Showing posts with label Canon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canon. Show all posts

June 5, 2016

Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane



Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane was established in 1892 as the Matteawan State Hospital by an 1892 law (Chapter 81), Matteawan functioned as a hospital for insane criminals. The new hospital confined and treated individuals committed to it by criminal courts and inmates who were declared insane while serving their sentences at State institutions. The Superintendent of State Prisons had control over the hospital.

In 1886, a legislative commission recommended the purchase of the 246-acre Dates Farm in the village of Matteawan for $25,000, or just over $100 per acre. The site was accessible by rail and offered good tillable land, pure water and pleasant scenery between the Hudson River and the Fishkill Mountains An architect was hired to draw plans for buildings with "an abundance of light and ventilation" to accommodate 550 patients. In April 1892, the Asylum for Insane Criminals, with 261 patients, was relocated from Auburn to its new site. The following year, it was renamed Matteawan State Hospital,

But 550 beds were not enough. Seven years later, in 1899, another prison mental hospital was built on the grounds of Clinton. Dannemora would hold male convicts becoming insane while serving their sentences, and had the power to retain them if they remained insane at expiration of their sentences. Matteawan would hold unconvicted males as well as females in both categories.
Except for tighter security, Matteawan functioned the same as the state's civil hospitals. Until the 1950's and thorazine, doctors prescribed the program of "moral treatment" developed in the early 1800's. It consisted of kind and gentle treatment in a stress-free, highly routine environment. Patients who were capable were assigned to a work program (often called "occupational therapy"): cooking, maintenance, farming and making baskets, rugs, clothing and bedsheets.

Patients were given outdoor exercise in the courtyards twice daily and motion pictures were shown weekly. Radios and phonographs were available on the wards. Patients played softball, tennis, bowling, tennis, handball, shuffleboard, volleyball, chess, checkers, cards, gymnastics, ping pong and quoits (similar to horseshoes but with iron rings). At Christmas and other special occasions, there were teas for the women, smokes for the men and "vaudeville entertainments" staged by patients and staff.

By 1949, new treatments had been added to the traditional moral treatment (now called "milieu therapy"). Electric and insulin shock treatments were now being used extensively, hypnosis and group therapy were employed and three lobotomies had been performed.
From Matteawan's opening, the proportion of chronic and dangerous patients - who could never be released - steadily rose, and so did the hospital count. Capacity was gradually increased to about 1,000, but overcrowding continued. In 1949, there were nearly 1,500 men and 250 women.

Outwardly, the madhouse atop Asylum Road was usually quiet. Its most notorious patient was probably George Metesky, the Mad Bomber. But Metesky caused no problems, and after his release lived uneventfully outside the state. Escape attempts offered occasional excitement. In 1933, four patients obtained pistols and held two attendants in a locked ward. State Police were called in and, when one of the patients pointed a gun, he was shot and killed by a trooper.

The End of the Prison Hospitals
By the mid- 1960's, the DOCS held approximately 3,000 patients at Matteawan and Dannemora state hospitals some serving sentence, some held past their sentences and many confined without ever having been convicted. Within a dozen years, all 3,000 would be gone.

A series of court decisions ended the relatively free and easy procedures under which Matteawan and Dannemora had operated. Simply put, everyone sent there stayed until the superintendent approved their release. In many eases, persons committed for minor offenses were confined for 30 and 40 years. Now, coinciding with a period in American history when faith in the judgment of “experts" was eroding, courts put a stop to the "unbridled discretion" exercised by mental institution superintendents.

First, the courts established that transfer to Matteawan or Dannemora would require the same procedures, including the right to a court hearing, as involuntary commitments of ordinary citizens to civil mental hospitals. A later decision established that nobody could be held in a correctional institution beyond their maximum sentence (if still dangerous, they could be committed to a civil hospital). Further decisions eliminated the transfer of "dangerous civil patients," and then of persons found not guilty by reason of insanity, to institutions where convicted persons were also held.
The effect of these decisions was to empty the prison mental hospitals. Dannemora was the first to go, in 1972. For another five years, Matteawan held convicted patients only, with all other categories of the criminally insane going to the Department of Mental Hygiene.
Information found on www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/docs2day/fishkill.html

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March 10, 2015

State Hospital for the Insane

















This is a New York State Hospital for the insane, incorporated in 1870 and opened in 1874. Since then over 11,000 patients have been admitted.

It is the finest Homœopathic Insane Institution in the world, and one of which the school may be justly proud, because since its establishment the treatment employed has ever been of the strictest homœopathicity and the results have been little short of marvelous.

There are 47 separate buildings, 12 of which are for the accommodation of patients, while the remainder supply every want that this village of 2,200 patients and 450 employees may need. The total acreage of the grounds is 543. A large farm is connected with the hospital, which is worked largely by the inmates.

It has a consulting staff of seven members and a large Training School for both sexes. There are 43 nurses in training, and further 42 nurses and 212 ward attendants employed.

The system of record keeping in this institution is as near perfect as is possible to attain perfection. It is the proud boast of this hospital that no narcotic or sleep-producing drugs have ever been found in its pharmacy.


September 2, 2014

Superfund Specialty Steel























The former Superfund Specialty Steel is an approximately 90 acre industrial site in Upstate NY. The main facilities contain a bunch of inactive buildings and open land. The original facility was constructed in 1909, with additions constructed in 1920, 1936, 1940 and 1968.

 This Industrial site was used for the manufacturing of iron and steel dating back to 1908. Foundry operations gave way to forging and finishing of stainless steel rod and wire from supplied billets. Past operations at the facility leading to site contamination have included; pickling operations using molten sodium or barium salts, trichloroethylene pickle baths, metal plating operations, solid waste disposal, spillages and discharges into the cooling pond.

Experiencing financial difficulties through the late 1990's Superfund Specialty Steel ceased operations in 2001. Now the site sits waiting for Environmental Clean Up.

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