Titicut Follies: An Asylum for the Criminally Insane

"They was gonna take my balls out of me... I told the doctor before I come here that I didn't want my balls taken out of me, so they took the cords out instead."

Titicut Follies, a 1967 documentary film by Frederick Weismann, depicts the miserable and inhumane existence of inmates living in Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

 It's not easy to watch. It hasn't always been easy to find a copy of the movie to watch, either.

Shortly before screening at the 1967 New York Film Festival, Massachusetts sought a legal injunction banning the release of the documentary. These actions come at a time when there was significant negative press about the institution and the state's handling of people with mental illness.

Despite the filmmaker getting permission from all the people shown in the film as well as the superintendent of the facility (who appears to have used the documentary as a tool to try to get more funding), Massachusetts claimed that the permission was not valid. In the end, the film was screened at the New York Film Festival. However, a year later Massachusetts Superior Court judge Harry Klaus ordered the filmed removed from distribution because of claims that the film violated the patients' privacy and dignity.

Wiseman appealed the superior court decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The court allowed for a limited distribution of the film allowing it to be shown only to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers, and students in these and similar fields. Further appeals to the US Supreme Court were refused.

For years hardly anyone saw this film. For years, the men at Bridgewater languished, often naked and in solitary confinement. This institution was one of the myriad examples of  people with mental illness being treated like unwanted animals.

Who were the men at this institution? How about the man who painted a horse? One inmate was sent to Bridgewater in 1938 because he painted a horse with stripes to make it look like a zebra. He was a fresh fruit vendor and in order to increase sales and get more attention, he though it might be a good idea paint his horse. He was arrested for public drunkenness at age 29 and died at Bridgewater from old age. He was supposed to serve two years.

Unbearable: Asylums in Serbia and Kosovo circa 2002

I was looking for some vintage images of advertisements for psychiatric hospitals this evening. Instead, I broke my heart. These haunting images were taken within the walls of a modern psychiatric facility in Serbia and Kosovo between 1999 and 2002 by the photographer George Georgiou. He writes:

For me, after the initial shock at the conditions and total lack of care, it became clear that the patients from all ethic backgrounds were able to display more community affection and care with each other, than the sad situation their "sane" countrymen were displaying to each other on the outside.

I have nothing to say other than this: we must do better.

Back to the Future: Thorazine for Sanity

healing or control?

I sat around in a circle with my cohort of post-doctoral fellows appropriately snickering. Our training director, Joe Shay, had distributed a list of hundreds of different types of psychotherapy. Many of them were laughable, sad, or just outrageous. How could anyone have practiced these therapies with a straight face? Didn't they know they were quacks?

With our recently minted doctorates in hand, we all looked smug and self assured. We were training to practice dialectal behavioral therapy--the state of the art treatment for people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Our mentors were elite luminaries in the field.  Our offices were in the heart of Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts. I felt I arrived in the liberal elite intellectual promised land.

With a deft few words, our training director swept away my smug look of superiority and taught me an enduring lesson. This post today is what I came to know in thinking about Joe's lecture that day.

People have come for treatment for hundreds--if not thousands--of years for phenomena that we currently call borderline personality disorder. People have turned to shamans, priests, friends, psychiatrists, psychologists, and others to receive treatment. Many have gotten better. Some have not.

I walked into that training room as a post-doc thinking I was learning a superior treatment. I couldn't imagine that the treatment I was providing--DBT--could ever be viewed as ridiculous, barbaric, old fashioned, or just plain weird. I could never be seen like those people we were learning about in Joe's lecture. We were better. I was better. These are modern treatments.

As many do, I failed to look forward. I failed to account for the fact that society is evolving. What one considers humane now, will be inhumane tomorrow. What are considered unquestionable facts today will be seen as antiquated examples of magical thinking tomorrow.

I will become a dinosaur one day. The way I practiced psychology will be looked at by some (if I am even remembered) as laughable--or worse.

I had this in mind yesterday morning while I was looking at vintage advertisements for Thorazine.

Hidden From View: Medfield Insane Asylum

The Opal: Alpina

From Shorpy

Yesterday I read a blurb about annual festivals at the Utica Asylum in Janet Miron's book Prisons, Asylums, and the Public: Institutional Visiting in the Nineteenth Century. I wanted to learn a little bit more about those festivals. That's how I found this image which dates from the 1890s. From there, one click followed another and before I knew it I had entered into the Google rabbit hole. I came back up with The Opal. 

The Opal was published in the 1850s by the New York Lunatic Asylum in Utica. Only two of the ten volumes appear to be available online. The others are locked up in various libraries. I've unleashed my irreverent librarian network to see if I might acquire access to these other volumes. 

