Florida will exhume remains of 100 children who died at Dozier School for Boys

NY Daily News ^ | 8-6-2013 | David Knowles

[yarddog]

I think the authorities say there are no unmarked graves.

The marked ones have what appears to by crosses in the form of large metal pipes painted white.

[livius]

Probably most institutions of the time were full of unmarked graves, since many of the people who went to these institutions were only marginally attached to their families, particularly in the rural South, where life was hard and nobody, black or white, had the time to spare for somebody who was either mentally disturbed or a behavior problem.

I would doubt that these kids died from skull fractures. If they were working for the institution - the kids spent a lot of time clearing brush and doing other such chores on the local area, bringing income to the institution - it surely would not have been to anybody’s advantage to kill them.

I know people who are working on this site, btw. I’m sure you’ll find that it was mostly natural causes, and I’d bet a lot of it was connected to malnutrition or pre-antibiotic infections and affected both blacks and whites in their separate institutions. People who are in a weakened condition are more susceptible to things such as heat exhaustion, cold (it drops into the 20s at night in that part of Florida), and infections.

This should be an interesting view into what things were like only about 60 years ago. We don’t realize how much things have changed since the 1930s-40s, mostly because of scientific developments during and after WWII.

[livius]

A lot of people everywhere died in 1918 (including my mother’s siblings - in Massachusetts ) and I hope they factor this into their calculations.

Also, any group of people concentrated together in one space would be a likely candidate for a major outbreak.

But trying to turn this into an intentional racial thing is ridiculous.

[fso301]

And just maybe the families of the 100 kids who also died there.......yep, money hungry families.

If the families cared more about the boys, they wouldn't have ended up there.

[robowombat]

I attended a girls reformatory for 18 months in 1972. Nivory died. Kids don’t just die at this rate unless something spread thru the school like influenza.

Yes, take a look at several other posts addressing just how primitive and cheap life was in the South before say 1945. The Influenza pandemic of 1918/19 was especially deadly to institutionalized populations due to their already compromised immune systems, malnourishment and generally unclean living conditions.

Pellagra is referenced by several, that is a condition that effected maybe 7-10% of people in much of the South.

I personally am one of those children who would have died of infections had I been born 15 years earlier. First sulfa drugs then penicillin and the myicins saved my bacon.

I would suggest that deaths after 1955 be the ones given the closest look.

[Scoutmaster]

This place was a horror story. Boys hog-tied and left in isolation for weeks at a time. A special room where boys could be whipped with a metal-studded leather strap. None of the cells locked and older juvenile sex offenders were left to roam free among the younger boys. Allegations of rape, murder, by staff.

The school failed inspections and showed signs of torture and abuse of boys in 1982, 1985, 2007, 2009, and 2010. One of the studies in the 2000's showed that almost 12% of the boys reported sexual abuse by staff.

A class action suit against the facility was dismissed in 2010 by a judge on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired.

Boys were sent to Dozier for offenses as small as trespassing.