92: New York's Notorious Blackwell's Island w/ Stacy Horn - A True Crime History Podcast

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

True Crime, History, Education

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stacy Horn, author of "Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad and Criminal in 19th-Century New York", joins me to chat about the infamous New York City island, which housed the women's notorious lunatic asylum that continued to operate for decades, despite the horrendous abuses committed against the inmates.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello all, Eric here. So if you are not a big fan of advertisements,
0:04.3	disrupting the flow of an interview, there is an option. Go to patreon.com slash most notorious
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0:15.6	most notorious podcast, but also for my new podcast, debuting in September of 2018,
0:20.9	called Where Blood Runs Cold. A collection of terrifying historical true crime stories from my
0:28.2	home state, Minnesota. And for four dollars a month, you'll not only get the ad free episodes,
0:32.7	but bonus content as well, including extra episodes, special commentary, and more. So skip the ads,
0:39.6	support the show and listen to new stuff by going to patreon.com slash most notorious. That's Patreon,
0:48.2	P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash most notorious. See you there. Cheers now back to the interview.
1:18.2	Welcome everyone to the most notorious podcast,
1:45.7	I'm Eric Rivenis. Happy to have you here with me. I'm so pleased to have as my guest today,
1:52.2	Stacey Horn, author of Damnation Island, poor sick, mad and criminal in 19th century New York.
2:00.9	Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you for inviting me. I've got to say I've read a lot of books
2:07.6	for this podcast, but yours is one of the most disturbing I've ever read. And I say that as a
2:13.2	compliment because you're really able to articulate the absolute horrors that happened in this
2:18.3	collection of places in your book. Can you describe for my listeners what Blackwell's island was?
2:24.3	The origins of the island and how an asylum came to be built on it. Sure. Well, it was early in the 19th
2:33.4	century and Bellevue, which is now mostly known as a public hospital. At the time, also
2:43.5	housed the city's lunatic asylum, and that's what it was called at the time, to penal institutions
2:50.3	and the alms house for the poor. And as a result, the conditions there were horribly overgratting
2:57.0	and inhumane city searched around for an alternative and they ended up buying Blackwell's island,
3:06.0	which is a tomb thin, two mile long island in the east river between Manhattan and Queens.
	...

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