Benjamin Reiss writes that the patients at the asylum were given "unusual, but not unprecedented, platform to address the public. The Opal, the patients’ literary journal, grew out of a school for patients run by the doctors; its first issue in 1850 was pen-printed and distributed only within the asylum. The next issues were sold at an asylum fair, and by 1851, the journal was published on the asylum’s printing press" 

The journal, of course, doesn't present a complete view of patient life at the asylum. Reiss points out that the journal "was an outlet only for those patients whose voices were deemed appropriate; even then, those voices only partially captured the experiences and thoughts of the authors, who always had to self-censor in order to find their way into print."

So let's take a peek inside volume II of The Opal. First published in 1852, my digitized copy is 382 pages and comprises of twelve monthly installments. The periodical, as described on the opening page to the right, is "Devoted to Usefulness" and "Edited By The Patients." 

I wonder what use the volume has 160 years later? I'm more than a little excited to read through the text and see who reaches out from the past and tells us something interesting about ourselves today.

As I read along I'm going to track themes that I'm thinking about. They'll appear in my commentary in bold. See a theme that I miss or think I've got something wrong? Leave a comment--this might turn into something larger than an occasional blog post. Your help is appreciated.

First up is Alpina: A Tale of Switzerland. Our anonymous author writes seven pages of prose that takes us on a journey from her home in Switzerland, to her passage to America by sea, to her eventual marriage and settlement in Indiana. 

I've selected a few passages that stand out to me. 

"Alpina herself entered her Father's and Mother's apartment, with a fresh unction on her soul, and kneeling at the bed-side of her inebriated parent, poured fourth in convulsive sobs, half stifled ejaculations, for his restoration to reason and duty." 

The facts of the author of Alpina are undoubtedly lost to history. We'll assume the author wrote some sort of fiction that was inspired by lived experience. There are two things that stand out to me in this particular passage: (1) the author makes mention of childhood complications that have an effect on later life development and (2) the theme of restoration to a state of sanity (described as reason and duty).

"Refinement of manners is always agreeable, and this young and only daughter was the idol of a fond parent. She never told her grief for his debasement, but let concealment, like a worm in the bad, feed on her damask cheek  and unlike the custom of the world, she never intimated that her Father was an inebriate, or told him how wretched he was."

Our author again speaks to childhood complications and adds a new dimension to their experience: silence. I wonder why the author decided, unlike the custom of the world, to keep silent about the alcoholism and wretchedness of Alpina's father.

"Educated as she was to prefer others, to bring herself to the wishes of others, and to seek their best good and usefulness, she lent her ear to sorrow in its every form, and gave her heart to sympathies, and her actions to engagements that tend to woo. No reproof, nor innuendoes, let a suspicion in those whom she sought to ameliorate, but with every look of love, and every smile of sweetness  and each embrace she gave her parent it seemed as if an angel girded him around--and her kisses and tears (a lady's most powerful battery,) divested him of that rudeness he had acquired by associations with the reckless and the unprincipled."

Here our author gives some suggestions on their views of the roles of women. That role was one of limited power. Alpinia appears to have few tools of agency at her disposal: tears and kisses.

Alpina's father emigrated to the United States first and settled on a homestead in Indiana  "So soon as possible after he had made his home in order, he sent to the Counsel at Basle to convey with all despatch (sic) his wife and daughter to his adopted country.... Being the worst sailors in the world, they suffered very much from the illness generally attendant to ship board novices. Alpina and the little children recovered from their serious illness, but the mother sickened and died. Here was the outbreaking of Alpina's mental aberrations, for her gentle spirit could not broke so many sorrows, and she bent and snapped--a tender plant,--which the winds and storms had visited too roughly. As Alpina gazed at the form of her lifeless Mother, she was mute, her grief was too deep, she could not realize her loss. So powerful was her attachment, that all she heard or saw was only a part of the loved object that was motionless in death."

Themes here of grief and etiology of mental illness. The author also hints that emotions (grief, in this passage) can cause a loss of agency.

"Painful indeed it was, to see her approach the dear one in her grave dress  and that grave to be the bottomless Sea. But she did come up to the last kiss, embrace and farewell--and old salt, all bathed in tears, caught her up in his arms, and let her kiss the clay-cold lips of her Mother. Poor Alphina!--Poor Alpina! She was dumb with emotion, and loneliness -and felt the luxury of grief oozing out of her living soul--awhile after the sad ceremonials."

Here our author touches on themes about emotions (grief) and death.

"On arriving at their destined port, Alpina was placed in one of those blessings to mankind, named Asylums, where under the care of its Physician, she became soothed and restored."

Here we have our first mention of an asylum. The author suggests that an asylum is a place for caring for ones emotions (soothing) as well as restoration. I wonder if our author really found restoration at the asylum? Perhaps so, or, perhaps the author was trying to curry favor with a physician and was saying what needed to be said to be released.

