Midnight clerks and daily drudges: hospital psychiatry in New York State, 1890-1905

Describes the centralization, bureaucratization, and politicization of New York State's care for the insane that began with the State Care Act in 1890 and ended with the Brackett-Rogers bill in 1902. The State Care Act legislated hospitalization in state-funded asylums for all mentally ill persons in county asylums, jails, or workhouses. The three-person Commission in Lunacy, created in 1889, had almost unlimited powers, and many battles were fought between the commission and the state hospitals. The Brackett-Rogers bill attempted to curb spending by abolishing the asylums' boards of managers, giving even more power to the commission, but the boards were reinstated in 1905.