By: Jess Gallagher

“[D]espite the mostly positive, caring work that went on here 

(and at other similar facilities), there seems to be a story or two of negative incidents, 

any one of which is enough to initiate stories 

of restless souls and troubled spirits.”

 –Damned Connecticut

“Mansfield Training School has gotten plenty of attention, 

for it is believed to be haunted.”

–Abandoned Playgrounds

“A former mental asylum still haunted by its victims… 

Dead animal bones littered the area.  

Old dressers, beds, and a wheelchair were strewn all over. 

The antique board reading “The Mansfield Training School”

–Syfy’s Paranormal Witness “The Haunting of Mansfield Mansion”

It was around 8:30 p.m. on a Monday night in early March. I sat at my desk in our school newspaper’s office. Since I had finished copyediting a good portion of my work for next day’s paper, I spent the rest of my free time line-editing a draft of my honors thesis on Mansfield Training School. Of course, while this was months later than my initial research on the institution, there were still more than a few questions that were left unanswered despite the amount of archival work that we had done. So, naturally, whenever I hear the words “Depot Campus” come out of someone’s mouth I instantly start listening, but I normally always hear the same conversation repeated…

“Oh yeah, have you guys ever been to the Depot campus before.”

“No, what’s that?”

“Isn’t that where the puppet place is?”

“Yeah, I heard it’s pretty haunted.”

This is how most of the conversations I overhear go. And, while it’s interesting to hear people actually talking about Mansfield Training School, this specific conversation really made me start thinking about hauntings and the implications that these narratives have on the past. Though the “haunted” articles on Mansfield Training School outweighed the history on my initial search of the school I really didn’t think much of it. It’s so common after all. 

Growing up, I always listened to stories about old hospitals, abandoned prisons, and “insane” asylums. My friends and I watched Paranormal Witness, The Haunted, and Ghost Hunters. And while these shows did tell us a little bit about the history of the buildings and sites they investigated, the main emphasis was on the demonic, the anger, the aggression, and the ‘ghosts’ rather than the people who endured the abuse, suffering, and oppression that those in power inflicted on them. 

In a way, we almost fail to understand the social impact that articles on “hauntings” have when it comes to the United States’ history of institutionalization. Viewing historical sites as “haunted” almost creates distance between the true history of the institutions and (if done frequently enough) can erase the humanity of the people who come to be labeled as just the institution’s “victims.” They become faceless. 

It seems that through the rhetoric utilized when talking about institutionalization if we center hauntings rather than investigate the histories of the “victims” or objects of said haunting, we can lose valuable information that critiques past behaviors and actions, attitudes, and ideals, or spatial and cultural norms that inflicted abuse and supported the oppression of millions of marginalized identities. 

Of course, there is always a degree of temporal distance associated with sites such as Mansfield Training School and its history, but if we use distance and re-frame it as a means to gain clarity and perspective that comes with the passage of time then we can establish a relationship of engagement and insight that can connect us to a past that has long been erased. 

I am in no way, of course, shaming or demeaning the entire genre of ‘ghost stories’ or ‘hauntings’ by talking about the potential harmful effects that can come when we center and sensationalize paranormal narratives over history and people of the past. The attention garnered by these paranormal stories could very well serve as a launching point for where we, as activists and scholars, can begin working. 

But, we must first be conscious of the distance being created (both socially, historically, and culturally) in these paranormal narratives and only then can we truly examine ‘sites of hauntings’ as ‘sites of history.’ In changing that perspective, scholars, activists, and investigators can uplift the stories and histories of those who lost their lives at these institutions. 

When we come to understand the history of institutions like Mansfield Training School, we understand that it was not just a place with “mostly positive, caring work” being conducted that just happens to have one or two angry spirits (like Damn Connecticut would have us believe). Instead, we uncover the politics, experimentation, and cross-institutional connections that went on here and in dozens of institutions across the state of Connecticut. 

