What really sends chills down my spine is the fact that this hell hole closed down the year I started Kindergarten. My grandmother, born 1935, still fears the mental health field thanks to the "asylums". Now I do understand her need to pretend things are okay even if they aren't... not doing that back then got you committed.
My grandfather was the director of recreation at Willard until around 1986. Very often he would bring patients home with him for a weekend, and I would find myself having a nice breakfast with them on Sunday mornings. My crayon pictures would hang on the refrigerator door next to theirs. It was a lovesly experience and an even more wonderful memory that I have of some of them.
Mimi Gray, you do not have to believe me, but in the era that I grew up, under certain circumstances it was absolutely acceptable. Today it would not be.
It is my understanding that in the cemetery across the street from Willard, where patients are buried, the graves are unmarked. If so, what would be the reason?
It’s very unfortunate that there’s still a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to mental illness. I got a bit teary eyed watching this for a few reasons. I have a special admiration for the photographer for his respect for the patients and their things, the fact that he did not judge them, and more. I hope the patients themselves are at peace now.....the ones who have passed on. Good video!
enjoyed watching this but i was also angered by it. what we know now but is it much different? these folks' weren't given their belongings, just drugged and mainly forgotten about. i hope more digging happens and families are given their belongings so that history might be closed or might fill that gap. makes you wonder how many more suitcases are abandoned elsewhere
I grew up not far from Willard Hospital. ....my mother would always threaten that she was going to go check herself into Willard if us five children didn't behave ourselves! My father went through alcoholic rehab their in the 1980s. I went through nursing school in 1968-69 with a large group of Willard employees that were upgrading their education to become nurses. I believe there was a State program that paid for them to do so and covered their school expenses.
They can't put names on the graves because they cared so little about the patient's that their paperwork work was full of errors but even more often incomplete. They don't know who is buried where and that some ate buried without any marker at all
Lori McKinney Here in Michigan. About twenty-five years ago an institution was shut down (Northville center), and hundreds of remains were found, left in the original metal containers about the size and shape of a coffee can, with the names rusted off, etc. I guess some folks just don't count alive or dead. Very sad. I'm not sure when they started cremating because they do have a cemetery that was used up to a certain time. I think the cremains were people whose families never claimed the body or no relations could be found.
You talked to a lot of staff, and a few expatients? Why...is there lots of suitcases left with belongings THE POOR SOULS. Had packed believing they would have them in willards? OBVIOUSLY they were removed from them when they entered, deprived of there last link to the outside world. It's good they at last are remembered. Yet l wonder..why abuse in mental health care is still happening.
Betty Crocker-Page then the law is a arse!.. It's ok to allow there property to be photographed, and there private lifes to be published for all and sundry... Yes the public have to know what happened to those poor souls! Yet there next of kin have no rights over ownership of properties. Seems to me the law wants to squeeze as much money out of those poor souls. Now if they released their records so we can see the level of abuse? (Bet they doint) patient confidentially.
Angela Deen, It is sad isn't it? Not only Willard, but the majority of 'asylums' back then removed the patients personal belongings for safety reasons. A new patient would be scrutinized for behavior patterns and possible issues with violence or misuse of objects. Also, it was extremely common for patients to take things from other patients. These were the main reasons that their personal belongings were removed from them. In regard to Willard, they stored their patient's personal belongings in the attic of the 'Pines' building. When a patient passed away, very often their families did not claim the body, nor their belongings. Their cemetery is quite remarkable and sectioned off by the patients religious practice. Hope this helps a bit. Be well.
Angela - I saw one suitcase with a record in it & fount the old song on UTube ...wild as the patients brought what they thought they would need or cherished. Bless them all...~
In 2012 or 13, Stuyvesant Town in NYC cleared out their storage rooms. Fascinating stuff was found, but then the whole story went dark. I have no idea if anyone catalogued anything or what happened to it. The lot was mostly left over from veterans of WWll, who moved to this inexpensive housing experiment in the forties and fifties...of course the current population is quite changed. I still think about this, would love to investigate, but that's not my sort of project or milieu,
another good book about this asylium is called "what she left behind" by Ellen Marie Wiseman. just finished reading and felt the need to know more about Willard.
