Port Magazine

31 July 2013 Prologue: Senior editor Matt Willey introduces this month's podcast on Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane, opened in 1869 on Seneca Lake, New York State. It's mission, to "Treat the chronically insane with gentleness and understanding". Nearly 50'000 patients lived at Willard during its 127 year history and roughly half died there. When it closed its doors in 1995, workers stumbled upon a discovery that shed an unknown light on the lives of Willard's patients... Karen Miller, a psychiatrist and poet who's spent the last several years researching the histories of Willard's former patients, talks to former employees Sally Dawley and Peg Ellsworth, who started working at Willard's in 1948. Miller explains how Willard, the first psychiatric hospital in New York, was home to more than 4'000 patients at one time during the 1920s and 30s, and the cultural attitude to mental illness at the time. We also meet photographer Jon Crispin has been tasked with documenting the suitcases of patients, found