This book was very detailed. I was absolutely fascinated in getting to learn more about the horrors that were hidden in such a infamous prison. I was so stoked about diving into this book, but it was just a bit more dense than I would have liked. Horn is a phenomenal writer and knows how to spin a tale, but it took me ages to get through this one.

An interesting and sad study on the treatment of asylum inmates and heartbreaking on the minor offenses in which some of the people were omitted. The first half of the book was interesting, however the second half felt a bit repetitive; same sad story with different names.

It's hard to say I really enjoyed this book, given the subject matter. I will say that it's a good peek into the lives of people whom history has ignored.

Netgalley Book

I already knew about a few of the issues with mental institutions and prisons back in the 1880s before reading this book. The information that filled these pages read like a horror story but tragically was all true. I couldn't believe some of the policies and procedures that were put in place.

The nonfiction DAMNATION ISLAND by Stacy Horn was an eye-opening expose. It was fascinating, binge-worthy and masterfully told. Highly recommended 5-star read.

This is a binge-worthy read, that masterfully tells the heart-wrenching tales of the patients and people of Blackwell Island. The author does an amazing job at weaving first hand accounts, news stories and court documents to give the reader the full view of life on this awfully place. Highly recommend.

Damnation Island takes a fascinating and terrifying look into what we did with our physically ill, mentally ill, and criminal populations in the 19th century. It paints a bleak and sad picture, but an important one, I think it is good for people to understand just how poorly these people were treated. Stacy Horn provides the history and horrors of Roosevelt Island from the perspective of the people who lived and died there, which really helps to humanize the story.

Horn has chosen an incredibly interesting topic for her book. Who doesn't want to read about a prison and 'insane asylum'? Unfortunately, I didn't feel like there was a clear, linear focus for the narrative for this to be super readable. Many of the patient stories were fascinating, but they sort of got lost in the shuffle of the details of the administrators. I think the book could have been a real pageturner, but it started to feel repetitive pretty quickly. I also would have loved a little more background on how the history of Blackwell's Island changed and influenced mental illness treatment and prisons in the future.

A true to life horror story. I guess you could say, well, that's in the past, but is it really? Blackwell Island, New York, four institutions built to shelter, the poor, the mad, the sick or the mad, supposedly compassionately. Almst from the beginning this did not work, not enough money, doctors, supplies, criminals providing care for the insane, you can imagine how that worked out. Charles Dickens touring the facility was behind appalled, the smells, the noises, lack of care, thought he had toured hell.
The author dprnds most of her writing on the ssylum, where the most records were available for research. She brings to like several different cases, including of of a dister of charity who was committed by her sister. I can't believe done of the things I read, all the inmates took baths, using the same water, whdthrr ridden with lice or encrusted either feces. Makes me shudder. The book explains how this came to be, but certainly something different could have been done.

It would be easy to dimiss this as ignorance in the past, but challenges in the poor, sick, criminal and mental health areas are still critical today. Granted, there are better treatments available, but prison reform is desperately needed as all the above groups are often imprisoned together, done that certainly shouldn't be there. Mental health cuts, unconsciousable, programs being cut right and left , with nothing provided in there place. We can say we are better now, know better now, but again are we?

Eye opening and informative, cringe worthy reality.

The cover and title were great. Unfortunately for me, that was the best part of the book. It seemed disjointed and dry. There seemed to be a lot of jumping around. Too much info in some places and not enough in others. Maybe, if someone thought that conditions for the insane and destitute were great in the 1800's they'd gain more insight.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read and review this book.

