Hannah Elizabeth Gandy was not Insane

In a 1921 report by the Attorney General, Hannah E. Crosthwaite is recorded as an as indigent confined person at an insane Hospital. Hannah was confined and had been for over 7 years. 

Hannah Elizabeth Gandy was born 8 May 1856 in New Jersey to Nathaniel Osborn Gandy and Sarah (Mick) Gandy his wife. Hannah was their first child. By 1870 her father has moved the family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and there Hannah met and married James R. Crosthwaite. 

Hannah was a dress maker and in July 1896 when her husband passed Hannah supported herself with dressmaking and by bringing in Boarders to her home. 

By 1911 Hannah is diagnosed with general paralysis of the insane also known as general paresis, or paralytic dementia.  It is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder with decreased mental function due to a disease. There is an inflammation of the brain similar to meningitis which then causes the brain to shrink and is a late stage of syphilis.  None of this was discovered until the late 1880s. Before it was just assumed people had a "desolate character". In 1913 it became a diagnosis and it was not until after World War II that penicillin was used to treat syphilis. But that was too late for Hannah she passed 16 March 1919 while an inmate at The State Lunatic Hospital at Norristown in Norristown Pennsylvania. 

State Lunatic Hospital at Norristown