"Would that all were as grateful as Alpina Swartz, for that restoration to health, induced by the skill, science and humanity of an Asylum, and as she glided over the splendid "high ways and by ways," to her new home in the far west, her countenance, manner and intelligence bespoke an interest in her behalf that words could not express."

Now the author here had not yet been released from the asylum. This passage perhaps represents a hope for the future--being released from the asylum, traveling far away, and being reunited with their family. Note here the reference to agency--here described as a self-interest.

"The hour of grief is the hour for love, and Alpina was deeply sympathized with by a kind young hoosier who had entered Justice Swartz's office to become a lawyer. And he won upon her affections; always together, their union was inseparable, and they were permitted to join hearts and hands--and live as members of the same family on Earth,--hoping to meet a dear departed mother in Heaven."

The story of Alpina ends with marriage. A hope to be cared for someone in the future in a loving way, and a hope to be reconnected once again with her dead mother in heaven. Also more reference here to the theme of emotions.

That's it for the Opal for now. Come back later for more.

Extraordinary Escapes of a Lunatic

Sunday March 4, 1860 -- "This day, a lunatic, named Wheedon, was caught and taken back to the Northern Ohio lunatic Asylum from which he had escaped. The Cleveland (Ohio) "Herald" gives the following strange account of him and his escapes. it says:--

Among the inmates of the Northern Ohio Lunatic-Asylum is a person named Wheedon, once a highly-respectable citizen in good circumstances, and said to have been a member of the former coal-firm of I.C. Pendleton & Co. He has been in the asylum for some time.

For some time past he has manifested a strong disposition to escape, and the utmost care and vigilance have been exercised to frustrate his designs, but not always with success. Before being places in his sleeping-room at night, he has always been stripped and carefully examined, to prevent the secreting of any instrument, and all his clothes, but his shirt, pantaloons, and stockings, taken away In spite of these precautions, he has succeeded three times within a few days in escaping from his room.

About two weeks since, he took a set of false teeth out of his mouth, and, by constant work, contrived with them to saw a hole through the floor of his chamber, sufficient to admit of his dropping through into another part of the house, and then escaping. He was traced and caught at the house of Mr. Pendleton, on Euclid Street.

A few days since he secreted a pin, and with that exceedingly unlikely instrument managed to pick the lock of his door and escaped into the hall, where he was fortunately arrested. He then stated that a pin was of more value than ten thousand dollars when he wished to escape from a room.

Last Saturday night he was carefully examined, as usual, before being placed in his room, but succeeded in secreting a small brass ring, split at one part, in his hair. On being locked up for the night, he set to work, and, with the ring, he cut through the window-sash and shutter, so as to enable him to remove them from the window. He then took the coverlet of the bed and tore it into strips, with which he made a rope reaching nearly to the ground,--a distance of some twenty-five or thirty feet. Some of the cotton batting with which the coverlet was wadded, he placed in his stockings, to protect his feet, as he had no shoes. Then, dressing himself in shirt trousers , and stockings, he slid down the rope and escaped.

Striking across the country to Eight Mile Lock, he then took a two-path of the canal and walked to University Heights, where he arrived yesterday afternoon. The officers of the asylum on his track came on him yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. he was very quiet when arrested and spoke freely of his escape, and made no resistance to being taken back to the asylum. We question whether this series of extraordinary escapes can be well matched."

I find it interesting that poor Wheedon, a former employee of  I.C. Pendleton & Company, was so desperate to escape from the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum. Even more interesting, why did Wheedon escape the asylum and head to Mr Pendleton's house? Was this the owner of his former company? Was Wheedon's ingenuity based in some paranoid or delusional process about Mr. Pendleton? Was he tossed into the asylum to hide some sort of wrong doing and an irate Wheedon kept trying to escape to find justice?

Give a moment of your time to Wheedon and wonder what the nature of his stay at the asylum was all about. While the facts of the story are likely forever lost, the people who lived and died within the walls of America's asylums are important. There voices help us understand who we were, where where were, and where we are going.

For more about the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum click here.

The New Asylums

Some time ago I wrote a blog post about my first trip to an asylum. A regular reader of my blog posted a comment. In part, she wrote:

This is tragically unfortunate because instead of creating a healing environment hospitals create a feeling within patients that they are merely being housed until released. At least this has been my experience with crisis stabilization units. I was literally dumped out into a side parking lot after one release because the tech didn't have time to walk me up to the front of the building!

Many of us would like to think we've come a long way from the abuses of the past. I remain unconvinced. There are myriad experiences like my blog reader shared. Mental health care can be excellent with those with significant financial resources. It can be horrific and neglectful for the middle class and the poor.

Some might think the most horrific images of neglect and abuse may mostly be a thing of the past in psychiatric institutions. They really aren't in the past. We have, as society, just managed to find another way to neglect those who are most vulnerable. Several years back the PBS program Frontline did an excellent documentary on prisoners with mental illness. They suggested--both in images and words--that prisons have become the new asylums.

