![]() Probably the most chilling scene in the 30 minutes of documentary footage in the TV10 report showed one of the hospital’s physicians describing how he dealt with a particularly vicious bully who had brutalized one of his other inmates. The administrators interviewed in this program recognized that they were falling short of their ideal treatment, but with a crumbling building, a budget shortfall of four million dollars, and only 9 medical doctors and 11 teachers (none of them with special education training), their hands were tied. Only 200 of the residents were in any kind of art, education, or recreation programs that would help to improve their condition, though many of the patients were high-functioning enough to improve with the right care. But as a state school, they had to take what they were given. It housed 2,791 people, most of them children, which was about 900 more than the administration thought the buildings could comfortably accommodate. The facility could operate without any interaction with the surrounding community, and that was the way the community preferred it.īy the mid-1960s, Pennhurst had been open for fifty years. Any additional needs were supplied by a railway line that connected the campus to the outside world. It operated its own power plant, policed its own grounds and produced its own food. Like many similar facilities of the era, Pennhurst was functioned almost completely independently from the rest of society. Physically, the patient could be declared either “epileptic” or “healthy”. Under the classification of mental prowess, one was listed as either an “imbecile” or “insane”. ![]() In 1913, the Commission for the Care of the Feeble-Minded was appointed, and boldly stated that those with disabilities were “unfit for citizenship” and furthermore, “posed a menace to the peace.” Patients at Pennhurst were grouped into several general categories. Pennhurst first opened its doors in November of 1908, and due to pressure to accept not only the mentally and physically handicapped, but also immigrants, criminals and orphans who could not be housed elsewhere, it was overcrowded within only a few years. This facility was one of the most striking examples of the maltreatment that was characteristic of such institutions––at one point, papers labeled it “The Shame of the Pennsylvania”. This state-funded school and hospital center was at the heart of the human rights movement that revolutionized this country’s approach to healthcare for the mentally and physically handicapped. The five-minute news segments were entitled “Suffer the Little Children.” When one patient was asked by the interviewer what he would like most in the world, if he could have anything he wanted, the sad and withdrawn reply was simply, “To get out of Pennhurst.” Many were severely disabled either mentally or physically, but others were quite lucid and coherent-but withdrawn into themselves because of over-stimulation of the senses in the loud and sometimes frightening place, and a lack of much-needed mental stimulation. Inmates of the institution were shown rocking, pacing, and twitching. On the flickering monochrome televisions of the time came images of full-grown hands and feet bound by straps to adult-sized crib beds. It painted a picture of neglect and abuse in the Chester County institution that was hard for the regular viewers to stomach. The History and Horror of Pennhurst Asylumīy Matt Lake, Rusty Tagliareni and Mark Moranīack in the mid 1960s, fledgling TV reporter Bill Baldini ran a five-episode exposé of Pennhurst State School and Hospital on Philadelphia’s TV10 (now an NBC affiliate).
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