About this item
The gripping voices of the inhabitants of Blackwell's Island make this history come alive. Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly) .Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island, what politics shaped it, and what constituted char- ity and therapy in the nineteenth century. Throughout the book, we return to the extraordinary Blackwell's missionary Reverend French, champion of the forgotten, as he minis- ters to these inmates, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Corrections Department and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man's inhumanity to man. For history fans, and for anyone interested in the ways we care for the least fortunate among us, Damnation Island is an eye-opening look at a closed and secretive world. In a tale that is exceedingly relevant today, Horn shows us how far we've come - and how much work still remains.
About the Author
In the 19th century, New York City's poor, insane, sick and punishable were thrown together and warehoused on the same narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River. It didn't go well. I spent a few years researching just what went on in the insane asylum, prisons and hospitals there, but it was quite a challenge. Most of the records were destroyed. I lucked out here and there however, like coming across diaries from former wardens, and prison records thought to be lost.My new book Damnation Island reads like a horror story, but it's all true.
