Ingleside Hospital For The Insane

Wyatt Mach-Jon Mueller-Sam Rempe

Senior Division

Website

567 words

483 words
 Jon, Sam, and I all started off this project by first gaining as much information as possible

about the rules on this activity. Ms. Shipley (our teacher) has been on the Nebraska History Day

Project which benefited us because she was able to provide more information than anyone else

could have. Once we had all of the rules processed, it was time for us to pick a topic to do our

project with. Jon and I were on the same team for the Nebraska History Day Project in early

2019. We did a website last year over D-Day. Talking with the other members of the group this

year, we were all very comfortable with the idea of doing another website because of the

experience we acquired the previous history day project.

Once we decided what our category was going to be it was time to pick a topic. Nothing

was coming to mind at first so Ms. Shipley suggested going to the Nebraska History Day website

and looking under the topic tab for some different concepts. On the website, there were many

different options ranging from racial and gender rights activist groups to mental insane hospitals.

Finally narrowing down our options to our top three, we finally decided to do our website over

Ingleside Hospital for the Insane. Ingleside is located a short thirty miles away from our school’s

location. Living so close to this asylum was one factor that helped us determine our topic. Be

that as it may, Ingleside is off-limits to the public which limits our ability to conduct primary

research ourselves.

Nonetheless, we began to compile as much research as we could find. As a result of not

being able to actually set foot on Ingleside soil, we looked to the internet for solutions to our
problem. Luckily for us, on the Nebraska History Day website they had provided under the

Ingleside Hospital for the Insane link, a few primary sources. We were able to retrieve burial

records from Ingleside’s cemetery, records of all patients admitted and released, and finally a

historical note from 1923. After finally analyzing all of our primary sources it was time for us to

move on to find our secondary sources. We found information ranging from news articles about

Ingleside coming to hastings to an article describing why it was built in the first place to a

general article about the “insane” patients.

Ingleside was our topic choice not only because it broke many different barriers but these

barriers have become a big deal in the present day. In the years around 1950, very little protected

people that were considered different. Patients admitted to Ingleside for mental or physical

disorders did not receive anywhere close to the help that they get now. It was places like

Ingleside Hospital for the Insane that brought civil and ethical laws to attention and finally put in

place.