In 1828, New York City purchased a small island. Located in the East River, Blackwell Island was the perfect location for a new asylum. At first, the plans were for a humane facility to help the mentally ill, indigent and criminal elements in the city. They estimated the number of mentally ill in the city to be less than .5% and planned an initial structure to house 200 people. The mentally ill and criminals would never be housed together and the facility might be able to help some of the chronically indigent in the city as well. They got a big surprise when the initial facility opened and had 199 patients (almost at max capacity) within days. The asylum was enlarged multiple times, and the plans for a humane facility was overpowered by cost cutting measures, bad planning and ignorance. In the 100 years Blackwell Island was used as an asylum the conditions, treatment of patients and medical services there were suspect and often cruel. Damnation Island tells the story of Blackwell Island and its inhabitants.

This book is very well researched and documented, which made it difficult to read. I had to read a chapter at a time...and go cool off....then return. What a grim picture of life in the 1800s. People could be committed for eccentricities or completely fraudulent reasons. Many women were committed because they were in the way or difficult, not because of any mental illness. Conditions in the institution were abysmal. Treatments were even worse. And this went on for 100 years!! Racism even played a part in the treatment of patients. The Irish were seen as incurable and intrinsically insane. Wow...really?? This book is a real eye opener about the use of institutions to pack away citizens seen as problems, without any real care about the quality of their life, health or care. At one point, the city was proud that they could run the institution at a cheap per-patient cost, completely oblivious to the fact that meant there was not enough food or medical supplies to go around. Patients were overcrowded, exposed to diseases and vermin, kept in unsanitary conditions and mistreated. Criminals housed on the island were hired as orderlies and workers and further mistreated patients. Just a sad tale all around.

I enjoyed this book, despite the grim subject manner. I am glad that there have been vast improvements in the mental health field, laws passed to protect people from fraudulent commitment, and health and safety regulations for institutions. I know that atrocities still occur, but I'm hopeful that they are nowhere near the level that happened on Blackwell Island.

Stacy Horn is the author of several non-fiction books including The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad and Waiting For My Cats to Die: A Memoir. Damnation Island is well researched and interesting. I will definitely be reading more by this author.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Algonquin Books via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

I was unable to finish this version of the book since it’s entirely lacking in dates, time and percentiles, which was pretty disappointing since I’m interested in Roosevelt Island. I’ll read the library’s copy when it comes in instead.

Damnation Island by Stacy Horn is the true story of Blackwell Island (now called Roosevelt Island) in New York's East River. It was home to a lunatic asylum, prison, almshouse, and hospitals. What was meant to be an improvement on all others ended up being just as bad or worse. It was hard to read at times simply due to the horror and sadness at what people endured. Mr. Horn does an excellent job of bringing this forgotten part of history to life.

This was a well written, engaging, and often horrifying account of the asylums in New York that were so often overlooked. It got into personal accounts of individuals, which upped the impact level quite a bit, and kept up a good pace, never lagging. I would definitely recommend this to fans of history, and of those who don't want to forget the horrors of the past.

Please see note to Publisher; not reviewing this title. The start rating reflects that we will purchase for our libraries but I did not complete the reading based on ARC formatting issues.

It’s an old saw that the measure of a society is how they treat it’s poorest members. If this is true, then nineteenth century New York has a lot to answer for. As we learn in Stacy Horn’s Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York, being poor and/or suffering from a mental illness and/or being a criminal at this time and place meant a trip to Blackwell’s Island. The island was home to an insane asylum, a prison, and a work house from the second half of the nineteenth century into the early decades of the twentieth. Horn dug through archives and newspapers to tell the appalling stories of all of these institutions.

The first third of the book covers New York Lunatic Asylum. Nineteenth century mental health care was appalling compared to today, though I suppose this asylum was a step up from London’s Bethlehem Royal Hospital (Bedlam), where keepers would charge admission for people to see the patients. The rooms at the Lunatic Asylum were essentially cells—small, dirty, and overcrowded. As a special bonus, the attendants were inmates from the nearby Penitentiary and the doctors were undergraduates, sometimes in their first year of medical school. The place was a miserable hell on earth. It was so bad that it was the subject of one of journalist Nellie Bly‘s exposés. Even though there were calls for reform, nothing ever happened for the patients. They were poor and there was never enough funding to build them something better.

