The Southwestern Insane Asylum of San Antonio

The Southwestern Insane Asylum or also known as the San Antonio State hospital was established on April 6, 1892. The hospital took over 640 acres of land and had the capacity to fit about 500 patients. Within the hospital there was a small village, where there was crops, livestock and even a lake for fishing. In 1910, a huge amount of money was donated to the hospital for expansion of the facility. Soon, in the upcoming years they were able to accommodate up to 1,140 patients. Later, in the year 1925 the state asylums decided to drop such harsh names on their facilities for example "lunatic" "insane. So the Southwestern Insane Asylum became the San Antonio State Hospital. Before you knew it, over population became a major issue in the hospital and there was way too many patients coming in which led to a lack of beds/rooms where they could be held in. Authorities at the hospital had no choice but to turn down any incoming patients and it eventually got to the point where they had to get rid of any patients that were in harsh mental or physical conditions. They would generally get rid of them in cruel ways like poisonous medication, physical abuse and other particular horrifying ways all to make more room for new patients. Unfortunately, the poor souls of the ones that lost their lives in such frightful actions never left the facility and that is where the haunting history of the San Antonio State hospital begins....

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In the year 1910, a man who was hospitalized in the facility for approximately 12 years reported several paranormal activity. As well as, even terrible treatment and disturbing poor conditions. He ended filing a lawsuit against the asylum and since he was a millionaire this lawsuit went publicly engaging for all distinct crowds. Which soon brought light to everything that occurred within the walls of the San Antonio State Hospital. Moving forward, nobody believed the poor man was telling the entire truth until he was finally granted a hearing and wanted to prove that he was a sane individual. Ultimately, the millionaire William Browne was granted his freedom out of the asylum however, on June 17, 1916 William's body was found floating on the Rio Grande. It's not safe to say who it was because the police never found any evidence to direct to anyone. Who's to say it was one of the authorities at the asylum who wanted William to keep his mouth shut about all of his horrifying experiences. Till this day no individual knows exactly what happened or who caused the murder of William Browne.

Patients at the Southwestern Hospital/ Asylum were overall treated poorly. They had limited space or living area, food, resources literally everything. Just like the experience I mentioned above which basically served as a review to the facility, there are several others that have gotten their story out. In this artifact we see the patients of the hospital kind of just lounging around and talking to each other, not really doing much. However you can notice the overpopulated area where towards the back of the image there is plenty of individuals squished together. The area shown also looks empty, unresourceful and vague, no hospital or facility that is meant to benefit individuals in need should ever look like this. The San Antonio state Hospital has definitely have the worst history and personally I completely understand why the haunting became a thing, poor souls that died within the horrifying building.

Within my exhibit and all the research and artifacts that I found there is two possible IB historical thinking concepts found. The first one being continuity and the second being perspective. Continuity ultimately relates to my topic because the haunting and paranormal activities till this day happen to the people that work in the new building built above the ground of the old asylum. Even over the years, many many years the strange stuff happening has not changed and has remained the same and working at its full potential which is why I say it’s continuity. Furthermore, perspective is also involved because many individuals have distinct points of views of the old asylum and till present time believe certain things. It’s all just depending on their own experiences within the place and the research they have done. Therefore, this is another major IB historical concept. I think this deserves to be highlighted and reserved in historical record and future generations because it’s something of higher power and is so strange. Also, happened here in our city where most of us were raised, why not want to learn and gain more knowledge about it, it’s so interesting. However, I really think this asylum is significant because it teaches all that know it’s story that history will always be valuable and remembered no matter the good or bad within a basic building it’s the memories, actions, people within it that make it, gain it’s own identity. 

To conclude, this history project was honestly a great learning experience that while researching something that I genuinely liked to learn more about, I gained knowledge about something so interesting within our city. Of course, there was some limitations which for me was learning how to deal with this story map website and simply being able to manage it, post the artifacts, organize my presentation, it was definitely a minor hassle. Another limitation was developing my internal thoughts and ideas and pushing myself to elaborate so that I could sound a little better when I talked about my artifacts, I really wanted to make this as good as it could possibly sound. On the contrary, besides the small obstacles along the way I enjoyed learning so many facts about this historic facility. It was an amazing feeling knowing that your city has cool, scary stories that honestly you never knew about and obtaining all the details and bits/ pieces of this part of history made me feel good and overall accomplished in a sense. I would definitely do something like this project again it made me gain so much knowledge in such little time and actually made me use all my Ib historical thinking concepts as well as, my researching skills.