There are nearly 500,000 mentally ill being held in jails and prisons throughout America. That's ten times the 50,000 that remain in psychiatric hospitals. 

If you don't have time to watch all these clips, just make sure you fast forward to the group therapy scene that starts at 6:25 in clip one. The horrors for those of our neighbors with mental illness have just moved to a new venue: prisons.

For more about asylums click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here.

In the House of Dementia Love and Compassion

Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum

Hawthornden State Hospital

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog entry about my first visit to a state run psychiatric facility. It was a harrowing experience that continues to influence my work as a psychologist in complex ways.

Recently someone left a comment on my original blog post. Shuko raised some interesting questions that I want to answer in more detail. That will have to wait for a future blog post since I've managed to get distracted (imagine that!). While you are waiting, check out Shuko's blog here. She has a great way of exploring the history around us in both images and words.

I visited Western Reserve Psychiatric Hospital every two weeks when I was a 23 year old case manager. The hospital has gone by several different names including Hawthornden State Hospital, Western Reserve Psychiatric Habilitation Center, and currently operates under the name Northcoast Behavioral Healthcare.

That's a whole lot of names. What surprises me is that there isn't a lot of information available on the internet about this hospital. It's especially surprising that the hospital hasn't been subject to any significant historical research. It seems that one of the precursors to Northcoast Behavioral Health Care found its way into a national magazine. The article was called Bedlam, 1946 and discussed the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum. We'll explore the Bedlam of Cleveland in a minute.

Here is an aerial view of Northcoast Behavioral Health (aka Hawthronden, aka Western Reserve Psychiatric Center) as it looks now.

Google Maps

Let's go back in time. The Ohio Department of Mental Health makes a single reference to the Hawthornden State Hospital. They write:

Hawthornden State Hospital, later known as Western Reserve Psychiatric Habilitation Center, operated as a farm for Cleveland State Hospital from 1922 until 1938. It was established as a separate facility in 1941. 

That's not a lot of information. The blurb however gives me an important clue. The property got its start as a farm for the Cleveland State Hospital. This means our first stop in exploring the history is a field trip.

Fenn College field trip, Special Collections, Cleveland State University Library 

It just so happens that in researching the Cleveland State Hospital, the first image I came across was an abnormal psychology class taking a field trip in 1946. Look at those eager young faces peering into a model of the brain and marveling at it's structure--and perhaps wondering what separated them from the patients in the asylum. Do you think as part of their field trip that they got to meet actual patients? I wonder what these young students thought about as they encountered those who were removed from society and kept for treatment in an asylum.

I also wonder if any of them were aware of the abuses that were going on at the hospital they were visiting. This class visited the same year that Life magazine published the article Bedlam, 1946. Look at the pictures in the article. The broken and abused people being "cared" for by the hospital in 1946 are far removed from the fresh faced college students pictured above.

The View From Here: Welcome to the Almshouse Edition

Can't you just imagine horse drawn carriages and early cars dropping off future inmates, patients, and residents of the Tewksbury Almshouse?

Pictured to the left is the Old Administration Building. Built in 1894, this building first accepted inmates to the Tewksbury Almshouse. The Public Health Museum notes that the name of the hospital changes over the years reflecting a change in mission as well as a change in how people were cared for. The facility was renamed Tewksbury State Hospital in 1909 and Tewksbury State Hospital and Infirmary in 1938. It has cared for paupers, pauper insane, alcoholics, and people with illnesses such as tuberculosis, smallpox, sexually transmitted illnesses, and typhoid. Currently, the facility goes by the name of Tewksbury Hospital. It provides acute and chronic hospital level of care for medical patients with Huntington's Disease, HIV/AIDS, and those in need of neurological rehabilitation. Additionally, the facility also provides psychiatric  treatment for adults over the age of 19 with serious mental illnesses that require the security of a locked unit.

Something I'm currently investigating: other institutions of the time include: State Colony for the Insane, Industrial School and Home for Crippled and Deformed Children; and North Reading State Sanatorium, and the Medfield Insane Asylum. It was a different era and the way we talked about and named conditions that people had were very different than our customs today. It seems incongruent that Tewksbury would be named a hospital while other institutions of the era were asylums and colonies for the insane. I suspect somewhere along the line some well-meaning local historians have altered the names of the institution to make it sound 'nicer'.

For more of my explorations of the Tewksbury Almshouse see here, here, and here. For more about my trips to the Medfield Asylum click here, here, here, and here. If you'd like to read about my very first trip to an asylum click here.

The View From Here: Almshouse Edition

This tower fascinates me. I'm convinced that there is a history waiting behind this shell of copper and glass. Perhaps a few scraps of paper telling a secret of a former inmate of the almshouse--or maybe some graffiti carved by a patient when this building housed an insane asylum?

