# The Horror of Topeka Insane Asylum American Asylums

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 26 Sep 2026, 1 h 03 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75116439/the_horror_of_topeka_insane_asylum_american_asylums_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Step into the troubled history of Topeka Insane Asylum in Kansas and discover what life was really like inside one of the state's earliest major psychiatric institutions. Opened in the nineteenth century, the hospital reflected a period when American society increasingly turned to large state institutions as a way of caring for people with mental illnesses and providing what physicians believed were structured therapeutic environments. Explore the origins of the institution and the ideas that shaped nineteenth-century psychiatric care. Discover how its buildings, grounds, routines, and medical practices were influenced by the belief that patients could benefit from fresh air, organized activity, regular meals, rest, and a carefully controlled environment. As the institution expanded, however, the realities of large-scale institutional care became increasingly difficult. This episode examines overcrowding, limited funding, staffing challenges, changing medical theories, and the enormous responsibility of caring for patients over long periods. Explore daily routines, work programs, meals, medical treatment, recreation, family relationships, and the restrictions that shaped institutional life. The episode also places Topeka within the wider history of American asylums. Examine the changing understanding of mental illness, the development of psychiatric treatments, the rise of state hospitals, and the eventual movement toward community-based care and deinstitutionalization. Discover how public attitudes and medical ideas changed throughout the twentieth century. Like many former psychiatric hospitals, the site later became associated with ghost stories and paranormal legends. Rather than treating these claims as historical fact, this episode separates folklore from documented evidence and examines why abandoned institutions became powerful settings for stories about hauntings and unexplained experiences. Drawing on historical records, government reports, medical writings, newspapers, photographs, institutional documents, and modern scholarship, this immersive journey focuses on the people who lived and worked within the hospital and the complex history of American mental healthcare. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this episode is perfect for history enthusiasts, American history lovers, medical history listeners, documentary fans, relaxation, or listening before sleep. Enter the history of Topeka Insane Asylum and uncover the people, practices, challenges, and changing ideas behind one of Kansas's most significant psychiatric institutions.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: It is quite easy to imagine the abandoned Topeka State
[0:04] Speaker 1: Hospital as a stereotypical haunted asylum. The whispers of ghosts,
[0:09] Speaker 1: the creaking corridors, a crumbling relic of a bygone era.
[0:16] Speaker 1: And indeed, after the hospital closed in 1997, and its
[0:21] Speaker 1: imposing Victorian buildings fell into decay, Locals had the great
[0:26] Speaker 1: pleasure of swapping ghost stories about the strange moans echoing
[0:30] Speaker 1: near the patient's cemetery. Yet, as fun as that is,
[0:35] Speaker 1: the true horror of Topeka State Hospital does not lie
[0:40] Speaker 1: in the supernatural, but rather within the very real history
[0:45] Speaker 1: of what happened inside its walls for a century. This
[0:50] Speaker 1: was a place founded with pure intentions. but it gained
[0:56] Speaker 1: infamy for abuse, neglect, and the cruelty inflicted on society's
[1:01] Speaker 1: most vulnerable. Patients were chained up for months on end,
[1:07] Speaker 1: sometimes left unclothed, rolling around in their own filth. Reports
[1:13] Speaker 1: of beatings, S.A., and even mysterious deaths became part of
[1:18] Speaker 1: the hospital's legacy. For decades, employees and even state officials
[1:24] Speaker 1: turned a blind eye or actively covered up the atrocities.
[1:29] Speaker 1: The institution that was supposed to be a refuge for
[1:31] Speaker 1: the mentally ill instead became a symbol for all that
[1:35] Speaker 1: could go wrong in psychiatric care. But what's the story?
[1:42] Speaker 1: How did such an academic-sounding place, a, quote, state hospital
[1:47] Speaker 1: right in the heart of Kansas, accumulate such a grim reputation?
[1:52] Speaker 1: Sounds like the plot of a horror film. Well, to
[1:56] Speaker 1: answer that, we have to go way back. Back to
[2:00] Speaker 1: the 19th century, when ideas of mental health treatment were rudimentary,
[2:07] Speaker 1: and often quite brutal. Over those ensuing decades, Topeka State
[2:13] Speaker 1: Hospital would witness forced sterilizations, experimental surgeries, and routine violations
[2:21] Speaker 1: of human dignity. but it would also sporadically be the
[2:25] Speaker 1: focus of reformers' efforts to shine a light on its darkness.
[2:31] Speaker 1: And so, today, we trace the full story, from the
[2:35] Speaker 1: optimistic founding in the 1870s to the bitter end in
[2:40] Speaker 1: the 1990s. It's, like many other asylums, a story of
[2:46] Speaker 1: good intentions warped by prejudice, underfunding, and the abuse of power. Well,
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[3:52] Speaker 1: on to the topic for today. Nice and relaxed. Nice
[3:56] Speaker 1: and slow. Let's do it. Well, the story, I suppose,
[4:02] Speaker 1: we can begin in 1861. If you know your American history,
[4:07] Speaker 1: that was the year when Kansas became a state. Its
[4:11] Speaker 1: constitution mandated that the state support institutions for the, quote,
[4:15] Speaker 1: benefit of the insane, blind, deaf, and dumb. The first
[4:22] Speaker 1: Kansas insane asylum opened in Osawatomi. That's an older native name,
[4:29] Speaker 1: isn't it? In 1866. And for a few years, officials
[4:33] Speaker 1: believed that one facility would suffice for the state's needs.
[4:39] Speaker 1: They were wrong. That optimism faded quickly, as the number
[4:44] Speaker 1: of patients outpaced capacity. By the 1870s, overcrowding at Osawatomi
[4:51] Speaker 1: prompted calls for a second institution to be opened and
[4:57] Speaker 1: the result was Topeka Insane Asylum, established by legislative authorization
[5:05] Speaker 1: in 1875, with a budget of 25,000 in that day's money.
[5:10] Speaker 1: Local authorities in Topeka eagerly contributed funds and land, 80
[5:16] Speaker 1: acres on the western edge of the city to secure
[5:18] Speaker 1: the project. Construction of the asylum's first buildings was Majestic
[5:24] Speaker 1: red brick structures with turrets and gables was overseen by
[5:28] Speaker 1: John G. Haskell, a prominent architect who also worked on
[5:31] Speaker 1: the Kansas State Capitol, by the way. The design followed
[5:36] Speaker 1: the Kirkbride plan, a popular 19th century blueprint for mental hospitals,
[5:42] Speaker 1: emphasizing long, staggered wings, plenty of windows, and airing courts
[5:48] Speaker 1: to promote a healing environment. June 1, 1879, Topeka Asylum
[5:58] Speaker 1: opened its doors to its first two patients. The early
[6:03] Speaker 1: administration talked of modern, humane care. Dr. Barnard Eastman, the
[6:10] Speaker 1: first superintendent, formerly of Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts, insisted
[6:15] Speaker 1: that mental illness should be treated medically, not punitively. At
[6:21] Speaker 1: that time, Kansas law required a formal court order to
[6:24] Speaker 1: commit anyone to the asylum, as if they were criminals
[6:29] Speaker 1: on trial. Dr. Eastman argued that the insane were not criminal,
[6:35] Speaker 1: but rather just sick. They called mental illness not mental criminality,
[6:42] Speaker 1: and he tried to dispel the public's notion that an
[6:44] Speaker 1: asylum was a prison. He projected an image of progressive institutions,
[6:51] Speaker 1: that would favour hands-on therapeutic engagement over mere custodial confinement.
