1,000 Bodies Found On University Of Mississippi Land Thought To Be From Old 'Lunatic Asylum'

[ashling]

While surveying land for a new parking lot at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, officials made a grisly discovery: more than 1,000 bodies thought to have been patients at the old Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum.

The unnamed, century-old graves present a problem for the university, whose expansion plans could be halted over the cost of relocating the bodies.

Dr. James Keeton, dean of the medical school, said that moving the remains to a new burial site would cost an estimated $3 million -- that's $3,000 per body.

"We can't afford that," Keeton said, according to USA Today.

Instead of moving the bodies, the expansion will most likely be relocated to another location on the 164-acre campus. It's possible there could be more unmarked graves belonging to tuberculosis patients, former slaves, or possibly even Civil War dead, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
While surveying land for a new parking lot at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, officials made a grisly discovery: more than 1,000 bodies thought to have been patients at the old Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum.

The unnamed, century-old graves present a problem for the university, whose expansion plans could be halted over the cost of relocating the bodies.

Dr. James Keeton, dean of the medical school, said that moving the remains to a new burial site would cost an estimated $3 million -- that's $3,000 per body.

"We can't afford that," Keeton said, according to USA Today.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/10/1000-bodies-university-mississippi-insane-asylum_n_4761166.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
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This is cool!

I was a unit administrator at Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield which was built in the late 30s to replace the Lunatic Asylum in Jackson.

I was on a history committee and traveled to Baton Rouge to conduct an oral history interview with the architect of the hospital at Whitfield. I had thought that I might write something on the topic of the founding of the hopital someday - either a straight history or a historical novel centering on Dorothea Dix and her role in it.

In 1852 Dorothea Dix came to Mississippi and spoke on the floor of the Senate about the need for a hospital. Shortly thereafter the hospital was begun on what is now the grounds of the Ole Miss medical school.

In 1863 when the union army surrounded Jackson from the North and West, one of the buildings they captured was the Asylum - which at that time was a few miles north of town. They were using the cupola of the building as an observation and communication (symaphore) site until it drew Confederate fire from the reinforced Confederate position along a higher ridge, now Fortification Street. The Dr. in charge of the Asylum asked (probably pleaded) with them to leave to save the building, as it surely woud have been destroyed by cannon fire. The Union troops abandoned the building and it survived.

Of course Jackson didn't. It was burned - it acquired the name "Chimneyville" because of all of the standing chimneys that were left.

Dorothea Dix, the famous advocate for the mentally ill, was instrumental in getting mental hospitals - commonly called Asylums - built throughout the north and south. Abraham Lincoln named her the Director of Army Nurses during the war. It is very touching to note that she remained in contact with many of her southern contacts during and after the war.

I felt that there was a good tale to be told in there somewhere, but I never got around to writing it.

anyway, it had long been known that there was a cemetary out there somewhere, but nobody knew where.

Maybe the next time we go to Mississippi I will have to spend some time with this.

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. What a fascinating history...

thank you for sharing the stories.

[csziggy]

2. I always wonder if asylums were really for lunatics

My great grandmother died in an asylum in Alabama, but it was for victims of consumption now known as tuberculosis. I believe she was buried at the hospital and not returned to be buried where her husband and family were buried.

So many times when I hear that an old building was an asylum - such as on some of these ghost hunter shows - I'm never sure if it was really for people with mental problems or if it was actually a hospital to quarantine people with diseases that were incurable at the time. That explains quite a few of these buildings that did have hundreds or thousands of deaths at the site.

Since you have knowledge of this particular location, I won't wonder about it.

[ashling]

3. asylum is a generic term

it means a shelter or refuge. There were asylums for the mentally ill, as well as for tuberculosis, and other ailments

In the 1840s when Dorothea Dix traveled throughout New England she found the severely psychotic and other mentally ill held in horrible conditions in jails and homes throughout the region. Some were kept in cellars, some were kept chained in a rootcellar or other shed or hole in the ground. Many of these poor souls were kept in conditions that would drive a sane man mad. She spent much of the rest of her life seeing to it that there were places of asylum for these people.

She lobbied state legislatures throughout the country to get comfortable refuges built. She was an amazing and compassionate woman.