I came across this phrase, "booby hatchery". Unsure of its meaning. Anyone care to shed some light on this?

Well, I know that a booby is a type of bird. Maybe that has something to do with it!

Booby Hatch is the old English name for the insane asylum.

I've actually heard that "booby hatch" one ~ never knew it was old English, though. It's quite popularly used among West Virginians over here in the States, for some reason.

While on the subject of odd little phrases: what's with that old thing "slick as a whistle"? It never made a dust ball of sense to me (but it sounds kinda cool so I use the phrase). Logically it's just odd! Personally, if I encountered a whistle that was slick the last thing I'd do would be to blow into it. Anyway...always wondered about that one ...

I believe the 'slick' is just a later variation of 'clean' as in 'clean as a whistle'. Something 'slick' would move smoothly and efficiently, and 'clean as a whistle' refers to old hand-carved wood or reed whistles having to be perfectly clean in order to work.
There are various other possible explanations, varying from the noise made by swords, to steam railway engine whistles, but I think the wood/reed one is most logical.

I have also found that a booby hatch is 'A raised covering over a small hatchway.' It is mentioned in Jack London, AND:

BOOBY HATCH - "'Booby,' for 'a dunce, a nimcompoop,' is recorded in English as far back as 1599, probably deriving from the Spanish 'boho,' 'a fool,' which in turn, may come from the L*tin 'balbus,' 'stammering.'.'Booby hatch,' for an insane asylum, may have its beginnings in the 'booby hatch,' a police wagon used to carry criminals to jail. This term can be traced back to 1776." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).

Fascinating. Words always are , to me.

Yes, there are several meanings for "booby hatch," but I've never heard of "booby hatchery," that blurrystar originally asked about.

I would venture a guess that booby hatchery is just another way of saying booby hatch? Or maybe not...

There's also the coincidental 'Colney Hatch', now a frightening block of flats reminiscent of the Munsters, which was North London's biggest asylum till a few years ago. It was named after the area and the residents were so fed up with living in an area synonymous with the asylum they had the place name changed to New Southgate. There's still Colney Hatch Lane that leads there from Muswell Hill. Whether the two names are connected is another question altogether.

You Brits will know the origin of the term "Bedlam" as well. When I was a kid, older people would say, "Oh, it was sheer bedlam" or the like. At the time I had no idea that it was a term for "out of control" that came from the name of a British mental hospital.

Bedlam is a corruption of Bethlehem.
The building now occupying the site is the Imperial war museum (I wonder if the founders were making a coment about war?)