[6:57] Speaker 1: After all, people were here to get better, not to
[7:00] Speaker 1: be punished. But the optimistic rhetoric soon came to head
[7:06] Speaker 1: with a harsh reality. In practice, the late 19th century
[7:11] Speaker 1: asylum was more about custody than care, pretty words notwithstanding.
[7:19] Speaker 1: The staff were too few. And more often than not, under-trained.
[7:25] Speaker 1: They didn't understand the mental illness of the time. It
[7:29] Speaker 1: was still all in its primitive understanding. And the funding, well,
[7:35] Speaker 1: that was also quite primitive too. Very quickly, rumors of
[7:40] Speaker 1: mistreatment began to surface. By the 1880s and 1890s, families
[7:46] Speaker 1: of patients and even some brave employees voiced concern that
[7:50] Speaker 1: patients were being neglected and abused behind the asylum's high
[7:54] Speaker 1: stone walls. The patient population climbed steadily, and overcrowding led
[8:00] Speaker 1: to squalid conditions. Restraints were frequently used to subdue patients,
[8:06] Speaker 1: and in some wards attendance resorted to chaining people to
[8:09] Speaker 1: prevent escape. A later report would reveal that some patients
[8:13] Speaker 1: in those early decades were kept continuously shackled, sometimes chained
[8:18] Speaker 1: in place for months and left unclothed, a practice as
[8:24] Speaker 1: inhumane as it sounds. But such conditions were sadly the norm,
[8:31] Speaker 1: not just in Topeka, but at asylums across the country.
[8:36] Speaker 1: But for Topeka they certainly set the stage for even
[8:39] Speaker 1: worse abuses. One of the first major scandals to hit
[8:46] Speaker 1: Topeka State Hospital, as the State Asylum would be renamed
[8:51] Speaker 1: in 1901, came in the mid-1890s. In 1896, Kansas newspapers
[8:58] Speaker 1: reported a horrifying incident. A patient had been beaten to
[9:04] Speaker 1: death by an attendant, and the killing was essentially swept
[9:09] Speaker 1: under the rug. and the victim was J. I. Dodd,
[9:15] Speaker 1: a man from Jewell County, who had been committed to
[9:18] Speaker 1: the asylum. Another inmate, a doctor named Duncanson, who was
[9:24] Speaker 1: recovering his sanity, witnessed and later described what happened. According
[9:30] Speaker 1: to Duncanson's testimony, an attendant named Flint grew angry at
[9:35] Speaker 1: Dodd for being restless and approaching the ward door repeatedly.
[9:41] Speaker 1: Flint repeatedly knocked Dodd down, choked him, jumped on his chest,
[9:48] Speaker 1: all while Dodd cried out and tried to defend himself.
[9:53] Speaker 1: After Dodd became too weak to move, the assault had
[9:55] Speaker 1: essentially broken his ability to even raise his arms, the
[9:59] Speaker 1: attendant dragged him into a side room and slammed the door.
[10:02] Speaker 1: Other patients heard noises, as if a struggle was going on,
[10:09] Speaker 1: and then the sickening sound of three heavy blows, and
[10:13] Speaker 1: a final groan. When the door opened, was unconscious, and
[10:21] Speaker 1: soon after, he was pronounced dead. What followed added a
[10:26] Speaker 1: layer of outrage to this cruel death. The asylum's administration
[10:32] Speaker 1: tried to explain Dodd's demise as an unfortunate but mundane occurrence.
[10:39] Speaker 1: But word gets out pretty quickly. Duncanson wrote a detailed
[10:45] Speaker 1: letter to a local newspaper, and a county attorney from
[10:49] Speaker 1: Dodd's home county traveled to Topeka to demand justice. This
[10:55] Speaker 1: should have been a turning point. One might expect that
[10:58] Speaker 1: the authorities would arrest the murderous attendant and initiate an inquiry. Instead,
[11:07] Speaker 1: every level of the state's power structure stonewalled the investigation.
[11:14] Speaker 1: The Shawnee County Prosecutor, in whose jurisdiction the hospital sat,
[11:18] Speaker 1: refused to cooperate with the out-of-country attorney, out-of-county brother. Shockingly,
[11:24] Speaker 1: Governor Edmund Morrill himself refused to order any investigation into
[11:29] Speaker 1: Dodd's death, effectively covering the whole thing up. Superintendent Eastman,
[11:37] Speaker 1: the very man who had championed compassionate care, quote, neglects
[11:42] Speaker 1: to take any steps to require humane treatment of patients.
[11:45] Speaker 1: as the newspaper bitterly noted. And so, in the end,
[11:50] Speaker 1: the attendant Flint apparently faced zero consequences, protected by a
[11:56] Speaker 1: wall of silence and official indifference. He literally beat a
[12:02] Speaker 1: man to death in the hospital, and he got away
[12:06] Speaker 1: with it. An editorial of the time pointed out that
[12:10] Speaker 1: this was the second suspicious death within a year at
[12:14] Speaker 1: the Topeka Asylum, that had come to public knowledge, and
[12:18] Speaker 1: it called for action to be more, well, look after
[12:22] Speaker 1: the poor unfortunates before they met similar fates. Yet, nothing
[12:29] Speaker 1: of substance was done. The horror was not just the
[12:33] Speaker 1: violence itself, but the lack of anybody caring, the impunity
[12:40] Speaker 1: that surrounded the whole ordeal. And we're just getting started.
[12:45] Speaker 1: That same year, 1896, brought another grim story, and one that's, well,
[12:52] Speaker 1: suggested this pattern of lethal abuse. Reports circulated that old soldiers,
[12:58] Speaker 1: that being elderly veterans, were being quietly killed off in
[13:03] Speaker 1: the Kansas asylums. At Topeka, a man named Gust Maurer,
[13:10] Speaker 1: who was a veteran, died under highly questionable circumstances. Maurer's
[13:15] Speaker 1: body was sent home to his family with two black eyes,
[13:18] Speaker 1: a broken nose, and a broken neck. You don't get
[13:23] Speaker 1: that from falling over, that's for sure. Yet the death
[13:28] Speaker 1: certificate issued by the superintendent blandly stated that the cause
[13:32] Speaker 1: was apoplexy or stroke. In other words, despite clear signs
[13:37] Speaker 1: of brutal physical trauma, the hospital insisted Maurer had simply...
[13:43] Speaker 1: suffered a sudden and natural death. As one newspaper noted, quote,
[13:50] Speaker 1: no effort was ever made to right the wrong, and
[13:54] Speaker 1: the superintendent is still in office. Well, if Maurer's family
[14:01] Speaker 1: or others suspected foul play, their cries did not penetrate
[14:05] Speaker 1: the shield of officialdom around the hospital, that's for sure.
