We are working on setting up new ways for people to donate to our museum. Currently we just have a cash box and hope people put 5 bucks in there when they visit. Heck, we usually don’t have any change, so we just say, “well, this time is free for you!”
I personally have been asked if I charge research fees. I usually don’t, but have set up a paypal donation page for people to contribute to my efforts if they feel they are worthwhile. I specialize in digging deep into our physical archives and finding information that simply can not be found elsewhere. If you want to contribute, you can use this QR code to my paypal donation page:
I love helping people find information. Thanks for helping keep history alive.
The difficult process of finding answers using old ledgers….
We are working on setting up donation options for the museum, as many people suggest different technical solutions. I will post any information here when we determine what services we’ll utilize.
Today I tried a different approach with our scanner to see if it worked using some backlight. I got somewhat better results on this negative of Guy Mayo, a long-time employee of the hospital:
Scanned Negative of Guy Mayo with backlight.
But it still doesn’t compare well to scanning an actual photo:
It’s Tuesday, but it was 6 below zero this morning, so it’s a slow day at the museum. While Nancy is looking through an old Ward Census tome, I found this little tiny picture (original is 2 inches by 2 inches) in a collection of documents Nell is preparing for a presentation about the State Hospital Facilities division. It’s so tiny I decided to scan it at the highest settings and see how it would turn out:
Pouring Concrete Image, Front Side.
Pouring Concrete, backside.
It’s a real joy when you find an old picture and the names of the people on it are written on the back. Too many historical picture are just blank on the back, making you wonder who the people on it were.
[UPDATE TO THIS POST: When trying the method below, I did not use any backlight, which I think will produce MUCH better results. Look for the results to be posted here in a future blog post! –Richard]
Today I decided to scan a negative in to our scanner here at the museum and see if it could handle negatives. Apparently not, so I’ll try bringing some of them to the PCHS and scan them there. In the meantime, though, I did get this image by inverting the values and messing around with the levels, using GIMP:
Patients in an old image that we only have a negative for.
I’d like to see these pictures in full detail. So I’m looking into it…. 🙂
At the last CSHM board meeting we re-visited being open on Saturdays. Like many volunteer organizations, we could ALWAYS use more volunteers to learn the ropes and help run this very unique museum.
The current plan is to check and see how we did on Saturdays this January and then decide what to do in the future. It may be that we’re open only the first and last Saturdays, or not at all. Or EVERY Saturday. We just don’t know at this time.
Come get your very own piece of paper, stamped as official from the Board of Lunacy Commisioners!
I’m planning on being there this coming Saturday, even though I am not signed up for it. Nancy will be there, maybe Nell will stop by, and hopefully we can help anyone who comes in to learn more about Colorado Asylum History.
I’ve been busy in the basement! Here are three new articles I’m working on that will hopefully appear in future issues of the Pueblo Lore:
Article 3: What Insanity Looks Like
This explores a series of old photographs taken by Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond (1809-1886) that were later used by Dr John Conolly in a series of 13 papers. The photographs were converted to drawings on stone, and we have a set of them in the Museum! Here’s plate 4, which depicts the looks of Melancholy passing into Mania:
Plate 4 of The Physiognomy of Insanity, by Dr. John Conolly.
Article 4: The Thirteenth Street Review
Did you know that the patients in the Colorado State Hospital had their own self-published newspaper? Yep. It was called “The 13th Street Review” and contained all sorts of interesting things written by patients. I am on the lookout to locate more copies of this publication. We have approximately 22 issues here in our collection, but there may be many more copies out there somewhere, and we’d love to collect ALL of them. It was started in 1939 and was so successful they published it daily for over 20 years!
The 13th Street review: a daily publication by patients at the State Hospital.
Article 5: A Busy Saturday in August of 1908!
This article is practically writing itself, as it jumped out at me and demanded attention. While paging trough one of our old books (a Daily census that tracked which patients were admitted and discharged through the years 1898-1922), I was surprised to see a whole bunch of names written as admissions on one Saturday back in 1908:
Saturday, August 8th, 1908: Welcome to the Asylum all of you!
I Didn’t know why so many women would be brought in on that one particular day. So I searched through old newspapers and found some information. I also worked with Zoi (our wonderful intern) on her research. She’s studying which Hospital building were built, and when they opened for business…
The details will be in the article when I finish writing it.
This old image was scanned from a pile of unclaimed patient possessions we have in our museum collection. I guess ALL of those photos are a mystery, but some just stand out and grab one’s attention. Like this one.
By Hick! This Photo is a Mystery to me.
Obviously this is a staged photo–the kind of thing you’d pay for so you have a souvenir while visiting someplace (Denver, apparently, in this case). The car seems to be a flat sheet of plywood. The Backdrop is also two dimensional. The two guys in the photo, though, they look so real in comparison. The way the guys hands wrap around the 2D steering wheel is wonderful. And the expression on the passenger is just heroically stoic.
I’ll share some more of these from time to time. Stay tuned for more.
Starting this Saturday, January 7th, 2023, the Colorado State Hospital Museum will be open for visitors! The hours will be the same: 10 am to 4 pm.
We’re trying this to see if more people prefer visiting the museum on Saturday, rather than Tuesday. For January 2023, the museum will be open on both Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Here’s an old receipt from 1898 that you can see in the museum!
HIPAA only goes back 50 years, though, and I spend most of my time on patients from the period of 1879 (Opening Day!) to about 1915 or so. The absolute best records we have on patients are from the years 1910-1914. For some reason those records are extremely detailed and rich in descriptions. We are digitizing these records and hope to have transcriptions of them in the future. I will also probably write up several stories for publication in The Pueblo Lore.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for many of these patients. I’d rather honor their existence than have them forgotten.
Colorado State Hospital Museum 