UER Store order your copy of Access All Areas today! Activity 661 online Server Time: 2024-05-16 11:15:32 Visit Infiltration Access All Areas AvBrand

UER Forum > Archived US: Northeast > Just some interesting narrative about Danvers from my grandmother... (Viewed 386 times) FFStudios  Gender: Female  |  Just some interesting narrative about Danvers from my grandmother... < on 10/29/2011 1:53 PM >   Hello UER, I haven't posted here in AGES it seems and I feel it only fitting to re-establish myself with society with something like this. In the late 50s to mid 60s my grandmother worked as a bus driver for the entirety of Essex county, in Massachusetts. A lot of her work was shuttling people from government/public works places to meetings and such, but she also had another arrangement with the faculty of Danvers State. Whenever they would go on "field trips" with some of the patients, they would call the company my grandmother worked for and they would drive them around. So every once in a while my grandma would take the drive up to Hathorne Hill, walk to wherever she needed to in the building, then drive them to places such as the beach. She said that most of the patients she came across were kindly and good natured (attributed to the fact that the closer to administration you were held, the less dangerous you were) but they had a nasty tendency to want to touch you. On the bus, patients would freely walk up and down the bus aisle for no reason and occasionally had to be restrained until they got to their destination. They'd try to pet my grandma's hair as she would drive, but the bus had a special curtain installed, so she would be able to close it for some driving privacy. She used to go up and down the fire escapes at the hospital to avoid getting caught up with talking to a bunch of people in the wings. One interesting story she told me was that one time, as she was going up, a large group of unsupervised patients were coming down. This gave her quite a scare, as at that point you have no idea whether these patients could be benevolent or violent. So she walked all the way back down the 5 flights of fire escape stairs, waited for them to leave, then climbed back up and into the wing. I dunno if any of this is very interesting or not, but I've had a certain infatuation with Danvers since 2007 and I just heard all this stuff yesterday. Justice works on the principle of equal torment for all. Under no circumstances may justice find a mistake excuseable. Weirdlig  Gender: Female  |  Re: Just some interesting narrative about Danvers from my grandmother... <Reply # 1 on 10/29/2011 3:05 PM >   Cool story bro, and I actually don't mean that sarcastically. It's always fascinating to know someone with a personal history to these types of places. My dad worked as night guard at a state hospital I visited a couple months back, but I didn't actually realize he worked in that very building until after the explore! Apparently he lived on campus for two bucks a week in 1967. For the most part he just sat and waited, not much happened. His only two stories are an occasion where he had to [with several other workers] pull some crazed man off a barred window who seemed to develop superhuman strength in his frenzy. The other was the story that made him quit. He had to feed the patients in what they called 'The Vegetable Ward', which was basically the brain damage unit. Their stories were mostly depressing, let alone their demeanor--such as the intelligent young man who had a future until he got kicked in the head by a horse, or the woman who sat from wake to sleep singing 'I want to go to bed, la la, I want to go to bed!' They had lined up twenty some-odd wheelchairs in the ward and one by one they were fed porridge of some kind...he had never seen anything like it and got out instantly afterwards. I'd heard the vegetable ward story all my life and shortly after telling him about my explore we both realized I was in that room forty years later than he was. http://www.flickr....irdlingphotography MrGreenJeans  This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.  |  Re: Just some interesting narrative about Danvers from my grandmother... <Reply # 2 on 10/31/2011 12:08 AM >   Go to an old age home, it's very similar. Crazy people babbling to themselves, drooling and begging you to let them out. I know it's fun to pretend these places were hell on earth, but really it was the best care they could have got at the time. Of course the violent offenders were kept locked up, and the nuts had more freedom even going on field trips like FF said. The alternative was probably being a vegetable at home where family couldn't have given the same amount of care or living under the bridge like alot of nuts do now since these places are closed up. FFStudios  Gender: Female  |  Re: Just some interesting narrative about Danvers from my grandmother... <Reply # 3 on 11/1/2011 4:05 AM >   But you have to keep in mind that this was a period in which Danvers was hideously overcrowded. The patients were not getting very good care at all. They'd put patients in the hydro ward just to shut them up. Justice works on the principle of equal torment for all. Under no circumstances may justice find a mistake excuseable. UER Forum > Archived US: Northeast > Just some interesting narrative about Danvers from my grandmother... (Viewed 386 times) All content and images copyright © 2002-2024 UER.CA and respective creators. Graphical Design by Crossfire. To contact webmaster, or click to email with problems or other questions about this site: UER CONTACT View Terms of Service | View Privacy Policy | Server colocation provided by Beanfield This page was generated for you in 93 milliseconds. Since June 23, 2002, a total of 741933615 pages have been generated.