[14:09] Speaker 1: The inference was chilling. Vulnerable patients, even war veterans, could
[14:16] Speaker 1: be beaten to death, and the institution would close ranks
[14:20] Speaker 1: to protect itself. The late 19th century thus ended with
[14:25] Speaker 1: Topeka State Hospital acquiring a dark reputation. People whispered about
[14:31] Speaker 1: what might really be happening in the wards, but their
[14:35] Speaker 1: voices were often hushed by the disbelief that such things
[14:40] Speaker 1: could occur under state supervision. or by fear of reprisal
[14:45] Speaker 1: from the powerful officials who seemed determined to keep the
[14:48] Speaker 1: hospital's image clean. By the first decade of the 20th century,
[14:55] Speaker 1: the litany of abuses at Topeka was becoming quite a
[14:59] Speaker 1: bit harder to conceal. 1901, reflecting a trend to use
[15:05] Speaker 1: more benign terminology, the Insane Asylum was officially renamed to
[15:10] Speaker 1: Topeka State Hospital. but a change in name did not
[15:15] Speaker 1: equate a change in practices. Patients continued to endure awful treatment,
[15:22] Speaker 1: and perhaps most importantly, employees began to speak out. The
[15:28] Speaker 1: turning point came in 1911, when a group of former
[15:32] Speaker 1: and current staff members presented formal charges of abuse and
[15:36] Speaker 1: neglect to the State Board of Control, excuse me, that
[15:41] Speaker 1: is the agency overseeing the state institutions. They had given
[15:46] Speaker 1: up on internal reform. All those meetings on Friday afternoons
[15:52] Speaker 1: were amounting to nothing, I assume. And, well, they turned
[15:57] Speaker 1: to public exposure instead, penning letters that documented specific incidents
[16:03] Speaker 1: in harrowing detail. The local press, especially the Topeka State Journal,
[16:09] Speaker 1: obtained these letters and ran articles that read like an
[16:12] Speaker 1: indictment of the hospital's administration. One letter described the slow
[16:18] Speaker 1: and senseless death of John Green, a patient in Ward E-2.
[16:25] Speaker 1: Green fell seriously ill, yet for eight days he lay
[16:30] Speaker 1: in bed with no food, no medicine, and essentially no care,
[16:37] Speaker 1: just left to die. Each morning, attendants had duly reported
[16:43] Speaker 1: Green's worsening condition up the chain of command, but nothing
[16:47] Speaker 1: was done to help him. The story got even more
[16:51] Speaker 1: grotesque after his death. Green's body was taken to the
[16:54] Speaker 1: hospital's dissection room, where Dr. P.C. Biddle, the superintendent and
[17:00] Speaker 1: chief physician at the time, removed the man's brain. The
[17:05] Speaker 1: next day, Bill used poor John Green's brain as a
[17:09] Speaker 1: prop in a lecture for a class of medical students
[17:12] Speaker 1: in the hospital chapel. He had never sought permission from
[17:17] Speaker 1: Green's family to conduct this post-mortem demonstration, and one suspects
[17:22] Speaker 1: the family was unaware that their loved one had effectively
[17:26] Speaker 1: been starved to death and then wheeled out for an
[17:30] Speaker 1: autopsy show. Dr. Biddle claimed the brain pathology proved Green
[17:36] Speaker 1: had a congested brain, perhaps to imply an untreatable condition.
[17:42] Speaker 1: But the intendants who watched Green waste away couldn't be convinced.
[17:48] Speaker 1: They knew that he had died purely of starvation. Another
[17:54] Speaker 1: witness statement exposed the sadistic handling of a patient known
[17:57] Speaker 1: as Mr. Smith. who had once been a respectable Topeka
[18:01] Speaker 1: banker before mental illness overtook him. Smith's attendant treated him
[18:08] Speaker 1: like a dog, as the newspapers put it. Visitors and
[18:12] Speaker 1: staff had seen Smith wandering the grounds in handcuffs, led
[18:17] Speaker 1: by a rope like an animal. On multiple occasions, the
[18:22] Speaker 1: attendant tied the rope around Smith's neck and hauled him
[18:25] Speaker 1: up off the ground by looping it over a door.
[18:29] Speaker 1: essentially strangling and tormenting him for the attendant's perverse amusement.
[18:35] Speaker 1: When not actively abusing him, the attendant might tie Smith
[18:39] Speaker 1: to a tree and leave him out there exposed to
[18:42] Speaker 1: the elements for hours. To make matters worse, this particular
[18:47] Speaker 1: attendant was frequently drunk while on duty, a fact that
[18:51] Speaker 1: did not stop him from beating Smith mercilessly. You can
[18:57] Speaker 1: hardly conceive a more extreme betrayal of caregiving responsibility than
[19:03] Speaker 1: a guard tasked with a mentally ill man's safety choosing
[19:07] Speaker 1: instead to torture him under the influence of alcohol. It
[19:12] Speaker 1: really doesn't get much worse than that. Or does it?
[19:19] Speaker 1: There was more. The letters recount how attendants would spit
[19:25] Speaker 1: tobacco juice rather into patients' eyes just to hear them yell,
[19:31] Speaker 1: or kick or stomp the patients at the slightest perceived infraction.
[19:34] Speaker 1: A staff member named F.J. Grubbs described seeing an attendant
[19:40] Speaker 1: violently kick a patient who had merely stepped out of
[19:43] Speaker 1: line during a group walk. That patient, identified as Bert McGibbon, died.
[19:50] Speaker 1: the very next night, presumably from the injuries sustained. It
[19:55] Speaker 1: seemed that nearly every kind of abuse imaginable had taken place,
[20:00] Speaker 1: choking patients with towels until they collapsed, as happened to
[20:03] Speaker 1: a man named Louis Vaughan, or keeping patients in handcuffs
[20:08] Speaker 1: for days on end, If earlier decades were characterized by silence,
[20:14] Speaker 1: 1911 was an eruption of voices detailing the systematic cruelty.
[20:19] Speaker 1: As one of the reform-minded writers put it, the, quote,
[20:23] Speaker 1: care of the insane at the Topeka State Hospital is
[20:26] Speaker 1: so criminal, so barbaric, so distant and far from the
[20:32] Speaker 1: care given at our ordinary hospitals, that the public will
[20:35] Speaker 1: scarcely believe our statements. The heartfelt plea aimed to rouse
[20:41] Speaker 1: public opinion, the writers knowing that only widespread outrage might
[20:47] Speaker 1: force the government's hand. Nothing much has changed there, hasn't it?
[20:54] Speaker 1: Nothing really changes until someone gets embarrassed in public. While
[21:00] Speaker 1: a particularly telling accusation involved visitation rights, the hospital leadership
[21:05] Speaker 1: had severely restricted visitors. to the point that out of
[21:10] Speaker 1: 29 total wards, only four ever saw outsiders ever allowed inside.
[21:15] Speaker 1: Parents were forbidden from seeing their own institutionalized children, and
[21:20] Speaker 1: friends or extended family were turned away at the gates. Dr.
[21:26] Speaker 1: Biddle defended this policy by claiming that visits could interfere
[21:30] Speaker 1: with the patient's treatment. But to the whistleblowers, this draconian
[21:35] Speaker 1: visitation rule was really just about secrecy It ensured that
[21:40] Speaker 1: few witnesses from the outside world would have a glimpse
[21:44] Speaker 1: at the patients' bruises, their emaciation, or of course their
[21:49] Speaker 1: living conditions. The hospital had effectively sealed itself off, operating
[21:55] Speaker 1: with impunity behind a veil of bureaucratic authority. The revelations
[22:01] Speaker 1: of 1911 also uncovered how the hospital and state exploited
[22:05] Speaker 1: patients financially. One report noted that Topeka State Hospital was
[22:10] Speaker 1: seeking ways to claim more money from the patients' families
[22:14] Speaker 1: and estates. In fact, the state had began taking families
[22:18] Speaker 1: to court to force them to pay the cost of care.
