Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, is home to a plethora of hospitals, be it for the physically ill or, what was defined as the insane and feeble minded. In 1891, the St. Margaret Memorial Hospital opened under John H. Shoenberger. In 1908, the Pittsburgh Hospital was run under C. A. Fagan, and on June 1, 1889, the South Side Hospital opened under Anna M. Rindlaub. Pittsburgh, commonly known as the "Steel City," also built up a reputation for its abundance of hospitals that had opened up within a fairly close time period of each other. During this time, many new mental hospitals were established due to overcrowding. In 1899, a building to house the mentally insane, Mayview State Hospital, was constructed; but it was not long before the complex had a reputation “as a place of sorrow” due to the lack of proper health care patients received during their stay.
Mental hospitals in the late 1800s and early 1900s failed to create stable environments for the individuals who required special medical attention. The patients would be in a state of physical health upon entering these hospitals, but would soon become increasingly ill throughout their experience in the facilities. The areas were unsanitary, claustrophobic, and, overall, heavily neglected. Patients came to be continually beaten by the care takers, shocked, tied, and abused in a radical attempt to somehow cure them.. The average number of individuals in institutions such as these consisted of 1,304 people. Of these numbers, males were the predominant patients averaging at 708 while the opposite sex averaged to approximately 596 in 1913.