Posted on 08/08/2013 4:17:38 PM PDT by Renfield
The children in unmarked graves at a notorious Florida reform school will finally be allowed to tell their stories.
After years of pressure from families, Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet voted to allow researchers to exhume the human remains of dozens of children who died while attending the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.
Researchers from the University of South Florida have identified more than 100 unmarked grave sites on the property of the state-owned school, which was closed in 2011 after decades of allegations that it routinely tortured boys who were sent there, WFLA News reported....
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Horror-story stuff. BTT
They have confirmed the deaths of 96 children were sent to the Dozier School between 1914 and 1973.
That is something like 1 1/2 fatalities per year. That hardly seems out of the norm for a troubled and dysfunctional population. How many were killed by other ‘children’ who were inmates? How many committed suicide? These people were just a younger segment of the same population that matriculated at Starke.
Ghastly!!
96 boys???
Throughout history, I assume most severely troubled boys didn’t live long enough to experience middle age.
I attended a girls reformatory for 18 months in 1972. Nivory died. Kids don’t just die at this rate unless somthing spread thru the school like influenza.
I’m all for scientific autopsies.
I suspect an attorney hungry for a class action jackpot is behind this.
Typo NOBODY died
I was wondering who Nivory was and why she died.
I saw a documentary on one of the History channels a few years back. A horror house for those boys. Unimaginable horrors. If remains are uncovered..and I think they will find some, my prayers for their souls once they receive a proper burial. And appropriate fires for those perps.
Rent the movie “Sleepers.” Tells kind of the same story. Only the movie is fiction ...
I suspect it was not as bad as portrayed but I do recall one of my distant cousins having been sent there.
My Father who knew him fairly well said he was a good kid who got into some minor bit of trouble and they sent him to Dozier with the idea of straightening him out.
He came out a hardened, totally different person. He was a very talented singer and musician but ended up in prison for a lot of his life.
Sad about your distant cousin becoming hardened and ruined by his experience.
Friend of mine grew up in an orphanage in SW Florida many years ago. He had no idea who his parents were but one woman who may or may not have been his mother visited or did not visit him on weekends. The orphanage was not run by trained workers or even by compassionate people. Cruelty was the norm. Then when he was 10, she came and got him, brought him to the Keys, where she had just married a very nice man. Friend had terrible psychological scars that never left. He became a hugely successful extremely wealthy CEO. And a terminal alcoholic. Needless to say, his relationships with women were intensely love-hate, not easy for anyone involved.
Tragic. But at least he got out of the “institution,” and made a life for himself that some would consider enviable. Would he have had the strength to do that had the place he was raised tortured and murdered the boys? He was one tough sob but I don’t think he would have survived Dozier....or at best, he’d have ended up like your cousin. What a waste of a life.
This is a 60-year period, much of it before the knowledge of vitamins. All institutions in the South - black or white, because this was during segregation - had hugely high death rates because corn was the main staple of the diet and many residents had pellagra from their corn-heavy diet. In addition, even in the communities, there was a high rate of mental illness, since dementia is an effect of pellagra. However, this was undiagnosed because nobody had any idea of the possible cause.
Pellagra is a vitamin D (niacin) deficiency disease that was first dentified in the 18th century by a doctor in Spain, when maize (corn) from the Americas started to take over from local grains. One of the problems is that, in addition to not having any niacin of its own, corn blocks the absorption of niacin from other sources.
However, it really wasn’t until early in the 1940s in the US, after the identification of “vitamins,” that scientists understood the connection.
In the South, they had always fed corn meal mush or other corn based products to prisoners (among whom the disease was first identified) and inmates of institutions, such as mental patients. After one study, they found - probably too late for many - that by adding acidic vegetables such as tomatoes or foods high in lysine, such as meats - they could not only halt but reverse the effects of pellagra.
Judging by the dates, I would say that a lot of these kids had pellagra (which was common in the South even outside of institutions because of the corn-heavy diet). It’s not racial, however. This was a practice in any institution until the discovery of vitamins.
Also, don’t forget that antibiotics are a recent development. Penicillin was a WWII development. I was one actually among the earliest civilians to get penicillin when I had pneumonia in about 1948 or 1949 - when I was only about 2 years old - and the doctor thought he was being quite daring.
We forget how far we’ve come and how fast. And it has nothing to do with race. I’m sure you’ll find that the death rates in white institutions were the same.
Don’t forget that in 1918, Spanish flu was epidemic. A place like Dozier would have been a perfect place for the epidemic to take hold.
I wonder how many died during that time?
My Grandfather wrote a letter to the local newspaper back in 1918. He was living near Madison Florida at the time and teaching school.
The paper republished the letter just a few years ago. One thing he mentioned was so many of his friends and relatives having died. At first I had no idea what he was referring to but remembered that 1918 epidemic.
i get all that but 100 UNMARKED graves??
UNMARKED? why? didnt they have names?
they need to know who these kids are. and while they are at it it would be nice to know how they died.
what if...
what if it was skull fractures or the like.
each life is precious to me.
sunshine is the best disinfectant.
I can remember troublemakers in school being threatened with that place, kids that came out were pretty well broken.
And just maybe the families of the 100 kids who also died there.......yep, money hungry families.
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