Letchworth: The Village of Secrets

Nearing the end of windy Call Hollow Road, there is a wide path dividing thick woodland. It appears to lead to nowhere, but anyone who ventures down this lonely trail will stumble upon a peculiar sight. In the midst of towering trees and overgrown woods lies a clearing. An immense memorial stone bears the words "THOSE WHO SHALL NOT BE FORGOTTEN" and a list of hundreds of names. Behind this memorial, sunrays illuminate a slope abundant with T-shaped markers bearing numbers. Here lie hundreds of nameless persons who died in Letchworth Village.

The cemetery lays half of a mile away from the institution named Letchworth Village, in Thiells, N.Y., in north Rockland County. Built on thousands of acres of rolling fields and dense woods, Letchworth opened in 1911 to care for mentally handicapped individuals. The village's fieldstone, neoclassic buildings consisted of small dormitories, a hospital, dining halls, and housing for the staff.

Closed in 1996, most of the structures remain desolate, weathering away with time. The poison ivy covering the facades has transformed into deep reds and gold with the coming of autumn. The once impressive arched windows are smashed, the panes rotting into mere splinters. "No Trespassing" is painted on boarded up windows and planks that bar entrance. Peeking inside windows of rusted doors reveals chairs and beds remaining where they were left. It appears as if the place had been immediately abandoned.

Letchworth was described as an ideal center for the mentally challenged, praised by the state as a significant advance from the almshouses. Yet, rumors about atrocities such as the mistreatment of patients and horrific experimenting continue to circulate long after its closing. What secrets have been buried with the sleeping bodies of previous patients?

Behind a grove of thick twisting branches, the grandiose columns of the administrative building hold a roof bearing the name of Dr. Charles Little. As the first Superintendant of Letchworth, he stated the purposes of this institution in a document titled "Letchworth Village: The Newest State Institution For The Feeble-minded And Epileptic," dated 1912. One founding purpose was to train those who were not severely handicapped to perform manual labor on the premises.

"It has been abundantly shown in older institutions that the wise teaching of the feeble-minded has been a profitable investment for the state from an economic point of view," Little stated.

The truth that patients were merely viewed as chattel was disguised behind flowery explanations of how beneficial the education was for the "feeble-minded." In the 13th Annual Report of the Board of Managers of Letchworth Village written in 1921, the various jobs that were assigned to the male patients are listed. They loaded thousands of tons of coal into storage facilities, built roads, and were expected to farm acres of land.

Another shocking fact Dr. Little presented in his reports was that this institution should be used for laboratory purposes. He did not go into detail on how experiments would be conducted, but perhaps his ideas meant that experiments on actual patients would be performed. They were, after all, the subjects being studied.

Dr. Little in his report explained that there were three categories of "feeble-mindedness": the "moron" group, the "imbecile" group, and the "idiot" group. The last of these categories is the one that could not be trained, Dr. Little said, and so they should not be taken into Letchworth Village, because they were unable to "benefit the state."

A disturbing realization upon a review of Little's reports is that many of his patients were young children. In 1921, the 13th Annual Report lists the number of patients admitted that year. Out of 506 people, 317 were between the ages of 5 and 16, and 11 were under the age of 5 years.

A section of the Thirteenth Annual Report, which briefly describes the aptitudes of the children, reveals that many of the children were able to complete schoolwork for their age group, just at a slower pace.

It is too heart wrenching to imagine how terrifying it must have been for those children when their families left them in this strange place.

An occupational coach, Nancy Yarsinski, started her job at Letchworth in 1970. She remembers seeing the condition of the children that were placed there. "Some were very bright," she recalls, "but they picked up behaviors and habits from the actual retarded children around them." She says that many of the children had no reason to be placed there. Parents had abandoned them, she says.

An ongoing issue for the early years of Letchworth was the lack of fiscal support from the state. The Inspector of State Charitable Institutions, H.M. Lechtrecker, writes in the Report that the Village Hospital was extremely inadequate for treating tuberculosis or delivering babies. Workers received a pitiful salary and many doctors refused to take jobs at Letchworth.

Patients were forced to dwell in cramped dormitories, because the state would not complete the construction of more buildings. Barely ten years after being constructed, Letchworth's buildings were already grossly overpopulated, cramming 70 beds into the tiny dormitories. Nearly 1,200 patients were present during 1921.

Visitors observed that the children were malnourished and looked sick. The Letchworth staff claimed in the Report that there was a scarcity of food, water, and other necessary supplies.

David Corcoran's 1991 article in The New York Times disclosed shocking realities concerning Letchworth. By the 1950's, the Village was overflowing with 4,000 inhabitants. Quoting a spokesman for the State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, Corcoran confirmed that families abandoned their relatives there.

The old grave markers reveal only the numbers that the dead patients had been given, because families refused to allow their names to be known. Corcoran explained that archives from Letchworth Village are withheld from the public. These perhaps despicable family secrets have been well hidden.