“The Shame of Pennsylvania” and “A Vast Junkyard of Wasted Humans” – this is how
one newspaper article described Pennhurst Insane Asylum located in Spring City, Pennsylvania.
Originally named the Eastern State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic, the initial
purpose of this state-funded hospital and school was to care for people with epilepsy
as well as those with physical and developmental disabilities. Opened in November 1908, it
was built in an isolated setting and included buildings connected by tunnels. This self-contained
community even had “its own power plant, farm, hospital, morgue, barber shop, and firehouse”
according to The Vintage News. More buildings were eventually added, and the institution
was later renamed Pennhurst State School and Hospital. Some of Pennhurst’s high-functioning
residents received vocational training and were able to participate in activities such
as the Pennhurst orchestra, band, and baseball team. Early group photos of these residents
give the impression that this place “was once seen as a model institution” as the
Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance (PM&PA) describes it. However, as time passed,
conditions inside Pennhurst deteriorated, and it truly became a living nightmare for
its residents.
To start with, overcrowding was always a perpetual problem at Pennhurst. PM&PA notes that “only
four years after Pennhurst opened, beds were lined up with no space to even walk between
them.” In the early 20th century, American eugenicists became interested in Pennhurst
as a place to house undesirable people who would taint America’s gene pool. In 1913,
the Commission for the Care of the Feeble-Minded cruelly concluded that the disabled were “unfit
for citizenship” and “posed a menace to the peace,” so officials thought why not
send even more “unfit” people to Pennhurst? Soon criminals, immigrants, and orphans joined
the ranks of Pennhurst residents. The idea was to keep all of these social outcasts away
from the general population and prevent them from reproducing.
But even as interest in eugenics waned, the overcrowding at Pennhurst continued. Despite
adding more beds and buildings over the years, it struggled to keep up with the growing resident
population. A 1940s information booklet states that the patient population at Pennhurst was
“approximately 2400 with a waiting list of nearly 1500 due to the fact that the institution
was filled to capacity.” A New York Times article reports that “in the early 1960's
it had a peak population of 4,100.” Even though the in-house population dropped by
the mid-1960s, one source notes that Pennhurst “housed 2,791 people, most of them children,
which was about 900 more than the administration thought the buildings could comfortably accommodate.”
Overcrowding combined with understaffing led to neglect and some appalling living conditions
at Pennhurst. One person who could attest to this was Roland Johnson, a former patient
who lived in the institution from 1958 to 1971. In his autobiography called Lost in
a Desert World, he describes the miserable environment inside Pennhurst:
To tell you the truth, Pennhurst smelled like a doghouse. It just smell like feces. Rats
crawling, roaches crawling all over; this was on the low grade wards. Holes in the wall,
big holes in the floors. It was awful to see. You would cry to see people living in that
kind of filth. Horrible. Feces and pee on the floor, flies coming in the windows. . . .
In 1968, the most well-known exposé of the inhumane conditions at Pennhurst aired on
local television. It was a 5-part news series called “Suffer The Little Children,” and
suffering was what the children filmed at Pennhurst appeared to be doing. The images
are haunting. An NPR article describes “naked, emaciated residents, swaying back and forth
to their own internal rhythms, or curled up in balls” and children “tied to their
beds.” In a 2010 interview, the journalist who created the series, Bill Baldini, still
vividly remembers some of the horrible sights he saw there 42 years ago: "Think of a ward
of infants and children from the ages of six months to 5 years old," Baldini recalls. "There
are 80 of them in ... metal cages. They had to attend to them every day, all day. These
people were literally lying in their own feces for days." The public reacted strongly to
“Suffer The Little Children.” According to NPR, Baldini’s news series “outraged
the community” and led to an “outpouring of support for Pennhurst.”
If neglect, filth, and restraints were not bad enough, patients also endured physical
abuse. Some of this abuse was documented in the case of Halderman vs. Pennhurst State
School and Hospital. Disability Justice describes it as “a class action lawsuit filed in the
U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on behalf of former and current
residents of Pennhurst against the institution, its superintendents, and state officials responsible
for Pennhurst’s operation.” One court document, a case opinion by Judge Raymond
J. Broderick, revealed that it was common for residents to be injured by other residents
and “through self-abuse.” Plaintiff Larry Taylor, for instance, “was often injured
while at Pennhurst; on one occasion, he was hospitalized for two weeks because of head
and face injuries he received as a result of a beating by another resident.” Among
the battered residents at Pennhurst was the original plaintiff in this lawsuit, former
resident Terri Lee Halderman. Broderick’s case opinion also states that “during her
eleven years at Pennhurst, as a result of attacks and accidents, she has lost several
teeth and suffered a fractured jaw, fractured fingers, a fractured toe and numerous lacerations,
cuts, scratches and bites.”
