Productive work was an important component of the mental hospital's moral therapy. These patients, photographed around 1900 in the dressmaker's workshop at the Brockville Asylum for the Insane, are manufacturing clothes for inmates and attendants. Other necessary work within the institution and in the fields frequently associated with them was performed by patients. This employment not only reduced the cost of maintaining asylums but was thought to have therapeutic value. Physical work diverted some of the patients' excess energy into useful and healthy activities and made them less self-absorbed. Such work was also intended to instil moral values. If patients were going to rejoin society as productive members, they had to be taught independence, industry and self-respect.
