Patients worked hundreds of acres of farmland that allowed the asylum to become self-sustaining.
There is a profitable and well-run cracker firm in a sweaty part of the town, there is a knot of men talking on the pavement about anything but crackers, amidst the irrelevant trucks.
National Science and Media Museum blog.
Patients were not only earning their keep, they were gaining the therapeutic benefits of hard work.
Some suffered brain injuries, mental retardation, or were simply elderly people who could not afford a nursing facility or retirement home.
Mayday Hills Hospital closed in 1995 after 128 years of operation.