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In the 19th and 20th centuries, reformers in the United States and Europe built asylums in response to a range of social issues including disability - mental health, and alcoholism. These documents and images from the NLM Digital Collections bring to life the day to day experiences of people at these sites: the conditions of the asylums and the limits on liberty that many people in them experienced.

Sheet of cloth with hand-stitched text

Letter stitched in cloth by Anna B. Kuster Welty, 1877

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

Anna Welty stitched this letter in German asking for her release from the California Insane Asylum in Stockton. She had been hospitalized for mania for four years when she created this piece. Like many people, Anna Welty experienced asylums as restricting their liberty, particularly if they had been placed there involuntarily. She did not gain release and instead escaped in 1884 and drowned accidentally the day after leaving.