After discussing the Asylum, Horn moves on to the Penitentiary, the Work House, the Almshouses, and the island hospitals. The situation at these buildings was dire. Hundreds of people would die in epidemics of cholera or typhus. Hunger was endemic. But I think, even worse than the deprivations of the island was the attitude of the people in charge of the island’s institutions and its funding. Even though the idea of all of the island’s institutions was to provide a place and care for people who had no where else to go, costs were cut everywhere. At one point, one of the buildings was literally bolted together before it fell apart and had to be rebuilt. Pennies were pinched because, as Horn quotes from the annual report for 1876, which reads:

Care has been taken not to diminish the terrors of this last resort of poverty [the Almshouse], because it has been deemed better that a few should test the minimum rate at which existence can be preserved, than that the many should find the poor house so comfortable that they would brave the shame of pauperism to gain admission to it. (n.p.*)

Horn also quotes Alexander Macdonald, a physician who worked at various of the island’s hospital, who wrote, “To be sure some of them will die, but so much the better for the tax-payers!” (n.p.). He was writing sarcastically but, given the attitudes of the commissioners in charge of the island and philanthropists like Josephine Shaw Lowell, he was essentially telling the truth. They are some of the most hard-hearted people I’ve ever read about.

Last year, I read a history of Bellevue Hospital, which overlaps the history of the New York Lunatic Asylum. Bellevue was and is a charity hospital that treats anyone who comes through the doors. They suffered from some of the funding issues that the Blackwell’s institutions did, but there is a fundamental difference between the two—at least the way the authors present it. There were people who cared at Blackwell’s, just not enough and with not enough clout to fight back against the commissioners. Where Bellevue could triumph in the face of adversity, Blackwell’s just stumbled along, drowning in people they couldn’t help.

Damnation Island is a fascinating, albeit depressing, look at what Americans did to house their poor, their criminals, and their mentally ill instead of caring for them. The prevailing beliefs that these people deserved the terrible conditions that they suffered on Blackwell’s were working against them even before they got off the ferry. Reading this book made me wish things were better today for poorest among us, but I take a little bit of encouragement from the fact that we no longer ship them off to a wretched island.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 15 May 2018.

Horrifying. How did we go from locking up everyone who is mentally ill to just letting them roam the streets homeless. A shocking reflection on how the mentally ill have been and ARE treated.

Damnation Island hooked me right from the first page. Stacy Horn has a great knack for blending historical fact with a narrative writing style which allows the reader to lose themselves in a tangible history lesson.

Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island) is within view of the glittering lights of Manhattan when electricity began to make its way through the city. This is in stark contrast to the bleak life of those who were set to spend their days in the institutions located on the island. Whether they were in the Workhouse, Penitentiary, Asylum, Almshouse, or one of the various hospitals (as term I use very lightly due to the atrocities which happened there) life for the people of Blackwell's was cramped, dirty, and inescapable.

Horn takes the reader through the humble and positive beginning of the institutions on Blackwell's Island all the way to the deterioration of those buildings which housed so much sorrow. Her choice to follow a number of key people through their time in the various institutions (such as Nellie Bly who committed herself in order to report on the conditions of the Asylum) added a much more human element to the horrors. This was not just a statement of horrible facts about the state of care for the mentally unstable or the poor a century (and less) ago but how we are still lacking the proper structure to help those who need it most.

A good source of information if you are doing research about this place. Engaging? No, but I don't think it is supposed to be; it is just a recount of history. I personally didn't enjoy it because I am not interested in the subject, but I do recognize its information value.

This book discusses the history of the many facilities on New York’s notorious Blackwell’s Island: lunatic asylum, almshouse, workhouse, penitentiary, and charity hospital primarily for treating venereal disease. The treatment was abysmally cruel, and there was an odd echo of some current philosophies rejecting help for those deemed lazy and parasitic rather than those considered the “deserving poor.”