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

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

Written by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny, photographs by Lisa Rinzler

When the Willard Psychiatric Center overlooking Seneca Lake in upstate New York was abandoned in 1995, 427 patient suitcases were moved to the warehouse for the state museum.  In 1998, the authors undertook a project to examine the suitcases and learn about the Willard inmates through them.  Ten suitcases were chosen from among the 427.  The authors were given permission to view the medical records, which were stored in an abandoned hospital building. 

“What might be revealed by comparing the personal artifacts from their pre-institutional lives with the way they were perceived by doctors and hospital staff?  Regardless of what might have troubled them, we were struck by the sundering of who they were as people from who they became as mental patients.”  (p19)

Beyond the biographies, information about general treatments, and conditions at the hospital, the general history of mental health care is discussed. 

The author of the preface, Robert Whitaker, speaks of the Quaker method of caring for the newly insane with compassion by providing food, shelter and companionship.  Apparently this was the initiative behind later institutions but that ethic was rather poorly carried out at Willard where the patients were “cared” for in the most rudimentary manner. “The hospital was no longer seen as a refuge for troubled people, but rather as a place for keeping them away from society…” (p10)

The question is presented, might looking into the patient’s histories have provided a path for possible treatment and recovery?  That seems likely in at least some cases.

Therese Lehner was an immigrant, a nun whose leader was cast out and she followed.  She suffered many hardships in the following years and asked repeatedly to be released from her vows.  Oddly enough, the hospital assumed this was something she had made up.  The researchers were able to verify her story, years after her body was given to medical research instead of being given a Catholic burial. 

Likewise, the case of Mrs. Ethel Smalls reveals a lack of treating the patient as a person.  Being evicted by her landlady at the age of forty, after divorcing her abusive husband and losing two infant children, Ethel felt “tired” and went to bed.  The police were called and she was committed.  She agreed to go, thinking she was going for a rest cure.  She never felt well enough to leave.  Like some women do, she spent a great deal of time talking about her various discomforts, which were discounted by staff.

“is always talking about herself and her ailments.  She expresses no other delusions or hallucinations.” (p78) 

Ethel had endured years of abuse by her husband, suffered a miscarriage and had an ovarian tumor removed.  Any of those things could have produced lasting problems that caused her stated complaints of back pain, headaches, gastrointestinal upsets and severe menstrual periods.  Instead she was ignored.  She fractured her wrist but it was never set.  She told about a spinal defect but no one believed her until an x-ray revealed scoliosis.  Even with that, she probably felt safer there than in her previous life.

The authors also provide insight into the current state of treatment for those suffering mentally, including a look at how other countries handle different problems.  Hearing voices, for instance, is not automatically seen as a cause for institutionalization in many places.  According to the authors, two to three percent of the population hears voices but only a third of those people become psychiatric patients.  The others have coping mechanisms.  One might think that those not receiving treatment are sadly slipping through the cracks but drugs for treating such auditory hallucinations are “only effective in stopping the voices for about 35 percent of people...”  (p53) 

The combination of biographies and historical details provide a fascinating and accessible portrait of mental healthcare in the past and make a plea for a humanization of the current system.  I would highly recommend this book, in particular for anyone interested in the history of the Finger Lakes area.

To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

It seems a little odd to me that as an English major in college and a librarian for the past thirteen years, I somehow managed to not read To Kill a Mockingbird.  Well, this summer, I finally bought myself a copy and found out what I was missing.

Set in Mississippi during the economically depressed 1930’s, the story is told through the eyes of Scout, daughter of Atticus Finch.  Atticus is a widower trying to raise two children, Scout and her brother, with the help of his housekeeper, Calpurnia.  This is a tough enough proposition, then Atticus is charged with defending Thomas Robinson, on trial for allegedly raping a woman.  Atticus knows that this is a losing battle because Tom Robinson has already been convicted in the court of public opinion simply because he is a black man.  Tom is a truly good and kind man though, whose only real crime is feeling sorry for a poor white woman.     

Though told from a child’s view, this is in no way a simple book.  The children go to school and learn to get along even when they are vilified for their father’s attempts to defend Tom.  They are fascinated with the neighborhood recluse, who they have never seen.  They take terrible scoldings from a crotchety old neighbor lady who verbally assaults them as they walk by.  Scout chafes under her Aunt’s tutelage to become a young lady.  But there is more than meets the eye to any situation and there are deeper lessons to these simple story lines, which I will not reveal here. 

It is the quintessential coming of age tale.  Scout learns to see the world through other people’s eyes; and she also learns that good men are sometimes laid low and the world continues to turn after a tragedy. 

