Mental Patients Burned to Death

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XVI, Issue 2, 1 April 1923, Page 82

Mental Patients Burned to Death

A terrible fire broke out on Sunday last in the Manhattan State Asylum, New York, and resulted in a large number of casualties. The wing affected was that in which the most violent and homicidal patients were confined, many in padded cells, and the fact that the fire occurred on a bitterly cold morning, at 5 a.m., added to the horror of the situation. The firemen and nurses are said to have succeeded in persuading the majority of the patients to leave the building in an orderly way by calling ' ' Breakfast is ready," and thus getting them formed into a line and marched outside, but some of the more violent cases refused, and clung screaming to the bars of their cells, resisting the persuasions of three nurses, who eventually perished in the flames with some 25 of their charges. We hope that the "padded cells" alluded to exist more in

the imagination of the reporter who sent the details than in reality. American hospitals have a high' record for their treatment of mental patients, and it is difficult to believe that padded cells are common in the Manhattan State Hospital. Precautions against fire are apparently by no means perfect; The fire engines from New York City could not be brought across the river, and the river fireboats were unable to play effectively on the flames, which were fanned by a fierce gale, for more than half-an-hour after the outbreak. — " Nursing Mirror." This terrible disaster reminds us of a fire in Sunnyside Mental Hospital some years ago. Fortunately all patients escaped and nurses and attendants were not called, upon, as in this case, to lay down their lives as these so heroically did.