Pennhurst State School: A Blight on Society

Founded in 1903, the Pennhurst State School and hospital is located in southeastern Pennsylvania. Although closed now, Pennhurst was a place where the physically and mentally disabled people in the state could be cared for in a humane way.

The patients who lived there were considered to be feeble minded and people who had epilepsy who needed a compassion place to live, and they did not get it. The treatment of these individuals was anything humane, simply because of overcrowding.

On November 23, 1908, five years after it started the first patient at Pennhurst received a room. Within four years, the place was very overcrowded. Pressure mounted for the hospital to admit more patients including orphans, healthy immigrants, and dangerous criminals.

Dumped at Pennhurst were children with the physical disabilities of blindness, hard of hearing, mute, epileptic, orthopedic problems, and deformities of any extremities. Adults who were feeble-minded or had physical disabilities also found themselves as patients. The hospital commission thought relatives could not care for their disabled children or loved ones with a child's mentality.

This commission stated that feeble-minded people or those with disabilities had a big chance to become a criminal and therefore shuttered away from society in general.

This brought all sorts of problems for overworked staff who became overwhelmed with so many patients. Some patients who were stronger preyed on the weaker patients and staff of Pennhurst. Ignored were the most disabled residents, as they required more hands on treatment from the overworked staff.

In 1916, the board of trustees at Pennhurst began planning a separate wing for the females housed there. This would prevent the rampant pregnancies, which were occurring within the facility. The children born of the patients who survived pregnancy remained at the hospital their entire lifetimes.

For decades, abuse and neglect of patients was common practice at the Pennhurst State School and Hospital. In 1968, a news report by NBC aired to draw attention to the conditions at Pennhurst yet things remained the same pretty much until the building closed. The name of that news report was "Suffer the Little Children by Bill Baldini. Linked below is part one of that news report in the resource section.

In 1977, a class action suit against Pennhurst resulted in its closure. For years, the abuse continued virtually unchecked by the government until this class action lawsuit ended it. The remaining 460 patients got their freedom and left the facility. Some patients were discharged from Pennhurst to their families while others were transferred to other facilities.

The haunted Pennhurst State School and Hospital building is located in Spring City, Pennsylvania on the borders of Chester and Montgomery Counties. Its haunted by those unfortunate souls of the patients who once lived there, the building is a known paranormal hotspot.

Resources:

http://www.pennhurstasylum.com/

http://www.opacity.us/site30_pennhurst_state_school.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennhurst_State_School_and_Hospital

http://www.elpeecho.com/pennhurst/2007-09-18PersonalAccount.htm

http://pennhurstproject.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF5E9BZ0iDk (1968 NBC news report on Pennhurst)