As a side note, I've been somewhat obsessed by old graffiti since discovering a face drawn on a wall at Ellis Island by someone waiting to be processed for entry into the United States. By obsessed I mean I've thought about it from time to time and hope someone might point me to some historical graffiti since I'm not often wandering across it on my own.

Anyway.

I've not yet had a chance to venture into this building. Parts of it are open to the public on a limited basis for tours. This building, the old administration building of the Tewksbury Almshouse, now houses a Public Health Museum. Peeking in the windows I saw a veritable cornucopia of treasures to look at, think about, and use to illuminate how we have cared for those most in need in past eras.

For now, I'll have to settle for pictures. In the late 1890s, the Commonwealth went about building sturdier structures at the Tewksbury Almshouse. The main administration building, a Queen Anne style building, was completed in 1894.

For more images of the Almshouse check here and here. To see images of another asylum built in this same style during this era, see my blog posts about the Medfield Asylum here, here, here, and here.

The View From Here: Patients Downstairs Edition

Earlier this summer I spent a couple of days wandering around the Tewksbury Almshouse. First opened on May 1, 1854, the almshouse offered care for those in society most likely to be ignored and thrown away--paupers, insane people with no financial resources, and people who were disabled. One of the more famous residents of the Tewksbury Almshouse was Annie Sullivan, the teacher of Helen Keller.

This sign, near the imposing front door of the main administration building, points potential patients down to a nondescript door. While I'm processing what I saw on my trips and doing more research, I'll be posting some of the images that I took.

Check out The Field of Dreams, which is the first of the images I posted from the Almshouse.

Field Of (Broken?) Dreams

Field of Dreams, Tewksbury State Hospital 

Dinner is Served: Asylum Kitchens

When I returned to the abandoned Medfield State Hospital yesterday I got to thinking about how the little details that remain decaying on the property offer glimpses into what life was like for the patients and staff that lived and died working in this place. I discovered that my imagination is greatly helped if I simply peer into the windows of the buildings with windows that aren't completely covered with red painted plywood. Near the center of the campus is a building that appears to have been built in the the 1940s or 50s.  It is easily identified by a spray painted sign over a door. 

Here in the kitchens, some 2,000+ meals were prepared three times a day for employees and patients at the asylum. They grew and raised  much of what they ate. Medfield Public Library's Adults Services Librarian Mare Parker-O'Toole opened up her files for me yesterday. Within her files I discovered an invaluable presentation prepared by a nurse who started working at the hospital in 1952. Veronica Hill wrote:

The Farm House, which is across the street from the Medfield Complex, as completed in 1901 to provide living quarters for the head farmer and his family, as well as 14 farm hands and 30 patients. The farm was to play a very important role in the lives of the patients and the economy of the hospital for many, many years. It was finally closed in the late 1960s as it was no longer economically feasible. It was really a shame to see the farm house and all the farm lands quiet down and no longer be productive. This had been a great source of patient working and needless to say we, and I mean that collectively, at the hospital enjoyed their efforts and their hard work by enjoying their fresh vegetable, the eggs, dairy products, and etc. It was really something. The patients really enjoyed it and we enjoyed the outcome of their work.

The farms were indeed productive places. Below is a scan of the bounty produced by the hospital during it's first six months of operation in 1896. They sure ate a lot of pickles. There was enough so every staff and patient could eat at least 30 pickles that year.

I discovered that my imagination isn't the only thing I have going for me. I can look at small details on the abandoned grounds. I can forage in archives for oral histories and other documents that describe what life is like. I can also just simply peer into the windows of the buildings with windows that aren't completely covered with red painted plywood. Near the center of the campus is a building that appears to have been built in the the 1940s or 50s.  

It is easily identified by a spray painted sign over a door that says "kitchen." Let's take a peek.

If you visit, be careful when you peek. First, the vast majority of the buildings are falling apart and the wooden porches are rotting. The floors aren't able to support any weight. Additionally, there is a private security guard that randomly roams the property. He requested that I don't stand on porches (stable or not) to peer in windows. 

I've always had a listening problem.

The Views From There: Abandoned Lives Edition

Part of what I find so striking about the abandoned Medfield State Hospital are the small moments of decaying remnants that still reflect the experiences of the people who lived and died at this now abandoned asylum. While I walked through the grounds today, accompanied by an occasional turkey running off to the side of me and the sounds of cicadas surrounding me like a summer symphony, I tried to picture what it was to see these images when the asylum was bustling with life.

Here are a few of the moments that captured my imagination. What memories do you think are hidden within these images?

We too have lived

After my walking tour of the abandoned Medfield State Asylum property yesterday, I set out looking for the cemetery where many of the people who called the hospital home were buried. If you blink while driving along Route 27 you'll miss this sign that is obscured by greenery.

