Danvers Mental Asylum
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- Опубликовано: 27 окт 2022
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In this video we discuss the Danvers Mental Asylum, a product of the Kirkbride plan for mental health in the late 1800's, which has now been gentrified into luxury condominiums.
I drove a Hackney 14 years just south east of Danvers and was working the day many of these patients hit the streets...some just wandered the streets in various states of dementia...a handful of these individuals I became familiar with...Those lucky enough to have relatives who cared enough were the fortunate ones...Those less fortunate made their way to the Homeless shelters in Boston where they could at least get a meal...Still others froze to death at Bus stops and alleyways...To this day my heart aches and my mind is haunted by the voices, images and memories of this human tragedy...Rest in peace Archie, Mary, Sam, Fibber, the Sargent and all the others lying in nameless graves...rest in Jesus...woods
Thank you for sharing this, some of the aftermath, and some of their names. Truly we must do better.
In 90s their was a basement room bricked up on all 4 sides. Lots of tunnels
Thank you MTwoodsrunner for your comment.
I was going to mention when these facilities closed. There were quite a few of them throughout Massachusetts, and when the public became aware and appreciated the terrible conditions, all the facilities were shuttered not that long ago. Many of these mass burial sites exist through the state, and the remnants of the facilities exist in various forms from ruins to condos to fenced off holes in the ground.
Unfortunately there was nothing in the way of adequate care and services for the residents, and as you mentioned, they were figuratively, and often literally, dumped on the streets… only to perpetuate the abuse… albeit through acts of omission rather than commission.
These stories serve as important lessons on how we chose to take care of our most needy, and how popular movements to fight injustice can lose all moment the second the “popular” part is over.
what's a Hackney ?
Those poor people must have suffered so much. Thanks for sharing it with us and giving these victims a way of their stories being told.
Actually, places like this still do exist, and what Regan did agains mental health made things even worse and resulted in the "streets" issue, as I think you're using as a slur?
@@wslrichards there still out there.
Chattahoochee is not a over all bad place now. But there was some hell of some stories about it in the 70's and 80's.
But having been around it some. Don't think the normal works went out of there way to be cruel.
It was a combination of the higher up and hiring practices and under staff that cause a lot of the problems.
@@tbjtbj4786 And there is an opposite reaction to all, if mentally ill is misbehaving day after day, everyone will at some point reflect their behavior to them. If mentally ill hits you, cook a little of their brain, that'll settle them until you need to fry them again and again and again, at some point under staffed it becomes easier to just fry their brain when they check in.
And so the place people hope to be from horror movies is reality.
@@felixchaus well here back then the staff for the wards were not well educated.
Your size was more what got you the job. You could be a drop out long after any other leo had to have a diploma.
They were short staffed and had to do what was nessary to keep control.
But that also let's in people that really should not have been in there.
I wouldn't say this "off" the usual content. I would say that this is exactly type of content I'm expecting from InRangeTV from time to time. Historical type of content is amazing, especially when done on site.
A torture-asylum gentrified into up-market apartments sounds like the set-up for a whole new horror film. You can bet it wouldn't take long for yuppies to start getting murdered by vengeful spirits in the movie version of this place.
I've not seen Session 9, but I googled it and it stars Peter Mullan, who's a fantastic actor, so I'll definitely try to look it up.
My Grandmother lives there 😂
Perhaps a person whose ancestor was an occupant ?
Even to this day, there’s huge improvements to be made in mental health institutes.
Both my mom and my sister work in an institute for mentally handicapped people. Some of their ‘good ol’ times’ colleagues still say stuff like: ‘we should just put them in straight jackets’. To this day, more empathetic people have to fight for the rights of these people to be treated as humans.
