Moses Sheppard came to Baltimore as a young man in the late 1700s and made a fortune as a merchant. He also served as the city’s warden to the poor and commissioner of its prison, positions that matched his Quaker beliefs. When social reformer Dorothea Lynde Dix approached him about helping to establish a facility for people with mental illness, he jumped and founded the Sheppard Asylum in 1853. Among the Asylum’s founding principles were that no patient was to be kept below ground, that the institution’s purpose was curative, and that only the income of his gift be used, a foresighted requirement but one that delayed the actual acceptance of patients for nearly 40 years (1891).

The Asylum got a big lift a few years after it opened, when in 1896 Enoch Pratt gave part of his endowment to the institution. Pratt’s gift enlarged the hospital, allowed it to better serve the indigent, and changed the name to the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital. The institution’s original buildings and grounds were designed by noted architect Calvert Vaux and are on the Baltimore County historic landmark list as well as the National Register of Historic Places. Please join us for a look at the historic original buildings on the camps and a visit to the Gibson Museum that contains artifacts and history of the hospital.