The Ladd School

An Idyl of Exeter Wood

2011-12-14T21:12:00.000-08:00

Sometime during the 1930s, the Ladd School conducted a pageant, performed by the residents, titled An Idyl of Exeter Wood. Since discovering one of several surviving handmade playbills for the occasion, it has always seemed to me a darkly ironic title when taking into account the lives claimed by the woods surrounding the institution.
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Hauntings at The Ladd School : Part Two

2011-10-25T15:25:00.000-07:00

It's a remarkable coincidence the 8 buildings remaining, as of this writing, on the Ladd School campus are arguable the most notorious in the institution's history. Among these, the Fogarty building, with its orange exterior panels and circular shape towering stories above the other buildings, attracts the most attention. Built in 1962, Fogarty was the first and only proper hospital at the Ladd School, outfitted with an x-ray room, dental clinic, and morgue. Of particular note, it was the dental clinic's practice of pulling teeth without anesthetic that, in 1977, sparked the movement to close the institution; but it is doubtless the morgue that has most provoked the pursuit of ghost hunters and curiosity seekers alike.
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Hauntings at The Ladd School : Part One

2011-10-14T16:28:00.000-07:00

With another Halloween fast approaching, I would remiss if I didn't say a few words about hauntings at the Ladd School. Though history has been the focus my work for many years now, folklore is a topic that has always remained central to the institution's legacy; and, particularly at this time of year, the supernatural is most at the heart of it.
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A Letter From Dr. Ladd

2011-03-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

The following letter addressed to the Director of Social Welfare (the agency responsible for overseeing the Exeter School) was written by Dr. Ladd in 1946. By this time, the second World War had come to an end, and eugenics had begun to fall out of favor in the United States in view of the war crimes perpetrated by Germany's Nazi regime halfway across the world.

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

2011-03-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

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.

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Women at the Ladd School

2010-12-13T15:44:00.001-08:00

One of the earliest, major buildings was Gleason House. Gleason House was originally made as a school; the only school, in fact, for which the institution could be called a school. In the early 1900s, I mean the early 1930s and before, Gleason House wasn't being used as a school at all, but as a dormitory for sheltering more than 200 women and young children. This was in addition to a female dormitory building called Mann, and later, another called Higgins, as well as an "annex" at the Oaklawn School For Girls (women's reformatory) in Cranston. By the time a third female dormitory, Ranger, was built in the 1940s, Gleason was restored as a training school. In the early 1950s, a fourth female dormitory, called Evergeen, was added.

Conversely, on the male side of the institution (the male and female buildings were partitioned on opposite sides of Main Street), there were far fewer dorms. Howe House was the only male dormitory until the 1950s when Riverfield was built for sheltering the severely disabled. The rest of the male population lived in the old colony houses, built at the turn of the century, on the farm.

The population rosters do not show a significant difference in the number of female versus male inmates. However, I do think that this distribution of male and female dormitories bespeaks of a special emphasis on the female population.

Eugenics in Rhode Island

2010-11-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

Ida was committed to Exeter for having 2 children with a man to whom she was not married. She was at the Ladd School for fewer than 4 months before falling ill with pneumonia and died at the age of 27 in March, 1929. There are no records to indicate that she received any treatment.

There are scores of cases in which young women, their chief "defect" being in the "moral sphere," as the doctors put it, were committed to Exeter for being cast as undesirable characters. But in the Ladd School's history, where the ugly and grave are mundane, Ida's situation stands apart from the others; what seems to be a relatively healthy, albeit troubled, young woman died after six days of evidently no medical treatment of any consequence so as to be recorded.

How many people at the Ladd School died from neglect? It is impossible to know. Until 1935, the institution had no hospital. It's an understatement to say that medical record keeping during this time was lax; it was in many cases non-existent. One death after another is attributed to pneumonia, tuberculosis, and inanition of idiocy, sometimes called "wasting disease" - in other words, malnutrition, or starvation. But what occurred in the final hours, days, weeks or months? The folder is empty; a question mark hangs in the dusty air.

If, as it appears, so many did expire as the result of neglect, it begs the question: was the cause accidental or deliberate? To put it another way, was this fatal neglect the outcome of lacking funds, facilities, and personnel - or was it a willful act of euthanasia?

Defining Feeble-Minded

2010-11-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

Though the Ladd School is best known for being an institution for people with developmental disabilities (e.g. mental retardation, etc.), it was created in 1907 as a "feeble-minded school." But "feeble-minded," being a very old word that we don't hear much anymore, is a difficult concept to grasp, and so contributes to the common misconception that the Ladd School was an insane asylum, which it was not.

Without delving into too many of the finer points of the Ladd School's specific purposes and functions, an observation of its core population at the peak of its role as a feeble-minded school helps to suss out who was considered feeble-minded and why.

Broadly - and for the purposes of this study - the population up until about 1950 can be divided into three simplified, albeit complex, categories: The socially unfit, the disabled, and the "permanent custodial" cases.

The socially unfit were characterized by a wide range of traits and behaviors, but could be identified mostly by their nonconformity with white Catholic morals and practices, especially in regard to sexuality. Masturbation, sex out of wedlock, homosexuality, cohabitation, and "illegitimate" pregnancy were firm indicators of feeble-mindedness, or "moral defect," particularly when in reference to women and minority races.

Likewise, drug or alcohol use (especially during the prohibition era), vagrancy, arson, violence, cruelty to animals, larceny, even truancy from school - any infraction of the law no matter how small or severe could be an indication of feeble-mindedness, and cause for commitment to the institution through a juvenile or district court. Such individuals, though sometimes confined to the feeble-minded school for a decade or longer, would almost always be discharged eventually - whether by escaping, exploiting some legal loophole, hiring a lawyer on the grounds of habeas corpus, or making good on parole by securing a job and an approved-of living situation with the help of a State-appointed social worker.

The disabled were those whom are now most commonly associated with the institution; men, women, and children afflicted by genetic disorders, birth defects, and physical handicaps. Most of these individuals were very susceptible to failing health to the point of death. Many were the children who, without proper medical facilities, often died of common illnesses such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and influenza. These persons, unless placed out to a foster home, a hospital, or sanitarium, usually perished. While some died within months, weeks, or scant days of being committed to the institution, few lived longer than a decade before succumbing to infection or violent epileptic attacks and expiring suddenly.

The permanent custodial cases were a mixed group consisting largely of individuals with definite mental or physical disabilities who were at the same time considered socially unfit. Young women with multiple children out of wedlock - especially with children from multiple fathers - were recommended for institutionalization "until menopause," until the child-bearing age had passed, or until she agreed to have her reproductive organs surgically removed. Many such women were uneducated and impoverished, and sometimes forced into a life of prostitution; others were diseased by syphilis, their sanity fading; still others were mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed, raped and abused by strangers, neighbors, or family members, and brought to the attention of State welfare agencies by concerned members of the community, school authorities, or police officers.

Permanent custodial cases of the male gender were less prevalent; typically more capable - or at least more aggressive than their female counterparts - young men and adolescent boys with a penchant for mischief, violence, or sexual perversion were commonly removed to the Sockonosset Training School, the State Prison, or the insane asylum. Severely disabled men, as with women of the same, rarely lived very long before succumbing to ill health and dying in custody.

"Permanent custodial" cases - men and women - with mild to moderate disabilities who did not succumb to disease or neglect, and who had no other means of support outside the institution, were often allowed to live at the Ladd School until old age, and eventually, death.