Central State Hospital named a Place in Peril
Scott Thompson
Issue date: 11/20/09 Section: Features
For many years the mention of Milledgeville was synonymous with Central State Hospital and mental health. Once the nation's largest and the world's second-largest mental health hospital, the 167-year old facility has been named one of the 10 locations on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation's 2010 Places in Peril list. The historic sites were selected because they are deemed valuable and need restoration work. The organization is providing ways for people in Georgia's communities to help with that process.
The idea for Central State was started back in the 1830s by Dr. Tomlinson Fort, a popular figure in Milledgeville at the time.
"Dr. Fort did everything around here back then," said GCSU history professor Dr. Bob Wilson. "He was well involved with banks and medicine, he served a term in Congress and he believed in the idea of a progressive institution for the mentally ill."
In 1837, the Georgia State Legislature passed a bill with Gov. Wilson Lumpkin's support calling for a "State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum." The facility was built and opened in 1842 as the State Lunatic Asylum in Milledgeville, a city that was Georgia's state capital at the time. After becoming Georgia State Sanitarium in 1898 and Milledgeville State Hospital in 1929, it became Central State Hospital in 1967.
"There was a movement that really started around that time to reform prisons and the way the mentally ill were treated," Wilson said. "The goal was to get those with various mental issues out of the prisons where they were treated horribly and create an institution to deal with them in a much more humane way."
Central State was under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Green from 1845 to 1879. Under Green, the hospital operated as an extended family, where Green ate with staff and patients daily and removed chain and rope restraints. In Gen. William T. Sherman's famous Civil War "March to the Sea," Green convinced the Union general not to burn down the facility while also asking him successfully to give some of his soldiers' rations to the patients.
The idea for Central State was started back in the 1830s by Dr. Tomlinson Fort, a popular figure in Milledgeville at the time.
"Dr. Fort did everything around here back then," said GCSU history professor Dr. Bob Wilson. "He was well involved with banks and medicine, he served a term in Congress and he believed in the idea of a progressive institution for the mentally ill."
In 1837, the Georgia State Legislature passed a bill with Gov. Wilson Lumpkin's support calling for a "State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum." The facility was built and opened in 1842 as the State Lunatic Asylum in Milledgeville, a city that was Georgia's state capital at the time. After becoming Georgia State Sanitarium in 1898 and Milledgeville State Hospital in 1929, it became Central State Hospital in 1967.
"There was a movement that really started around that time to reform prisons and the way the mentally ill were treated," Wilson said. "The goal was to get those with various mental issues out of the prisons where they were treated horribly and create an institution to deal with them in a much more humane way."
Central State was under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Green from 1845 to 1879. Under Green, the hospital operated as an extended family, where Green ate with staff and patients daily and removed chain and rope restraints. In Gen. William T. Sherman's famous Civil War "March to the Sea," Green convinced the Union general not to burn down the facility while also asking him successfully to give some of his soldiers' rations to the patients.
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