In family tree research, the best stories often find you by chance. While tracing a completely different lineage in the 1914 parish registers of Bilychi village (Lviv region), our team stumbled upon a very rare record. Hidden among standard entries, it preserves the fate of 70-year-old Kataryna Senyk, a rural woman registered far from home under case number 1812.
What the Document Actually Says
The handwritten entry from the State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv reads (translated from the old orthography):
“After … of the institution for the mentally ill in Kulparkiv from Jan 25, 1914. No. 1812. Kataryna Senyk died there, wife of Vasyl Senyk, aged 70 — on Jan 24, 1914 — and on January 27, 1914, she remained buried there…”
How did a peasant woman from a remote mountain village end up in a provincial psychiatric hospital back in 1914? Who footed the bill for her treatment? This discovery leaves us with an intriguing puzzle, opening the gates to one of the most fascinating and mysterious medical institutions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Facts About the "City of the Forgotten" in 1914
To search for answers and understand the world in which Kataryna spent her final years, we took a closer look at the history of this legendary hospital, as preserved in regional historical accounts.
- An Incredibly Rare Facility: In 1914, specialized psychiatric care under Austro-Hungarian rule was an absolute luxury. There were ONLY two major facilities in the entire region—Kulparkiv in Lviv and a clinic in Chernivtsi. Getting admitted—or released—required a massive effort.
- The Largest in the Empire’s Crownland: On the eve of World War I, Kulparkiv was the largest institution of its kind in the entire Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, housing over 1,100 patients simultaneously.
- A “City Within a City”: Opened in 1875, the hospital spanned 59 hectares. It featured a massive labyrinth-like park, a water tower, a theater, and even a dedicated railway branch line to deliver supplies from across the empire.
- Advanced Self-Sustaining Economy. Kulparkiv functioned as a massive agricultural estate. Patients took care of hundreds of cattle, managed extensive vegetable fields, and operated an on-site mill and brick factory
- Treatment Through Labor: For patients in a calm state, the primary treatment was ergotherapy (therapy through work). They worked daily on the hospital’s massive farm, in the gardens, or in the kitchens.
- Early Hydrotherapy and Electrotherapy. Long before pharmaceutical tranquilizers existed, Kulparkiv relied heavily on hydrotherapy. They used specialized “continuous baths” where patients with severe mania were kept in warm, flowing water for hours to naturally lower their heart rates and anxiety. By the early 20th century, the hospital became one of the first in the region to experiment with early electrotherapy apparatuses for treating deep, catatonic depression.
- The Strict “Three-Class” Dining System. Wealthy patrons (elites and gentry) paid high fees for private quarters. They enjoyed premium menus, which even included wine and chocolate served in fine dining rooms. Middle-class citizens received decent, standardized meals. Poor peasants (composing about 83% of the hospital) ate communal meals funded by the state. However, archival diet sheets show their food was carefully regulated for nutritional balance, focusing heavily on locally baked bread, grains, and fresh dairy produced directly on the hospital’s internal farm.
- Who Funded the Treatment?: While wealthy families paid for private rooms, about 83% of patients were financed by the provincial budget or their home village community (gmina). It is highly likely that Bilychi’s local administration funded Katarina’s stay.
Kulparkiv Mental Hospital in 1939
While researching, we uncovered a 1939 article in the local Dilo newspaper (see below) detailing the life of the Kulparkiv hospital, and a photo taken at that time:
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Among the Insane of Kulparkiv
More than once, many a Lvivian, flying into a rage, sends someone ‘to Kulparkiv’ or says that they came from there. Few of those who use this word know what the institution looks like, where people with certain disrupted wires in their brains reside. A Lviv journalist, Sh. Shaund, has just published a booklet titled ‘City of the Insane’, where, in the form of a reportage, we find interesting material about the lives of the inhabitants of the Kulparkiv institution.
