William Sixsmith
Professor Kelly Jones
HIS 3450: Health Care in America
May 16th, 2019
Final Paper
When you think of Randall’s Island the first thing that would come to one’s mind would be its unique landscape and spacious property where many high school and college students would enjoy music festivals like Global Citizens Festival, Panorama, and Electric Zoo. With no residents or apartment buildings located in this area, Randall’s Island has been a spinning image of all the good that comes outdoor recreational parks for the New York citizens. However what people don’t know is its dark past of Wards Island. This strip of land is located in Randall’s Island but is divided by a channel of water that was known as “The Little Hell Gate Channel”. Back in the 19th and part of the 20th century, Wards Island was home to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center and several other institutions that were responsible for the care and watch of New York City’s outcast and villains. The center took the responsible of caring for New York City’s criminals, terminally ill individuals, and the mentally unstable. Based on the idea of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, the patients were to remain on this strip of island and remain there a body of water preventing them from escaping and returning to civilization. The psychiatric is just \the tip of the iceberg compared to the rest of the endeavors that they established when functional. In essence, Randall’s and Wards Island served as a horrific significant of everything improper and inhumane with the treatment and served an image of how not to run a psychiatric center but still has a purpose towards an island as a whole.
There are many reasons to why this location matters to the medicine sector, but it’s how they treated their patients that set them apart from everything else. In 1854, Wards Island established the House of Refuge which housed criminals and street urchins by the hundreds, and both groups were largely comprised of Irish teenage boys. The children spent four hours a day in religious and secular classes, and six and a half hours caning chairs and making shoes for outside contractors. Children who misbehaved were hung up by their thumbs. In 1887, business finally forced the state to stop using House of Refuge inmates as workers (perhaps because the streets of New York were already flooded with cheap immigrant labor) and conditions improved slightly, though there were still reports of inhuman treatment by drunken officers and armed revolts by the boy.[1] The dark past of the island continues to haunt them outside the brutal memories that were left at this refuge house. The Island was also home to a refuge for the smallpox outbreak centuries ago. Once the outbreak began, the island first started to go downhill in 1776 when George Washington declared it a quarantine area for those infected with smallpox.[2] On top of the bodies that were dumped into the East River during this time period, Wards Island also became a burial ground for over 100,000 bodies that were transferred from Madison Square Park and Bryant Park in end of the 19th century. During this time period, Ward’s Island was merely being considered as a drop off station for the dead, sick, and criminally insane with no way of returning to a normal lifestyle.
Although these Islands dark history is something that has always been a topic of conversation, the two islands are holding a purpose for the city that can be commemorated. For some time now, Randall’s Island is responsible for the training program for the FDNY. The Island’s training program, is responsible for formulating and conducting all formal fire suppression training programs within the Department. Randall’s Island, chosen because of its central location to the East River, is surrounded by the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. The numerous training facilities include state of the art audio-visual technology, a Distance Learning Center, buildings that simulate similar dwellings found in the city (tenements, brownstones, commercial buildings), field house, burn building, and propane-fueled automobile fire simulator.[3] The Island is now also responsible for the sewage system for New York City and more. Ward is home to a major sewage treatment center, which takes up about a quarter of the island, and several homeless shelters, some of which are “emergency” shelters that have nevertheless been there for decades.[4] The Islands dark history can still haunt them as they are still home to two functional asylums today, but the Islands serves a growing purpose to the function of the city that will only grow more as time goes on.
The past of the two islands would bring concern to anyone if they’ve lived through the amount of pain that the refuge and psychiatric houses produced, but it’s a new day to commemorate what they’ve done for the city as of late. Stabilizing a quarter of our cities sewage line, emergency homeless shelters, and a Fire Department Training facility are enough examples to see the growth of the two islands since their rocky beginning. The island’s taken in the responsibility for the city with sewage center and the proper care of the homeless shelter to those less fortunate give them the opportunity for making up for their past mistakes. Only time will tell what Randall’s and Wards Island does next to further benefit our city.
References:
[1] Lovejoy, Bess. “Islands of the Undesirables: Randall’s Island and Wards Island”. Atlas Obscura. June 2, 2015.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/islands-of-the-undesirables-randall-s-island-and-wards-island
[2] Childers, Elena. “The Dark Story of Randall’s Island”. BTRToday. May 15, 2016.
https://www.btrtoday.com/read/sunday-island-week/
[3] National College Credit Recommendation Service. “New York City Fire Department”. The University of the State of New York.
http://www.nationalccrs.org/organizations/new-york-city-fire-department
[4] Lovejoy, Bess. “Islands of the Undesirables: Randall’s Island and Wards Island”. Atlas Obscura. June 2, 2015.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/islands-of-the-undesirables-randall-s-island-and-wards-island