[22:22] Speaker 1: A 1910 Kansas Supreme Court decision even allowed the hospital
[22:27] Speaker 1: to bill a patient's estate for the entire cost of
[22:29] Speaker 1: their confinement, even after death. That's terrible, isn't it? Well,
[22:39] Speaker 1: emboldened by this, hospital administrators lobbied for laws akin to
[22:44] Speaker 1: Ontario's Lunacy Act, which would let them take over a
[22:48] Speaker 1: patient's property and assets to fund the institution. There was
[22:53] Speaker 1: one egregious example, a faulty Potawatomi Native American woman confined
[22:59] Speaker 1: in 1918. She owned valuable land in Oklahoma, which instantly
[23:05] Speaker 1: made her a target. Kansas authorities portrayed her as mentally sick,
[23:11] Speaker 1: and then worked to vilify her guardian who was managing
[23:14] Speaker 1: her estates in newspapers and courts, accusing him of looting
[23:18] Speaker 1: her property. But the real objective, as it appeared, was
[23:24] Speaker 1: for the state to wrest control of her Oklahoma estate
[23:27] Speaker 1: under the pretense of paying for her care. In other words,
[23:31] Speaker 1: declaring someone insane had become big business. A cynical means
[23:38] Speaker 1: of to acquire wealth. Those bastards. This profit motive cast
[23:45] Speaker 1: a grim shadow on the hospital's commitment to actually curing people.
[23:52] Speaker 1: After all, a patient with a large estate was simply
[23:58] Speaker 1: more valuable if kept in custody indefinitely. Don't want to
[24:02] Speaker 1: lose that source of steady income. Faced with all these charges,
[24:08] Speaker 1: the Board of Control initially promised a thorough investigation in 1911. However,
[24:14] Speaker 1: lasting change was frustratingly slow. Dr. T.C. Biddle, who had
[24:19] Speaker 1: been superintendent since the late 1890s, resisted calls to resign.
[24:24] Speaker 1: He dismissed the whistleblowers as disgruntled ex-employees, the slough of
[24:30] Speaker 1: the institution, he called them, and asserted that he was
[24:33] Speaker 1: being targeted unfairly. Indeed, it took some time, and likely
[24:39] Speaker 1: more political pressure, before Biddle was eventually replaced. Meanwhile, those
[24:44] Speaker 1: who tried to intervene on patients' behalf continued to face retaliation.
[24:49] Speaker 1: Lawyers who advocated for patients found themselves stonewalled, or worse.
[24:55] Speaker 1: A Kansas attorney named Hanson, for example, attempted to secure
[24:59] Speaker 1: the release of several inmates whom he believed were sane
[25:02] Speaker 1: or held without proper hearings. Not only did the hospital
[25:07] Speaker 1: rebuff his efforts, but get this, in a jaw-dropping turn,
[25:12] Speaker 1: the state attorney actually filed a lawsuit against Hansen himself
[25:16] Speaker 1: to stop him from, quote, harassing the state officials in
[25:20] Speaker 1: charge of the Topeka State Hospital and from disturbing the
[25:23] Speaker 1: patients with his legal petitions. The very authorities entrusted to
[25:29] Speaker 1: oversee justice used the courts to silence a whistleblower. rebranding
[25:36] Speaker 1: the compassionate attorney as a nuisance, a kind of shock
[25:41] Speaker 1: jock journalist. While this incident, preserved in the public record,
[25:46] Speaker 1: shows how deeply the culture of concealment ran, rather than
[25:50] Speaker 1: address abusers, the system often moved to punish the people
[25:55] Speaker 1: who dared to expose them. While physical abuse was just
[26:02] Speaker 1: one form of horror at Topeka, Another form emerged in
[26:07] Speaker 1: the realm of medical policy. Eugenics-based sterilization. In the early
[26:16] Speaker 1: 20th century, a wave of pseudoscientific thinking convinced many American
[26:22] Speaker 1: states that they could improve society by preventing the, quote,
[26:27] Speaker 1: unfit from reproducing. You can see how this is becoming
[26:32] Speaker 1: a bit of a problem. Kansas. was an eager participant
[26:37] Speaker 1: in that movement. Well, in 1913, the Kansas legislature passed
[26:42] Speaker 1: the first forced sterilization law, aimed at, in the blunt
[26:48] Speaker 1: language of the day, quote, habitual criminals, idiots, epileptics, imbeciles,
[26:55] Speaker 1: and insane. Under this law, superintendents of institutions like Topeka
[27:00] Speaker 1: State Hospital were empowered to perform surgical sterilizations, typically vasectomies
[27:08] Speaker 1: for males, and salpinectomies for females, on patients they deemed
[27:17] Speaker 1: to have hereditary defects. Now, there was supposed to be
[27:22] Speaker 1: a procedural review, an examining board, and a chance for
[27:26] Speaker 1: the individual to appeal, but in practice these safeguards were weak.
[27:30] Speaker 1: Many in Kansas felt the 1913 law was too timid,
[27:35] Speaker 1: and indeed it only produced a few dozen sterilizations in
[27:39] Speaker 1: its first years. So in 1917, a new law was
[27:43] Speaker 1: passed to streamline the process, removing the requirement of a
[27:48] Speaker 1: court hearing and making it easier for institutions to authorize
[27:53] Speaker 1: sterilizations on their own authority. So what did this mean
[27:58] Speaker 1: on the ground? Effectively, it meant that for roughly the
[28:01] Speaker 1: next four decades, a significant number of patients, those labelled
[28:06] Speaker 1: feeble-minded or otherwise genetically inferior, were surgically rendered infertile without
[28:13] Speaker 1: their consent. The hospitals' operating rooms became factories of a sort,
[28:19] Speaker 1: quietly carrying out the dictates of eugenic social policy. Out
[28:24] Speaker 1: of a slow start, the pace of operations picked up
[28:27] Speaker 1: rapidly in the 1920s and 30s, as eugenics gained mainstream acceptance.
[28:33] Speaker 1: By the mid-1930s, Kansas was sterilizing individuals at a rate
[28:38] Speaker 1: that peaked around 10 per 100,000 residents per year. At
[28:43] Speaker 1: least in the early years, most of Kansas' sterilizations were
[28:47] Speaker 1: performed at Topeka State Hospital, indicating how central the institution
[28:53] Speaker 1: was to the eugenics campaign. Over the entire era in
[28:57] Speaker 1: which Kansas' sterilization law was active, that is, 1913 to 1961,
[29:03] Speaker 1: more than 3,000 people were sterilized statewide. And a large
[29:10] Speaker 1: share of these procedures are attributed to Topeka and other
[29:15] Speaker 1: state hospitals. Now, each of these numbers represents a deeply
[29:19] Speaker 1: personal horror. Men and women, who in addition to having
[29:23] Speaker 1: the trauma of institutionalization at their very core of personhood,
[29:30] Speaker 1: their ability to have a family taken away by a
[29:35] Speaker 1: signature on paper. One infamous figure connected to the early
[29:40] Speaker 1: sterilization efforts was Dr. F. Hoyt Pilcher, though he wasn't
[29:46] Speaker 1: at Topeka State Hospital itself, but we will mention him.
