The Daily Dispatch: December 10, 1860., [Electronic resource]

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The Burning of the Kentucky Lunatic Asylum.

--The loss by the burning of the Kentucky Lunatic Asylum, at Hopkinsville, is estimated at $200,000. Dr. Montgomery, the Superintendent, lost everything in his efforts to save his patients. The assistants suffered in like manner. On reaching the yard some fifty of the patients fled, panic stricken, to the woods; parties are in the woods searching for them, and are fast bringing them in. On repairing to the spot at 3 o'clock, the editor of the Mercury found the road, extending some two miles from the court-house, thronged with citizens visiting and returning from the scene of the disasters. The splendid structure was the pride of our people, and all were shocked at its swift destruction. The attendants succeeded in saving the patients, some two hundred and fifty, without injury, except one who was fastened in his cell, near where the fire originated. The attendant, after endangering his own life, had to leave him. The procession of lunatics marching into town presented a spectacle of melancholy grotesqueness, as the poor creatures passed on, the men on foot and the females, in wagons and hacks, wrapped up in quilts, comforts, and blankets of every fine. Some of them seemed passive and indifferent; some seemed unusually elated, whilst others wore in their features a vague impression that some heavy misfortune had befallen them.