To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was voted best novel of the twentieth century by librarians in 1999.  I can see why.  It is fascinating and heartbreaking.  There are funny moments and scary moments.  There are even moments that brought a tear to my eye.  It has the type of ending that always appealed to me – not a happy ending, but life goes on, and we look for the best in the future ahead.  I would highly recommend it to most people.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader ~ Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Letters of a Woman Homesteader
by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Elinore Pruitt Stewart is the embodiment of the pioneering spirit, longing for a place of her own and willing to work hard for it.  These cheerful letters to a former employer, full of humorous incidents and vivid language, detail the adventures of the first few years in Wyoming.

Hardship is no stranger to Eleanor.  As a child her parents had died within months of each other.  Later, her husband was killed in a railroad accident leaving her with a baby to raise.  After a difficult bout with the grippe she decides to make a change and takes her little girl, Jerrine, away to the wilderness of Wyoming in 1909.  

In Wyoming she works as a housekeeper for a Scotsman while homesteading her own piece of land.  She is an inspiration in her industriousness.  “I have done most of my cooking at night, have milked seven cows every day, and have done all the hay-cutting, so you see I have been working.  But I have found time to put up thirty pints of jelly and the same amount of jam for myself.”

Her wonderful adventures are full of language that is very conversational and easy to read, but also picturesque.  “We were driving northward, and to the south and back of us were the great somber, pine-clad Uintah Mountains, while ahead and on every side were the bare buttes, looking like old men of the mountains, - so old they had lost all their hair, beard, and teeth.”

Her sense of humor is evident throughout the letters, as when she goes to file a claim on her homestead and, “modestly kicked over a chair,” in order to get the land agent to pay attention to her. 

Even with so much hardship and work, she remains cheerful, kind and full of hope.   A light in a snowstorm leads her to Zebulon Pike, who gives her and Jerrine shelter.  Elinore learns that he has not been home, or heard from home, since the end of “The War.”  She writes letters for him and reads those that arrive in return.  With the help of her employer, she arranges for someone to stay at Zebbie’s homestead while he takes the train home for a visit, with a ranch hand for an escort.

On another visit to Zebbie’s, her imagination takes flight as they sit in a cabin listening to him play the fiddle while a terrible storm rages outside – “Zebbie was playing what he called ‘Bonaparte’s Retreat.’  It all seemed to flash before me – I could see those poor, suffering soldiers staggering along in the snow, sacrifices to one man’s unholy ambition.  I verily believe we were all bewitched.”

She also manages to find romance in sparsely populated Wyoming but loses her first son as an infant, to an infection which could be easily treated with penicillin today.  “His little message to us had been love, so I selected a chapter from John and we had a funeral service, at which all our neighbors for thirty miles around were present.  So you see, our union is sealed by love and welded by a great sorrow.”

Elinore is at once a product of her time and place, and also leaves us a record of it.  Besides the book of letters which is a quick and enjoyable read, there is a recording of the book available on CD which lends the perfect voice to Elinore, pleasant and homespun.  It can also be listened to online through our library’s subscription to Talking Tumble Books.  I highly recommend it.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver 

Follow Barbara Kingsolver and her family as they make the move from water starved Arizona to lush Southwest Virginia.  How does one pack a year of living and learning new things into just 370 pages?  In the case of Barbara Kingsolver, the answer is with humor and grace. 

The family starts their locavore year with morel hunting and asparagus harvesting.  Join the family for Barbara’s 50^th birthday party, a huge celebration planned around local foods.  There are trips to Vermont, over the border into Canada and across the ocean to Italy.  There’s also the joy of removing lactose from milk by making cheese at home, the sustainability of organic farming methods which build up the soil instead of eroding it and a crash course in what it takes to market organic produce.  Learn about the trials and tribulations of raising heritage turkeys without very much information available, the “harvesting” of poultry and turkey sex.   Add in canning safety and know-how, as well as recipes.

Both Barbara and her husband have biology degrees and are concerned citizens of the world so the book is packed with verifiable information as well as their personal experiences.   There are warnings, including what CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) are costing our environment and health, but solutions are offered too.  The author contends that our food has become industrialized to the point where it is minimally nutritious and we need to take that process natural again.  She makes the case for heirloom and open pollinated vegetable seeds versus the hybrid and genetically modified seeds which are only good for one season and may even have animal or bacterial genes spliced into the plant chromosomes. 

The author contends that where our food comes from and what’s in it is something everyone should know about, care about and can do something about, whether it is growing some veggies in pots on your windowsill, in a back (or front) yard plot or simply buying seasonally from a farmer’s market.  We can vote with our dollars by buying local and organic products in big supermarkets too.  The contention the author makes is that buying locally whenever possible and growing some of our own food, can make a tremendous impact on the environment through reducing our use of fossil fuels in moving foods to market. 

An inspirational and informative read.