A Belligerent Patient at the Steilacoom Asylum
One day last week as B.C. Woodruff, accountant at the asylum at Steilacoom, was passing through one of the male wards, a belligerent lunatic hurled a chunk of wood at him, striking him a severe blow on the head, which laid him up for a few days. At last accounts, however, he was up and about. Sam has come to the conclusion that an accountant's lot is not always a happy one.
“Sam has come to the conclusion that an accountant's lot is not always a happy one.”
Then · 1885141 years apartNow · 2026
Steilacoom was the site of the first state-run asylum, long a landmark in Washington's history of mental health care. Incidents like this highlight the pre-modern, often dangerous conditions for both staff and patients in the 19th-century asylum system.
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