Nursing at the Hudson River Psychiatric Hospital by CB Taylor Kinsella

“Hudson River Psychiatric Hospital Here we Come, Right Back Where We Started From” sang  Phidy Hall and I. It was August of 1947.

The hospital, located in Poughkeepsie, New York, was a former New York state psychiatric hospital that operated from 1871 until its closure in 2003. The Hudson River campus is sprawling (160+ acres) and beautiful, designed by some of the country’s best architects at the time, including Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead.

The campus is notable for its main building, known as a "Kirkbride," which has been designated a National Historic Landmark due to its exemplary High Victorian Gothic architecture, the first use of that style for an American institutional building.

This expansive campus was built as a part of the Kirkbride Plan, which practiced a new method pioneered by Thomas Story Kirkbride.  Kirkbride encouraged the building of massive structures, conceived as “ideal sanctuaries for the mentally ill”.  The employees of each asylum were also instructed to keep close supervision of every patient, as it was believed to help promote self control. Patients were encouraged to exercise on the sprawling campuses and to eat a healthy diet, trying to help rehabilitate their lives so they could eventually re-enter society.

----------------

Phidy (Phyllis) Hall and I were charter members of the ‘5^th Wheel Club’ and on our way to a three month affiliation at this place for the mentally ill. This club? Oh, that was the name the five of us had chosen. Finding ourselves roommates when we began the nursing program, as ‘Probies’, we’d teamed up with the next door girl, ‘Swanie’ and two more down the hall, Marian Miller and Betty McLarty. Betty had recently left us, at the end of the first six months; ‘Not my dish’ she said about nursing, but we four had continued on, and now, Phid and I were off on another adventure!

Phid was an easygoing loner from Corning, NY who had ‘traveled alone’ through no fault of her own. Her bluntness was hard to get used to at first, but I found the lonely girl under it and we became friends, mainly because we were placed in the only double room in the dormitory. We grew used to one another. Phid read straight through her assignments and seldom studied, while I slowly absorbed mine, hoping to make sense. We both passed the ‘Probie’ test, and were steadfast friends for life. Phid, also, was the recipient of constant jars of Hellmans mayonnaise and cans of potted ham, which her mother brought on her monthly visits. A loaf of bread from the little grocery store across from the hospital and we were ready for a party any time. Now on to Poughkeepsie!

Knowing next to nothing about mental illness, we looked forward to this next chapter in our lives. Arriving, the buildings looked old and barren, with spacious lawns. We noticed small groups of people around under trees, seated on benches or walking about, maybe patients and families? Occasionally one person with a white outfitted adult, perhaps a patient or attendant?

Phid Hall and Aunt CB

Hudson River Psychiatry Hospital

August 1947

Later we discovered, yes our guess was correct; in good weather, some patients were allowed to visit outside with families—only the very nearly well ones and only in certain paths and areas. Attendants might accompany a single mostly recovered patient strictly as a ‘prize’ given for good behavior!

Locked units were necessary; your set of keys was your passport, never to be out of your person. Windows were mostly screened, and some buildings more heavily guarded than others.

Classes gave us a foundation for the understanding of various types of illness within the scope of mental disability. Wide variances existed within the scope of each category. Each of them represented heart breaking periods of someone’s life, or broken edges of families.

We were exposed to various degrees of illness, from the very violent individuals to the sweet little confused ones, who might be just clever enough to fool you into relaxing your guard and grab your keys or ‘clonk’ you. We learned to guard our backs and protect one another.

These were not the days of medication that was to be the future of psychiatry, and offer a real hope of ‘living a life’ for some. These were days of such activities as warm baths in tubs, secured with canvas robes within the calming water, to electric shock treatments for the jolt that might clarify the brain. Water baths required constant single attendance and sometimes required singing or story telling or just plain ‘listening’ to the patient.

Crafts were available for those on the path to ‘wellness’  to keep themselves busy and I particularly enjoyed the large loom; it reminded me of one my Grandma Baker had in her attic, on which she wove rugs from scraps of any material available. In fact, I wove a small scatter rug myself there—enjoyable but hard work!

