Patient Number 124

Motts what does the Patient number 124 mean.

Families were too ashamed of they're ill relatives so they had a number rather than they're name on the stones.

Thanks Motts? You are a great help????????

Sad that a human life is reduced to a simple number.

It's like a prison...some jails still do that.

Canada,

"Shame on us
Doomed from the start
May God have mercy
On our dirty little hearts
Shame on us
For all we've done
And all we ever were
Just zeros and ones"

Nine Inch Nails

At least these grave have somthing on them. I saw an old asylum grave yard before and the head stones were just un marked wooden planks that stood about a foot high.

I'd imagine it was also cheaper to dispense with full inscriptions, especially when the liklihood of relatives visiting the site was probably minimal.

If they were looking to save money and keep the anonymity, I wonder why they didn't make arrangements to have the decedents cremated.

First impression: It makes me want to cry- what if I was just #184? Know what I mean?
Now that you mention it, I get the patient privacy thing.

That’s really sad how an entire life gone by and all that remains of it. Is a number no name or anything a life marked by 124 on a piece of stone no taller then my night table lamp. Also another amazing pic.

I thought many times that the hopital used the medical chart number . In old times and even even now saddly many still belive that God has cursed or punished the person with mental Illness that is way many people have disowned there family members or just dropped them off and never clamed them. I can not give you the exact paragragh or verse.

I Agree Canada !!

I agree with Dean.

Beautiful, sad shot.

Nice job. I love this.

"In this year [1913] also a crematory was put into use on the hospital grounds and all burials in the Asylum Cemetery were disinterred and cremated."

Oh my God!

Did I read that right?! You mean to tell me they dug up people just so they could cremate them? What ever in the world for? It wasn't like they were bothering anybody. They're dead! What are they going to do? Clamber up from out of their graves and get up to no good?

This is just awful. And sad. God awful sad. It wasn't bad enough that most likely a very large percent of these people, if not all of them, had no peace when they were alive, being tormented by mental illness and for some at least being locked away and forgotten by their family. Oh no, they don't even get peace once they're dead, what with being dug up and all. Just awful, makes you wonder if perhaps the wrong people were put away? Surely there must be something a bit off about whoever it was that said, dig all the grave yard up and dispose of the dead, as if they were nothing more than a pile of fall leaves being burnned in a bonfire.

Also, just think... Who came to the graveside to pay their last respects? I'm pretty sure there were no flowers, there were no songs, no words of comfort to greaving family members, hell no family members in some cases, just a grounds keeper? Trustee inmate who was in charge of the disposal of those who had the piss poor luck to die in the state hospital? I know that it wasn't as bleak a picture as I see here in some cases, but then again, it must of been just as bad for some.

very powerful photo... very sad as well....

these people's minds may have disintegrated but they're still human... they at least deserve a name regardless of law or policies... dehumanization just isnt cool...

That is so sad that they didn't even get their name on their headstone! Its a beautiful picture though.

...And to think- that in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 in Salem Mass.,some of those executed were intered with a head stone that included the line "hanged as a witch..."

(in the 1967 documentary "Titicut Follies", about the life and times at Bridgewater Prison for the Criminally Insane, also in Mass.,(film was banned for thirty years) I found the scene of a deceased inmate to be starkly bleak,and no one was there save the priest, Warden,and those who would bury him .
When in prison you lose people and family as they bail on you,but you may meet others; even pen pals. You may even marry.
When you are in an insane institution you lose even more people,as try as they may they get tired of you and can''t keep up with the situation.
When you are in a prison for the criminally insane you lose everybody.

Some states and hospitals handle things differently.

State run hospitals did the best with what they were given. My great grandfather was an accountant for Kings Park, my grandmother used to tell me about how little the hospital really got. He met my great grandmother there as she was a head nurse and she would often complain about how inadaquate the supplies they had to work with were. So in the end the fact that these people got buried and that their grave was marked with a stone was probably more than they ever had in life. The fact that maybe, just maybe a nurse or fellow patient thought of them or shed a tear for them is more than their own families did...its something.

In the end, if carving a name in a stone means not being able to buy a much needed supply to serve the living...then there would be much more dead and a lot less saved or made more comfortable.

Just the way i see it.

This is so sad...what an existance.
Great shots.

