Life and Death at Eastern State Hospital

10/1/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In 2005, archaeologists were called in following the discovery of human remains during the excavation of a trench for a new waterline behind the main building at Eastern State Hospital in Kentucky. Prior to this discovery, the known cemetery had grass that was almost as high as the fence and very little was known about its history.

Patients at Eastern State Hospital

The hospital was originally known as the Eastern Kentucky Asylum for the Insane, and was established in 1824 on 10 acres of land, that included a fresh water spring. It would become the second oldest psychiatric hospital in the United States.

Those admitted were considered "idiots or imbeciles" in the parlance of the day, as well as those who developed mental illnesses. Epileptics also found their way to the hospital. The asylum became the place of last resort for person who had become unmanageable and were considered incurable.

Soon it was over-populated, and the rooms on the third floor were only heated by one fireplace. The overcrowding also did not allow for the violent inmates to be kept separate from the rest of the patients.

The cemetery was started in 1861 away from the main building, and not part of the original ten acres, but from land that was added some time between 1839 and 1854.

An investigation of the history of the cemetery found this had been the third time the patients had been reinterred. In 1984, over 4,000 burials were relocated to the northeast corner of the property behind the Hope Center. The cemetery was found during the construction of a waterline that ran beneath a paved road, however the last resting place of the patients had been repurposed since 1861, when it was used as "pleasure grounds" for female inmates.

The records of who they were was lost, or as some genealogists were later to find out, unreasonably kept from publication even to family members.

In June, 2005, the Kentucky Archaeological Survey unearthed 11 graves at Eastern State Hospital in Lexington. Ten of the bodies had been thrown into one large grave, and the eleventh was by himself in a pit that predated the other grave. It's estimated the burials took place from 1839 to 1861. The reason for the mass graves could have been they were the victims of a contagious disease or cholera, of which there were epidemics in 1849, 1850, and perhaps 1856. From 1849 to 1850, almost 200 hospital patients died, most of them from cholera. In 1856, there was an outbreak of dysentery caused by sewage flowing into the asylum's source of drinking water.

Excavation of the Eastern State Hospital cemetery

Cholera originated in Asia, and spread westward from shipping ports located in the eastern United States. Cholera can be spread from one person to another, but water contaminated by human feces is the prime method of contagion. The quality of sanitation also has an impact.

"During the 1830s, industry heavily relied on water transportation, which allowed the disease to move rapidly through waterways. The path of the earlier 1832 epidemic, for example, can be traced relatively easily from Plattsburg, New York on June 11, 1832 to New Orleans, Louisiana on November 18, 1832. The disease traveled down the Hudson Valley, through the Erie Canal, and down the Ohio Canal to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The 1849 epidemic followed a similar pattern, but extended to Wyoming and California."

The skeletal remains indicated that most of the inmates at Eastern State Hospital endured hard, physical labor, before and after they became patients. Many of their teeth had a high number of cavities from eating starchy foods, but even as children they had experienced nutritional stress. The skeletons which all belonged to adults reflected most of them had bowed longbones, an indication they suffered from vitamin deficiencies resulting in diseases, such as rickets. One of the individuals, a woman had a cranial bone that was abnormally shaped. The skull was very narrow and her facial structure could be described as beaky. The size of the skull was small in relation to her body size. This could have been due to a congenital disorder, pituitary dwarfism or "congenital idiot" (feeble-minded).

In 2011, 170 more graves were discovered in the same area under a road. At this time the hospital was transitioning from a psychiatric hospital to the Bluegrass Community and Technical College.

This was the third time in 25 years that a discovery of this type was made. Indigent patients, or for those whose body went unclaimed by their families were buried in the hospital graveyard from 1824 until 1954.

In total 186 persons were disinterred from three, irregular rows that paralleled the hospital's 1839 northwestern property line. Of these 35 where single interments, the others held from 2 to 10 corpses. The mass burials could have been due to fear of contagion if an epidemic was running rampant in the asylum. Men were dressed shirts, jackets and pants, and women in dresses and shifts. They were placed inside wooden coffins.

The patients came from different, surrounding counties. Some of the bodies bore evidence of where their legs and/or arms were restrained.

Iron coffin unearthed in 2011 which dates back to the 1840s

In 2011, there was a discovery of an iron coffin probably dating back to the 1840s. It had a plaque on it with a name, but the surname was unreadable. The discovery of this coffin was kept secret from the media supposedly to "preserve the dignity of the person in the coffin and to protect their privacy", even if they had been dead probably over 100 years. Further attempts to find out this person's name has been denied citing HIPAA laws. Again for a person who is dead for over a century, and had their entire name engraved on the outside of their coffin, seems lubricous. Perhaps this person, present day has descendants that are trying to find out about them.

In 2013, the remains were reinterred including the iron casket, which was never opened.

James Harrison Cannon c. early 1900s (Source - Findagrave)

In 2011, Lois and Cindy Shelton, were trying to solve a family mystery that dated back about a 100 years. Mother and daughter were trying to find out what happened to James "Pap" Harrison Cannon, Lois' grandfather. He was at Eastern State Hospital on November 27, 1928 when he was 74 years old, and died from a streptococcus infection from abrasions on his hand and forearm. His death certificate confirms he was buried at Eastern State, but they have been unable to get any information as to who are the patients buried there.

Cannon born in Tennessee in 1854, traveled to Kentucky where he married and raised a family of 10 children. As a young man he was kicked in the head by a mule, which caused epileptic seizures. As he grew older his family could not care for him, and his son Andie took him to the hospital. The family was later informed that he contracted scarlet fever after being admitted, and that due to the quarantine they were not allowed to visit him or attend his funeral. Pap Cannon died less than two years after being admitted with a diagnosis of epileptic psychosis.

Not all those who ended their days at Eastern State were harmless. On November 29, 1922 Hattie Abner, 38, chased her 18-year-old sister-in-law Thelma Swartz around the property they both lived on, and then into a cornfield where she shot her three times with a revolver. Thelma had been married four years to Mrs. Swartz's brother P.R. Swartz.

The death of Thelma Swartz and Hattie Abner c.1922

Afterward she jumped into a cistern with only 3 feet of water inside. Two hunters who witnessed the attack, took her out of it. She told the coroner she didn't know why she did the shooting.

Later she attempted suicide by hanging herself with her apron in the jail before being sent to the hospital. A jailer found her and cut her down. She tried twice more, once by sticking a safety pin in her head, and once by sticking a piece of wire in her ear.

Ironically it was Thelma Swartz, the victim who had been a patient at Eastern State Hospital at Lexington for the past several months, and had been discharged the Friday before.

Hattie Abner the attacker was married to Clarence Abner and had one child. The women had no trouble between them before the attack. Once in jail, Hattie Abner like her dead sister-in-law, was adjudged insane and sent to Eastern State Hospital.

Two weeks after she killed her sister-in-law, and five days after she arrived at the hospital Hattie died from what was cited as natural causes. It seemed that after her last suicide attempt she never fully regained consciousness, but lay in a stupor.

Her body was sent for burial to Elizaville where her family lived.

Three weeks after his wife Thelma was killed, and a week after his sister Hattie died, Henry Swartz, 42, was adjudged of unsound mind and sent to Eastern State Hospital. What became of Henry is unknown.

As of 2024 there are only 3 graves which have headstones at Eastern State Cemetery. They are: Brent Roberts, Sophie Turner and Sallie Frazier. The others are numbered, which makes it impossible to know who is buried there, without a corresponding list of who the numbers represent.