Haunted Memories. State Secrets.
I later discovered that I had stumbled upon what was rumored to be one of Rhode
Island’s most haunted sites, where terrified trespassers would often flee from ghostly
cries. Now, almost 20 years since I laid eyes on the large, abandoned campus in rural
Exeter, it still haunts me: Riderless swings on long-abandoned swing sets blowing in the
breeze along with tall grass. Shattered windows in buildings scrawled with profanities.
Urban blight surrounded by bucolic farmland.
Whether or not you believe in the paranormal, it’s hard to believe that what went on at
the Rhode Island School for the Feeble Minded was ever considered normal. The public
face of the institution was all well and good. Beginning in 1908, the state-run school
would enable the mentally challenged or disabled to learn a trade or farming so that
they could become productive members of society. Beneath this veneer of good
intentions, however, was an overriding mission—to remove menaces from society so
they would not breed.
In the early 20 th century, leading intellectuals worldwide were swept up by eugenics, a
scientifically unsound and morally reprehensible theory that to protect and perfect
humanity, undesirable hereditary traits needed to be systematically eliminated from the
gene pool. Not the musings of a lone, charismatic crackpot, eugenics was underwritten
by foundations established by the Rockefellers and Carnegie. Throughout the 1920s
and ‘30s exhibits at fairs across the country touted the benefits of the movement for the
good of mankind. Eugenicists stationed at Ellis Island used its teachings to screen
immigrants. This homegrown American movement is how Harvard and MIT justified
using children as unwitting human guinea pigs in experiments. Across the Atlantic, it
served as Hitler’s inspiration to create a master race.
The Rhode Island School for the Feeble Minded was established by fervent eugenicist
Dr. Walter Fernald, who notoriously lured some of his students to join a so-called
“Science Club,” then allowed Quaker Oats to feed them oatmeal laced with radioactive
isotopes for their own studies. Equally horrifying was the sweeping criteria for what
qualified as feeble-minded. Inmates, as they were aptly called, were enrolled for many
reasons. They were there because they were mentally or developmentally disabled.
They were there because they were physically infirmed. They were there because they
were simply unwanted, destitute or abandoned. Many were placed there by a judge,
who, along with doctors, would provide them with a label—idiot, defective, imbecile,
moron, degenerate or mentally inferior.
Many women were there for being “boy-crazy.” Unwed mothers, prostitutes and
promiscuous females were viewed as morally deficient, therefore incurably feeble
minded. It was seen as prudent to hold them until after their childbearing years to
prevent them from spawning more threats to society.
By 1944, reports of deplorable conditions included such severe overcrowding that 50
inmates slept on the floor. The school designed to accommodate 484 was housing 833;
a few years later the number of inmates whose ages ran from 2 to 79 years old neared
1,000. So understaffed, there were no nurses, just one doctor and two teachers who
taught classes of 100 children. Higher-functioning inmates were enslaved to pick up the
slack. Rhode Island was not alone; by 1949, it’s estimated that 150,000 people were
institutionalized in similar facilities across the country, 12,000 of whom had nothing
wrong with them whatsoever.
In 1958, the school was renamed the Dr. Joseph H. Ladd School after Fernald’s protégé
and a proponent for involuntary sterilization of the feeble minded. As the eugenics
movement was gradually debunked, the school devolved into a dumping ground for
anyone in unfortunate circumstances.
After a half century of scandalous operation, an inquiry into the Ladd Center revealed
many shameful truths. Despite substantiated allegations of abuse, neglect, and medical
malpractice, the school carried on in the same way for almost 30 more years. Finally
ordered closed by Governor DiPrete in 1986, it wasn’t until the 1990s that its last
inhabitants would be rehomed.
A few of the school buildings on the 331-acre campus were repurposed, but most stood
decaying for decades. The last one came down in 2016. A cemetery serves as a lasting
reminder of the horrors that the 4,500 people who lived there experienced.