New York State School – Newark Custodial Institution for Developmentally Disabled, Childbearing Age Women. February 17, 1932, Begins Accepting Boys.
1878-1885: The Newark State School operated as part of the Syracuse State School.
1885: By statute erected as the State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women.
1919: Name changed to Newark State School for Mental Defectives.
1927: Became a part of the Department of Mental Hygiene and name changed to Newark State School.
1932: Accepts boys.
1916 Newark State Custodial Institution For Feeble-Minded Women.
Early State Schools in New York.
State of New York Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Newark State School for Mental Defectives, 1921 – Through – Fifty-Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Visitors of the Newark State School, at Newark, Wayne County, New York to the Department of Mental Hygiene 1943.
Newark State School 1937
Newark State School 1937-2
Newark State School 1937-3
Newark State School for Women
Photograph courtesy of The Museum of disABILITY History
“The New York State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women was established in 1878 in response to an increasing awareness that almshouses were improper places for ‘feeble-minded’ women. Social reformer Josephine Shaw Lowell led the crusade, with assistance from the State Board of Charities. Lowell delivered several reports before the state legislature expressing her concern that feeble-minded women often disregarded moral and sexual restraint when placed in the undisciplined environment of an almshouse and frequently had illegitimate children who, in turn, became dependent on the state for their welfare. Women of child-bearing age, fifteen to forty-five, were admitted into this institution, in order to “prevent them from multiplying their kind.” (New York State Board of Charities Report, 1879).
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The Inmates of Willard 1870 to 1900 / A Genealogy Resource 