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Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
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A century of ashes looking for a home |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Thursday, 10 March 2005 |
Mental hospital inmates
Mary Vallis
At Oregon State Hospital, inside a building that staff members rarely enter, thousands of dented copper canisters containing human remains are stacked along the walls like cans of soup in a grocery store.
Some of them are a century old. Others are dented and corroded, or fused together. In many cases, the paper labels that identified their contents have worn away.
Each one contains the ashes of a former resident of the mental hospital, which opened its doors in 1883 as the Oregon State Insane Asylum in Salem, 75 kilometres southwest of Portland. The institution is perhaps best known as the location for the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
For decades, patients who died at the institution were cremated. Any ashes not claimed by their families were stowed away in the canisters and quickly forgotten. But that may soon change as politicians and mental health advocates are working to find a more appropriate resting place.
Peter Courtney, president of the state Senate, visited the makeshift mausoleum late last year after The Oregonian wrote about the hospital. Earlier this month, he formed a work group that will recommend what should be done with the cans.
The beaten canisters have become a symbol in Oregon for how mental illness has been neglected and ignored for decades.
"That's the history of mental health in our country," said Mr. Courtney.
"People were doing the best they could, but even today, I think many people feel mental illness is one of these mysteries. It frightens people. We've come a long way, but this shows we haven't come that far."
The state hospital is not alone in keeping the ashes of former patients; many government-run institutions like hospitals and prisons are responsible for the unclaimed remains of their dead. But how these 4,000 patients wound up stacked on shelves is a tumultuous tale involving burial, exhumation and a flooded underground mausoleum.
In its early days, the Oregon State Insane Asylum was a dumping ground for people no one knew what to do with -- depressed women, religious fanatics, children as young as six years old with Down's syndrome or cerebral palsy.
Many ended up being buried in the asylum's cemetery, says Susan N. Bell, an amateur historian in Salem who has written a history of the cemetery. Patients came from as far away as Idaho and Alaska. Shipping the bodies home was often impractical -- and undesirable.
"It was probably a scandal to have someone who wasn't quite right in the head as a member of your family," Ms. Bell said.
Although hundreds of people were eventually buried in the cemetery, few of them merited headstones. As Ms. Bell puts it, they were "gone and definitely forgotten."
In 1913, the cemetery closed because the state needed the land. The hospital was ordered to build a crematory and exhume the bodies. That April, administrators published a notice in the Oregon Statesman warning the public that any remains not claimed by June would be burned.
The copper canisters containing their ashes were stored in a basement until 1976, when hospital staff raised money and built a series of outdoor vaults for them around a fish pond. A headstone honouring the dead was added in 1984 but, as it turned out, the arrangement was not permanent -- the vaults has been built below the water table and were often flooded.
Five years ago, the cans were cleaned, inventoried and stacked in the outbuilding, where they have remained in what is known as the "Cremains Room."
Although Sen. Courtney insists they need a more appropriate resting place, not all mental health advocates are optimistic anything will come the work group's recommendations.
"This is kind of an easy thing for a politician to jump on and say, 'Let's do the right thing.'" said Jason Renaud, secretary of the Mental Health Association of Portland.
"But frankly, our state budget is a billion dollars in the hole right now. To add more state revenue onto a memorial project, I'm not sure that would be fiscally prudent."
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=0cf4fb1e-9fd7-4af6-8a40-de204ceb6ceb&page=2 |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?” Alexander Pope
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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