And this is why, I feel blessed to still be able to care for mine at home
I helped discover the lost cemetary completely by chance. My friends and I (being kids) "unofficially toured" there around 1999/00 when it was horribly dilapidated at about 2am. The stuff that was still in there and the tunnels, mechanisms, tools..nightmares. I still have nightmares sometimes. Those poor people. Like they had them. No way you could've escaped that stuff. Ugh. Anyway, the cops, likely unknowingly boarded us in through the boarded up hole we squeezed in through. We panicked trying to bust back out and they must've heard the commotion. Everyone split in the panic. My friend and I ran in the pitch black through the overgrown woods and came up to an opening (still very overgrown though) & as we were bolting through it , my friend destroyed himself tripping over what he thought was a tall rock. I grabbed him and was dragging him backwards and I then fell over the same. I'll never forget this..we realised they were graves. That we were running through some lost graveyard. The grave we could see only had a number on it. I was totally frozen in confusion. My buddy then grabbed me and angrily told me to run. The cop behind us yelled all of a sudden like he got hurt. We figured he ran into one too and kept running to get away. My mom was watching the local news on tv a few week later and the broadcaster was saying the local p.d. had discovered a lost graveyard at the defunct Danvers State Insane Asylum while chasing a group of "hooligans" (I guess we were). They were saying they'd update with more details on the lost cemetary as more details came to light, but it is thought it might be an illegal secret burial ground for failed lobotomies done there or something. To those offended at our trespass, forgive us. We were just kids looking for adventure.
I do disability support work, and I used to work with some guys who used to be institutionalised, the huge improvement I saw in them in 18 months of just, being treated well and like individual humans really hit home how terrible institutionalised is for most people.
As a kid I lived near an old hospital it was a mental asylum,nursing home,general hospital, when it closed I went in what I seen was insane like they just walked out everything was still in place. There was blood all over the mourge area as well. I also love that your going outside the world of guns.
And now you have minor lead and asbestos poisoning for the rest of your life.
You can Join the club, I used to hangout at an old paper factory and mill..
This reminded me of an answer you gave in the recent Q&A, about wishing we had more empathy. That would certainly have been much in need at this place. A very affecting video and this content is appreciated.
Danvers State Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts, USA and opened in 1878 at a cost of $1.5 million. Danvers had previously been called Salem Village and was the site of the famous Salem Witch Trials of 1690, the name having been changed to distance itself from the events of the past.
Danvers-> captain marvel-> bad lady if you research it. Change the nsme again.
Ok there has got to be something in the water there that makes people want to abuse mentally ill people lol that is a crazy coincidence
I was unfortunately in Taunton state (another State Hospital in Massachusetts) it wasn't as bad as a few others but it certainly has it's horror stories. People like to pretend treatment of the "mentally unwell" has changed over the centuries but unfortunately a lot is still the same. At Danvers you're not too far from Westwood Lodge, I was unfortunately there a lot too and they were shut down for how patients there were treated. The horrors of Westwood Lodge are easily researchable too. I hope that some day mental issues are treated the same as physical issues but I'm not holding my breath.
I was a security guard at the old Central Islip Psychiatric Center a couple of years ago. The center was built in the 1860's and sprawled hundreds of acres. It was closed down in the 90's and parcelled out, about 80% was levelled and became a Target/Home Depot shopping center and gentrified gated communities. The remainder was bought by NYIT, where I worked. For a decade or so, it was a boarding school for disabled kids. They closed that down a few years ago. It has since been sold and is in the process os becoming, you guessed it! Luxury apartments. There are tunnels connecting the older, original buildings. I loved patrolling during the spring/early summer when the ivy retook the buildings. It looked so cool and spooky.
here in knoxville, lakeshore has been turned into a park, before they knocked down most of the buildings you could see inside and see that everything had pretty much been left. the children's school still had homework and drawing laying around medical records were left laying around. there has been some effort to recount it's history but most people don't even know what used to be there. thank you for another great video.
You are good people. Thanks for the content that you make.
" And where do you live Simon?"
Fantastic work Karl! I was surprised to see that there was anything left as I thought the whole building had been demolished. As a fan of the film I can't imagine what it must have been like to stand in the burial site, combined with the actual sadness that those markers represent.
It's infuriating to see that the attitude to this history is erasure not rememberance.
Thank you for shining a light on this subject. I spent most of my working career in mental health. As part of my training I learned the true history of mental health in America. The horrors that these people suffered at the hands of their "caretakers" was unspeakable!
There seems to be a lot of health care against people's will still going on.
This was fantastic. I would absolutely love more content like this, personally. Very, very interesting stuff.
Awesome, thank you!
