Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York

by Stacy Horn

Overview

"Enthralling; it is well worth the trip.” --New York Journal of Books
Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York’s Blackwell’s Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals, quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, "a lounging, listless madhouse." Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Stacy Horn tells a gripping narrative through the voices of the island’s inhabitants. We also hear from the era’s officials, reformers, and journalists, including the celebrated undercover reporter Nellie Bly. And we follow the extraordinary Reverend William Glenney French as he ministers to Blackwell’s residents, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Department of Correction and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. Damnation Island shows how far we’ve come in caring for the least fortunate among us—and reminds us how much work still remains.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616208288
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	05/15/2018
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	962,613
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Stacy Horn is the author of five previous nonfiction books, including Imperfect Harmony. Mary Roach has hailed her for "combining awe-fueled curiosity with topflight reporting skills." Horn's commentaries have been heard on NPR's All Things Considered, and she is the founder of the social network Echo. She lives in New York City. Her website is stacyhorn.com.

Table of Contents

Prologue xiii

I The New York City Lunatic Asylum

Opened On Blackwell's Island 1839, To Accommodate New York City's Lunatic Poor 1

Reverend William Glenney French: The Blackwell's Island Episcopal Missionary from 1872 To 1895 3

Sister Mary Stanislaus: Committed to the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island August 3, 1872, Diagnosis: Monomania 20

Sister Mary Stanislaus Is Admitted into the Asylum 24

The Trial of Sister Mary 32

Suicide, Murder, and Accidental Deaths on the Rise in the Lunatic Asylum 44

Lunacy Investigation: December 1880, Metropolitan Hotel, New York City 60

Nellie Bly: Ten Days in a Mad-House, September 1887 78

II The Workhouse

A Penal Institution For People Convicted Of Minor Crimes, Opened On Blackwell's Island In 1852 91

New York City and the Unworthy Poor 93

Rev. William R. Stocking: Superintendent of the Blackwell's Island Workhouse from 1886 to 1889 108

A Workhouse Exposé and Lawrence Dunphy: Superintendent of the Blackwell's Island Workhouse from 1889 to 1896 125

III The Almshouse

Completed In 1848, To House The Poor And Disabled Of New York City 133

The Almshouse Complex, The End of the Line for Many 135

IV The Hospitals For The Poor

In Operation Beginning 1832, To Serve The Sick People Of New York City, And The Inmates Of The Penitentiary, Workhouse, And Almshouse 163

Penitentiary Hospital aka Island Hospital aka Charity Hospital aka City Hospital 165

V The Penitentiary

Completed In 1832, For People Convicted Of More Serious Crimes, And With Sentences Generally From Three To Six Months To Two Years, Although Sometimes More 187

Adelaide Irvine: Sentenced to the Penitentiary December 6, 1862 189

William H. Ramscar: The Old Gentlemen's Unsectarian Home, Sentenced to the Penitentiary December 23, 1889 203

Reverend Edward Cowley: The Shepherd's Fold, Sentenced to the Penitentiary February 20, 1880 216

VI Separating Charity From Correction

New York City Divides The Department In Two In 1895 237

The End of a Dangerous Conglomerate 239

Epilogue

Blackwell's Island after 1895 257

Acknowledgments 264

Appendix 265

Source Notes 267

Index 284

Author Interview 295

Editorial Reviews

05/01/2018
Horn (Imperfect Harmony) presents a fast-paced history of Blackwell's Island, "a lounging, listless madhouse," according to a visiting Charles Dickens. In 1828, New York purchased Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island) in the East River to build state-of-the-art facilities for the city's poor residents who were considered to be insane. In 1839, an asylum was opened and subsequently overcrowded. During the next 15 years, a workhouse, almshouse, hospital, and penitentiary were constructed. Horn chronicles the horrors of the incarcerated relying on Episcopalian Reverend William G. French's insightful diary and court cases of the condemned. Inept administrators were politically appointed and budgets were meager. To save money, prison inmates were tasked with caring for the mentally ill. Journalists, including Nellie Bly, went undercover to expose egregious treatment and reformers agitated for improvements. In 1896, responsibility to care for the island's prisoners was transferred to the state in hopes conditions would be improved. "They didn't get it right," concludes Horn. VERDICT A dour yet deft telling of an often forgotten era of 19th-century America. Criminal justice advocates and historians as well as general readers interested in the history of the New York underworld will delight in Horn's timely and skillful offering.—John Muller, Washington, DC, P.L.

