A US hospital, where the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed, has published a list of 3,500 patients who died there between 1914 and the 1970s, and whose ashes have mostly not been claimed.
The release, part of an attempt to find family members of a handful who are still not identified, is the culmination of a project that began when a “room of forgotten souls” was discovered by accident in 2004.
A team of politicos touring the run-down institution in the western US state of Oregon opened a door in an outbuilding and discovered around 3,600 copper canisters containing the ashes of former patients and prison-ers.
Some cans had lost their labels, others were fused together. The room had apparently been forgotten for 30 years.
The crumbling Gothic institution was the setting for the blockbuster movie adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel about a mental institution, starring Jack Nicholson.
The sprawling collection of buildings in Oregon’s capital, Salem, was known primarily as a secure mental hospital, although several buildings have been demolished in recent years and a new facility will open this year.
“Some remains date back to 1914,” official Rebeka Gipson-King said.
“We have just four that are unidentified. We’ve found homes for 120 so far. Any that remain unclaimed will be included in a memorial we’re building on the new hospital grounds.”
“We hope all remains will be united with family, but we also know that may not be possible, given how much time has passed,” Oregon State Hospital superintendent Greg Roberts said in a statement.
Portland resident Don Whetsell’s grandfather and brother both died in the hospital.
“It was during the big Depression, money was scarce and I guess that’s why they both ended up in the state hospital, there were no facilities in Astoria,” Mr Whetsell, 79, says of the Oregon coast town where they lived.
“My older brother Kenneth had terrible seizures. I remember my father carrying Ken around for hours at night. It was epilepsy. Today they would be able to treat him,” he remarked.
His parents reluctantly had the nine-year-old committed and Kenneth died in the hospital age 11. “They didn’t talk about it much, it was too traumatic.”
Mr Whetsell’s grandfather Nathan McComber was committed in 1939 and died in 1941.
“My grandfather, they declared him insane but he probably had Alzheimer’s disease.”
In 2005 Mr Whetsell began making inquiries about their remains, whether they had even had a funeral. Four years later he laid hands on their urns.
A 2007 law change allowed the state hospital to release certain medical information for just this purpose.
Mr Whetsell found his brother’s birth certificate but not his grandfather’s, but the hospital let him take both sets of cremains. He buried his grandfather last summer and will bury his brother in the family plot this summer.
Founded 128 years ago, for the first half of its life the hospital was where patients were routinely sent for treatment for dementia or epilepsy. However in the 1970s the hospital declined. By 2008 it was 40 per cent unusable, beset with rodents, peeling paint, flaking asbestos and pigeon droppings.
The care it offered declined too, with almost 400 cases of assaults between patients a year. Ward 40 was a notorious treatment centre for children and teenagers, where sexual abuse by staff was routinely hushed up.
“While we’ve made a lot of strides in improving care for people with mental health issues, we still have work to do,” said Ms Gipson-King. “We’re also taking care of the patients of the past.”