Nah, all large residential centers have morgues. You have to understand that the majority of people who lived in these places were folks with some pretty serious physical/medical/behavioral needs and that even with the best of care (which this group of folks obviously did not get) by definition deaths were expected, as these people were sent here for life. And given that many of these folks did not have families to claim them after they died, you couldn't just dump them somewhere for the city to collect and dispose of, so they were often buried on the institution grounds.
These days a morgue in a residential facility is where you keep people until they are transferred out to the local medical examiner's office, which most folks are these days, exactly so they can rule out (or rule in) abuse and homicide as a possible cause of death. However, sad to say there are still people living in institutional facilities with no one to claim them when they die, so some things haven't changed.
This was a different age and different time and it's always been easier to judge people with 20-20 hindsight than to advocate for government to give more money to the states to provide for folks with serious handicaps. That is true even today. It's always been easier to toss bricks at the people who worked at these facilities with people that no one else would take care of, who did not have adequate facilities and supplies, who had crappy salaries, who had no support from other people in doing the difficult jobs they did, who had atrocious staffing ratios, and who received minimal training and compensation but who kept these societally rejected people alive, than it has been to understand what an impossible job these staff had and how remarkable it is that they kept as many people alive as they did doing work that very few people will do even today.
Oh Lord! I would be drawn to this as well! This is how I would envision the children in the story seeing the place for the first time, misty forest and all!
These days a morgue in a residential facility is where you keep people until they are transferred out to the local medical examiner's office, which most folks are these days, exactly so they can rule out (or rule in) abuse and homicide as a possible cause of death. However, sad to say there are still people living in institutional facilities with no one to claim them when they die, so some things haven't changed.
This was a different age and different time and it's always been easier to judge people with 20-20 hindsight than to advocate for government to give more money to the states to provide for folks with serious handicaps. That is true even today. It's always been easier to toss bricks at the people who worked at these facilities with people that no one else would take care of, who did not have adequate facilities and supplies, who had crappy salaries, who had no support from other people in doing the difficult jobs they did, who had atrocious staffing ratios, and who received minimal training and compensation but who kept these societally rejected people alive, than it has been to understand what an impossible job these staff had and how remarkable it is that they kept as many people alive as they did doing work that very few people will do even today.
Just a little note of levity there. ;-)
Stepping down off soapbox now.