While ghost stories and narratives of the paranormal will always remain, I think it’s important that we remain cognizant of the people behind these narratives, their histories, and work to advocate against modern-day forms of institutionalization that currently exist in our society. If not, then years from now, we may see our own history become one of the many haunted stories of the past…

By: Matthew Iannantuoni

Enraptured by the findings of the termination papers, I dove back into the folders of the “Dismissal and legal action regarding Elly C. Fischer, Florence M. Nichols, James P. Purcell, Dr. Helen T. Warner” where I found another shred of evidence that seems to only muddy the story I was trying to uncover.  On a yellowed piece of legal paper was, in faint handwriting “Overheard in staff dining room by patients (waiters) Dorothy Reynolds on the day of the write up in the paper (Tuesday Dec 14 1944.)” This faded note from some unknown staffer details a conversation between the three medical staff members who would be terminated less than a year later. The conversation goes as follows:

 “Dr Warner said the paper did not blame him enough” 

Mrs. Nichols replied “they’d get something on him yet.” 

Mrs Fischer said “He’s such a damn liar he’d deny it anyway”

“The next day Dr. Warner said to Dorothy Reynolds ‘you’d better look out they may send you to the Superintendent’s office’”  

She replied, “I wouldn’t go to the office and tell anything.”

Dr Warner said “That’s right Dorothy don’t go”

The girl was told not to tell anything she overheard them talking about in the dining room”   

This faded piece of paper gives so much muddying insight into how things at MTS were running at the time. It seems as though the three medical staff members, Warner, Nichols and Fischer all spoke out to a newspaper against Superintendent Neil Dayton, but that the resulting article did not cover all that they were complaining about. The conversation with one of the patients also gives some insight into how Dayton ran the institution; the threat of going to the Superintendent’s office is enough to keep the patient quiet. It really calls into question some of the more intense complaints on the termination letters. Some of the most egregious examples are in Dr. Warner’s termination letter, which states:

 “Incompetency in the service in failure to respond to a call in the case of Louise Seymour, who was suffering from a broken femur. You did not go to see the patient, but ordered her brought to the clinic in the Hospital Building. The patient, with a broken leg, was picked up and, although in great pain, was carried to the Hospital Building by another patient” 

There is also the complaint: 

 “Failure to follow an order to the point of insubordination in not writing out orders in Doctor’s Order Book in William Coursen’s case. Five hypodermics were administered by you without being recorded in either the Doctor’s Order Book or the beside notes, with the result that there is no record of the drugs given by hypodermic at these times by you, or the amount thereof.”   

While these seem like rather appalling offenses from the director of nursing, there are other shreds of evidence that sway in the direction that Dr. Warner was doing the best she could with limited resources. For example, in a letter from  Dayton to the Chairman on the Board of Trustees there is the request to hire a pharmacist because “the work of the Drug Room has been taken care of by Mrs. Nichols and the other registered nurse. However, properly speaking, this is not their work and it has not been a very satisfactory procedure,” Later stating that “We might be in a little better position to stand criticism if we had a pharmacist” of which criticism is probably referring to the newspaper article that started this controversy. 

Another piece of damning evidence is the document titled “REASONS FOR EMPLOYEES LEAVING THE: Mansfield State Training School and Hospital March 1– April 30, 1945” which details that a total of 19 staff members had resigned, retired, or left without notice all in the same short period. While there is little explanation left for this mass exodus it seems as though there was some great discontent when only 2 of the 19 left for reasons pointing toward a consensual and mutual break. 

As mentioned in my previous blog post, this is the rub in doing this kind of archival work, we are left with a few puzzle pieces that can fit together several different ways. Was it truly a bad set of staff that were not fulfilling their job responsibility? Was it poor leadership that set impossible standards in an attempt to rid the institution of workers speaking out against some cruelty in the institution? Was it some unknown third factor that has been lost to time? Given what we know about how patients were treated at the Mansfield Training School it is important to ask who is to blame, which, of course, is never a cut and dry answer. However, any shred of definitive culpability seems to be lost to time, given the documents left behind.    

