Dorothea Dix Hospital Admissions Ledger Dataset, Patients 0000-7827

This dataset was transcribed from photos of the original, handwritten admissions ledgers for the North Carolina Asylum for the Insane (later known as Dorothea Dix Hospital) held at the State Archives of North Carolina. The original records are publicly available under the North Carolina Public Records Act, which indicates that records created by state government entities more than 100 years ago are publicly accessible through the State Archives of North Carolina. Historical finding aid at the State Archives of North Carolina (1977) notes that admissions ledger was maintained from the opening of the hospital in 1856 to 1937 (Vol. 1: 1856-1911; Vol. 2: 1911-1929; Vol. 3: 1929-1937). For the period relevant here (1856-1920), this was a hand-written ledger recording both the admission (with identifying admissions number) and disposition (discharged, transferred, escaped [eloped], death) of each patient—more than 7,200 admissions. The original order of the data as recorded in the admissions ledgers (Vols 1 2) was chronological, by admittance date. Each patient was issued a unique patient identifier upon admission to the hospital, and each admission resulted in a new patient number. As a result, repeat patients are not specifically indicated in this dataset. These admissions ledgers record personal health information such as name, county of origin, age, sex, civil condition, occupation, apparent form of mental illness, supposed cause, duration when admitted, time in the asylum, condition, and release. Race is occasionally indicated, although fewer than 50 African Americans were admitted to the hospital during the period in question. More than 100 different supposed causes were noted for patients admitted between 1856 and 1920. A controlled vocabulary was implemented in the following data fields, to aid in data visualization: Occupation, Occupation Category, Supposed Cause, Supposed Cause Category, and Form. This vocabulary was designed using historical sources such as, but not limited to, Kirchhoff's Handbook of Insanity for Practitioners and Students (1893), The Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane (1918), and Wines' Report on the Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the United States as Returned at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880). A version retaining the original entries for these fields is also available. This is as of the time of writing (May 2021) the only searchable dataset for this collection and the only alphabetic index to the collection. Additional records will be transcribed and added to the dataset as they become available. At present, the following versions of the dataset have been produced: 1. Unredacted transcription and digitization of original ledger records in spreadsheet form including patient name, admission identifier, and controlled vocabulary applied to some fields (see above). 2. De-identified ledger records in spreadsheet form, first and last names omitted, numerical admission identifier preserved with controlled vocabulary imposed for some fields.