Rob's Rants

Massachusetts was a pioneer in the era of institutional treatment of the insane. All of  the good and bad that came with state run institutions can be found in the history of Massachusetts. In my town of Grafton, just1/2 mile from the Commuter Rail stop sits the main part of the campus of what was the Grafton State Hospital. Originally built in 1901, Grafton State Hospital was designed as a “farm colony” for the higher-functioning patients to grow food for the nearby Worcester and Westborough State Hospitals. I could never write a better history here than you will find at the incredible 1856.org site. (See http://www.1856.org/grafton/grafton.html.)

From 1901 until the hospital closed in 1973 (which was a disaster in its own right as the State began de-institutionalizing people with no real plan), 1,041 people died at the hospital and were buried in mostly unmarked graves. That’s more than 15 people a year on average. Incredible. And these were 1,041 people who weren’t claimed by relatives.

After the hospital closed in 1973 the property sat abandoned for many years until parts were taken over by Tufts University for the Cummings School of Veterinary Science and by the Grafton Job Corps program. (Some wonderful photographs of the still abandoned buildings can be found on the Desolate Metropolis website.) But neither organization took responsibility for the cemetery until 2009 when some Job Corps students responded to a Grafton citizen concerned for the veterans buried at the site and did a remarkable clean-up of the cemetery grounds in time for a re-dedication ceremony for Veterans’ Day 2009. (See this article in the Grafton News.) Well, actually, they really cleaned up and improved access to the cemetery, the grounds were still pretty open.

This has all really been a lead-in for a picture I took there today.

No Longer Forgotten

I like this view … most people are drawn to the major feature of the cemetery which is the remains of the stone base of an old water tower, but something about this view struck me. Buried in this row are veterans from WWI through Vietnam. All of whom died abandoned by their families and institutionalized.

For some general pictures of the site you can look here or here. And in spite of the speculation in the comments of these posts, the stone structure is the base of a water tower.

If you’re interested in using the picture above, a full resolution version without the watermark is available on Wikimedia Commons at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flags_VeteranGraveMarkers_B%2BW.jpg.

For anyone interested in such things, the technical details are:

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