History Events in Augusta

Join us for an engaging historical story and a walk to learn about our future accessible trail loop and the meaning behind the effort. Between 1840 and the late 1960s the site known as Viles Arboretum was part of a farm used by the Maine Insane Hospital (now Riverview Psychiatric Center) to cultivate crops and livestock through occupational therapy/exercise programs. Thanks to support from the Maine Trails Bond program, we are building a 1.25 mile accessible trail loop. Part of this project is an effort to share the story of the working farm and the people who toiled on the land. During the years as a working farm, thousands of individuals worked this land. The annual reports and other records from the Maine Insane Hospital farm are a clear demonstration of the biased attitudes that were (and in many cases, still are) prevalent in our society and government. In the 1841 annual report, they wrote “Thus engaged, without care or responsibility, in an employment that interests the mind while it furnishes wholesome exercise for the body, the incurable have been made more happy than they could be any other way, and the curable have promoted their restoration more rapidly than if they had been spending their time in idleness or mere amusement.” However, a closer look reveals that the benefits that really mattered were financial. The crops raised covered the costs of the hospital kitchen in the first year. By the turn of the century, the farm was a profitable venture for the State of Maine. So much so that the hospital farm Piggery was honored at the famous 1893 Chicago Exposition for its efficiency and the quality of the products produced. By the 1912 annual report, the year’s yield included more than 37,000 pounds of beef, veal and pork; hundreds of bushels of peas, beans, pickling cucumbers, endive and lettuce; 22,000 ears of corn; more than 3,000 bushels of potatoes and apples; 73.5 tons of vegetables such as beets, cabbage, carrots, currents, squash, rhubarb, parsnips, tomatoes, and turnips; nearly 400 tons of hay, millet, and rye; hundreds of bull and cow hides, and tons of fertilizer and bonemeal. During all the years the farm existed, thousands of people worked here, and most of them were patients. They produced all this product, apparently, as the 1840 report noted, “without care or responsibility.” But we now know the more painful truth: the ‘patients’ were really inmates, and they were not compensated for their work. Many worked the farm against their will. The concept that they could be separated as either ‘curable’ or ‘incurable’ also represents an injustice to those individuals. The hospital patients were obviously capable of working really hard and taking great care and responsibility in their work. But to the State of Maine they were considered to be mentally or physically incapable of leading ‘normal’ lives. During the research conducted as part of the “AMHI Consent Decree” in the early 2000s, some stark realities of the treatment of patients were revealed. It is estimated that of the more than 45,000 people who were admitted to the hospital between 1840 and 2004, nearly 25% died while they are patients. What’s more, there is no record of burial for more than half of those individuals. Further, when we consider the time period, we know that the type of individual who would be a candidate for institutionalization was varied and, in many cases, a victim of the injustices inherent in the system. Those in mental institutions in the 19th and early 20th century not only included individuals with mental and physical limitations, but also those who were Indigenous, of mixed race, members of the LGBTQ+ community, unmarried mothers, those with addictions, individuals suffering from depression, veterans and others with post-traumatic stress disorders, people on the autism scale, women with post-partum depression, people with undiagnosed bi-polar challenges, and, as one report noted, people who don’t ‘fit in with societal norms.” For example, the records report a 49-year-old women from Kittery who had expressed ‘erroneous views on religion’ and who, it was thought, had contracted her mental illness while caring for her mentally ill father and brother. Able bodied, she was likely a worker at the farm. She died while she was incarcerated at the hospital. As evidenced in even the most recent news stories, our society still grapples with the assumptions that lead us to ignore the needs of those who struggle with the challenges of seeking equity. We too often assume that those with mental and physical limitations somehow did something to cause their condition. Further, some people believe that ‘equal’ access is the equivalent of ‘equitable’ access. Equitable access means that those who need additional accommodation to gain equality can receive it. Our plan to construct a trail and tell the story of the hospital farm, therefore, is a critical priority in that it aims to provide resources for equitable access to our trails for the kind of individuals who might, at one time, have been forced to work on the hospital farm. Our Jane’s Walk will feature a talk and walk around the proposed trail.