Ladd School Babies (The Exeter School and What It Was)

Many children became wards of the State, and by no fault of their own. Their parents were "known" to the agencies on the Confidential Exchange; they were alcoholics, drifters, unfaithful wives, or prostitutes, or dead or mad from syphilis. The children were neglected, undernourished, and sometimes found completely abandoned in filthy hovels or begging on the street. They didn't attend school, and so they could not read, or write, or count. Some children, first generation Americans, couldn't speak English. Later, when they were bathed at the institution, their hair was full of nits; some of them, their bodies were laced with scars.



Usually a neighbor or a school teacher concerned about a particular child who appeared to be dirty or slow would call the police, and somehow the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC) got involved. Some families had nine or ten children, and the family would be broken up. Some of the kids ended up at the State Home and School, Rhode Island's State orphanage; others would be sent more or less directly to Exeter School. In fact it was not uncommon at all for children at the State Home and School to eventually wind up at Exeter, should they reach a certain age without having been adopted.

The abusive or negligent parents who attracted the attention of the agencies were sometimes arrested by the police and brought before a court, whereby some were adjudged criminal and sentenced to the State prison, others were adjudged insane and committed to the State Hospital for Mental Diseases, and yet others were adjudged feeble-minded and committed to Exeter School. A court commitment to the insane asylum or the State school was, unlike a prison sentence, indefinite; and so it was not unheard of for mother and child to be reunited, someday, at the institution.

Catherine was perhaps the most notable of these mothers. Her son, born while she was an inmate of Exeter School, would someday himself be committed to the institution where he would become its most infamous inmate - by killing a child. Though long forgotten, the death of this child was clearly the catalyst behind Dr. Ladd's sudden retirement, and so it ended an era in Rhode Island State history. In two years, the institution was renamed The Ladd School, and by the end of century, nobody would remember The Exeter School or what it was.