Browse Primary Sources
"Hospital Funerals" - John Stanley James - The Argus (Melbourne, AUJ
" ... The patient being dead, what happens to him? The first thing done is to communicate wiht his friends and ascertain if they are able or willing to bury him. If not, he receives a pauper's funeral at thee Melbourne General Cemetery. . . . "
The Argus 1876-12-23
"Undercover Reporter 'Haunted' by Abuse of Patients" - Joe Casey - BBC Panorama
On a near-daily basis, I watched as some of the very people entrusted with the care of society's most vulnerable targeted patients - often, it seemed, for their own amusement. They are scenes of torment that are not easily forgotten.The targets had no way of defending themselves or speaking out. Anyone who questioned the abuse met a wall of silence.
BBC News 2011-05-31
I-"Personal Experience: Central State Conditions Found Poor" - Frank Sutherland - Nashville Tennessean
Central State Psychiatric Hospital is a warehouse for the storage of people - an unaccredited and unclean hospital with more than half its doctors unlicensed to practice in Tennessee. I know. I just spent 31 days there. From Dec. 14 until last Sunday, I posed as a patient at Central State to observe conditions and treatment firsthand. No member of the staff was aware of the role I was playing. During my month's stay, these conditions were glaring and obvious: The hospital is unaccredited. There are a number of reasons, including substandard facilities, lack of equipment and supplies, failure to meet fire and health standards and unlicensed physicians in key clinical and administrative positions Eight of the 14 full-time physicians at Central State do not have licenses to practice in Tennessee. Most of them are foreign born doctors who are unable to pass the state examinations. Unsanitary conditions prevailed not only in my building but in other buildings I visited on the hospital grounds. Toilets went for weeks without cleaning. We patients who were there were rarely encouraged to practice personal hygeine. Walls and halls reeked with dried urine and vomit. Patients may get no comprehensive medical examinations upon admittance. Officials there say they do not have the staff and time for such a complete examination immediately. I recieved only a chest X-ray and blood and urine tests. Patients may recieve no psychiatric examination upon admittane. A staff member told me that if I wanted to see a psychiatrist I "should go on the outside and pay $59 an hour." I never had a psychiatric examination the entire month I was at central state. On three occasions during my month's stay I met for about 10 minutes with a "staffing team," headed by an unliscenced psychiatrist, nurses, aides, social workers and sometimes an occupational or recreational therapist and a chaplin.
The Nashville Tennessean 1974-01-20
XV-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In this little, straggling Negro cemetery, its graves weed-grown, its headstones leaning drunkenly, stands a magnificent sarcophagus of white Alabama marble. It is an astonishing thing to find here on the edge of this Mississippi Delta town of Clarksdale. Quite likely there’s nothing like it all up and down the Delta in either white or Negro cemetery.Within it lie the bodies of a dark woman and her baby, both dead in the hour of the baby’s birth. Proudly, Dr. P. W. Hill, wealthy Negro dentist, shows us through this gleaming mausoleum where his wife and baby lie and where some day he too will rest.In all simplicity he regards it only as his tribute to the ones he loved.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-25