Library Journal

In her fine new book…Stacy Horn lucidly, and not without indignation, documents the island's bleak history, detailing the political and moral failures that sustained this hell, failures still evident today in the prison at Rikers Island.

The New York Times Book Review - Patrick McGrath

02/12/2018
Horn (Imperfect Harmony) creates a vivid and at times horrifying portrait of Blackwell’s Island (today’s Roosevelt Island) in New York City’s East River during the late 19th century. Using the institutions that populated the island as an organizing principle, Horn selects colorful stories of individuals confined in the asylum, workhouse, hospital, almshouse, and penitentiary. Episodes include the heroic muckraking efforts of journalists Nellie Bly and William P. Rogers in exposing the mistreatment of the confined; tragic tales of young prisoners, like teenaged pickpocket Adelaide Irving, imprisoned for relatively minor crimes and never able to fully recover from her time there; and truly nightmarish accounts of medical experimentation, including brain surgery administered under (ineffective) hypnosis rather than anesthesia. The anecdotal rather than linear narrative approach captures the drama of the island’s inmates, but can make understanding the chronology challenging. Horn has created a bleak but worthwhile depiction of institutional failure, with relevance for persistent debates over the treatment of the mentally ill and incarcerated. Agent: Amy Hughes, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

In her fine new book . . . Stacy Horn lucidly, and not without indignation, documents the island’s bleak history, detailing the political and moral failures that sustained this hell, failures still evident today in the prison at Rikers Island.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Fast moving and entrenched in detail . . . History buffs will be terrified by what occurred [at Blackwell’s Island] a century ago.”
—BUST

“Horn creates a vivid and at times horrifying portrait of Blackwell’s Island (today’s Roosevelt Island) in New York City’s East River during the late 19th century . . . Horn has created a bleak but worthwhile depiction of institutional failure, with relevance for persistent debates over the treatment of the mentally ill and incarcerated.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This is an essential—and heartbreaking—book for readers seeking to better understand contemporary public policy.”
—Booklist, starred review

"[A] fascinating look at a piece of nearly forgotten New York City history—one that will make you thankful for modern conveniences."
—Mental Floss (Best Books of 2018)

“Horn engagingly explores a history that, perhaps surprisingly, extended into the 1960s.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Having reviewed a seemingly endless array of archival materials, Horn brings this subject to light in stunning detail. Readers will instantly see how this history continues to haunt us, as the boundaries between the four classes of people on the island (the poor, the mad, the sick and the criminal) are, in the public imagination, as blurred as ever.”
—BookPage
 
“Teeter-tottering between a history textbook and a murder mystery, Stacy Horn's Damnation Island is fast moving and entrenched in detail . . . What's even more horrifying—it's all real . . . These days, the island is a residential community dotted with scenic parks and landmarks. But history buffs will be terrified by what occurred there a century ago.”
—Brianne KaneforBUST
 
 “A stunning examination of bureaucracy gone wrong, and the evolution of the place we now call Roosevelt Island.”
—Salon

“Stacy Horn has done a commendable job by shedding light on the dark corners of our history. Damnation Island is a book of history written like a novel. Every American needs to read it.”
—The Washington Book Review
 
“Stacy Horn's history of Blackwell’s Island is a shocking tale, and an invaluable account that will reward anyone with an interest in the history of New York.”
—Simon Baatz, New York Times bestselling author of For the Thrill of It and The Girl on the Velvet Swing
 
“Through a wealth of harrowing anecdotes and fascinating case-studies, Damnation Island tells the real story of how America has treated its poor, its tired, and its huddled masses: with petty cruelty, often in the name of Christian charity. A gripping and compelling read.”    
—Mikita Brottman, author of The Maximum Security Book Club
 