In the Netherlands we have about 2500 mental patients who exhibit violent behavior. After a picture of 1 (Jolanda Geertruida Venema) of them was taken belted to her bed and published in a local newspaper in 1988 it didn't take long before the CCE (Center for Consultancy and Expertise, same letters in Dutch) was set up (€20 million annually, €8000/patient) to monitor their treatment and and advise on care, extra funds were made available for their treatment, after the case snowballed. Good treatment of these people is worth every eurocent alone, it's pure profit for their families to know they get proper care and for the staff to have enough time and support. High taxes are pretty nice to have when they are spend well like this.
Excellent video Karl! Lets hope it does a little of the same as that 1 picture.
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard mention of Session 9. Thanks for covering this, Karl!
Wonderful video and good job remembering the people that past away May They Rest In Peace
"Session 9" is one of my favorite films. I came across it by accident when it as on Netflix. Awesome movie.
I actually did a lot of the carpentry during the months of renovations.when the tower on the kirkbride building burnt in the fire, I helped rebuild the old one on the ground, and swung it up.great job to be part of.
Thank you ,Carl, for bringing these places and history to a digital format for us to view and appreciate.
It sucks that they couldn't get all of the names onto stone and that the cemeteries aren't shown more respect and given more exposure.
Thank you for your efforts, Karl. The little we know about those horrific places needs to be remembered and you're doing a great job of that. So thank you again for keeping the flame of remembrance alive.
Love your history presentations. Keep em coming!
Karl, videos like this is my favorite InRange videos.
We need a light shined on places like this and the dehumanizing way those poor patients were treated. I like that you don't sensationalize their treatment. I wouldn't mind a deeper dive into what went on there, thank you for the spark, Karl.
Fantastic content as always, and from where I live! Thanks Karl!
Thanks for these, Karl! God dang I love this channel
Thank you Karl for this video. Since you said that videos which aren't directly about firearms get much less views i leave this comment to boost the "engagement" and hopefuly make RUclips promote this a little bit more.
The subject of mental health is somewhat personal to me (don't worry, it's nothing too bad and I'm not "crazy" either). Where I live the mental health care is much better these days, but still has some issues. Although treating mental health problems is just inherently a difficult task by it's nature.
As a side note: I really like your old west content. Keep it up!
Thanks for shedding light on this. There are countless places like these and they are so important to understanding our past.
There are some truly tragic stories out there of women who were sent to these facilities, not because they were unwell or needed help, but simply because their husbands no longer wanted to support them (or because the husband wanted to date again). These facilities have a truly horrific history, and it is shocking that mental healthcare in this country has not evolved far beyond that time, and in some ways it has regressed.
I think the big difference is that, before the Public institutions were shut down in the 70s through to the 90s, the mentally ill were simply 'out of sight, out of mind'.
Now the people with mental illnesses are on every streetcorner, in every city.
We can't ignore them now.
And now that cities are being gentrified, politicians are scrambling to find new places to abandon the homeless and mentally ill...
There are quite a few of these facilities scattered throughout the state and more than one of them have been converted to condos in the last two decades… If you want to see one that has not been converted I would suggest going to the former Medfield State Hospital.
Medfield's the only one left in its original state.
No true Kirkbrides left though...
Nice to see you in the Northeast (my neck of the woods). If you have time the Metfern Cemetary in Waltham has a similar vibe (served now defunct State hospital and the Fernald Center which housed disabled/developmentally delayed individuals).
Hope you had/are having a nice time in the area!
Thanks for shining a little light Karl, modern ruins and the stories surrounding them are always neat, shame the structure is luxury apartments now, though.
Live about three hours away from Mansfield penitentiary... where they filmed Shawshank. They give tours! Love videos like these, Karl!
I learned something today and content like this is why you’re one of my favorite creators Karl!
Karl, ALL of your content has always been informative, entertaining, or both. Thank you for sharing this very interesting history lesson.
I appreciate that!
I also spent 10 years in metal heath lots of good people work in the field but the system is broken beyond repair
Thanks for sharing this! These stories are worth telling.
I was born in Cherokee Valley Memorial Hospital/Asylum in '55. My mother also worked in the asylum in the 50's. It was also a Kirkbride Building. It still functions as an asylum, albeit, smaller. She mentions many Doctors working there were from Germany, (Jews) having moved there after the war (Iowa) The hospital is still in very good shape. Danvers, just fell apart. There's a completely refurbished Kirkbride Building in Athens, Georgia. Amazing builders and craftsmanship.
