The project is called Willard Suitcases and the blog is capturing the very essence of the 400 suitcases belonging to former residents of a New York psychiatric hospital. The cases were put into storage when the patients were admitted, many contained belongings packed without the realisation of what it means to be institutionalised. The luggage dates from between 1910 and 1960 and in the cases of many of the patients they never left. Quite simply tragic.
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| Willard Psychiatric Hospital circa 1880 - courtesy of The New York Times |
You can read more details about the project at
http://www.willardsuitcases.com/about. Jon's introductory post can be found HERE. You can also read Jon's blog and see the posts about the suitcases at http://joncrispinposts.com/
The tragedy in all of this is that many people were confined in institutions across the globe for conditions that were not diagnosed or treated. Conditions such as epilepsy for example. Conditions such as dementia was not acknowledged. In other instances wives were confined for perhaps having what we know now to be post natal depression, or perhaps confined so they could be replaced with a newer model!
Websites such at this one exists to honour those who lived in such tragic times. It is important that we learn from the material and data they left behind.
Further information
- Suitcase Exhibition - http://suitcaseexhibit.org/
- UK Newspaper - The Daily Mail 10th June 2013 - Article
- The Inmates of Willard 1870 - 1900
- US Newspaper - The New York Times 28th November 2014 - Article
- Willard Cemetery Memorial Project
Links accessed and found to be live 23rd March 2015
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