Arkham Asylum

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Arkham Asylum is a psychiatric care facility located in Gotham City. Formerly a Victorian-style estate it now boasts facilities to care for 100 patients at any given time. Arkham is one of the few hospitals in the United States that is licensed to care for and house criminally insane patients declared unfit to stand trial.

Arkham Asylum's capacity is often stretched to the limit. They regularly accept psychiatric care patients from Belle Reve and other Federal institutions. Federal funding that accompanies these transfers often gets allotted to other projects, which compromises inmate care and rehabilitation. ​​

The Arkham facility was helmed by Jeremiah Arkham starting in 1995. In 2010, with the events of No Man's Land, the Asylum was compromised and all the patients were let loose. Jeremiah Arkham went missing and was presumed killed. After the situation stabilized, Arkham was remodeled into a more modern facility with 'low-risk' patients in the main house and high-risk patients kept in expanded underground cells.

The current director of the facility is Dr. Hugo Strange.

History

The Arkham family was one of the old-blood families that founded Gotham City. Their house near the wharf was a sprawling estate that at one point supported a large extended family and required a small army of staff to maintain. Misfortune devastated their financial interests while the family line died off rapidly due to genetic infirmity. Dr. Amadeus Arkham was the last scion of the Arkham family, born in 1890. After he finished medical school he opened a care practice out of his home with the help of his wife Constance and daughter Harriet. Part of the estate was leased to the city of Gotham as a sanitarium to cater to Gotham's more affluent families, if they had undesirables that needed to be housed out of sight.

After Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins killed Amadeus' wife and daughter, Amadeus spiraled into a deep depression. During Hawkins' trial his lawyer made one of the first claims to the state that his client was not guilty by reason of insanity. Amadeus volunteered his support to this claim and ensured Hawkins would be transferred to his care. Amadeus promised to rehabilitate the man but in reality spent years torturing Hawkins until he died on an electro-shock table. Amadeus himself began to descend into dementia and was admitted to his own facility after the state seized Arkham Estate and turned it into an asylum.