Great job as usual, Karl! I love your historical videos. You show empathy for other humans, somrthing rare on a lot of gun based channels. More please!
Johnthan Bates, I too love the historical videos that Karl puts out. Also a fan of his empathy for the marginalized as well as firearms related content. Karl does firearms & shooting sports right ! A lesson many others should learn !
Eastern State Hospital in Washington State has a similar past. Also has a cemetery with poured cement headstones about 1 foot by 2 feet with stamped numbers. The cemetery was actually forgotten about and overgrown until a few years ago when it was cleaned up and a memorial sign was placed nearby.
Tragic story. Very glad you choose to cover topics like these and the New Orleans club fire, where people have forgotten or never paid attention in the first place.
I live near the one in Weston, WV. It's history is very much similar to Danvers but also has callings back to the Salem witch trials. Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (Weston State Hospital when it was active) did have a large population of women there due to husbands either wanting their wives property or to simply get rid of them. They also housed a lot of "vagrants" and "undesirables" such as orphaned kids or homeless people. The facility was closed down in 1994 when Sharpe State Hospital opened up down the road, which this hospital is arguably worse than TALA. One interesting bit about TALA is the nonviolent residents were able to roam around town and were even allowed to have jobs.
I was wondering if tala was gonna be mentioned in the comments. If I recall correctly it was used as a youth mental hospital well into the 90s. As someone who was in and out of mental healthcare and young in the 90s it frightened me...
Fascinating. More of this type of content would be very welcome!
A very important video and commentary. Thank you.
Thank you for this video. Continue to make these types of stories as there are many peoples history's that are lost and forgotten. Humanity by its own compunction can create more horrors than any monster from fantasy or myth.
I appreciate that you cover the stories of history that would otherwise be glossed over because they're unpleasant to some. If we only tell the stories that make us feel good, it does a massive disservice the victims of those stories, as well as giving others free reign to do those same injustices all over again. Thank you
Ahhhh Danvers 🥰🥰🥰🥰 My baby. Loved the time I got to investigate
My dad grew up near the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (aka the Weston State hospital) in West Virginia. Another Kirkbride plan facility, and the exact same things happened. Funding was cut, overcrowding ensued and so did abject cruelty. Unlike with Danvers, it's not known how many patients died at Weston. Estimates put it at 400-500, but given that it was a smaller facility (designed for 250) and had a similar peak population as Danvers (2600), I wouldn't be surprised for those estimates to be low. Weston also became home to the West Virginia Lobotomy Project: using lobotomies to reduce the overcrowding at Weston.
Extremely fascinating thank you
Awesome work Karl!
Amazing short film, shows there are more narratives to history other than those written by those who have the pen. More power to you
The story of mental health care in the U.S. (as well as all other nations) is complex, and not always tragic. It must be kept in mind that for most of history mental illness was not understood; its cause(s), manifestations, course, and effective treatments were unknown. Theories abounded, methods of care were idiosyncratic, and objective clinical research was rare; "improvement" was as often as not defined as behavior that did not disturb society. Recall that Walter Moniz (Portugal) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 for developing the brutal frontal lobotomy surgical procedure. But during the late 19th and early 20th centuries much of medicine was hardly evidence-based. Chloroform was used to treat asthma; surgery was a common treatment for peptic ulcer until Marshall and Warren proved it was caused by H. pylori infection in 1982; radical mastectomy was considered the only appropriate treatment for breast cancer; radiation was used for acne, etc.
All of that notwithstanding, when I was a high school student I had a summer job at Creedmoor State Hospital in NY. While it was not necessarily a happy place, I did not observe any negative or unkind behavior toward patients by the staff. The patients were fed and housed adequately, provided recreation, clothed, and importantly were in a safe environment. When the politicians wanted to spend less, and the mental health "experts" of the day contended that all inpatient institutional care could be provided in the community on an outpatient basis, the mental hospitals were closed. Now how did that work out? [See the New York Times article "Bedlam in the Streets" (May 1999)]. Today, most of those who otherwise would have been in mental care facilities are homeless on the streets, drug or alcohol abusers, or in jails or prisons. I can guarantee their morbidity and mortality rates are higher than in inpatient facilities.