A Bit of Statistics.Kulparkiv is not a single house, but an entire small town made up of buildings and parks. It is the largest institution for the insane in Poland, housing 2,000 patients, of whom barely 17 percent pay for their lodging, food, and treatment. Most of them live here for life as ‘hopeless.’ First of all, a few numbers. Over the past year, there were 37 percent Roman Catholics, 29 percent Greek Catholics, and 30 percent Jews; 51 percent unmarried, 41 percent married, and 8 percent widowed; 72 percent with lower education, 7.6 percent with secondary education, 7.3 percent illiterate, and 5.1 percent with higher education; 24 percent small farmers, 15 percent without professions, and 10 percent artisans. The largest number of the insane suffer from schizophrenia—731, mentally underdeveloped (idiots)—87, epileptics—87, and those with progressive paralysis—78. Very few people die there; mental illnesses belong to those with which one can live to an advanced age with an intact body.What They Say About Themselves.You can meet the first insane patients in the garden during their walk. Some betray their illness from their very first words. A 45-year-old man, with the smile of the bell-ringer Quasimodo from Victor Hugo’s ‘Notre-Dame,’ says his name is Yuzio N.N. and counts money like this: ‘I have 8, 10, 8, 2, 3, 10, and 4, which makes two times two and fifty.’ A 50-year-old Jew who speaks English says he is King Lord Herman, who conquered Africa in 1907 and commanded two thousand and two million troops. A 70-year-old man working in the institution’s laundry calls himself the ‘domestic emperor’ named Alexander Anton Leopold I ‘of the House of Kwieciński-Habsburg.’ He is an emperor from the opening of the national church and swore an oath under the regulations to God and the people, the government and the army, the church and the cathedral, and he gave all his medals to be adjusted in the machinery. This emperor is an organist by profession and plays the organ quite well during services, just as conscientiously as he washes dirty laundry in the washhouse.Those Who Work.Kulparkiv has various workshops where patients practice all kinds of professions. Idleness has the worst effect on the mental state, and those who can break away from their thoughts through work instantly give the impression of being normal. A certain Yuzio from the weaving mill, with a burnt head, has been working with almost superhuman strength for 30 years already and ‘feels very pleasant because he is 48 years old and makes 13 meters of yarn daily.’ There are specialists here for rugs or blankets who cut scraps and strips of fabric with scissors for entire years, always the same ones; others make shoes or wooden spoons. When you ask any of them what he is doing and why, you might hear answers like this: ‘I was in America for 13 years, and my family lives 36 miles from here. I could have been with them 36 times already, but I prefer to do the same thing 36 times, because it is my duty. They say so, and I must!’ One who manufactures mattresses explains his work like this: ‘In civilian life, I am a private clerk, specifically a timber handler, but now I am doing this. I make hundreds of these so people have something to sleep on. But I am from Brody and no one has condemned me, so give me such a handler for life.’ One of the tailors repeatedly says during his work: ‘I want to be a man!’, while Anton the locksmith actually invented a new type of Wertheim lock. ‘This is such a Russian secret, a patent that does not exist…’The Intellectuals.A higher type of the insane are the intellectuals. None of the readers will be surprised that there is a poet among them, who writes poems with extraordinary ease, copies them onto carbon paper, and distributes a few dozen copies to those interested in poetry. He writes under the pseudonym of ex-cardinal Skos-pasternyk. He calls his grand poems sonnets. They have highly original titles, all in a modern spirit, for example: ‘Horseradish in a Case’ or ‘Sardines in a Window Recess.’ One of them, titled ‘A Dreamer Wrecked at Sea,’ we translate for those who do not like modern poetry, so they can see for themselves that this poem is not a single bit worse than those found in the numerous collections of some of our actual poets:Having fallen from the pedestal of life, he lay in oblivion, like a sailor without perceptions of utopia—courting,
barely does his ruin reach us from the world of equipping—thus he greedy withdrew his creations in the succession of his travels, their studies, so that the sun covered the trough
with calm, conscience, and the rudder of precision.
Yet so much of the tuning of unyieldingness lies toward the dreamy apparition supplemented by life.
For can they not render affairs, or do they guard the onslaught of sleep before the excess of tireless backdrops from enough catastrophes, events, and unknown struggles?The majority of intellectual insane individuals behave as if they were completely normal; they are calm and polite. Only in some do an unnatural gleam in their eyes or abrupt gestures indicate a shaken inner balance.
The Women’s Department.“The women’s department leaves a very distressing impression. Many among the female patients bury themselves in books, which they mercilessly destroy. Some suffer from religious mania, while others carry some kind of fatal family grief in their hearts. Here is one who plays the piano beautifully—she was once supposed to become a great pianist; a second one matches rhymes; a third lies like a log, staring at the ceiling; a fourth, paralyzed, incessantly repeats in a sleepy voice:
‘Then I will go with you to the Jordan, to the Jordan I will go with you. And there will be an indulgence, my beloved.’
One young but wrinkled Ukrainian woman, half-naked, with a bedsheet on her head, whispers: ‘I believe in the one Lord, but you don’t believe, you batiar! Ha! I believe in the one!’ There are also those who can only sit in a straightjacket, because they suffer from fits and pose a threat to their neighbors.Kulparkiv has a separate department for the possessed and semi-possessed, who lash out and are ready to tear down all outward barriers that hold them within the hospital walls.
Among the insane, one can find no fewer types and people suffering from various manias than among the healthy. Although they are sorted into groups, almost every single one has some tiny little screw that winds up their entire spiritual mechanism and tints the world in a different color. If only it were possible to put that screw back into its normal place, the person would be entirely sane.”
As you can see, a single record can take you on quite a journey through time. Genealogical research goes far beyond historical dates and names; it is about understanding the complex, lived experiences of our ancestors. Feel free to contact us if you need help with tracing your family history in western Ukraine.
Andriy