For as long as I can remember, I have had a fascination with institutions. I suppose it’s because I have a curiosity for places not accessible to everyone and the people who live and work in those places. I’ve looked forward to reading Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th Century New York by Stacy Horn as I had never heard of Blackwell’s Island and the subject matter seemed a perfect fit for my interests.

As revealed in the book, Blackwell’s Island is now known as Roosevelt Island, a two-mile stretch of land in the East River. It was named Blackwell’s Island after a family who were long-time residents and owners of the island. In 1826, the almshouse at Bellevue Hospital was overcrowded and city officials purchased the island as the new location for the almshouse. Over the next several decades, more and more institutions were added to the island. There were hospitals, a penitentiary, workhouses, a smallpox hospital, an asylum for people with mental illness, and a home for children and elderly men and women.

Author Stacy Horn takes the reader on a guided history of life on Blackwell’s Island through its former residents. There are many stories depicting the lack of simple sanitation of the institutions and residents, plus countless stories resulting in tragic deaths due to a lack of medical attention and outright neglect. Stacy tells the accounts of officials who contributed to the problems and the reformers who tried to affect change. Journalists secretly infiltrated the asylum to gain a perspective on living conditions and treatment to share with the public. The famous Nelly Bly who wrote the book Ten Days in a Mad House is highlighted in this book. Another significant character of the time was Reverend French, who ministered the poor souls, testified at trials, and fought injustices.

At the end of its existence, administrators commented that the staff on Blackwell’s Island did the best they could, regarding the care of their patients, with what they knew at the time. My immediate thought was, “Did you?” I understand medical and psychological care has since become quite advanced, but the simple attitude and behavior of compassion for others has been around since the beginning of time. The humans in their care were certainly denied basic care and compassion, which to me, is unfathomable.

I enjoyed learning the history of Blackwell’s Island and cringed at the stories told of its former residents. Books such as this are important to educate us about the past treatment of humans so that we can appreciate the growth and continue to aspire for more change.

I borrowed the audiobook of Damnation Island from my local library through the Hoopla app. Narration by Pam Ward made for a nice listening experience.

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog ( )

This book is horrifying. Being poor in New York City in the late 1800's was a horror show. ( )

I actually hated this book but it was certainly well-researched and informative - which is why I went with two stars instead of one. There was so much of the same sort of abuse and misery described that, after a short while, it all ran together and the individual cases meant nothing to me - it was all the same horrible and disgusting treatment.

If the point of the book was to discuss on the atrocities inflicted upon those unfortunate enough to be sent to any of the work houses, alms houses, or asylums of the time, it did that ad nauseam. It felt like I was reading misery porn. It was honestly just too much of the same thing over and over and over and over.

If you're looking for something to give you a feel for what life in an asylum was like in a short, emotionally manageable dose, I highly recommend Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly. I took a break from Damnation Island and listened to Bly's book and feel like I got a lot more out of the small book than I did from nearly 10 hours of this one. ( )

Stacy Horn has pieced together a history of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) in New York City in the 19th century. The book is structured in sections that align with the buildings – an insane asylum, workhouse, almshouse, penitentiary, and hospital. These structures were almost instantly overcrowded and underfunded, leading to appalling conditions – limited ventilation, infestations of vermin, rampant diseases, starvation, violence, and prisoners serving as attendants. The author shows how good intentions went horribly awry.

Considering that records had largely been destroyed, it is apparent that Stacy Horn has done extensive research to find these detailed stories of people who lived, worked, and were confined on the island. She highlights the lives of abused, neglected, and murdered patients as well as those that tried to change the system or lessen the dreadful conditions.

This account is extremely detailed. Horn examines the flawed legal system and misguided social milieu that lumped together the poor, mad, sick, and criminal. She shows how these blurred lines have contributed to issues that persist today.

Memorable quotes:

“Although the insane were no longer thrown in prison (mostly), the criminal and the insane still formed one group in people’s minds, along with the poor, who were often thought of as defacto ‘guilty.’”

“Today around 28 percent of Americans suffer from some form of anxiety disorder, an affliction that would have been enough to get you committed in the nineteenth century.”

“In reality it was as easy to get an innocent person sent to the Workhouse as it was to get a sane person committed to an asylum.” ( )

I would have preferred this book to have more information about the day to day lives of the people incarcerated on Blackwell Island. It started out interesting but got so boring and repetitive that I began to skim most of the last half of the book. I would have like some actual historically correct and possibly verifiable stories. The ones the author relayed seemed to have been made up. ( )

In 1828, New York City purchased a small island. Located in the East River, Blackwell Island was the perfect location for a new asylum. At first, the plans were for a humane facility to help the mentally ill, indigent and criminal elements in the city. They estimated the number of mentally ill in the city to be less than .5% and planned an initial structure to house 200 people. The mentally ill and criminals would never be housed together and the facility might be able to help some of the chronically indigent in the city as well. They got a big surprise when the initial facility opened and had 199 patients (almost at max capacity) within days. The asylum was enlarged multiple times, and the plans for a humane facility was overpowered by cost cutting measures, bad planning and ignorance. In the 100 years Blackwell Island was used as an asylum the conditions, treatment of patients and medical services there were suspect and often cruel. Damnation Island tells the story of Blackwell Island and its inhabitants.

