Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum

The public has always enjoyed  a good scandal, and madhouses of the 19th and 20th centuries sometimes provided horrific fodder for newspapers eager to sensationalize problems. Nellie Bly’s stay at Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum was well publicized, but abuses existed elsewhere as well.

The New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica gave the world the infamous Utica crib (see post from 3/20/10) but abuses beyond imaginative restraints were abundant throughout the system. Reports about patients being choked, beaten, starved, and brutalized surfaced like clockwork.

Charges against Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum published in The New York Times included: “The insane, he [Mr. Townsend]  said, were kicked and choked until blood spurts from the nostrils–some being driven to suicide by systematic cruelties.”

Many hospitals had “black-eye” wards, where patients who had been abused were taken to recover away from inquiring eyes.