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The Tragic Story of Canada's Asylum Built to Disappear Unwanted Women: Hamilton Insane Asylum

The Canadian Autopsy

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This video uncovers the chilling history of the Hamilton Asylum for the Insane, a 1875 Victorian-era psychiatric institution notoriously used to silence and "disappear" women deemed social outcasts. We explore the tragic reality of institutionalization in 19th-century Canada, where diagnoses like female hysteria, melancholia, and moral insanity were weaponized against women who defied patriarchal norms or suffered from post-partum depression. Through archival records and haunting local history, we examine the human rights abuses and systemic neglect within "The Mountain" hospital, shedding light on the thousands of unwanted women who were stripped of their identities and forgotten by a society that prioritized conformity over compassion

20 Comments

@TheDianne888 4 months ago

I am absolutely repulsed. A woman who is sick to death of her husband is taken there and kept because she won't clean the house, cook his dinner, or, and this is a big one, give him his nightly orgasm! Thank you for telling this story. I grew up in Toronto but had never heard about it. It's just too sad. Women had no say and no rights. I just can't imagine ever feeling so scared, so lonely and so helpless. 😢

@KimWhitney-d3o 5 months ago

This is heartbreaking, my husband's aunt was sent to the psychic hospital in Montreal at the age of 16, all because she'd had a nervous breakdown and they said she was violent. His aunt was very intelligent, she spoke 3 languages, yet she was committed to a life of misery, nobody visited, sadly she spent her life there until her death, left staring blankly out a window. A waste of a life that could have been easily treated.

@hollymurrison1562 5 months ago

As an angry daughter I would have been sent there. Thankfully I grew up in the 70’s.

@artzyally5020 5 months ago

My mom was a victim here. They gave her shock therapy. She came home a different person, didnt remember the majority of my childhood.

@GoldieWalma 5 months ago

It is tragic knowing many lives were shamed into non existence.

@colleenkerr4152 5 months ago

This makes me want to throw up. It disgusts me at a level I can't explain

@GalenBallentine 4 months ago

Utterly tragic and evil.

@GreatNorth. 4 months ago

An unhealing wound 😢 🇨🇦 🍁

@reclaim-your-power 5 months ago

My friend was given electric shock therapy quite a few times. In the 1990s. She was diagnosed with depression but her real problem was abuse at the hands of her father . Women are still diagnosed with anxiety for neurological problems to this day. Women are prescribed antidepressants constantly. Many of them really need hormone replacement therapy.

@agakata8221 5 months ago

Heartbreaking.

@boomerang9967 5 months ago (edited)

This building no longer exists. It was called the Barton Building. I worked there one summer. I did not enjoy that time. The left hand side was for men, the right hand side for women. I worked on the first floor on the men’s side. The food was excellent. This was 1970. They got three good meals a day and their medication. It was their home. It was long-term social housing.
I remember the electric shock therapy. No consent by the patient. They used an injection first to prevent any muscular movement. At that time the patient could not breathe due to this. Thus everything had to move quickly.
At that time it was called the OH, or the Ontario Hospital. The name was changed to the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital.
The top of the building held the criminally insane.

@pjk1714 4 months ago

History Canada can't afford to forget.
I appreciate this being shared, let's hope this history is learned and not repeated.

@LesyaRoberts 4 months ago

We had an institution here. They shut it down and moved the mental health ward downtown. Many people.still walk the road every day since they were released. There aren't enough long care beds. While institutions historically were horrible we still need long term care for many people. Many more since drug policies are inflicting long term cognitive impairments to users, many of which are already mentally ill.

@kevinsnider7750 4 months ago (edited)

The same people today who think its ok to cut the genitals off of a child are the equivalent of the people who blindly supported insane asylums. Same goes with the doctors then and now as well. People in 100 yrs are gonna look back at us today and be horrified we allowed them to do the things they do to our kids.

@thejokerOL-u6y 5 months ago

At no cost to the public

@morbid1bunny 4 months ago

It is really sad....
And yet we could absolutely benefit from hospitals like these.

Many people who lived in these hospitals just got thrown to the streets.

@pamwade6450 4 months ago

The problem is we can all look at things like this and say that was an abomination. We need to step back and see what we are doing now that in 40 years will be an abomination to future generations and stop them now.

@GailMalka 5 months ago

This is infuriating. It takes a male to impregnate a female yet it's the female who suffers the consquences.
Not everyone during that era were virgins when they married. They were just lucky.

@kamilthegreat2834 4 months ago

Ahhhhh the good ol' days.

@sarahmartin7888 4 months ago

My grandfather spent a couple years here at the West fifth asylum in Hamilton after he killed a child while drunk driving upon returning home from the Korean War. I never heard him speak before, as a kid I always thought he was mute but my parents eventually told me he bit his tongue off when trying to commit suicide jumping off the second floor of the asylum.