From the opening of the hospital in 1896 until the influenza epidemic of 1918, patients who died while in the care of the hospital were buried in one large anonymous grave at the Vine Lake Cemetery. Deaths were not uncommon at the asylum. The first annual report of the institution stated that 24 patients died in the first five months of operation.

From 1918 through 1988, the hospital buried patients in their own four acre cemetery. This is the cemetery that I visited yesterday. It is fitting, somehow, that the cemetery is difficult to find. The people buried here disappeared with a blink of the eye from the view of society. All that remained of their lives were fist sized stone grave markers engraved with a number. The person's catalogue number, the only memory of who they were, are in some cases erased from the erosion of water and wind. 

In other cases, the number remains but the records of who they were were long since lost. People--mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children of someone where banished from the view of society and left in the care of the state. All the remains of these individuals is a number etched in stone.

In 2005 a group of citizens including a troop of dedicated boy scouts. cleaned the cemetery, scoured public records, and raised funds to place gravestones in the cemetery that remembers the names of those who were erased from time. Many--though not all--of the lives of those forgotten are now remembered.

A newspaper article quotes a former hospital volunteer who said "I was surprised by the lack of respect shown to these people. It was almost like warehousing, it made it smooth and quick. It was to keep things anonymous. A lot of people felt the mentally ill people are not as important in life or death. It was a combination of factors, perhaps because they were considered less important than others in society."

I'm left to wonder the stories of these people lost to the cemetery. I wonder about the lives they lost and the families that have forgotten them. I also, at least in the case of Elvine Kiwisaun, wonder about the families that do remember them.

As I walked through the cemetery I thought about the collective importance of people like Fred Colson. Dead at aged 18. Perhaps he was considered insane for a developmental disability, masturbation, or hearing voices. Fred, and all the named and unnamed people lost to this cemetery, remind me the importance of witnessing and resisting any effort to devalue, repress, and forget the power of the human experience--normal or not, sublime or distasteful.

It isn't as if these forgotten lives were a thing of the distant past. The staff of the Medfield hosptial were reducing people to numbers in this cemetery as last as 1988. Here on the right, is among the last of the patients at the then called Medfield State Hospital that were forgotten and lost until 2005.

Spend a moment today thinking about what you aren't looking at. Turn your attention to the things you avoid. Look at what you think you cannot look at. We owe it to people like Number 650, Fred Colson, Robert Smith, and Elvine Kiwisaun. We owe it to ourselves.

Medfield Insane Asylum

Welcome. We've been expecting you.

In a recent blog post about the New Orleans City Asylum, a reader commented about an abandoned asylum here in Massachusetts. The asylum contains, among other things, a cemetery in which many of the patients who spent their lives in the care of this asylum were buried. I woke up before sunrise this morning and headed out to Medfield for a look. I needed to experience the place for myself.

The Medfield Insane Asylum was created in 1892 by an act of the Massachusetts State Legislature. At its height, the asylum held over 2,200 patients supervised and cared for by between 500-900 staff members. Built in the Greek Revival, Queen Anne, and Beaux Arts styles, the 58 buildings scattered on 900 acres of rolling green land a self-contained institution. The facility had it's own power generation, heat, water, and sewage systems. The patients raised their own livestock and produce.

Major institutions of the era were built in the Kirkbride style--patients and administration were housed in one large building. Intended to offer humane treatment for those in need, Kirkbride style buildings worked toward changing public perception of "lunatics" who were generally locked in prisons and alms houses. The newer hospitals were meant to treat the insane in a more natural environment away from the pollution and hectic life in the city. Medfield was to be a different kind of institution. When the doors of the asylum were opened in 1896 it was the first in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be built on the cottage plan.

The cottage plan gained popularity during the end of the 19th century. The Kirkbride buildings were becoming overcrowded and dangerous places. The doctors of the time found that the Kirkbride buildings lacked proper facilities for patients who were noisy and violent. The cottage style, which continued to be popular through the 20th century, was move away from large institutions into more home-like environments.

The plan generally consisted of multiple paired buildings (segregated by sex and patient type) surrounding a central core of administration, recreation, worship, and treatment buildings. At  Medfield, the "cottages" mimicked the home environment--sleeping quarters were on the second floor and sitting and work rooms were on the first floor.

Unfortunately, as suggested by the article to the left, life could still be a dangerous and violent place at the asylum.

A newspaper article describes the early set up of the asylum.

At first, the staff worked on the wards and lived with the patients, usually sleeping in the attics of the buildings were they worked. For a time inmate death rate averaged four per week... Farming took place on the hundereds of acres of land surrounding the campus. A farmhouse was built across Canal Street in 1901. It served as living quarters for the head farmer and his family as well as 14 farm hands and 30 patients... farming was stopped in the late 1960s... There were also between 6-10 emotionally distrubed children admitted to the facility; the youngest just 4-years old. 