In addition, some staff members abused residents. According to The Travel Channel, “cruel
punishments were common at the facility.” Patients who engaged in extreme misbehavior
could suffer extreme punishments, such as this one described in The Vintage News: “The
staff, for example, would often remove all the teeth of a patient who bit another patient
or a staff member. In fact, this happened so often that even years after the asylum
was closed, visitors would find teeth in the tunnels.”
And consider this disturbing account from Anthony Leeds. In the 1940s, he observed the
mistreatment of patients when he served as part of a Civilian Public Service (CPS) program
held at Pennhurst:
I went for a miserable 20 months to a concentration camp called Pennhurst State Training School
for Mental Defectives . . . . The patients most likely to get training and get better
and go into a real world of work, somehow were found to have “broken a rule” so
they were sent to U-Cottage, a slave house where they were beaten, had arms tied to steam
pipes, and made to provide all the major labor of the institution. The Director, an alcoholic,
and the Comptroller were in cahoots, many of the charge attendants in the cottages were
drunks and even more of the assistant attendants were “rum-bums”. . .
Unfortunately for the residents of Pennhurst, conditions did not improve much even after
the class action lawsuit was filed on May 30, 1974. Broderick’s case opinion lists
four incidents of staff abuse in 1976 that resulted in the suspension and/or termination
of the perpetrators: “In 1976, one resident was raped by a staff person . . . ; one resident
was badly bruised when a staff person hit him with a set of keys . . . ; another resident
was thrown several feet across a room by a staff person . . . ; and one resident was
hit by a staff person with a shackle belt . . . .”
In 1977, Halderman vs. Pennhurst State School and Hospital went to trial. Despite a ruling
in favor of the residents, the institution stayed open, and residents continued to abuse
each other. Broderick’s case opinion also notes that “in January, 1977 alone, there
were . . . 833 minor and 25 major injuries reported.”
In 1979, an outside observer named Lou Chapman saw firsthand that some Pennhurst residents
were still neglected. In her report, she wrote, “There are enormous amounts of time when
nothing is done. The ‘high point’ of the day is when someone smears herself with feces;
she then gets a one-on-one shower with talcum powder added for good measure and returns
to doing nothing . . . . ”
In 1983, more staff abuse at Pennhurst made headlines. A New York Times article reported
that 9 current and former Pennhurst employees were indicted for “charges of beating and
abusing patients.” One employee “was accused in 10 counts of beating nine patients,”
while another was “accused of causing one patient to beat and physically abuse another.”
All of these employees were fired, but one challenged her dismissal and got her job back.
The superintendent of Pennhurst at the time, George Kopchick, saw the firings as proof
that “’we were on top of these things,’” but it was “too little, too late” as the
saying goes.
By 1984, Pennhurst’s days were numbered. According to PM&PA, a “final settlement
agreement between the Halderman v. Pennhurst parties provide[d] for the closure of Pennhurst.”
After the District Court approved the agreement in April 1985, Pennhurst shut down in 1987.
Over the years since it closed, parts of Pennhurst have been re-purposed and sold. Pennhurst
is now the site of a veteran’s home and a Pennsylvania National Guard armory. The
opening of a haunted house attraction in 2010 stirred up controversy given Pennhurst’s
tragic history. An NPR article notes that it “upset people” because they thought
it “trivializes the suffering of those who lived there.”
There is supposedly a paranormal presence at Pennhurst too. The Vintage News states
that Pennhurst “has a reputation of being one of the most haunted places in the world.”
In some of the abandoned buildings, ghost hunters hear disembodied voices and see shadowy
figures, the paranormal remains of patients who were treated so horribly because they
were deemed “defective” by society. For these unfortunate patients, the suffering
never ends.
Would you visit Pennhurst? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments! Also, be sure
to check out our other video called You vs Annabelle - How Would You Defeat Her?! Thanks
for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next
time!