[29:51] Speaker 1: You see, Pilcher was a superintendent of a sister institution
[29:55] Speaker 1: the Kansas State Asylum for Idiotic Youth in the 1890s,
[30:00] Speaker 1: and he performed at least 11 illegal castrations of boys
[30:06] Speaker 1: in 1892 before public furor forced him out. His zeal
[30:13] Speaker 1: foreshadowed what would later become a state-sanctioned policy, kind of
[30:18] Speaker 1: a trailblazer in a very grim sense, I suppose, at
[30:23] Speaker 1: Topeka State Hospital. Castration was indeed used as a, quote,
[30:27] Speaker 1: treatment for male patients deemed excessively sexual or degenerate. This
[30:33] Speaker 1: brutal practice, along with so-called hydrotherapy, which often meant dunking
[30:38] Speaker 1: patients into frigid water and wrapping them in ice-cold sheets,
[30:42] Speaker 1: was justified by crude theories that such methods would curb
[30:45] Speaker 1: insanity or improper behavior. But in truth they were punitive
[30:51] Speaker 1: and torturous. The hospital's use of hydrotherapy tubs and ice
[30:56] Speaker 1: baths left a lasting psychological scar on many patients, yet
[31:01] Speaker 1: this was considered advanced care at the time, finding a
[31:05] Speaker 1: reminder of how thin the line can be between healing
[31:08] Speaker 1: and harming when prejudice guides the doctor's hand. The eugenics
[31:14] Speaker 1: error forced the notion that patients at Topeka were not
[31:17] Speaker 1: individuals with rights and feelings, but rather problems to be
[31:22] Speaker 1: managed or in the worst cases eliminated. Descriptions from the
[31:27] Speaker 1: hospital's mid-20th century records reveal a chilling detachment. Patients with
[31:33] Speaker 1: diagnoses of imbecility or chronic mania might be slated for
[31:38] Speaker 1: sterilization upon admission. Women who had born illegitimate children or
[31:44] Speaker 1: men who were habitual petty criminals and ended up in
[31:48] Speaker 1: the hospital were prime targets. And this was all perfectly
[31:53] Speaker 1: legal under Kansas law. They weren't doing anything wrong in
[31:57] Speaker 1: a strict legal sense. It wasn't until 1961 that Kansas
[32:02] Speaker 1: quietly halted involuntary sterilizations, following changing public sentiment after the
[32:08] Speaker 1: Second World War, when eugenics kind of became tainted by
[32:12] Speaker 1: association with the other side. Well, by then, however, thousands
[32:19] Speaker 1: of Kansans, is that what they're called? Kansans? Kansanians? I'm
[32:24] Speaker 1: not sure. You can tell me in the comments. For
[32:28] Speaker 1: many of them from Topeka State Hospital, I'd been subjected
[32:30] Speaker 1: to this irreversible procedure. The hospital that was supposed to
[32:35] Speaker 1: help patients return to society, instead permanently barred them from
[32:41] Speaker 1: the possibility of a normal family life. And in retrospect,
[32:47] Speaker 1: the sterilization program stands out as one of the most
[32:50] Speaker 1: haunting aspects of Topeka's legacy. It was an abuse enacted
[32:56] Speaker 1: not by rogue attendants in secret, but as an official
[33:01] Speaker 1: policy carried out by physicians in white coats who believed
[33:06] Speaker 1: or claimed to believe that they were doing society a
[33:09] Speaker 1: big favor. This kind of horror, the cold, bureaucratic variety,
[33:16] Speaker 1: lacked the immediate drama of a beating in a locked room.
[33:21] Speaker 1: But it was devastating nonetheless. And it went all the
[33:25] Speaker 1: way to the top. I think that makes it even worse.
[33:29] Speaker 1: It also intersected with the same callous attitudes that enabled
[33:32] Speaker 1: physical abuse. After all, if patients were seen as less
[33:37] Speaker 1: than fully human, as defective, whose reproduction was a threat,
[33:44] Speaker 1: it became easier for staff to justify chaining them up,
[33:48] Speaker 1: neglecting them, treating them like objects. Eugenics was just another
[33:54] Speaker 1: way of dehumanizing the mentally ill, cloaked in that respectability
[33:59] Speaker 1: of misguided science. By the early 30s and 40s, the
[34:06] Speaker 1: accumulated scandals and a shift in professional thinking finally spurred
[34:11] Speaker 1: efforts to reform Topeka. The Great Depression years had been
[34:16] Speaker 1: especially dire for the institution. Overcrowding peaked as families impoverished
[34:20] Speaker 1: by economic collapse sent relatives to state care, and funding
[34:26] Speaker 1: was tight. Under these pressures, abuses might have actually worsened.
[34:32] Speaker 1: One 1930s patient would later reminisce that staff were often
[34:35] Speaker 1: overwhelmed and resorted to brute force to maintain order. However,
[34:42] Speaker 1: Change was in the air, at least a hint of it. Notably,
[34:48] Speaker 1: Topeka became home of the innovative Menninger Clinic, a private
[34:52] Speaker 1: psychiatric clinic established by Drs. Carl and Will Menninger, which
[34:58] Speaker 1: espoused more humane psychoanalytic approaches. The presence of the Menninger
[35:04] Speaker 1: Clinic in the same city cast a contrasting light on
[35:08] Speaker 1: the old state hospitals. Enlightened methods were being extolled just
[35:13] Speaker 1: a few miles away. And that made Topeka's Victorian-era custodial
[35:19] Speaker 1: approach look even more outdated. In 1948, the Kansas governor,
[35:26] Speaker 1: Frank Carlson, took a decisive step that marked a turning point.
[35:30] Speaker 1: Confronted with continued reports of substandard conditions, one report actually
[35:34] Speaker 1: said it was 100 years of darkness. Doesn't sound good.
[35:40] Speaker 1: Governor Carlson ordered a thorough investigation of Topeka. What this
[35:46] Speaker 1: investigative panel found was damning. Among other issues, they discovered
[35:50] Speaker 1: that the hospital's record-keeping was so poor that many patients
[35:55] Speaker 1: essentially had no documented treated plans or any histories on
[35:59] Speaker 1: file at all. Some inmates had simply been deposited in
[36:04] Speaker 1: the asylum and left to languish, forgotten by the bureaucrats.
[36:10] Speaker 1: The investigators also confirmed ongoing use of restraints and the
[36:14] Speaker 1: lack of active therapy. This time, however, the response was
[36:18] Speaker 1: not to hush it up. Those days were long gone.
[36:21] Speaker 1: It was time to implement changes. After the report was published,
[36:27] Speaker 1: state funding for the hospital nearly doubled to address the
[36:29] Speaker 1: most glaring deficiencies. The worst offenders on the staff, those
[36:35] Speaker 1: implicated in abuse or gross neglect, were fired. You're fired.
[36:42] Speaker 1: For the first time, social workers and psychologists were brought
[36:46] Speaker 1: in alongside doctors to evaluate and plan patient care. The
[36:53] Speaker 1: ethos began to shift from mere confinement to actual treatment.