I located annual reports for the first 23 years of the hospital's operation. I'm going to spend some time with the documents over the next few weeks and write a future blog post about them. For now here are a few highlights:

From the Trustee's Report

The doors opened to the Medfield Asylum in 1896. Due to overcrowding in other state asylums, the State Board of Lunacy and Charity transferred "about 600 patients of the chronic and incurable class... from the various hospitals for the insane" to the newly built asylum. The Superintendent, Dr. Edward French, made $2,500; Assistant Physican Dr. Charles A. Drew made $1,500; Assistant Physican Thomas Howell made $900; Steward John B. Chapin made $12,200; Engineer Arthur e. Read made $1,000, Bookkeeper Sue R. Haynes made $600; Treasurer Charles C. Blaney made $500; and Matron Mary R. Satterwaite made $450.

From the Superintendent's Report

The world of cleaning, furnishing and otherwise preparing the different buildings was begun March 1, and was pushed forward as rapidly as possible. Twelve of the cottages for patients were ready to be put in order while six others designed for the filthy and more disturbed classes were in process of erection. 

Let's take a look at the occupations of the first 600 patients of the asylum:

Now let's take a look at the chief complaint of those six hundred people who were the first to call the Medfield Asylum home. Note the variety of complaints that would lead to life long commitment to an insane asylum such as epilepsy, influenza, masturbation, menopause, disappointment, and domestic affliction.

The last patients left Medfield State Hospital on April 3, 2003. Here is some of what is left behind.

Check out my next blog post, We Too Have Lived, to learn more about the Medfield Hospital Cemetery that is tucked away behind the old asylum property. 

New Orleans City Insane Asylum

New Orleans City Insane Asylum

I couldn't pass these records up. The New Orleans City Library has select patient records of people who were committed to the New Orleans City Insane Asylum. The city asylum appears to have served as a sort of assessment center. Local residents, police, and other officials would drop people off for evaluation. Dr. Y. R. LeMonnier, the physician of record, would make an evaluation and determine whether or not the patient would be sent to the East Louisiana State Hospital for the Insane.

The records offer up a fascinating glimpse into what behaviors were considered abnormal in the late 1800s. Some individuals were "cured" and returned home to their families. Many lived out their lives in the asylum and were buried in unmarked graves on the asylum grounds. One can only imagine what the lived experiences of these people, deemed insane by the state of Louisiana, must have been like. Here are a few of their stories:

• Abigail vs. Mrs. Lincoln – F – Blk – entered April 26, 1865 – aged 43 years. Today April 25,/82 – 61 years old [sic] – native of U.S. 5 3 ½ feet high. Kind of Insanity when she entered – Furious Mania – Today her disposition same is quiet & obedient – but she is turbulent, vulgar and obscene when irritated, yet very clean about her person. All doctors are her husbands brothers. Health rather good.

Quiet and obedient. No wait, just quiet. Also prone to being turbulent, vulgar and obscene when irritated. That's the record for Abigail. It's not much to go on. Not much at all. Take a closer look at the dates Dr. Le Monnier entered into the record. Abigail was brought to the asylum during the second year of the Civil War. It's unclear what the record means by "entered April 26 1865." It's entirely possible that Dr. LeMonnier didn't get around to entering the data into the record until years later. It is also possible that it was the day  Abigail was transferred to the East Louisiana State Hospital for the Insane. While the meaning is unclear, the date is interesting. April 26 1865 entry occurred just days after General Lee surrendered the Confederacy to the North on April 9, 1965. 

One wonders if Abigail was mentally ill or damned angry at being held in slavery. Was her illness the failure to fit in with White society's expectation of normal behavior for their slaves?

• Victorine – F – Blk – Entered Oct. 26, 1866 – 45 yrs old – Today, April 25, 1882, 62 years old – Native of U.S. 5.3 feet high – Kind of Insanity when she entered – Erotomania. Today, same. Disposition: quiet and obedient. Excited at times, at the sight of men, strangers to the institution, but even then very obedient. When her thoughts are turned to the pass [sic], on whatever subjects, she will at times seem to be a raving maniac. At these moments it suffices to call her, for her reason to return and she becomes quiet and obedient. Her health is very good. She makes herself useful.

Erotomania is a diagnosis that describes a person who has a delusional belief that a person of higher social status falls in love with them and is making sexual advances toward them. The record makes no mention of who was the subject of Victorine's advances. One wonders if she was in love with a White man, and if he loved her back. Could it be that a society with rigid anti-miscegenation laws diagnosed Victorine to keep races separate?

Was Victorine mentally ill or a victim of a racist culture?

