Anna Ott, Economic Agent
Anna Ott, Economic Agent
The Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane was a significant economic enterprise whose daily workings generated immense income for the local community. Even while an asylum inmate, Ott remained a consumer of local businesses. The economies inside the asylum were highly tied to and interwoven with economic systems outside of the asylum. This chapter argues that nineteenth-century insane asylums altered communities. They became huge economic markets, provided goods to the local economy, created employment opportunities and also provided laborers, generated a demand for attorneys and new legal processes, and medicalized behaviors sometimes not previously considered pathological.
Keywords: Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane, capitalism, community development, institutionalization, legal incompetency
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