Bridgewater State Hospital, located in southeastern Massachusetts, is a state facility housing the criminally insane and those whose sanity is being evaluated for the criminal justice system. It was established in 1855 as an almshouse. It was then used as a workhouse for inmates with short sentences who worked the surrounding farmland. It was later rebuilt in the 1880s and again in 1974. Bridgewater State Hospital currently houses 395 inmates all of whom are adult males. The facility was the subject of the 1967 documentary Titicut Follies. Bridgewater State Hospital falls under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Department of Correction.
Read more about Bridgewater State Hospital: History, Titicut Follies, Officer Deaths At Bridgewater, Notable Prisoners, Facility Address
Famous quotes containing the words bridgewater, state and/or hospital:
“I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod from a haddock. Generous as it seems, this condition would empty most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the fishers of men were fishermen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Mead had studied for the ministry, but had lost his faith and took great delight in blasphemy. Capt. Charles H. Frady, pioneer missionary, held a meeting here and brought Mead back into the fold. He then became so devout that, one Sunday, when he happened upon a swimming party, he shot at the people in the river, and threatened to kill anyone he again caught desecrating the Sabbath.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)