[37:00] Speaker 1: Of course, the effects of this post-World War II reform
[37:04] Speaker 1: effort were significant. During the 1950s, observers noted that Topeka
[37:09] Speaker 1: was becoming a more modern psychiatric institution. The use of
[37:14] Speaker 1: chains and cages were phased out. Medications started to play
[37:20] Speaker 1: a role in calming patients rather than straight jackets alone,
[37:23] Speaker 1: particularly the anti-psychotic drugs in the 50s. By the early 60s,
[37:29] Speaker 1: some even claimed that Topeka had transformed into one of
[37:32] Speaker 1: the top mental hospitals in the country. rather optimistic assessment
[37:38] Speaker 1: likely influenced by the presence of the manager-trained psychiatrists and
[37:43] Speaker 1: new therapeutic philosophies. The hospital adopted practices like occupational therapy,
[37:51] Speaker 1: recreational activities for patients, and in some cases open wards,
[37:56] Speaker 1: that is allowing certain patients more freedom of movement, a
[38:00] Speaker 1: far cry from the terror of room 18. or the
[38:04] Speaker 1: locked dog cages, as they were called, of earlier years.
[38:08] Speaker 1: Doesn't sound nice, doesn't it? And yet, even in this
[38:13] Speaker 1: era of relative enlightenment, there were undercurrents of the old
[38:19] Speaker 1: horror that had not fully dissipated. Consider the story of
[38:24] Speaker 1: Miss X, a case that came to light around 1950.
[38:30] Speaker 1: Now Miss X, her real name withheld in press reports,
[38:34] Speaker 1: was a 55-year-old woman admitted to Topeka State Hospital in 1932,
[38:39] Speaker 1: after she reportedly had a mental breakdown. She suffered paranoid delusions,
[38:47] Speaker 1: including the belief that her husband was trying to kill her,
[38:52] Speaker 1: and in her fear she apparently tried to attack him.
[38:55] Speaker 1: At first, her commitment might have been justified by her condition. However,
[39:01] Speaker 1: What follows shows how patients can be lost in the system.
[39:07] Speaker 1: After a year, doctors noted some improvement, but said she
[39:12] Speaker 1: still had delusions. After four years, they claimed she was
[39:17] Speaker 1: too dangerous to consider releasing, and by the ninth year,
[39:22] Speaker 1: they bluntly labelled her incurably insane. For seventeen years, Miss Eck,
[39:30] Speaker 1: lived at the hospital with that label. Essentially a life sentence.
[39:35] Speaker 1: But then a new doctor joined the staff, someone with
[39:38] Speaker 1: perhaps a more compassionate or curious approach. He found Miss
[39:42] Speaker 1: X by then in her seventies physically healthy and still intelligent,
[39:47] Speaker 1: just deeply institutionalised. And this doctor did something astonishingly simple.
[39:53] Speaker 1: He spent half an hour each week just talking with
[39:57] Speaker 1: her one-on-one, giving her personal attention and a sense that
[40:01] Speaker 1: someone cared. And over a few months, Miss X's demeanour
[40:07] Speaker 1: changed markedly. The long quiescent spark of her personality returned.
[40:13] Speaker 1: After five months of these gentle chats, no drastic medical intervention,
[40:18] Speaker 1: just human contact, this woman who had been deemed incurable,
[40:23] Speaker 1: was calm, oriented, and no longer considered a threat. Sometimes
[40:30] Speaker 1: that's all you need, just to talk to someone, right? Well,
[40:35] Speaker 1: at age seventy-two, Mrs. X was released back into the world,
[40:39] Speaker 1: where she went on to work as a practical nurse
[40:41] Speaker 1: and housekeeper, proving she could function in society. They should
[40:46] Speaker 1: have given her a payout, though. They really should have. Seventy-two. Well,
[40:52] Speaker 1: the doctor who helped free her made a sobering observation.
[40:56] Speaker 1: Perhaps not every patient would respond so well to simple
[40:58] Speaker 1: kindness and attention, but he admitted, doctors should slow down
[41:03] Speaker 1: on the brain surgeries and shock treatments for patients who
[41:07] Speaker 1: are often just starved for human interaction. And indeed, during
[41:12] Speaker 1: the 1940s and 50s, there had been a surge in
[41:16] Speaker 1: the use of radical treatments like lobotomy and electroconvulsive therapy
[41:22] Speaker 1: at mental hospitals nationwide. Topeka was no exception. Some patients
[41:28] Speaker 1: who were difficult to manage were subjected to lobotomies or
[41:31] Speaker 1: frequent shock therapies as a way to quiet them. Yeah,
[41:36] Speaker 1: that would certainly quiet me down, I tell you that.
[41:40] Speaker 1: But Mrs. X's case suggests that in many instances such
[41:43] Speaker 1: drastic measures might have been avoided if anyone had taken
[41:46] Speaker 1: the time to just sit down and get to know
[41:50] Speaker 1: the patient, actually engage with them. A small beacon of
[41:55] Speaker 1: hope amid the horror, I suppose. Proof that even very
[41:59] Speaker 1: long-term inmates could improve if treated with respect, but also
[42:04] Speaker 1: an indictment of how rarely that happened. Another case from
[42:08] Speaker 1: the same period exposed ongoing flaws in the hospital's judgment.
[42:14] Speaker 1: John Krabbe, a Danish immigrant, provides a tragic example of
[42:20] Speaker 1: bureaucratic error, with nearly tragic consequences. In 1931, Crabbe was
[42:27] Speaker 1: a dishwasher in Topeka who got into a little bit
[42:30] Speaker 1: of a scuffle at work. He had a hot temper,
[42:34] Speaker 1: and when a co-worker provoked him, Crabbe made some threatening
[42:38] Speaker 1: remarks and was arrested for disturbing the peace. While in jail,
[42:43] Speaker 1: he was apparently quite furious at the situation, sulking around,
[42:48] Speaker 1: refusing to eat. This apparently led authorities to call in a, quote, expert,
[42:54] Speaker 1: likely a doctor with questionable credentials, who diagnosed the non-compliant,
[43:01] Speaker 1: non-English speaking crab as insane. He was then promptly shipped
[43:08] Speaker 1: off to the state hospital and certified as a hopeless case.
[43:13] Speaker 1: He would spend nearly 20 years there as an incurable patient,
[43:17] Speaker 1: even though in reality he was perfectly sane. And in
[43:21] Speaker 1: a darkly ironic twist, Crabbe's persistent protests of sanity were
[43:25] Speaker 1: taken as further evidence of insanity. Every time he would say,
[43:30] Speaker 1: I'm not crazy, I'm completely fine, they would basically say, look,
[43:34] Speaker 1: he's in denial of his illness. So in denial, he
[43:39] Speaker 1: may as well be in Egypt. That's how in denial
[43:42] Speaker 1: he was. Well, thus it only entrenched his status further.
[43:49] Speaker 1: he grew increasingly angry and uncooperative, which the staff interpreted
[43:55] Speaker 1: as symptoms rather than the understandable frustration. I think we
[43:59] Speaker 1: can all say that we'd all be pretty frustrated at
[44:02] Speaker 1: this situation too, if it were us. It's certainly easy
[44:06] Speaker 1: to imagine this poor man's plight, trapped in a madhouse,
[44:10] Speaker 1: unable to convince anyone of a mistake, and every effort
[44:14] Speaker 1: to prove himself rational only tightened the noose of his imprisonment.
[44:20] Speaker 1: But one day, Mr. Krabs' salvation came almost by accident.
[44:27] Speaker 1: Not from within the hospital, but from outside. A group
[44:32] Speaker 1: of Danish businessmen, insurance men, that being visiting Kansas, heard
[44:38] Speaker 1: about a Dane languishing in the asylum and took an interest.
