By Mary O’KEEFE

In recognition of Women’s Equality Day [Aug. 26] CVW is recognizing a local woman who created a historical safe place for women who were dealing with mental illness. Just three years after women were officially given the right to vote, Agnes Richards opened Rockhaven Sanitarium with six women residents. By all accounts Richards did not think of herself as a suffragette but simply saw a need and acted. She married in 1904 and received her RN [registered nurse] license in 1922. By 1930 she was divorced.

This timeline is important to note because of the history of what it was like for women, especially the stigma of divorce for a woman, and how mental health was viewed at that time. Author Clifford Beers called mental illness asylums a “chamber of torture.” This was bad for all but worse for women. Women were wives, not businesswomen, although more and more were attempting to expand into the new realms of independence. Richards not only opened her own business but also expanded. Women who were suffering from a variety of what was then considered mental illness, from menopause to serious dementia, were given respect and equality in treatment. Richards was a woman who ignored the limited vision that society had of women at the time as what women were and what they could accomplish. She didn’t fight for equality – she just expected it.

  Mary Okeefe