A Woman Who Witnessed a Historical Movement

March is Women's History Month! It's time to shine a spotlight on the ladies in our family trees. I'll be writing all month on women I've researched. I encourage all family history lovers to take the month to seek out the stories of our foremothers!  

 

 

Our local genealogical society features the "Ancestor Question of the Month" in our newsletter. For the month of March one of the prompts was, "Which of your female ancestors witnessed a historic American event? What was it? What was her experience?"

I looked through my tree to find a female ancestor whose life intersected with an historic event. Since many of my women ancestors are still under researched, I can only image their experiences of events like the Civil War, the Great Depression, plagues, or natural disasters.

But I did light upon one ancestor who experienced not so much a historic event but a historical movement in the medical field.

I've written many times about my second great-grandmother Catherine (Kate) Ryan Gilbride (1855-1881). She was institutionalized in April 1877 for puerperal mania after the stillbirth of her second child. She and her husband, Michael Gilbride (1855-1908), were indigent, and so Kate's fate was sealed by the Directors of the Poor of Providence, and she was sent to Danville Asylum in Montour County, Pennsylvania, for care.^1>/sup>

Patient at Bedlam, London.

When I first discovered that Kate was institutionalized, my immediate thought was that she was simply warehoused in horrible conditions, with terrible food, shoddy accommodations. I wondered is she was restrained like those pictured in the drawing (left) of the infamous Bedlam asylum in London, or did she endure treatments that would send a shiver down our spines today?

But while at Danville Asylum, Kate experienced a very new form of treatment for those with mental illness—the Moral Treatment, championed in the U.S. by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride. Originally developed in Europe, this new method focused on providing a calm, soothing environment for patients, theorizing that this would help them regain their mental health.²

 

Rather than cells, patients lived in dormitory-like wings in a beautiful new facility, tastefully decorated with carpets, curtains, plants, and artwork. Indoor and outdoor activities were offered, including chapel, entertainments, and the ability to experience nature in the asylum's pastoral setting.³ They ate wholesome, nutritious food. The use of physical restraints, jackets, or cuffs was frowned upon until or unless absolutely necessary. Medical staff cared for the patients' needs and prescribed various medicines to help with their illnesses.

 

 

Danville Asylum, Montour County, Pennsylvania.

 

Without Danville, Kate might have faced a very different fate. Before the Moral Treatment, mentally ill individuals were often housed in local jails or poor houses which were ill-equipped to care for their multitude of needs. The Moral Treatment opened the doors to new thinking about how the those with mental illness were treated as well as where they lived. Patients were removed from their homes and housed in a new type of building especially designed for their needs by Dr. Kirkbride. 

 

"The design of the asylum can be described as having a cheerful and comfortable appearance with ornamented grounds including trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. The attractiveness of the asylum is meant to impress upon the patient a desire to reside in the building. The basic form of the building consists of a central structure flanked by two wings, resembling the anatomy of a bat."⁴

 

"Dr. Kirkbride believed that management of the asylum was essential in curing mental illness. He thought that removing an individual from the outside world and immersing them in a more ordered world would revert them to sanity. The individual would be free of the over stimulation and stresses thought to cause insanity. They would restructure their daily regimen to include harmony and balance, achieved by exercise or some form of interaction with nature."⁵ Facilities like Danville allowed local officials and physicians to direct their ill charges to a better situation than they could offer.

 

 

Vintage image of a Danville ward. (Courtesy Thomas Industries)

When Kate arrived at Danville, she was underweight and malnourished, likely from the rigors of pregnancy and the lack of nutritious food borne of her poverty.⁶ Clearly, any form of treatment she had been given locally in Scranton, Pennsylvania—if any—did not measure up to her needs. As a patient she benefited from shift in thinking that occurred during her life about the treatment of those with mental illness. 

 

While Kate ultimately did not recover from her illness—she died of pneumonia in 1881—she was spared a worse fate by being sent to Danville.⁷ How would she have fared had she been forced to live in a jail or poorhouse simply because her family could not help her and there was nowhere else to go? Would she have received any treatment at all? Would she have suffered even more? I'm grateful for the small mercy that she was sent to Danville and received the best treatment known at that time.

 

I had never really looked at Kate's situation in the larger context of how it fit into the American story. In addition to dates, places, and important events, American history is also about movements, cultural changes, and shifts in thinking. In this way, Kate's experience, though tragic, is part of that American story. 

 

To read more about Catherine "Kate" Ryan Gilbride, see these other posts:

 

What Would You Tell Me, Catherine? 

The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville, Part 1 

The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville, Part II 

The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville, Part III 

The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville, Part IV 

The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville, Conclusion

 

Until next time... 

 

 © Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2026. All rights reserved. 

All images used with permission of Thomas Industries, except Bedlam illustration from rawpixel.com.

 

 

NOTES 

 

¹ Nancy Gilbride Casey, "The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville, Part II," Leaves on the Tree (https://myleavesonthetree.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-lady-in-asylum-catherine-gilbride_01279589497.html : posted 15 Oct. 2022). 

 

² Patricia D'Antonio, "History of Psychiatric Hospitals," Penn Nursing, n.d. (https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/nurses-institutions-caring/history-of-psychiatric-hospitals/ : accessed 26 Feb. 2026). Also: Penn Medicine (https://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/timeline/1801/tline14.html : accessed 26 Feb. 2026), History of Pennsylvania Hospital, Historical Timeline, "Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride."

 

³ Pennsylvania Board of Public Charities, Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of Public Charities, Vol. 10 (Harrisburg : Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1880), p. 273; digital images, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annual_Report_of_the_Board_of_Commission/e0_wAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 : accessed 26 Feb. 2026); citing Pennsylvania State University, State College.

 

⁴ Lindsay Havrilla, "Therapeutic Architecture," Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Fall 2010 (https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/feature-articles/therapeutic-architecture : accessed 26 Feb. 2026).

 

⁵ Ibid. 

 

⁶ Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1887-1881, Record Group 23, Records of the Department of Public Welfare, Danville State Hospital, Female Case Books, Book A, page 81; photocopies supplied by Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg, PA to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Tioga, Texas. 

 

⁷ City of Scranton (Pennsylvania), Board of Health, death certificate for Catharine Gilbride, 27 Jan 1881; imaged, "Record of deaths, 1878-1905, in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania," FamilySearch, (https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog/koha:707274 : accessed 26 February 2026); citing Bureau of Health, Scranton.