Maryland. Commissioners for Erecting a Hospital for the Insane.

In 1852, Dorothea Dix, outspoken advocate for the mentally ill, addressed the Maryland legislature on the inadequacy of the state's sole facility for the treatment of the insane, Maryland Hospital in Baltimore City. The General Assembly passed a law which created a commission to "select and purchase" a tract of land for the purpose of erecting a 200 to 250 bed hospital for the insane (Laws of 1852, ch. 302). The Commission acted quickly. On 27 October 1852 it purchased 136 acres of land in Catonsville (five miles SW of Baltimore) which was renamed "Spring Grove." By November the commission hired an architect and an excavation contractor.

Despite further appropriations (Laws of 1858, ch. 179, and Laws of 1860, ch. 244), construction was interrupted by the Civil War. In an apparent response to wartime politics, the original commissioners were replaced in 1862 (Laws of 1862, ch. 234). Nonetheless, war continued to delay construction. In December 1864 the commission explained: "No work was done during the last year on account of the great scarcity of workmen, an advance of labor and material and the inability of contractors to complete their contracts on account of such advances." It appears that the commission did not meet again until November 1867. Politics came to the fore again when the original commissioners were reappointed (Laws of 1868, ch. 117). While no record of its proceedings exists, the commission presumably continued to oversee the construction of the Spring Grove facility. In 1870, the legislature again ordered the sale of the Baltimore City hospital (Laws of 1870, ch. 208). Proceeds went to defray construction costs of the new hospital. Finally, when the first patients were admitted to the Maryland Hospital at Spring Grove in October 1872, the commission's mandate was fulfilled.