Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 6:00 pm
Boneyard Bookworms meets once per month on the grounds of Laurel Hill or West Laurel Hill. There is no fee to join or attend, but registration for each session is required. To offer a unique perspective, each month’s discussion will be led by a different moderator whose areas of interest and expertise vary.
The January Boneyard Bookworm selection is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad and Criminal in 19th Century New York by Stacy Horn.
From Amazon.com:
On a two-mile stretch of land in New York’s East River, a 19th-century horror story was unfolding …
Today we call it Roosevelt Island. Then, it was Blackwell’s, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals. Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world ever seen, Blackwell’s Island quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, “a lounging, listless madhouse.”
In the first contemporary investigative account of Blackwell’s, Stacy Horn tells this chilling narrative through the gripping voices of the island’s inhabitants, as well as the period’s officials, reformers, and journalists, including the celebrated Nellie Bly. Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Horn brings this forgotten history alive: there was terrible overcrowding; prisoners were enlisted to care for the insane; punishment was harsh and unfair; and treatment was nonexistent.
Throughout the book, we return to the extraordinary Reverend William Glenney French as he ministers to Blackwell’s residents, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Department of Correction and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man’s inhumanity to man. In Damnation Island, Stacy Horn shows us how far we’ve come in caring for the least fortunate among us—and reminds us how much work still remains.
The discussion will take place on Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 6:00 pm, at West Laurel Hill Cemetery’s Atrium at 225 Belmont Avenue, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004. Free parking is to the right of the Funeral Home where the Atrium is located. Directions on how to get to the Funeral Home are available here.
For more information on Boneyard Bookworms visit here.
