Alabama's largest mental hospital - had 5,000 patients in 1970, had its own newspaper in 19th ce
By Jeremy Gray | jgray@al.com AL.com
Tuscaloosa, AL /Byline
From 1872 until 1881, the patients at Bryce Hospital ran a newspaper called The Meteor, The Atlantic reported today. Aka Secondary Package /gallery-preview gallery-preview Aka Story Package /series series
"The paper was named after the patients' own expectations for it: "Meteors are always a surprise," the first issue explained, and "so doubtless will be our little sheet. They appear at regular intervals. So will it," the report continued.
"There were columns on Darwinism, essays on literature, and updates about goings on at the hospital, including an editorial complaining that the female patients were too loud (a letter in a subsequent issue upbraided the editor for his sexism). There were concert reviews, marriage and death notices, and a recurring section of one-off musings called Meteoric Dust."
Originally named the Alabama Insane Asylum, the hospital opened its doors in April 1861, where superintendent Peter Bryce admitted his first patient, a soldier, under the diagnosis of "political excitement."
By 1970, the hospital -- renamed in honor of its original superintendent -- had become an inhumane dumping ground, housing more than 5,000 patients. Hal Martin, the editor of The Montgomery Advertiser, likened some of the conditions to those of concentration camps he had seen while covering the Nazi war trials.
In 2010, the state announced plans to sell the hospital to the University of Alabama, which agreed to pay $72 million and restore the main, historic Bryce building.
Its residents, some of whom had lived there for decades, were transferred to community care facilities, with the last patient moving out in December 2011.
The new Bryce Hospital opened in 2014.