This is yet again another document found at the Austin History Center, with no author to thank for this contribution. When reading this it is important to remember that the way people spoke whenever this was written, which I assume was sometime in the 1970s. Is different than today. Indian Indians today are known as Indigenous Americans. When referring to the quest to find someone to manage the building. Men and women today would have been considered. All of the buildings except for the administration building, the original building have been demolished. One wonders if Central Market, which is now located right next to where the central kitchen used to be, if that is where it got its name.
It’s titled: Way back when – Nostalgia. Austin State Hospital.
The pharmacy was located in the staff conference room on the first floor of the administration building.
The barbershop was located on the east side of the basement, where the men could get their institutional type haircuts and a shave about every week or two. In the 1950s,, with a whopping population of 3400 patients and 600 employees, The hospital had a canteen, which consisted of two small tables and eight chairs. The canteen until the mid 1950s was located in a two story brick building. The canteen occupied the lower section and a married couple was assigned to the upper apartment. This apartment was considered one of the more prestigious areas.
Actually, the canteen did not need to be large.
Very few male patients had ground privileges and female patients had none whatsoever. As both patients and employees received coffee in their work areas, courtesy of the hospital, seating space in the canteen was not necissary. However, it did do a booming business in candy, cigarettes, snuff, chewing tobacco, soft drinks and other pleasant incidentals. Each morning and afternoon wards make a list of all the items the patients on the ward would like to purchase. An employee and two or three trusted patients would proceed to the canteen to make the purchases with either cash or coupons that had been credited to the patient’s trust fund. For the women, it was a special honor to be selected, as this may be the one and rare opportunity for them to leave the ward. The trip was frequently made with an old paint chipped two wheel wooden cart which was a standby to be seen all over the hospital grounds. This was the standard mode of transportation and was used to carry everything from supplies, groceries, laundry and In emergencies, to carry patients to the hospital. Every ward and department had its cart with the name stenciled on it, and like horses, you were on your honor not to take any but your own.
Money was as tight in those days as it is now, and just as much for patience as it was for employees, But somehow the hospital economy thrived enough that coins did Jingle and pass from one hand to another.
The Department of Labor and Minimum Wage division was not around in those days, and patients earned money in a variety of ways. Primarily by washing employees, cars, selling papers, running errands and doing domestic chores such as ironing, babysitting and yard work when they had earned the reputation as a good working patient. A patient would develop seniority or “squatters rights” over an employee’s parking lot and set up a system of fees to keep an employee’s car clean.
One rags to riches story
was a patient who had the parking lot north of the Staff Development Building, when that was the doctor’s building. This patient was so successful in operating his car washing business that he hired other patients to do work for him and he became a manager. He saved his money and after a period of at least twenty years in the hospital, was discharged and returned to his native county near Schulenburg. Here, he opened a small cafe and lounge. This prospered to the extent that he moved further to the South and East and upon last being heard from, was operating a luxurious club in southern Florida.
Hospitals, then, could be compared to small feudal kingdoms
because it was self-contained, sealed off from the community and governed by one strong toletarian figure. Like a small community, the hospital had its own crops and garden, hog and dairy farm, chicken, farm, Creamery, sewing room, laundry, mattress, factory, shoe shop, utility system, complete with deep water well and electrical generating system, and just about everything necessary to be self sustained. A common sight behind the wards was mattress racks and, weather permitting, at least twice a week. All mattresses were carried out by patients to air and sun for at least six hours. On sunny days, whole wards would go for walks around the hospital park.
Back in the olden days, the only way you could describe the Superintendent was “Big Daddy”.
Like the captain of a ship, he was supreme authority of everything that occurred within the hospital confines. There was no central office at that time and was not until 1949, when it became the Board for State Hospitals and Special Schools. Prior to that time, The hospital system, If you could call it a system, operated under the auspices of the Board of Control, Eleemonsynary division.
It seems the hospitals were content to shift for themselves. So considering the framework for the management structure and the closeness of the family relationships of those times, it is not surprising that. The Superintendent made decisions not only. Regarding patients treatment, but also regarding the lives of the employees. It cannot be denied that there was a definite caste system. Employees of one department or pay category could associate only with employees in a comparable type of department or pay category.
If a single young male employee wished to court a single young female employee,
adhering to the above requirement, he approached the Superintendent with a request to begin courting her. With the Superintendent’s approval and if this relationship developed, he requested permission to marry her. His decision permitting them to marry was often based on whether there was available quarters. If not, they would have to wait. If accommodations were available, and the marriage blessed with the heavenly event, even though the baby was born at the hospital Infirmary, it was assumed that arrangements had been made by the parents for the baby to be kept by relatives who lived off the hospital grounds. The only exception being those employees high enough in the system who were fortunate enough to have a cottage of their own.
Now this is not as bad as it seems.
Most of the superintendents were benevolent and had the best interest of employees. Many employees who worked under this type of environment look back fondly on those days with a warm regard for Dr So and So. One of the last of the superintendents in this category was responsible for planting all the pecan trees on the hospital grounds. He was also an excellent gardener and personally planted much of the shrubbery that remains around the hospital building s. He was responsible for establishing a large greenhouse located directly West of the laundry on Lamar. This greenhouse was later demolished by the central office to make room for the motor pool.
