The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

An exhibit in New York City that exposes the recent dark ages of psychiatry in the 20th Century. From the NYC City guide

When an old ramshackle New York hospital, once known as the Willard Asylum for the Insane, closed in 1995, workers found a long-forgotten door tucked under pigeon-infested rafters. They pried it open and discovered a roomful of suitcases, covered in cobwebs and bird droppings, seemingly untouched for many years.

The luggage revealed surprising and touching stories about the patients who lived and died at the hospital. Working for nearly a decade, two mental health officials pieced together a dozen of their stories.

What emerged was The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic, a free public exhibit, on view December 4, 2007 to January 31, 2008 at The New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library, 188 Madison Avenue.

The exhibit is presented by the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City Metro, The New York Public Library and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, with generous support from the New York Community Trust.

[...]

"Hundreds of thousands of people ended UP in mental institutions before the mid-20th century and almost nothing was known of them," said Suitcases co-curator Peter Stastny, a psychiatrist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "It was virtually a mass grave. This was really a unique opportunity to learn about their personal and medical histories side by side. That’s incredibly rare."

Suitcases presents a riveting, often appalling slice of psychiatric history in the United States, from the patients' point of view. Two dozen panels feature the stories of patients such as Miss Madeline #22040, a beautiful young Frenchwoman drawn to the occult, who fought her institutionalization for decades, and whose haunting photograph after years of confinement betrays intense suffering. And there was Mr. Lawrence #14956, an immigrant window washer who was institutionalized after being overheard singing loudly, praying and claiming to hear the voice of God. During his time at Willard, Mr. Lawrence dug more than 600 graves until his death at age 90, when he himself was buried in an unmarked grave.

[...]

The materials on display include photographs, panels depicting the patients' stories and cases of their belongings, including clothing and toiletries.

Not that things have gotten all that much better, as our site documents. An Exhibit that people should look into, but be aware that there is some positive spin regarding the "advances" of the modern era.