Monday, November 24, 2025

Researching State Hospitals and Using Filters In Our Digital Collections

You might already be aware that accessing old patient records is a topic that has featured in the news recently, for example, the Boston Globe published an article discussing the issue back in August. The Globe article mentions recent bills created to address the issue along with the Overview and Recommendations report published by the Special Commission on State Institutions (SCSI). The Commission’s findings bring to light the state’s mishandling of sensitive records that document the (mis)treatment of patients. The Commission also presents suggestions for ways the state can take responsibility and acknowledge the people effected as well as how to better handle these records moving forward. A copy of the SCSI’s review and recommendations can be accessed here.

In addition to this overview, the Commission produced a full report that contains a detailed history of state hospitals in Massachusetts as well as the known repositories that contain surviving records. The report also includes citations to key legislation that led to the development and administration of these facilities. In light of the SCSI’s publication of this report, I thought it would be helpful to revisit our past blog post on Old Massachusetts Hospital Records and Patient Files which discusses where and how researchers can access patient records. Spoiler Alert: the State Library does not have patient files; however, there is sort of an exception to this – as the SCSI discovered in their research: a report published in 1848 Senate Bill number 47. Although it doesn’t contain detailed patient information, this report does list the names of individuals whose institutionalization was paid for by the State from the year 1838 to 1847.

The 2017 blog post lists several depositories (also listed in the SCSI’s report), namely: the Massachusetts State Archives, Harvard University’s Countway Library of Medicine (especially the Warren Anatomical Museum and Collection), and the City of Boston Archives. The SCSI confirmed that the State Archives has records from the following institutions:

Boston State Hospital
Metropolitan State Hospital
Grafton State hospital
Boston Psychopathic Hospital
Medfield State Hospital
Bridgewater State Hospital
Fernald State School
Westborough State Hospital
Danvers State Hospital
Northampton State Hospital
Tewksbury State Hospital

The Commission determined that surviving materials not kept at the State Archives technically are (or should) still held by Department of Mental Health and the Department of Developmental Services. These are some of the other repositories the that the Commission found which contain records:
The Massachusetts Historical Society also has materials connected to the McLean Asylum for the Insane, Worcester State Hospital, and the Channing Asylum in Wellesley. Information on these MHS collections and more, is available here: Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Related to Disability.

The Commission’s research didn’t just stop at tracking down patient records. There is a whole section on issues surrounding burial records (starting on page 165 of the report), but that is a topic for a whole other blog post. In the meantime (which will probably be a while), I strongly recommend reading the SCSI’s full 366-page report – a copy of which can be accessed in our Digital Collections, here. If the page count is too daunting, don’t worry! There is also an 18-page plain text summary of the report which is available here.

So, where does the State Library fit into all of this? As mentioned earlier – we don’t have patient records, but we do have the legislation that created and shaped these institutions – including bills that were enacted (or not enacted), and the acts that got passed by the General Court. As noted, with Senate Bill 47, some of this legislation contains commission reports. If you want to learn more about researching legislation, please consult our Guide to Compiling a Massachusetts Legislative History | Mass.gov. We also have publications issued by these institutions. Our collection of digitized material from Massachusetts state hospitals can be accessed here. These publications are typically the Annual Reports for the institutions, and the contents are primarily concerned with the finances and administration of the facility as reported by the hospitals to the General Court.

Let’s take a closer look at our digital collection from the Northampton State Hospital. Pro Tip: currently, the Sort By feature under Settings on the left of your screen defaults to “Most Relevant” -- you can change that to put them in chronological order.


In these reports you can find general statistics (e.g., age, sex, etc.) regarding the patient population during that year (below is an excerpt from page 26 of Northampton State Hospital’s 1870 annual report):


You can also find information on the expenses of the institution (below is an except from page 32 of Northampton State Hospital’s 1870 annual report):


For instance, the table above shows how many pillowcases were allotted to the 2nd Hall of the men’s quarter.

Sometimes, drawings and floor plans are included (images below are from Northampton State Hospital’s 1874 Annual Report):



Obviously, this data lacks information about the personal stories of the individual patients committed to these institutions – something that more likely would be kept in patient records – which are currently located at the State Archives (see Archive Grid). These files cover a period ranging from 1858 to 1993 (when the hospital closed).

Navigating our Digital Collections 

Our collections are organized in a similar way to how an archival collection is organized. This is a helpful tool for conceptualizing the organization of Massachusetts government.


The collections are nested within one another. Massachusetts State Hospitals → Northampton State Hospital → Annual Reports. If there were non-Annual Report materials, there would be another heading like the Annual Reports one you see in the image, e.g. “Newsletters,” “Board Meeting Minutes,” or even “Documents” (our catchall for monographs and other one-off materials that don’t fall into a specific category).

Check if there are more collections, if it says “Show more” you know that there are more collections with hits for “Northampton State Hospital."

You’ll notice multiple collections called “Annual Reports.” That is because these refer to annual reports from different agencies. We are working on fixing this because, as you can imagine, just about every agency publishes an annual report. 
For right now, you are going to need to click into each of these to find out to which they belong.

Clicking randomly into one of these Annual Reports, we end up in the Worcester State Hospital Annual Reports which evidently had reports that mention the Northampton State Hospital:


For the most part, these hits are from reporting on staff (named) and patient (unnamed) transfers to and from different hospitals. Other collections, such as House Documents or Senate Documents include bills which will help you compile legislative histories on laws that mention the state hospital. If a Digital Collection is a year, e.g. 1946, that represents the Acts and Resolves passed from that year.


If you run into issues navigating our collections, please don’t hesitate to contact us at Reference.Department@mass.gov. One of our Reference Librarians will be happy to assist!


Maryellen Larkin
Government Documents Reference Librarian

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