Tom Holohan M.D.
My thoughts too. As bad as these places got, that's from corruption and negligence. That doesn't take away the fact these are sadly a necessity in a society. There's nothing wrong with being empathetic as Karl mentioned, but logic has to rule the day. A lot of the problems in our society today are because of the former and much, much less of the latter. Part of the human condition is accepting the fact that some people will always need help, and many will unfortunately fall through the cracks. Is that tragic? Absolutely. Should the burden be placed on the rest of society to the point that it leads to societal decay? No. As society grows and improves, so can places like these. The proof of that is the fact that these places, like prisons, are still a hell of a lot better than they used to be in "civilization".
Just out of curiosity, do you know what a mental facility would have looked like say.....1500 years ago? Did they even exist? Did the Romans even have a version of it?
@@KossoffFan The Romans and the Greeks before them were relatively medically sophisticated, and recognized mental illness, establishing a rudimentary classification system, basically divided into "mania" and "melancholia". Treatments were dietary, purging, baths, exercise, fresh air and talking. Roman law defined mental illness and the state could appoint a "curator" to supervise behavior and economic decisions. Unfortunately, if the family had no money, the mentally ill could be housed in a prison - not as punishment, but to prevent injury to the patient or to the public.
@@thomasholohan4090 Thats very interesting. I had no idea they were that sophisticated in that field of medicine. I knew they were in others, but not mental illness. Thank you.
I think it might be good to use these videos as a way to start discussions about better ways to handle mental health in the future.
Quality video. Thank you.
You know Danvers was the inspiration for Arkham Sanitarium in Lovecrafts work The Thing On The Doorstep which was the inspiration for Arkham Asylum in Batman. I also feel like it must have inspired the movie A Cure for Wellness.
Thanks again Carl for uncovering history, that was “swept under the rug.”
You are a very clever man. Your history lessons always have a deep message in them. I wonder how many people understand this.
I doubt you did much shooting on this trip, unless you also visited one of the free states to the north.
Marginalized, primarily by their own families
At least they werent enabled
Society basically forced families to get rid of them.
What is the practical solution then? Allowing the mentally ill to live on sidewalks with open drug use, violence, criminality, destroying the community around it?
@@bannedbycommieyoutube5time920 if you don't want facilities like this? Community support. Every town, jurisdiction, whatever, would need some sort of in patient/out patient treatment center. If it is government run, it will end up like this, over crowded and mismanaged. If it is private and for profit, it will as well. If private and non profit it still will. This seems a cyclical thing. Entropy and chaos are just a part of the system. You can try your best, but things fall apart and have to be rebuilt or replaced. That is the nature of the world and humanity.
@@nothim7321 I agree in theory, but that will simply never happen at anywhere remotely at scale it would need to make a material difference.
I wouldn't have known a thing about Danvers if Karl didn't put up this video. Thank you Karl.
Thank you for this "off topic" video. It is shocking how many these places were around but are now forgotten. It is important to remember our history, both our good and bad.
Off topic and totally unrelated, while watching a different (which I cannot remember the name) I thought a good topic for a video might be the history, rise and fall of Soldier of Fortune magazine. I remember seeing them on the magazine racks as a kid and being intrigued but was told by sales clerks they were not appropriate for kids.
Thanks for this.
Karl's got me on an emotional rollercoaster: last week the handgonne, the o.g. happy boom time. This week one of the most horrifying places I know of, ye olde mental "hospitals".
Happy Halloween indeed!
The first cemetery shown is often called the Lower Cemetery. That was for patients from the Middleton Colony. The Middleton Colony was designed for the frail and elderly, more of a nursing home setting.
I’ve stayed in Danvers a few times but have never been here. Very cool video.
In the western part of the state, the Northampton state hospital was also abandoned and in the 90’s was a spooky urbex spot. Nail marks on walls, abandoned equipment, etc.
At the height of its overcrowding there were a number of times where patients had died and weren’t found until days later. Danvers is also rumored to be the place where the prefrontal lobotomy was invented. There was a big stink over the place being sold to be turned into apartments. Most people wanted it to be left alone or to maybe restore it and turn it into a museum. While construction was still in its relatively early stages in 2007 there was a huge fire there, believed to be intentionally set.