I would hate to be just a number. Privacy is one thing, but to replace who you were with a few digits is just wrong, in my opinion.

I'm sorry, maybe I'm seeing it wrong, but to me, it looks like it says 134, not 124...

A little mental exercise : Just think of all the people in the world who have died.
Where are they?
They are not all cremated.(space saver)
They are not all lost at sea(lost at sea is,well,just lost at sea)
They are not all excarnated.
Caveman times.
Roman times.
The Black Plague of Europe in the 1340's when an estimated 60% of the population died.
They weren't ALL burned.
Modern times.
Wartime.
Any time.
Where are these people?
Where are these cemeteries? It boggles the mind.

As a student archaeologist I can tell partially answer Guitorman's question - many of those bodies which have not rotted away entirely, or been otherwise destroyed, are still there - deep within the ground, unlikely to be found, buried under buildings and in river beds. Many skeletons are broken up and destroyed by natural forces including micro and macro organisms. A small percentage of the soil in populated areas is probably made from human bone. It's a sobering thought that below and around us, in the ground, the plants and the animals, are the components of our ancestors. We breathe the same molecules of oxygen and nitrogen that they did. It's a funny old world, when you think about it.

QUESTION! SO NOW THAT THE PSYCHATRY WARD IS CLOSED AND ABANDONED WHAT HAPPENS TO THE BODIED THAT ARE BURIED THERE? DO THEY GET MOVED TO ANOTHER CEMETERY OR THEY JUST STAY THERE?

If you look at that stone long enough, you begin to see a sort of.....head, a skull.

It just looks so cold and bleak. Powerful.

Thank you Motts/.. this pic has indeed moved me to tears.. Thank you for bringing out the loneliness, yet humanity,
I am bipolar, as are 3 other close family members. I can only think that in an earlier age, when the stigma and shame were so great, that I or my family members could have ended up in one of these facilities for life, abandoned in life and death

To those on the board who feel it necessary to mock and dehumanize the mentally ill and developmentally disabled, you have no idea what might lurk in your own family trees and circles of friends.


M
"a looney" finding her way back into the world of sanity

If you think about it [I'm not sure how Europe goes] but the US government does apply a number to each and every person that is born here. We are simply names to the people whom we know & are loved by, by the government we ARE simply a number.

Once death occurs, only those who remember us can account for our names... the government still think "000-00-0000" is dead, not "Jane Doe" [ps, nowadays for tombstone graving it is up to 95$ PER LETTER, can you imagine what the price was then? esp with a psychiatric hospital which I'm sure was not given the correct money for anything!]

I won't make a joke on this one. I hope all of these individuals are in a better place.

The facility where I work has a cemetary. In fact, they just buried a resident there in the last couple of years. Had to get special approval though, because there hasn't been a burial there since like the 1930's. One of our staff did go through and "plot" the cemetary and take notations on names/graves/locations because we do sometimes get relatives looking.

These people did at least get somewhat of a decent burial. There are many graveyards at these old psychiatric hospitals and many people are buried in unmarked graves.

canada, from Auschwitz era? Your life is a number, be it money, birthday, or um... your social security number... So yeah life is a number not reduced to it.

why would someone be ashamed of something they can't control, why is the world so Arrogant?

"Not enough money" is a lousy excuse. It would have taken 10 minutes with a hammer and chisel to add the patient's last (or first) name. Then at least they wouldn't have been buried under a numbered grave like a common criminal that the state is ashamed of and wishes to anonymize.

Seriously, I can't comprehend the tiny-minded Puritan moral sickness and shame that would cause an institution of doctors to toss another a long-suffering patient's body in a hole with just a number like a euthanized dog.

It seems so sad that a life lived was not significant enough to have a name. Regardless of the place of death, if a name is known it should be remembered.

I am not a number. I am a free man.

What's all this about people being reduced to a number? I'm sure there was at the time of burial, an index that the hospital would refer to when a deceased patient's family came and wanted to visit the grave or possibly pay to relocate the remains in a private cemetery. The point is they had some policy that the grave markers where to be nondescript so that trespassers whose business was none of theirs could not nose around looking for a particular grave and mess up the place.

I remember 124, we used to call him "Wunt" for short.

Where is this located at in Marquette?

Amazing!