“Riveting. Horn brings alive this forgotten history, and her extraordinary book has far-reaching significance not only for the past but for the future.”
—Jan Jarboe Russell, best-selling author of The Train to Crystal City

“At Blackwell’s, the inmates really were running the asylum. An important piece of history in public medicine, Damnation Island weaves a compelling narrative with threads of thorough research and realism.”                 
—Julie Holland, M.D., author of Weekends at Bellevue

“A riveting, character-driven dive into 19th-century New York and the extraordinary history of Blackwell’s Island. Stacy Horn has an uncanny knack for making history come alive.”
—Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica

“Blackwell’s Island’s descent into darkness is chronicled with clarity and conscience by master-story-teller Stacy Horn. No one who has taken that journey with her will return the same.”                                                   
—Teresa Carpenter, Pulitzer Prize-winner and editor of New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009

“New York’s Victorian-era reformers had an idea: to isolate the city’s indigent, diseased, mentally ill, and delinquent on an island in the East River, where they could be cared for with competence and compassion. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way. Stacy Horn is the perfect Virgil for this chilling, vivid, and enthralling journey through the Inferno that was 19th-century Blackwell’s Island.” 
—Gary Krist, author of Empire of Sin

“Revelatory. What occurred during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the prisons, hospitals, and insane asylum on the New York City spit of land that is now home to the fashionable Roosevelt Island constitutes the stuff of nightmares.”
—Steve Weinberg, author of Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller

“More than a diligent expose, Damnation Island presents a cautionary tale for what could happen even now, informing and educating in a way that urges us toward humbling self-reflection.”
—Katherine Ramsland, author of Confession of a Serial Killer  
 
“Blackwell’s Island and its troubled history haunt New York City. Who better to delve into its many-layered secrets than one of America’s foremost storytellers, Stacy Horn.”      
—Philip Dray, author ofAt the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America

From the Publisher

Narrator Pam Ward couldn’t have provided more contrast between her delivery and this audiobook’s title. Her sprightly, exuberant style shines a bright vocal light on what is otherwise a dark, troubling story. Ostensibly the story of the asylum on Roosevelt Island, then called Blackwell’s Island, in New York’s East River, it’s really a tale of what nineteenth-century society did with its people who suffered from cognitive and physical disabilities—people who were considered expendable. Ward is easy to understand but at times sounds like she’s giving a rousing reform speech rather than interpreting the book. Nonetheless, she does a good job using her voice to convey emotion, varying her narration from a high pitch all the way down to a low growl to denote the wretched conditions being described. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2018 - AudioFile

2018-03-05
Somber study of a dark, little-known episode in the history of New York, when Riker's Island wasn't the only warehouse for the condemned.It makes good sense, on reading Horn's (Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others, 2013, etc.) latest, why the 2005 horror film Dark Water found so appropriate a setting on New York's Roosevelt Island. In the late 1800s, writes the author, that small chunk of land, barely 150 acres, saw four kinds of unfortunate denizens: the mad were shunted off to the island's Lunatic Asylum, the destitute to the Almshouse, the vagrant or indigent to the Workhouse, and the seriously criminal to the Penitentiary. Each offered its own version of a living hell, and despite reports by early whistleblowers, not much was done to improve the condition of the inmates. "You can have no idea…what an immense vat of misery and crime and filth much of this great city is!" exclaimed a social reformer who worked on the island, and Horn's account paints an exacting portrait of just how true that was—and how summary the judgments against the lower class could be. Of interest to students of Foucauldian history is the author's contrast of what was then called Blackwell's Island with facilities for the well-to-do, such as the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum near Central Park, with its well-appointed libraries, plush chairs, and expensive artwork. No such amenities were to be found on Blackwell's, which saw appalling levels of disease, starvation, child mortality, and other ills. Despite such demerits, as Horn writes, the rate of escape from the island was low and the level of recidivism, particularly among younger inmates, high: "At ten the boys are thieves," noted one official, "at fifteen the girls are all prostitutes."Horn engagingly explores a history that, perhaps surprisingly, extended into the 1960s, when the renamed island became a site for mixed-income housing.

Kirkus Reviews