Damn I recently ran a pen and paper roleplaying session (Cthulhu-Universe!) about that place (well: That place held the "Objective" - a patient who was friends with my investigators and wanted to leave the damn place) and yeah it is a spooky place from the photos that I gathered alone, so yeah it fits a Halloween episode to the T! Great vid! Thanks!
Have a similar place in my hometown, no names in cemetery just numbers. It's still a state facility with many problems today.
Snuck into a part of this building a number of years ago at night, was very cool
Wow.... Great Video!....
They were going to turn Greystone Park, here in NJ, where the great Woody Guthrie was a patient from '56 to '61, into a high-end, boutique shopping center. They demolished it instead.
Love your kontent Karl!
A focus on civil rights with occasional gun content might change more minds than a lot of gun content with occasional civil rights videos. These are always the ones I send to friends
Thanks for sharing this information. I was recently there but couldn't find the first cemetery that you show in this video. Where is it? With a little research I found the last cemetery that you went to.
Danvers was the inspiration for Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium in "The Thing on the Doorstep."
GORGEOUS gothic Kirkbride
Thank you for the content and shedding some light on this horrible topic.
I would’ve gone an hour long with you sharing this.
Great Subject!
I snuck in that building before it was demolished one night with a couple friends. Still remember when we were on our way up to the building and i subbed my toe on a huge rock that turned it to be a numbered headstone.
In Britain one of the most secure facilities is Rampton in Lincolnshire. Some of the most criminally insane people, (although that seems like the wrong term) are held there. The sold off the staff houses on the grounds a few years ago. This led to my daughter almost giving my mother a heart attack after telling her she had "Gone to a party at Rampton". Where she got the idea to tell her I have NO idea! The houses are nice but all the outbuildings have metal doors and large locks, they test the alarm system in case of a break out regularly and you have to block yourself inside for the duration no matter what.
Thanks for posting this it was very interesting, I love your history videos.
Well presented Karl. This story is repeated in different forms all over the world. (qualified psychiatric nurse).
I am lawyer in Massachusetts who deals with mental patients, have heard from a number of people how bad the system was up until even recently things did not get much better for a long time. I have been to Danvers and Taunton state both had major issues.
Great work Karl 🎃
There's a pretty big one out in Maryland (not too far from Annapolis if I remember correctly). Crownsville, Forest Haven, and Rosewood were a few of the more well-known horror shows run by Maryland.
While you were in the area you should have checked out Medfield State Hospital. I guess some pretty bad stuff went on there too. I was actually fortunate enough to get the Building Search lesson of my police academy done there. We got to go inside and practice finding each other.
I very much appreciate your content, in particular your historical. I am wondering if you have any verified scorses for this video? Firstly because I think it would be an interesting read but I am also studying building conservation and crafts and would like to investigate whose history is preserved.
Thank you for your content
/ v from scandinavia
Sad live in MA too, at least the building was saved it's cool looking. Saw the Odd Fellows home in Worcester demolished that was a shame such a nice building.
my wife and i found the will county poor farm cemetary or what was left of it. the situation was similar to those two cemetaries
I've found a few cemeteries in the woods around where I live. Completely overgrown and forgotten.
They're in the process of turning Lakeville state hospital into condos here in southeastern Ma.
Is that what they're turning it into? I live basically down the street from it and didn't know that.
@@jaytea4093 I believe so . They did the same with foxboro state hospital
Prefect story for October
oof I knew this one was going to be rough. I was friends with people that where in state wards (they are all dead now) ive even known people that worked in those wards. the wards we have now are not better its all unbelievably stupid and some how allegedly sane people think wards are a reasonable way to treat other people.
I hope you got to visit Salem.
Good video
Thank you for making this video….
It surprised me as a young teenager when I read about how many “asylums” were active into the 1980’s and how many were “abandoned” around my home state Michigan until the 2000’s. Thank goodness mental health treatment has advanced so much in the last few decades. Still wish I could have investigated these areas while they were frozen in time though.
It didn't advance. We just throw drugs at people now and let half of them live on the streets.
Mental Hospitals were done away with to trim state budgets, not to help people.
My dad worked there when I was a kid … it was mad creepy even then