[44:42] Speaker 1: Thanks to their advocacy, Krabs' mental state was re-evaluated around 1950,
[44:48] Speaker 1: this time with proper testing. and likely with translation so
[44:52] Speaker 1: he could actually express himself. And he was found, surprise, surprise,
[44:58] Speaker 1: to be perfectly sane. After nearly two decades of his
[45:04] Speaker 1: lost life, the hospital agreed to release him. But even then,
[45:08] Speaker 1: red tape delayed his discharge for another 10 months while
[45:12] Speaker 1: officials dithered. Finally, in 1950, John Crabb walked free, A
[45:20] Speaker 1: bitter testament to how easily someone could be disappeared into
[45:25] Speaker 1: the system due to a mislabelling. Of course, the public
[45:29] Speaker 1: had a field day with this one. It became a
[45:32] Speaker 1: case of public embarrassment. Newspapers as far away as Chicago
[45:37] Speaker 1: picked up the story of the sane man trapped in
[45:40] Speaker 1: the asylum when he was released. And in fact, a
[45:44] Speaker 1: Chicago Times article in 1951 trumpeted the quote, Kansas solves
[45:49] Speaker 1: the problem of treating mentally ill, highlighting the cramp's release
[45:53] Speaker 1: in a broader effort by the hospital to review long-standing
[45:56] Speaker 1: patients' diagnoses. It was as much a publicity piece as
[46:02] Speaker 1: a news article, but it signaled that Topeka State Hospital
[46:05] Speaker 1: was trying to shed its image as a hellish warehouse.
[46:11] Speaker 1: The hospital's administrators in the 50s wanted to prove that
[46:14] Speaker 1: they were turning things around, and for a while they
[46:18] Speaker 1: seemed like they might be succeeding. Despite the mid-century improvements,
[46:25] Speaker 1: Topeka could never fully escape the legacy of horror. The
[46:30] Speaker 1: broader tide of mental health care was turning by the 70s.
[46:34] Speaker 1: Across the United States, deinstitutionalization became the new paradigm. Rather
[46:41] Speaker 1: than just keeping tens of thousands of patients in massive
[46:44] Speaker 1: state hospitals, The idea was to treat patients in community settings,
[46:49] Speaker 1: halfway houses or outpatient clinics. New psychiatric drugs made it
[46:55] Speaker 1: feasible for many people to live outside an asylum who
[46:58] Speaker 1: would earlier be confined for life. Kansas followed this national trend.
[47:04] Speaker 1: By the late 80s, the population of Topeka had dwindled
[47:07] Speaker 1: dramatically from its mid-century heights. Where once 1,500 patients had
[47:13] Speaker 1: filled its wards, Fewer than 200 remained by 1990. The
[47:19] Speaker 1: old sprawling institution increasingly looked like a dinosaur. Unfortunately, even
[47:27] Speaker 1: in its waning years, there were grim accidents that reminded
[47:32] Speaker 1: everyone of how things can go terribly wrong in a
[47:35] Speaker 1: place like this. One such incident was the murder of
[47:40] Speaker 1: Stephanie Ulrich in 1992. tragic event that proved to be
[47:45] Speaker 1: the hospital's final notorious scandal. Ulrich was a 30-year-old music
[47:51] Speaker 1: and activity therapist who worked with patients to provide enrichment
[47:55] Speaker 1: and a sense of normalcy. Among her charges was a
[47:59] Speaker 1: man named Kenneth D. Waddle, who had a violent history.
[48:06] Speaker 1: Waddle was at Topeka State Hospital because he had been
[48:09] Speaker 1: found not guilty by reason of insanity for an aggravated
[48:12] Speaker 1: battery charge. Effectively, he was a forensic patient, sent to
[48:18] Speaker 1: the hospital instead of a prison for a violent act. Initially,
[48:23] Speaker 1: Waddle was placed in a high-security ward at another facility,
[48:26] Speaker 1: but due to budget cuts, the secure forensic unit at
[48:33] Speaker 1: Topeka State Hospital had been shut down in the 80s. Well,
[48:39] Speaker 1: as a result, Waddle was moved into the general patient population,
[48:45] Speaker 1: an administrative decision that in hindsight was disastrous, because on
[48:50] Speaker 1: February 23rd, 1992, Ulrich and another staff member took a
[48:55] Speaker 1: group of patients, including Waddle, on a supervised outing to
[48:58] Speaker 1: see a movie, part of the hospital's effort to provide
[49:01] Speaker 1: social activities. And when they returned that evening, Ulrich was
[49:06] Speaker 1: escorting Waddle back into one of the buildings, when in
[49:09] Speaker 1: a secluded moment, Waddle attacked her, strangling Ulrich to death.
[49:15] Speaker 1: and assaulting her in a bathroom. The murders ended. shock
[49:20] Speaker 1: waves through the state. A mental hospital, presumed to be
[49:24] Speaker 1: a place of care, had become the scene of a
[49:25] Speaker 1: brutal killing. And the victim was not a patient, but
[49:31] Speaker 1: a dedicated employee. Certainly breaks the trend, doesn't it? In
[49:36] Speaker 1: the aftermath there were many questions. Why was such a
[49:40] Speaker 1: dangerous patient allowed that close to a staff member on
[49:45] Speaker 1: their outing? And why was the secure ward closed? Officials
[49:49] Speaker 1: conducted reviews, but in a controversial 1995 ruling, Federal Appellate
[49:55] Speaker 1: Court concluded that while Ulrich's murder was undeniably tragic, as
[50:00] Speaker 1: they said, it did not result from reckless and conscience-shocking
[50:06] Speaker 1: misconduct by the hospital administrators. and effectively cleared the state
[50:12] Speaker 1: of any liability of her death. Oh dear. Not good.
[50:19] Speaker 1: Not good. You might have expected something like this back
[50:23] Speaker 1: in the 1910s, 1920s, but in 1995? Now that is ridiculous.
[50:31] Speaker 1: Of course, from the staff's perspective... The environment had grown
[50:37] Speaker 1: more dangerous as the hospital's resources dwindled in its final years.
[50:41] Speaker 1: In fact, another female staff member, Dr. Cynthia Turnbull, was
[50:46] Speaker 1: actually assaulted by a patient around the same time, and
[50:51] Speaker 1: she later sued the hospital for ledging a pervasively hostile
[50:54] Speaker 1: and unsafe work environment. Dr. Turnbull's case highlighted that even
[50:59] Speaker 1: in the 90s, female staff were at risk and the
[51:03] Speaker 1: institution struggled to maintain safety, a lawsuit went through appeals
[51:08] Speaker 1: as courts debated whether the hospital could be held accountable
[51:11] Speaker 1: for not protecting employees. These incidents certainly show a painful truth,
[51:19] Speaker 1: that even as the patient population shrank, the hospital's fundamental
[51:24] Speaker 1: problems persisted. Chronic underfunding, administrative neglect, and a lingering culture
[51:31] Speaker 1: of making do with what you have. It all meant
[51:35] Speaker 1: that patient care and staff safety were sometimes compromised. In 1988,
[51:43] Speaker 1: the Topeka State Hospital had lost its accreditation to receive
[51:47] Speaker 1: federal Medicare and Medicaid funds due to deficiencies in care standards.
