Back in the day when I was in High School I took a class called Social Problems. We discussed a wide range of subjects, one of which was mental hospitals. Our class trip was to Letchworth Village, which at the time was open and active catering to severely retarded children and adults.
What we saw that day was just horrific. The patients were well cared for but many where so profoundly retarded and disabled that it was hard to comprehend that they where human beings and not some horrible props from a fright movie.
I particularly remember the ward for severe hydroencephelitius. Dozens of cribs filled with creatures with enormous heads and tiny bodies. Unresponsive, laying silently in those cribs basically brain dead. I wondered aloud why they where even kept alive.
In another ward was a group of screaming pre teens with the mental age of just a few months. They ran from one end of a large room to the other in a pack shreiking. Most naked, because they tear off their clothes, and incontinent. The nurses really tried to keep the room clean but it reeked of urine and feces They looked like a flock of featherless screaming chickens.
That was my first trip. The second decades later was to a quieter more pastoral setting. The only occupants of the buildings now, birds and small animals.
1
Forgotten
2
Rear of the Hospital
3
Tubs
4
Torched
5
6
7
Service Buildings
8
9
10
11
12
13
What we saw that day was just horrific. The patients were well cared for but many where so profoundly retarded and disabled that it was hard to comprehend that they where human beings and not some horrible props from a fright movie.
I particularly remember the ward for severe hydroencephelitius. Dozens of cribs filled with creatures with enormous heads and tiny bodies. Unresponsive, laying silently in those cribs basically brain dead. I wondered aloud why they where even kept alive.
In another ward was a group of screaming pre teens with the mental age of just a few months. They ran from one end of a large room to the other in a pack shreiking. Most naked, because they tear off their clothes, and incontinent. The nurses really tried to keep the room clean but it reeked of urine and feces They looked like a flock of featherless screaming chickens.
That was my first trip. The second decades later was to a quieter more pastoral setting. The only occupants of the buildings now, birds and small animals.
1
Forgotten
2
Rear of the Hospital
3
Tubs
4
Torched
5
6
7
Service Buildings
8
9
10
11
12
13
