Ken was interviewed in September 2005. In the early 1970's, Ken was only 19 when he began working at Fairfield Hills. The time was before card scanning electric locks, and when metal keys opened all locked doors at Fairfield Hills. During his orientation tour, it was some frightening to Ken to be first exposed to the locked up inside world of the mentally ill.
The woman who led Ken on his orientation carried a metal ring with dozens of metal keys. The keys were of all sizes and shapes, and jangled loudly as she sorted through the keys to open the locked doors along the tour.
Ken tells of Fairfield Hills having a concrete hierarchy, a caste system that controlled all aspects of resident patient lives. Keys were a large part of the hierarchy, allowing staff to go whenever and wherever they wanted. Patients held no keys, and therefor had to wait for the locked doors to be opened for them.
At Fairfield Hills, Ken says that Hospital Administrators, Psychiatrists, Ph.D's, Social Workers, Nurses and Mental Health Workers were the pyramid of hierarchy. Below this hierarchy, keyless patients resided behind locked doors. It was a rigid system. Patients were instructed when and where to go, and what to do. Patients were routinely labeled as schizophrenic or paranoid disordered. Categorized, they were treated with associated medications, given cigarettes, assigned a bed and escorted to and from their meals.
Ken experienced the rigid system beginning to change in the 1980's, when Ken says victories within the civil rights movement of the sixties gave birth to the patient rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to marchers in Washington D.C., President John F. Kennedy asked for a reduction of numbers of individuals confined to residential institutions to restore and revitalize their lives in effort to improve their quality of living.
Ken tells that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to a number of other laws that codified people's rights to share the benefits of being American citizens. Laws like the Fair Housing Act of 1964, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975, Protection and Advocacy for Individuals suffering with Mental Illness Act of 1986, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the American's with Disabilities Act.
Ken says these Acts are among the keys that opened locked doors and provided civil rights for patients, including personal dignity, right to privacy and right of choice. Currently, Ken continues to work in the mental health field. Utilizing a new set of keys, Ken works to improve the quality of life for those individuals, who in the past, would be keyless patients, residing behind locked doors at Fairfield Hills.
LINDA (D'AGOSTINO) HINCKLEY - OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST - 1974 TO 1978
Linda Hinckley worked at Fairfield Hills State Hospital from July 1974 to October 1978. In addition to working at Fairfield Hills, Linda lived on the campus of Fairfield Hills in Woodbury Hall. Woodbury Hall is opposite Newtown Hall, which is the main administration building. Newtown and Woodbury Halls face towards each other and are on opposite sides of what is referred to as the main Green.
Linda was employed as an Occupational Therapist within the Activities Therapy Department. The Department was made up of about 52 staff members. Department staff included Occupational Therapists, Recreation Therapists, Music Therapists, Art Therapists, Vocational Trainers, Teachers, Librarians, Horticulture Therapist, Home Economics Teacher, Woodworking Teacher, students from Northeastern University in Boston, and OT students from Manchester Community College.
Linda worked in the Shelton House building on the first and second floors, towards the left inside the front door. The first floor was an "open" (chronic patient) ward and the second floor was a "locked" (acute patient) ward. Linda worked with all male patients, and approximately 80 total. There was usually one Occupational Therapist and one Recreation Therapist for each half of the building. The female side was towards the right, inside the front door, and had the same setup with the upstairs locked and first floor open. Even the first floor open wards were locked from 6 PM till 8 AM. The open ward patients were able to roam the grounds, as they liked after their meds (taking their medications) in the morning. These patients were usually the ones who were likely to be there for life, not a risk to themselves or others, and many of them had no where else to go, Fairfield Hills was their home.
Linda usually took her patients to Plymouth Hall for Art and Music Therapy, or for classes in Woodshop, Horticulture, Pottery, Cooking, and Library. In addition, she also took them there for gym to play basketball and volleyball, and for bowling in the basement. They used the fields to play ball, football, and soccer. Sometimes they went just for a snack at the "Snack and Chat Shop" located in the basement of Plymouth Hall. The "Snack and Chat Shop" was run by staff and patients. You could get coffee, tea, sodas, etc., and light snacks, muffins, donuts, sandwiches or candy, and they had a jukebox there and tables and chairs like a soda fountain. Linda recalls that one of the favorite songs on the jukebox was "Make the World Go Away...and get it off my shoulders".
Other activities Linda involved her patients with were Arts and Crafts and Talk Therapy groups that were held in the big windowed porches located at either end of the Shelton House building. Linda says that the big windowed porches where usually used as "OT Rooms". She had hers set up in sections for reading and relaxing, and also work tables for crafts. Linda says that she was not so into the whole "craft" thing, that is not as much as some of the other Occupational Therapists. Linda says she would prefer to bring them out of the building (if permitted), in a group for other activities. The patients in the locked wards had to be signed out by a doctor to go to activities.
Linda and her coworkers, as Activity and Therapy Staff members, would also do great activities together. They would have evening dances with live bands, winter festivals with snow sculptures, picnics in the summer, elaborate plays with patients and staff as cast members, fashion shows, county fair with games of chance right on grounds, field trips off campus like to fairs, or go out for ice cream, movies, swimming, the Danbury Fair, plays and such. Linda says that she and the talented staff she worked with were very close and she still keeps in touch with them.
HOSPITAL LAUNDRY - 2 EMPLOYEES INTERVIEWED
An August 2005 interview of two women, employed in the Hospital Laundry at Fairfield Hills during the late 1940's and early 1950's, provides some insight into patients doing work at Fairfield Hills. With thousands of patients living at Fairfield Hills, there was a lot of dirty laundry. Just imagine 3 to 4 thousand patients, all clothed and bedded at Fairfield Hills.
Patients were a large part of the workforce. Patients were not enslaved or forced to do hard labor, rather they were provided with opportunities to have jobs and to do work at the hospital. Many patients wanted jobs and to work, as they enjoyed being useful and busy. In addition to being therapeutic, having a job and working provided a patient with work experience and skill building that could be helpful should the patient be released.
Not only female patients worked in the hospital laundry; male patients worked the large ironing presses. All laundry had to be washed, dried, pressed, folded and packaged. The laundry facility included a large sewing room where female patients did mending and alterations.
The laundry workers interviewed, indicated that some patients were akin to coworkers. Hospital employees worked along side and directly with some of the hospital patients. Not all patients were difficult or needed close supervision, they were simply in a transitional period, and were going to be released.
One female employee told of a female patient she worked with, a nice colored woman who stuck very close by her side. The patient worker knew the ropes so to speak, and would help out the female employee, should a difficult situation occur. Sometimes a patient worker would act up, and some female patients were known to act up regularly.
The underground tunnels were scary to the 2 young female employees; they had to escort their female patient coworkers to and from the laundry facility, during the winter months and on bad weather days, through the tunnels. Stories were of the tunnels being dimly lit by light bulbs far spaced, and often screams or yelling coming from distant tunnels.
The second female employee told of a very tall and largely built female patient who worked with her in hospital laundry. I will refer to her here by the fictitious name of Marlene Alsmere. On escort through the tunnels, Marlene would assure the young female employees, and the other female patient workers, that she would protect them from any male patients traveling the tunnels. If male patients approached from the opposite direction, Marlene would step out front and tell the others "just stay behind me" and Marlene with her very large stature could intimidate and walk down any oncoming male patients who might otherwise be unruly, or try to spook the females.
HOSPITAL PHARMACY - CLIFFORD WALKER INTERVIEWED
Clifford's interview coming soon.
MORE COMING SOON...