Letchworth Village

6/14/2019

Letchworth village opened in 1911 for "mentally handicapped" patients. The grounds consisted of dormitories, a hospital, a dining hall, and housing for the staff. Later they added more dormitories, a chapel, a synagogue, dining halls, laundry buildings, doctors building, science labs, and more. When Letchworth was first opened it was considered as amazing and praised by many. Many of the patients were young children, and when people would visit the institution, they noticed the children looked sickly and malnourished. But they claimed it was because of underfunding and not enough food. Then, staff and doctors tricked the public by showing everyone very clean and well groomed patients but in a undercover photography project, they uncovered that patients were dirty and naked huddled in corners of day rooms and some patients were covered in their own feces. In the small domoritories 70 beds would be crammed in and would cram mattresses in hallways and common rooms to accommodate everyone they had over 4,000 patients and no space. Also patients at Letchworth were the first human test subjects for the polio vaccine, even though they didn't consent to any of the tests. The buildings were closed in 1966 and left abandoned.