Individual Details

Death

Westville’s history actually begins not with the opening of a new state prison but with the opening of a twenty-million dollar mental facility named the Northern Indiana Hospital (now the Logansport State Hospital). Created by the Indiana General Assembly in 1945, the facility admitted both mental patients and the criminally insane from Alaska and Indiana. Two years later, the hospital was renamed after Dr. Norman M. Beatty, a pioneer in hospital sanitation and a leading activist for improving mental health facilities. The hospital housed roughly 1750 patients in the civil section and around 500 patients in the maximum-security portion. Patients ages six and up were admitted into the hospital. Contained within the facility was an accredited school, bowling alley, beauty and barber shop, power plant, sewage disposal plant, fire department and security force. The hospital also helped students from the surrounding community benefit from internships in psychology, music, occupational, vocational and recreational therapy and nursing programs.[3]