Another glaring similarity was the Lincoln Park, St. Louis City Cemetery, and Hart Island were built near insane asylums, poor houses or county farm, workhouse, reform house, women's hospital, and pest houses. The pest houses were built to contain people suffering from contagious diseases such as small pox. The insane asylums were meant to contain people not deemed to be mentally functional. The poor houses and county farm were places for indigent people to have a place to live and work with dignity. This was society’s way of providing for people with limited or no means to be productive members of society. The workhouse and reform houses were for men and young boys that were less than desirable members of society that needed to be taught how to become productive members of society. The pattern here is that the Potter’s field that are burial grounds for the less fortunate were built around places that kept less fortunate people while they were still alive. Matter of fact, today Hart Island is still worked by prisoners as seen the image below.
Record keeping was not done well with any one of
these three potter’s fields. St. Louis City cemetery and the potter’s field in Chicago
(now Lincoln Park), were both removed for urban renewal and revival. I have not
been able to find detailed records of the St. Louis City cemetery. Only that it
was closed and the bodies re-interred but not exactly to what location. I found newspaper
clippings in an article regarding the removal of bodies from Chicago city
cemetery but again, not much more. There
was an article about medical students stealing bodies from potter’s field in Chicago.
It can be read here: http://elane.stanford.edu/wilson/html/chap4/chap4-sect7.html
Hart Island still exists but efforts are being made
to keep detailed records of those interred there. A project called Hart Island
Project is diligently working to wrong the past mishandling of records.
More can be read about that here: http://hartisland.net/
References:
From what I had read was that Potters fields are burial sites of unknown or indigent people. Reminds me of a previous post about being to broke to be dead.
ReplyDeleteIf they were indigent, im sure the family could not afford a proper burial
Christina,
ReplyDeleteYes, Potter's Fields to meant for unknown and indigent people. The point that I was trying to make in this post is that many Potter's Fields across the United States shared many characteristics. Being poor was not always the only reason to cause people to have Potter’s Field to be their final resting place. It is also for unclaimed dead as well. The Civil War was often used as a burial place for the solders that died during battle. Take for example the cholera epidemic, it was spreading fast and the time it was not known how to avoid it. Therefore, many family members did not claim their ones in fear about being exposed to the illness. And my guess would also be that the sheer numbers of people dying each day or week created a sense of urgency to quickly dispose of the bodies. This would not allow family members time to claim their loved ones prior to being buried.