This book is very well researched and documented, which made it difficult to read. I had to read a chapter at a time...and go cool off....then return. What a grim picture of life in the 1800s. People could be committed for eccentricities or completely fraudulent reasons. Many women were committed because they were in the way or difficult, not because of any mental illness. Conditions in the institution were abysmal. Treatments were even worse. And this went on for 100 years!! Racism even played a part in the treatment of patients. The Irish were seen as incurable and intrinsically insane. Wow...really?? This book is a real eye opener about the use of institutions to pack away citizens seen as problems, without any real care about the quality of their life, health or care. At one point, the city was proud that they could run the institution at a cheap per-patient cost, completely oblivious to the fact that meant there was not enough food or medical supplies to go around. Patients were overcrowded, exposed to diseases and vermin, kept in unsanitary conditions and mistreated. Criminals housed on the island were hired as orderlies and workers and further mistreated patients. Just a sad tale all around.

I enjoyed this book, despite the grim subject manner. I am glad that there have been vast improvements in the mental health field, laws passed to protect people from fraudulent commitment, and health and safety regulations for institutions. I know that atrocities still occur, but I'm hopeful that they are nowhere near the level that happened on Blackwell Island.

Stacy Horn is the author of several non-fiction books including The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad and Waiting For My Cats to Die: A Memoir. Damnation Island is well researched and interesting. I will definitely be reading more by this author.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Algonquin Books via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**
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The title is very fitting, Damnation Island is the well researched history of Roosevelt Island, a two mile island in the East River. The original intentions of what to do with this island were well meaning but the idea of how to house three different populations of people, the poor, the ill and criminal were not well thought out and the buildings themselves were sweltering hot in the summer with only thin slits for windows, cold in the winter and the rooms became filthy. The description of the filth on the audio book would make you be outside immediately, where ar least the air was better.

The inmates who had a criminal record were very poor and were used to take care of the ill who were also very poor. No training, very poor food, just terrible conditions What made all of this worse was the resistence to improving the buildings, the food, clothing was fuled by politucs. Charles Dickens visted the island and was horrified. A young woman reporter took on the assignment of a tell all of what it was like by pretending to be a lunatic. Nellie Blye's report was well written and gained a lot of readers. The conditions were truly shocking.

That is just a brief glimpse of the history. I am not going into detail, but I assure there will be times when you listen to the story that you will be thankful to be living now and also not there.

I bought the audio book myself and think that the author had the right amount of detail to help you imagine what it was like. I highly recommend it. ( )

In David Morrell's 1972 novel “First Blood,” Rambo is arrested for vagrancy because he lacks a job and has less than five dollars in his pocket. Treated like a criminal, he becomes one, and all the violence and death that follows stems from that arrest for the crime of being poor.

A century before that story takes place, poverty and crime were even more closely linked, as Stacy Horn explains in “Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th-Century New York.” New York, in fact, had just one agency, the Department of Public Charities and Correction, for dealing with the poor, the mad and convicted criminals.

In consequence, Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island), a narrow, two-mile long stretch of land in the East River, became home to a lunatic asylum, a workhouse, an almshouse, a charity hospital and a penitentiary. Convicts from the penitentiary were used as nurses and aides in the other institutions, leading to mistreatment barely worse than that provided by the hired staff. The only place in the city where poor people could be treated for syphilis was the penitentiary hospital, but one needed to be a convict to be admitted. No problem. Patients were simply charged with a crime.

The phrase "out of sight, out of mind" was never more apt than on Blackwell's Island, where the city's most undesirable residents were sent, promptly forgotten about and, in many cases, died. Just pennies a day were provided for food and other necessities for each of the thousands sent there. The prisoners were actually considered to be the lucky ones, for they at least had sentences with release dates. So many others sent to the island had, in effect, life sentences.

Reform came slowly. What reform there was partly due to Nellie Bly and other newspaper reporters who went undercover to reveal what life was like on the island and partly due to William Glenney French, a priest who visited the island almost daily for many years and whose reports helped bring change and also proved invaluable to Horn's research.

Yet though corrections and care for the poor and the mentally ill were eventually divided among different departments, some things haven't changed much. Horn points to Rikers Island, where convicts today are still treated much as convicts were on Blackwell's 150 years ago.

Horn's book shows evidence of padding. A trimmer account would have been more readable. Still this is a valuable, fascinating book for it shows how attitudes toward society's undesirables have changed since the 19th century — and how they haven't. ( )

This book was a hard read, because of its really depressing subject. However, Stacy Horn did a good job of detailing all the different, miserable aspects of Damnation - Welfare - Roosevelt Island in NYC! ( )

A true to life horror story. I guess you could say, well, that's in the past, but is it really? Blackwell Island, New York, four institutions built to shelter, the poor, the mad, the sick or the mad, supposedly compassionately. Almst from the beginning this did not work, not enough money, doctors, supplies, criminals providing care for the insane, you can imagine how that worked out. Charles Dickens touring the facility was behind appalled, the smells, the noises, lack of care, thought he had toured hell.
The author dprnds most of her writing on the ssylum, where the most records were available for research. She brings to like several different cases, including of of a dister of charity who was committed by her sister. I can't believe done of the things I read, all the inmates took baths, using the same water, whdthrr ridden with lice or encrusted either feces. Makes me shudder. The book explains how this came to be, but certainly something different could have been done.

It would be easy to dimiss this as ignorance in the past, but challenges in the poor, sick, criminal and mental health areas are still critical today. Granted, there are better treatments available, but prison reform is desperately needed as all the above groups are often imprisoned together, done that certainly shouldn't be there. Mental health cuts, unconsciousable, programs being cut right and left , with nothing provided in there place. We can say we are better now, know better now, but again are we?

Eye opening and informative, cringe worthy reality. ( )

I have about 100 pages left of this book to read and though it's interesting, because I do love me some 19th century New York history, I'm finding issues with the copy editing and proofing. There are enough mistakes that it really has distracted me from the content, which is just a real letdown. ( )