During the most recent Women's History Month in March I ran across an article by Liana Kathleen Glew, "Stitching Time: Women and Fiber Art in Psychiatric History." Low and behold, two illustrations she used have an Alabama connection. These two photos are from a Bryce Hospital album and were taken around 1916.
In the 1840s American mental health crusader Dorothea Dix visited state legislatures--including Alabama's--attempting to improve the care of the mentally ill. The state responded with a law in 1852 establishing the Alabama Insane Hospital. Some 326 acres in Tuscaloosa were purchased as the site of the hospital; the facility opened in 1859 with Peter Bryce as the first superintendent. Eight years after he died in 1892 the institution officially became Bryce Hospital.
For decades the patients at Bryce, as at so many similar places around the country, were involved in work that helped sustain the hospital in the face of chronic underfunding. These programs also seemed to help many of the patients. However, by the end of World War II Bryce was so overcrowded and poorly funded that conditions reached a crisis. In 1972, a ruling in a federal court case changed psychiatric institutions around the country and many including Bryce eventually closed. The University of Alabama now owns the property and preservation and redevelopment efforts are continuing.
The article by Glew cited above addresses the roles fiber arts played both inside asylums and in the wider culture outside. Sewing, knitting, weaving, crochet and needlecraft provided a way to keep female patients busy and contributed to the asylum budgets. She includes several examples of self-expression in these activities as well.
A sewing room at Bryce
Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History
Industrial art room
Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History
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