1,944 Comments for Worcester State Hospital

It reminds me very much of my junior high's locker room in the 1970s, in the basement of a WPA-built gymnasium from the 1930s. The only thing this lacks is the ground-level windows where the boys would try to sneak peeks at the girls (we just thought that was normal behavior for 13-year-old boys back then. I suppose today some would want to charge them with sexual harassment or even label them sex offenders).

I find it interesting that there doesn't seem to be a lock on the door, especially for storage of temperature-sensitive medications. Today even Pepto-Bismol has to be locked up and not dispensed without a doctor's order! Was this locker in a location that was already secure?

For $10,000, and using the proverbial ten-foot pole, I would stick the pole in there, stir it up, and see what came out (provided I was also wearing full hazmat gear), but I wouldn't get any closer than that for any amount of money!

Maybe someone can enlarge the label on the front leg? That might have a manufacture date or other useful information.

I don't think it's a WWII bombsight. If my father were still alive, I could show him the picture and ask for sure, because he was a navigator on bombers in the Pacific from 1943 until the end of the war. Unfortunately he died recently.

A search for Leeds and Northrup shows that the company made resistors, milivolt pontentiometers (I have NO idea what those are!), and other similar types of equipment. I couldn't find any pictures of anything that looked even remotely similar to this item, however.

Apparently changes in the market (what's new?) led to Leeds and Northrup becoming part of General Signal some years back, and subsequently, Leeds and Northrup was "sold off piecemeal, mostly to its nemesis, Honeywell."

I was directed to a company called Process Instruments in Pittsburgh which provides "calibration and repair services" and advertises itself as "legacy Leeds and Northrup, Honeywell and Hagan Support." There is another company in Forest Hill, MD that repairs Leeds and Northrup equipment.

So...now we know all that, and we still have no idea of what this is. Maybe we could send a copy of this picture to one of those repair companies to see if they know what it is.

I'm interested in hearing more about the patient shower rooms. I worked with a person with developmental disabilities who had been in an institution for nearly 50 years when the institution closed in the late 1990s. When we trained new staff to work with this person in the community home, we had to emphasize that only tub baths, rather than showers, be used because of his intense phobia of water falling on his face. This reportedly stemmed from the group showers that he had received in earlier years in the institution, which I know were not done to frighten or hurt patients, but were necessitated by lack of funding and staff to care for the large number of patients. Of course, any technique can conceivably be misused and perhaps at some point there was a caregiver who used the shower or water that was too hot or too cold as a means of behavioral control.

I think the round structure in the photograph is the one identified as Hooper Hall in the old photos on the Worcester State Hospital intro page. There is an interior photo also with a caption that identifies it as a day room. Perhaps one floor was the dormitory and the other floor was the day room?

The 1949 photos from Life Magazine on the intro page are wonderful! I had never been able to imagine what the "spinning chair" therapy looked like (all I could think of was one of my wonderful uncles who had a swivel chair in his ham radio room, and was the one adult who would let us kids spin as much as we wanted to). Is it true that a person with schizophrenia does not get dizzy from the spinning that makes a "normal" person dizzy? If so, there may be some medical significance to that....I know that schizophrenia usually emerges in a person's late teen years, and I remember that when I was a child, I could go on spinning rides at the fair over and over without dizziness (and never understood why my parents complained after one ride). Then when I was about sixteen, I went on a ride twice in a row, something I had done many times in previous years, and was so dizzy and sick that I had to sit on a bench for the next hour. It's probably two completely unrelated events that happen at the same time, but what would it mean if there is some kind of neural connection between not experiencing dizziness and the onset of schizophrenia?

John, Lisa, Adam...I don't understand your consternation at the quality of architecture devoted to hospitals for persons with mental illness. Why are patients with this kind of illness less deserving than any other group? Should their home look like a jail, as if the patients are convicted criminals? If a person you loved required this type of care, would you still complain about the "waste?" What about the employees--were they also undeserving of an attractive place to work? I am troubled by the idea that only certain types of people are worthy of beauty or attention or care.

http://farm4.static.fl...575_065ac5d95d_o.jpg

You should have come back with the boards off!

Was there ever a connecting building behind this? Looks like it was demolished and sealed up with brick.

i was flabber gasted my lead man was vomiting and the boss did not care he was gettin on in ag e his name was palker d o b 1910 i am 51 years old now and still canott forget that my crew of three was responsibl for the nine alarmer in broad daylight

we as adults had the permishion from the state politions to converge on all floors one to five with acetalene torches to cut stainless steel our boss is since deceaced we got the fire started by accident at 4 p m roughley give or take

it is an historical statement of what stone masons can do i am so sorry my crew of three guys were responsible for the fire in 1999 we did not mean to and we had permission from the state to be there however i fell bad that i was responsible for the 9nine alarmer late fall 1999

its disturbs me when i saw the railings but then i thought this could help the patients from refraining to do somthing bad to themeselves when they dont know what their doing

ANOTHER creepy equipment that comes to life! yikes

a very nice creep hallow hallway!

the shredding walls looks to be a unique interior design, like a glass splited rounds!