Patients, during their ‘well’ times, could congregate in large sitting rooms to listen to radios, play cards, visit with one another or just plain rest. There were quiet spots to read, and as we were there in August through October, plenty of lovely fall days to take ‘trusted’ patients outside to walk, but we never did so without a constant awareness on our part.

And yes, there were favorite friends, ones who became your special client, ones who sometimes broke your heart with their back sliding. Remember, no medications as yet; it was still in the early stages of experimentation. 

Yes, I met ‘Constance’ one day, she was a lovely short honey blond, maybe 26 years of age; she had a PhD in chemistry. We chatted, but chemistry was never my strong subject.  I listened to all the stories she had to tell and enjoyed especially her stories of the tricks her students pulled on one another during their lab experiments.

The next day I came on duty to find her in a straight jacket, a teeth gnashing, spitting, very irate young lady who bore no resemblance to my friend of the day before.

Marsha Hinz, Grace Stennner, Dick Cashmer,

 Phyd Hall, Mom

August 1947

Then, in the dining room, there was ‘Annie’, a genial lady of perhaps 40 or so, who daily ate corn on the cob, the cob going from left to right in a frantic pace like an accordion, all while a steady stream of kernels shot out of a hole in the side of her neck. An infected throat left unattended, they said, she had lived this way for 6 to 8 years. Her head ‘not quite right’ to live outside or even to completely care for herself, but where else to keep her?

I think the biggest thing I learned was ‘compassion’—to understand that for each of us, be it family genes, life’s distress, illness or whatever, we were each only a small space from being here ourselves. Yes, treat warily, medically, but with compassion for there, ourselves might be one day.

At the end of this affiliation, I did something I had long wanted to do. My mother, Ethel Baker Taylor, as a 7^th and 8^th grade teacher, had specialized in mathematics and English, as well as Art—drawing and painting. Having met my father, Lloyd Taylor, in Oakfield, she found their plans meshed, as he planned to go to Albany and study morse code and train to be a train master, while she obtained a teaching position in East Orange, New Jersey, which happened to be the end of the line for her train conductor uncle.

Thus, Uncle Frank Youngs was available each circuit, as he rode from Scranton, PA to New Jersey, to keep an eye on her, in strange new territory. New York City was only a short distance for Ethel and Lloyd to meet one another on a long weekend.

While teaching, she lived in a strict dormitory for lady teachers, and attended church weekly where she met an office worker, Adelia Guernsey, who became a close friend. Adelia worked as a policy clerk at Prudential Insurance; she lived with her mother Harriet, and her younger sister, Lillie. Mom became a member of her family, as all three Guernseys were church members. They became very close and stayed close for at least forty or forty-five years.

As Mom married and had a family, their friendship enlarged to encompass all of us! “Aunt Dede” as we knew her, was our Fairy God Mother, and her Christmas packages, arriving during the Depression, were sometimes the bulk of our gifts. Adelia, her sister and mother, after carefully creating their lists from Mom’s letters that must have given them hints or actual needs, purchased each of us a gift, wrapped it, packaged it in a large box and mailed it. That box was eagerly awaited by all six of us Taylor kids, sometimes arriving the third week of December but often was more like the day before Christmas and one disastrous year, it arrived AFTER Christmas!

That’s where I got my baby doll who wet her diapers—my Betsy Wetsy doll, and my Girl Scout belt and compass. One summer when Aunt DeDe arrived by train for a visit, we girls each got a lovely plastic bracelet.  We had never had one before this!

I wanted this woman to know what she had meant to us, and although her mother was dead, to tell her how we loved the packages over the years, how we loved all of the work and care they put into them, and we so thanked and appreciated them! Through the years, these packages were such an important part of our childhood.

So, I visited with the two sisters and stayed overnight. Aunt Dede died five years later, in 1952, although I did not know it at the time. And throughout the years, as adults, when each one of the six of us sent a package to one of the others, we said it was from ‘Aunt Dede’.Aunt Dede, wherever you are, thank you again!