State Agency Finding Aid: Dorothea Dix Hospital, 1881-1956

DOROTHEA DIX HOSPITAL Minutes, Board of Directors L'J: В A - КмЪ MINUTES OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 1881-1945 Accession Information: "Record of transactions of the board meetings. No minutes were found before 1881, and minutes since 1945 are included in the State Hospitals Board of Control proceedings. Located in office of Superintendent and basement storage room." Transferred to Archives 12-29-60. Schedule Reference: Page 4, item 1. Finding Aid revised by: Ellen Z. McGrew Date: November 14, 1977 The influence of Miss Dorothea Dix upon the state of North Carolina's decision to build a mental hospital is illustrated in her presentation to the General Assembly in 1848 of a "Memorial Soliciting a State Hospital for the Protection and Cure of the Insane" [see Legislative Documents, 1848-1349, House Document No. 2, 48 pp]. In the same session a bill was submitted to provide for the establishment of a state hospital for the insane [House Doc. No. 6]. The act establishing the hospital was ratified in January, 1849, and the asylum received its first patient in February, 1856. For an account of the hospital's early history see "Founding the North Carolina Asylum for the Insane," by Margaret C. McCulloch, The North Carolina Historical Review, July, 1936. The biennial reports to the General Assembly are in the printed volumes of Legislative Documents, 1849-1919. The "Dorothea Dix Hospital Information Brochure," by F. Leary, librarian, 1968, typescript, 33 pp. is a compilation of administrative information and can be found in the Documents Branch of the State Library. After a brief period of being called the Lunatic Asylum prior to its opening in 1856, the mental hospital at Raleigh was officially the Insane Asylum of North Carolina until 1879 when it was incorporated as the North Carolina Insane Asylum. In 1897 the General Assembly attempted to clarify the confusion of names identifying the three mental hospitals located at Raleigh, Morganton, and Goldsboro, and for a brief period the Raleigh hospital was officially the "Central Hospital for the Insane "[Pub lie Law, 1897, c. 265]. In the next session the legislature designated all three hospitals as "State Hospital" followed by the location, cf. The State Hospital at Raleigh [Public Law, 1899, c. 684]. This designation was officially constant until 1959 when the name Dorothea Dix Hospital was authorized [Session Laws, 1959, c. 1028].