Image 1: Superintendent Neil A. Dayton.

Image 2: “Overheard in staff dining room by patient.”

Images 3 & 4: The termination letter of Dr. Helen T. Warner.

Images 5 & 6: A letter from superintendent Dayton to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees requesting the hire of a pharmacist in order “to better stand criticism.”

Image 7: “Reasons for Employees Leaving the Mansfield Training School and Hospital March 1- April 30, 1945.”

By: Matt Iannantuoni

My fellow researchers, Jess and Brenda, had found in the archive inventory list a box titled “Dismissal and legal action regarding Elly C. Fischer, Florence M. Nichols, James P. Purcell, and Dr. Helen T Warner (1942-5.)” Knowing that I am eventually bound for Law School, they suggested I read through it as my entrance into this project. After reading through these folders I have found my problem with this type of archival work is that those doing the research are at once archeologists, storytellers and, ultimately, visitors peaking in on what was once someone’s career. The natural inclination is to put together a story from the documents which tends to be like putting together a puzzle without the picture on the box and with many missing pieces.  As I dug through the minutes and court documents from the Personnel Appellate hearings for four employees of Mansfield Training Schools I was trying to find the through-line of the folder, I kept asking, what did these four major staff members do in the mid-forties?

My question had been answered by a slew of new questions when I came upon a stapled set of papers titled “Termination Letters” and the through-line immediately revealed itself, “Failure to cooperate with and hostility towards, and defiance of the authority of the Superintendent duly appointed by this board.” Each of these employees, an X-Ray Technician (Fischer,) the director of nursing (Nichols,) a business manager (Purcell,) and a Senior Physician (Warner) had all been fired, at the same time, for separate and often seemingly inconsequential missteps besides this one similarity- “defiance of the authority of the Superintendent.” Perhaps this common complaint is just a generalized, boilerplate umbrella phrase, however, the explicit mention of the Superintendent (Neil A. Dayton) seems to point away from this conclusion.

 Each employee had a laundry list of missteps, such as the director of nursing being accused of “Neglect of duty and incompetency in failure to have resertilized for several months certain sterile goods held for routine or emergency use.” Or, in the case of the X-Ray technician, “Language and conduct towards personnel employed in said institution, leading to friction, dissension, and disturbance of the harmonious operation of the institution.”  It’s impossible to say with any certainty how founded or unfounded these claims are, which is the “rub” of doing this kind of work, however, taken with what we know about the overwhelming code of silence which allowed so many cruelties to go on unabated, it seems that those accused may have spoken out against the institution, “broken the code” and were fired soon after. 

Another “mask off” example of this is in the complaints levied against the business manager (Purcell) which, chief among the nine, is “Failure to carry out an order to the point of insubordination in refusing to return an ornamental metal tray left as a gift in your office in 1943 by a business concern doing business with said institution” and then hidden on the second page, at number 8 is “indulging in unwarranted criticisms, charges and accusations against the Superintendent of said institution, at public hearings, in newspapers and in other ways, in a manner tending to bring discredit upon the Superintendent of said institution.” Attempts to find records of the public hearings, newspapers and the ominously ambiguous “in other ways” proved futile, a moment in MTS history that is left open to interpretation. 

As I dug through this box of files I kept finding different documents that did not seem connected to the termination of the staff members, for example, a few patient census files that counted the number of patients at MTS, a copy of an outdated Connecticut act concerning “Training School Recommitments and Transfers,” as well as a letter from the patient’s mother, thanking the Superintendent for the treatment her son received from doctors and nurses. I’m not sure how these relate to the mass termination of 1945, but I’m also not sure why they would be in this folder if they were not. More questions than answers on this first day of research. 

Image 1 and 2: the termination letter of business manager James P. Purcell.

Image 3: Thank you note from Tommy’s Mother (name omitted for privacy.)