• Ah Sing – Chinaman – age unknown (35? yrs)[sic] – Committed to the Asylum June 28rd*, 1882.This man is very excited. Being a Chinaman nothing can be obtained from him. Attached is a specimen of his writing – His tongue is good. Yesterday (26th) he was very wild, Raving Mania, to-day he is much better. This improved state is probably due to exhaustion. Yesterday his P. was 108, small; weak; to-day the 27th it is small and weak at 84. 

I'm speechless here, really. Was Ah Sing insane, or unable to communicate in English? Imagine how you might behave if you were kept against your will by captors who did not speak your language. Raving Mania, indeed.

• Anna Doyle, female, white, 35 years of age, native of Indiana, married, recommended her commitment to the State Insane Asylum, on November 3d, 1882, finding her suffering from Puerpueral Mania. This young woman is of a crabbid [sic] and peevish nature, using at times a very obscene; insulting language. She is naked, has a diarrhoea, and constantly dirties on her. At times rational, then incoherent in her speech. Her present condition is the result of a miscarriage or parturition – I have been unable to learn which or the exact date – a few weeks ago. She was sent to the hospital but her insanity caused her removal to the parish prison, for examination, prior to be sent to Jackson. At the hospital as here, she was very disagreeable; unmanageable [sic].

My heart goes out across time for poor Anna Doyle. It's interesting that she had no family to speak for her--Dr. LeMonnier wasn't sure if she had a miscarriage or live birth. Where was her husband? The record says she was married. Was the child the result of an affair? Was the husband uninterested--or dead?

It's important to note that no psycho-social factors were considered in any of these records. Do you suppose we take into consideration the context of peoples when  making diagnostic decisions in 2012? If you were to read the records of psychiatric patients who are hospitalized in 2112 would the records indicate an ignorance of the ways in which context influences sanity.

• Wm. Turley, male, white, 19 years, native of N.O., La. recommended his commitment to the S. I. A. at Jackson, on February 13th, 1883, finding him suffering from Stupidity. This young man is an epileptic, and is to-day reduced to an advanced state of Stupidity, which renders him unable to distinguish his right hand from the left. He knows not his age; says he is 10/years[sic] of age. He knows not the difference between 10 & 20.

It has been nearly erased from history that people who suffered epilepsy generally faced a lifetime of institutionalization. 

• Mrs. John Morehiser born Mary Grady, female, white, single (i.e. not legally married) native of Ireland, 27 years of age, recommended her commitment to the S-I-A. at Jackson on Feb’y 28th/83 finding her suffering from Puerperual Mania. This unfortunately woman was living with a man, to whom she was devoted. He proved untrue to her. She became jealous, and shortly, one or two months, after the birth of her last (3d) child, she showed the first symptoms of insanity. She is very quiet, speaks very little, her answers are slow to come, the questions often, having to be asked several times before being answered. The answers are not always rational. Her eyes are constantly roaming to & fro looking for something. She speaks of her children who are in the garden, whereas they are not present, nor is there a garden near by.

I found the admission record for Mary when she was adjudged to be insane by the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans. The reason official reason for her insanity? Jealousy. Was she insane or was she angry (or dejected) that her lover abandoned her and their children? 

• Augustine Smith, male, white, single, 21 years of age, native of Algiers, LA recommended his commitment to the S-I-A. at Jackson, on March 21st 1883, finding him suffering from Klopemania He is in a state of excessive hilarity. Laughs, jumps, claps his hands, runs at a great speed across the room, sets down jumps up again, puts his hand in your pocket, in a word does not remain two minutes quiet. At the station house, I found him in his cell, having torn his shirt to pieces, broken the lamps glass with his shoe, and laughing at his deeds. A month or two ago, he was arrested. He had robbed a ladder at night, brought it to the police station (Algiers), and there was asking for the loan of a hatchet that he might fix it, to enable him to light all the street lamps of Algiers. The citizens of Algiers complain of his night prowlings & thefts, and fear that he may some night be shot as a thief, if he be not placed in a safe place.

A modern day reading of Augustine's record suggests he might be suffering from a manic or hypomanic episode. What's interested about this record is that it suggests the protective use of hospitalization: Augustine was placed in a safe place so his behaviors didn't get him shot as a thief. One can infer from  Dr. LeMonnier's writing that he didn't believe Augustine was responsible for his own behaviors. Perhaps an interesting precursor to the notion of 'not guilty by reason of insanity'?

• Elizabeth Riley, female, white, about 35 yrs old, married, native of Ireland. Recommended her commitment to the S.-I.-A. at Jackson, on March 11th/84, finding her insane, suffering from Hallucinations. She is afraid of bodily harm, when anyone approaches

Hallucinations or flashbacks? The experience of Elizabeth is mostly erased from time. I wonder if perhaps she was victimized by someone--perhaps rape or physical abuse?