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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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Clergy identify, memorialize those buried in psychiatric hospitals graves |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Thursday, 27 May 2004 |
May 27, 2004
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. -- It will take another 11 years to finish this quest to bring a measure of dignity to those buried in Connecticut Valley Hospital's cemetery, to put a face on 1,670 faceless dead from decades past, 100 names at a time.
As they have each May since 1999, the Rev. John C. Hall and nine other Middletown clergy members recently gathered for a memorial service at the old cemetery off a gravel road on the grounds of CVH, the state's first and only remaining public psychiatric hospital.
On this day, the names of the dead in graves 500-599 - the markers bear only a number that corresponds with a death registry - were read one by one, each followed by a blessing. The clergy, a few in flowing robes starkly white against the aging stones, moved from marker to marker, their progress matched by a couple of dozen onlookers.
Bob Byrnie stooped and placed a white rose at each marker. His grandfather, a carriage painter named James Byrnie who suffered from lead-poisoning dementia, is buried here.
His grandfather died in 1906. It was not until 1997, after an exhaustive records search by Bob Byrnie and his sister, Anne Grace of Cromwell, that James Byrnie's fate was learned.
"To put a face on those buried here - it's just a wonderful concept. I look forward to coming each year," Byrnie said.
Unused since 1955, this is the place of the unclaimed dead, the indigent who died while at CVH. The oldest markers date to 1878. In those days each body was borne to the cemetery by a horse-drawn funeral wagon.
During this recent memorial service, each name was read in the same steady, somber cadence.
"Grave 500, Annie Sincolitch, died Sept. 4, 1910, at the age of 31," intoned the Rev. Greg Perry, chaplain at CVH. "Annie belongs to you, oh God, for you are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end."
"Your mercy endures forever," came the response from the onlookers.
At this rate, notes Hall, it will be 2015 before the task is done.
"The cemetery spans 120 years. Doing this over time gives weight to the service," said Hall, senior minister at First Church of Christ, Congregational.
Until the mid-1950s, the dead at CVH and at many of the state hospitals across the country were buried under small, numbered markers. The stigma of mental illness was that great.
In later years, it was thought that state confidentiality laws prevented the hospital from identifying the dead. The names would surface another way: In the late 1990s, Wesleyan graduate student Ben Holder found a list of the dead at Russell Library.
Then in December 1999, the state attorney general concluded that because the deaths preceded the state's 1969 confidentiality law, it would not be a breach of privacy to name the patients now.
Three granite directories bearing the names, corresponding numbers and date of death stand at the edge of the cemetery. It will be three more years before all the names are etched into the granite. Money to fund the engravings comes from the patient-run Valley View Cafe at CVH.
"By honoring the dead this way, we are showing our elderly patients how we'd care for them should they die here," said Garrell S. Mullaney, chief executive officer at CVH.
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/state/hc-27140507.apds.m0872.bc-ct-fea--may27,0,3850406.story?coll=hc-headlines-local-wire |
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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
“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.” A Sachs
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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