[51:53] Speaker 1: An inspection had found the hospital failed to properly review
[51:56] Speaker 1: the treatment of two patients, among other issues. leading federal
[51:59] Speaker 1: authorities to pull funding until corrections were made. This was
[52:04] Speaker 1: a public embarrassment, and put additional financial strain on the
[52:08] Speaker 1: state to support the hospital without federal aid. By the mid-90s,
[52:14] Speaker 1: the Kansas legislature faced a decision. The state was operating
[52:19] Speaker 1: three mental health hospitals, Osobatomi, Larned, and Topeka. Maintaining all
[52:26] Speaker 1: three of them was too costly. and at odds with
[52:29] Speaker 1: the community-based care model. The political and fiscal wounds favoured closure.
[52:36] Speaker 1: So in 1997, after 118 years of operation, Topeka State
[52:43] Speaker 1: Hospital was ordered shut. May 17th of the same year,
[52:50] Speaker 1: the hospital discharged its last patients and locked its doors
[52:54] Speaker 1: for good. Some patients were transferred to the remaining state hospitals.
[52:59] Speaker 1: Others were moved to community facilities or nursing homes. But
[53:03] Speaker 1: there was little fanfare. In fact, given the hospital's reputation,
[53:07] Speaker 1: many believed its closure was long overdue. Yet for the
[53:11] Speaker 1: city of Topeka and former employees and patients, it was
[53:15] Speaker 1: the end of an era. An institution that had loomed
[53:20] Speaker 1: in the collective consciousness for generations was no more. What
[53:26] Speaker 1: did remain, however, was the empty, sprawling campus, decayed buildings, and,
[53:34] Speaker 1: of course, no doubt a lot of painful memories. For
[53:38] Speaker 1: a few years, the site stood abandoned. During Curiosity Seekers,
[53:42] Speaker 1: Urban Explorers, and, of course, the aforementioned ghost stories, I'm
[53:47] Speaker 1: sure plenty of teenagers would be bringing the Ouija board
[53:50] Speaker 1: up to that abandoned building. The once grand centre building,
[53:54] Speaker 1: with its gothic turrets, sat silent and vandalised. Eventually, practical
[54:01] Speaker 1: concerns won out. In 2010, the Topeka School District, which
[54:05] Speaker 1: had acquired the property, demolished the old buildings to make
[54:08] Speaker 1: way for new development. The demolition crews noted the iconic
[54:12] Speaker 1: five-story administration building was the most formidable, a symbol of
[54:18] Speaker 1: the old asylum era, finally coming down in clouds of dust.
[54:24] Speaker 1: By mid-2020, almost no trace existed. of Topeka State Hospital's
[54:28] Speaker 1: structure remained on the site. The very ground was cleared,
[54:33] Speaker 1: and even the concrete foundations were dug up to leave
[54:35] Speaker 1: no haunting monument. Today, in place of the asylum's halls,
[54:41] Speaker 1: one finds a sports park, school facilities, the landscape of
[54:46] Speaker 1: terror transformed into something mundane and healthy. Well, they should
[54:52] Speaker 1: have at least left one part of it for the museum,
[54:56] Speaker 1: I think, Old buildings getting knocked down. I just think
[55:02] Speaker 1: it's a tragedy. To me, buildings, statues, this kind of thing.
[55:09] Speaker 1: Parts of history gone. It breaks my heart. Maybe it
[55:14] Speaker 1: doesn't break my heart, but you know what I mean.
[55:17] Speaker 1: In any case, one part of the hospital could not
[55:20] Speaker 1: so easily be erased. The cemetery. On a quiet corner
[55:27] Speaker 1: at the formal hospital grounds, lies a 2.8-acre burial ground
[55:32] Speaker 1: where patients who died in custody or were unclaimed by
[55:35] Speaker 1: family were interred. And so for over 75 years, the
[55:40] Speaker 1: hospital buried at least 1,157 individuals in that plot. And
[55:47] Speaker 1: the nature of these burials reflects the anonymity and tragedy
[55:51] Speaker 1: of many of the patients' lives. Only 16 graves ever
[55:56] Speaker 1: had headstones with names The rest were marked, if at all,
[56:01] Speaker 1: with a simple numbered marker or nothing at all. In
[56:04] Speaker 1: the rush of the hospital's daily routine, record-keeping for the
[56:07] Speaker 1: deceased was spotty. Some names were just lost at time.
[56:11] Speaker 1: For decades after closure, the cemetery sat neglected, a patch
[56:17] Speaker 1: of weeds and weathered stones, essentially a mass grave of
[56:23] Speaker 1: the forgotten. Only in 2001 did the state authorise a
[56:26] Speaker 1: memorial eventually installing a plaque listing the names of the dead,
[56:33] Speaker 1: and putting a fence around the site. Visitors who wander
[56:37] Speaker 1: there today, perhaps drawn by a morbid curiosity or paying respects,
[56:42] Speaker 1: confront a pretty stark tableau. Over a thousand poor, nameless souls,
[56:49] Speaker 1: who live their final days, or in many cases, years
[56:53] Speaker 1: or decades in the hospital, now lying beneath the earth,
[56:58] Speaker 1: their identities forgotten. nearly erased. It's a pretty chilling reminder
[57:04] Speaker 1: of how people were warehoused and forgotten inside institutions like
[57:07] Speaker 1: Topeka State. Each number was a human being with a story,
[57:13] Speaker 1: subsumed into the anonymity of the insane, thrown into a
[57:19] Speaker 1: big bucket of people who never get remembered, people who
[57:25] Speaker 1: never have any justice, just Thrown in the ground. Once again. Finally.
[57:34] Speaker 1: Out of sight. Out of mind. So what do you think?
[57:41] Speaker 1: Any thoughts? Or maybe you're already asleep. That's okay. As
[57:49] Speaker 1: long as you enjoyed the video. In whichever way you
[57:51] Speaker 1: choose to enjoy it. Now as for me. There is
[57:55] Speaker 1: a list of names that I am going to read off.
[57:58] Speaker 1: That's the top, dear patrons and supporters. No ads on
[58:02] Speaker 1: this video because of that. Wasn't it cool to enjoy
[58:05] Speaker 1: it all the way through uninterrupted? You don't get that
[58:09] Speaker 1: on many channels, don't you? Not these days, not in
[58:13] Speaker 1: this economy. So we got Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Ember, Susan, Cameron, Charlene, Lynn, Therese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Anir, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Erin, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[58:30] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Shell, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal, Tauvery, Anthony, Lucy, Branton,
[58:41] Speaker 1: Goo Goo Bubonic, Nicholas, Craig, Neftis, Alexander, Gokhan, Dorsey, Benito, Claire, Courtesy, Carol, Robert, Mary, Bridget, Nefertari, Yvette,
[58:50] Speaker 1: Miss Mochi, Eleven, Allison, Free American, Jennifer, Brittany, David, Cody, Brian,
[58:57] Speaker 1: and Are You My Mum? All right, everyone. That's it
[59:02] Speaker 1: from me for today. I hope you enjoyed everything. I
[59:04] Speaker 1: certainly did. Quite enlightening. And we have plenty more insane
[59:10] Speaker 1: asylums coming up I can tell you that now matter
[59:14] Speaker 1: of fact truly I'm enjoying it a little bit more
[59:18] Speaker 1: modern history a bit of psychiatry a bit of medical
[59:22] Speaker 1: history it's good it's good fun good night everyone lots
[59:29] Speaker 1: of love to you all And I will see you
[59:31] Speaker 1: next time.

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