Anyone who’s ever done
genealogical research is familiar with the term “stone wall” – a point beyond
which you’re unable to travel back, blocked by the unknown. Or the unrecorded.
New York State, as with many
another locations, is home to several specialized stone walls. Family
researchers whose forbearers lived in areas around Rochester, Albany or Seneca
Lake may lose track of their ancestors, especially those less well-off - such as the impoverished or homeless.
Especially those who might have had mental problems. Hopefully most reading
this won’t have ancestors falling under the latter category. But . . .
You never know.
Michael T. Keene, author of
two previous books – “Folklore and Legends of Rochester, The Mystery of Hoodoo
Corner” and of “Murder, Mayhem and Madness: 150 years of Crime and Punishment
in Western New York” has just released his similarly-themed third work –
“Mad-House: The Hidden History of Insane Asylums in 19th Century New York”.
Beginning with the history of
mental institutions, dating back as early as 792 AD in Baghdad, and covering
the changing attitudes and treatments for dealing with psychiatric episodes in
men and women, he tells of influential people – familiar and little-known -
such as William Tuke, Dorothea Dix, Thomas Story Kirkbridge, Elizabeth
Cochrane, Dr. Amarah Brigham, and Gerit Smith. (You may know Cochrane better
under her pen name – you can Google her). Then there’s the Austrian immigrant
named Lawrence, who lies in the Ovid-area mass grave at Willard Asylum for the
Insane, along with the uncountable persons he physically placed there.
Covering different parts of
the state and of New York City, Keene tells of institutions such as the
latter’s Belle Vue, the Blackwell Island Lunatic Asylum and the Bloomingdale
Insane Asylum (on the site of today’s Columbia University). Elsewhere around
the state he treats of institutions – all defunct or transformed into other
types of facilities – at Monroe County, Cattaraugus County, Utica, Syracuse, Binghamton,
Poughkeepsie, Buffalo, Middletown, and Mattewan.
Willard Asylum, in the Finger
Lakes region, would probably prove most frustrating to those seeking missing
persons in their family’s past.
Keene begins the asylum’s
chapter in “Mad-House” with the appearance on October 13, 1869 of a Mary Rote,
arriving by steamboat on the nearby shore of Seneca Lake. Chained by the wrists
and jostled along by armed guards, the “deformed and demented” Rote became the
first inmate of the Asylum for the Chronic Insane. It has been speculated that
Mary Rote may not have been the woman’s real name. Even if untrue, any Rotes
out there today may hit the brick wall already mentioned. If so, they are not
alone.
When the facility shut down
in 1995 the nearby graveyard contained 5,775 graves. Most do not have markers
identifying the deceased. Most have only been marked with a number and even
these are often nearly impossible to physically locate. Keene closes this
mournful chapter with, “May God have mercy on their souls”.
HEADLINERS
While the above may bring to
mind the old Cole Porter Kiss Me, Kate lyric phrase “. . . the world forgetting, by the world forgot . . .” a
few other inhabitants of asylums were very much in the forefront of the media
of their time.
On June 26, 1906 the front
page headline of the New York American, one of the many illustrations in Mad-House, read “HARRY THAW KILLS STANFORD WHITE ON ROOF
GARDEN!. The case will be somewhat familiar to readers who saw the1955 Richard
Flesicher film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing which starred Farley Granger as Harry Kendall Thaw,
Ray Milland as architect Stanford White, and Joann Collins as Evelyn Nesbitt (the aforementioned Girl). A search of the New York Times archives turns up the following subsequent headlines
(among many, many others – imagine what the so-called Yellow Press or
sensationalist newspapers of the time reported along the way):
MURDERER’S’ ROW GETS
HARRY THAW – June 27, 1906
INSANITY IN THAW’S
FAMILY – February 7, 1907
HARRY THAW BACK IN
STATE ASYLUM – AUGUST 19, 1909 (referring to Mattewan State Hospital for the
Criminal Insane, one of the featured institutions in Mad-House).
Somehow the Times seemed to have missed out on the story in 1913 when,
as Keene reports, with Thaw, “. . . reputedly just walking out of the hospital
and getting into a hired car that took him across the border to Canada.” He was soon extradited, ending
up back in Mattewan, until a 1915 sanity trial declared him sane and he was
released.
The Times did not
miss out on the February 23, 1947 story:
Harry L. (stet)
THAW, 76, IS DEAD IN FLORIDA; Coronary Thrombosis Fatal to Former ‘Playboy’ . .
.”.
The book also includes the
accounts of undercover reporters, such as the already mentioned Elizabeth
Cochrane and of Julius Chambers, both who had themselves committed in order to
come up with exposés of the many horrors of residency in the state’s numerous
Mad-Houses.
Author Michael T. Keene will
keep you turning pages throughout these fascinating accounts.
Anyone wishing to purchase
Mad-House or learn about Keene’s other books, may contact him through his
website:
He mentions “For those who
are not comfortable with using PayPal and who wish to purchase the book
directly from me, can do so by either sending me an email or by
calling toll-free. My email address and phone number are listed on my
website.”
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