I really enjoyed this video and appreciate what you did with the suitcases. I live right across the street from Willard and have tried to get permission to mow the cemetery but have still been denied the right. It is a shame that those of us who care about the past cannot be allowed the right to care for those who are gone whether we knew them or not.
My great aunt was a patient there. I believe she had polio as a baby because she had a little underdeveloped arm and then epilepsy, and as my great-grandparents became older they just couldn't take care of her anymore and this seemed to be the only/best solution. I think it was the available "assisted living" of the day for the mentally unwell. I remember visiting her there once when I was very young. I hope there were some nice people there taking care of her. She went intermittently initially as a respite for her parents. Medicine has progressed, but I think at the time medical providers for the most part really wanted to help and were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had at the time.
It seems it was a common practice to separate the patients from belongings that were very special to them. On one hand the suitcases are time capsules and also carry elements of what is physical or object and how we relate to that, person and object, in an objective yet subjective, pragmatic at times yet metaphorical, utilitarian yet spiritual, a facet of material culture, that the suitcases are archaeological, sociological, psychological, yet to my amateur self they too reflect on a kind of inner sanctum... additionally, yet only just me... there is an underlying ominous kind of dark feeling I have that reminds me of places like Auschwitz or the concentration camps. I know this predates that, yet it post dates it too. Part of it would be to strip an individual of their identity or sense of past and belonging and indoctrinating them into this other world apart from the world, inside/outside, us and them etc. I wonder how they handled death at Willard, or how they handled convincing patients they were now "patients", us and them. "They" were not buried, at least a significant number of them, even with the rest of the world. I need to think in retrospect too, the continuum of time, yet I delve into the then and the now and what carries on and the possibilities of what lies ahead. What is manipulation and what is simply evolutionary? What darkness of Willard can manifest in different forms in our own lives and to recognize those forms, to progress, to evolve, to rise above. Thank you for taking your time to bring this into the light where we can ponder about who we are, what defines us, what we allow or even take for granted in the echoes of institutionalization around us. Carpe Diem!
My great grandfather Clinton O'Dell spent time there and my Grandfather Hickey died there .i remember visiting my grandpa Hickey there.im terrified of mental institutions.i also have a mental illness disorder..parinoid schitzophrenia ... PTSD and a rapid cycler bipolar person..i am also terrified of electroshock therapy as it was done to both my grandpa and my granddad hickey..o would love to know if my grandpas things are there and to get them bsck to have connections to them both.
At minute 13:53/21:44 you did release the name of Frieda B. in the photograph. A quote from the page is in the photograph: (What is your name?) "Frieda Bowker". Don't know how you missed it because it was glaring at me no mater how fast the photograph went by. You did a great job in photographing the suitcases. I have been researching one of the patients who was committed and died at Willard. The Penn Yan Democrat, Jan 27,1911 stated "Emma Franklin, who is an inmate of Willard Asylum.". She died at Willard in March 1911 and her body was returned to Penn Yan for interment.
The contents perfectly survived all that time unwrapped and un-bagged - and in an attic, no less. Great they were given to a museum, but they should have been left as they were found. Sealing everything in plastic bags is not always a good idea as far as long-term preservation is concerned.
Jesus God dude, didn't anyone ever tell you that when speaking in front of an audience dont use um, uh, or er. And for the love of God please speak with some confidence man. So hard to listen to men who talk sheepish and not articulate.
dementia præcox, more or less, meant schizophrenia, but diagnoses were fairly unevolved back then. now we just turn them into diseases of the week, & diagnose everyone, so i cant say we're much cleverer currently.
enjoyed watching this but i was also angered by it. what we know now but is it much different? these folks' weren't given their belongings, just drugged and mainly forgotten about. i hope more digging happens and families are given their belongings so that history might be closed or might fill that gap. makes you wonder how many more suitcases are abandoned elsewhere
