Christmas In Purgatory

Some cells have mattresses, others blankets, still others bare floors. None that we had seen (and we found these cells in each institution visited) had either a bed, a washstand, or a toilet. What we did find in one cell was a thirteen or fourteen year old boy, nude, in a corner of a starkly bare room, lying on his own urine and feces. The boy had been in solitary confinement for several days for committing a minor institutional infraction.

In December, 1965 Dr. Burton Blatt and his friend Fred Kaplan, a photographer, visited “five state institutions for the mentally retarded”. Kaplan was armed with a small camera attached to his belt, which he used to surreptitiously take photographs during their tours. The finished photo essay, which they titled “Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay On Mental Retardation”, is a harrowing catalog of loneliness and despair; the reader being saved from its crushing weight only by its last collection of photos from The Seaside, an institution in Connecticut, whose program is cited here as an example of proper, institutional care. The entire book can be viewed at the link below, as well as hundreds of others chronicling the history of mental and physical disabilities.

We walked to the door. On the other side were forty or more unkempt infants crawling around a bare floor in a bare room. One of the children had managed to squeeze his hand under the doorway and push his face through the side of the latched door. His moan was the clearest representation we have ever heard of the lonely, hopeless man.

In each of the dormitories for severely retarded residents, there is what is euphemistically called a day room or recreation room. The odor in each of these rooms is overpowering. After a visit to a day room we had to send our clothes to the dry cleaners to have the stench removed. The facilities often contribute to the horror. Floors are sometimes wooden and excretions are rubbed into the cracks, leaving permanent stench. Most day rooms have a series of bleacher benches, on which sit unclad residents, jammed together, without purposeful activity, communication, or any interaction. In each day room is an attendant or two, whose main function seems to be to “stand around” and, on occasion, hose down the floor “driving” excretions into a sewer conveniently located in the center of the room.

Christmas In Purgatory: A Photographic Essay On Mental Retardation [Disability History Museum] : Thanks, Monkey!