these are some images of the willard state hospital.
willard grew into a sizeable village,
relying heavily on unpaid patient labor to sustain its operation.
the patients that worked in the farm,
bakery and kitchens provided most of the food for the inmates and staff.
it's industrial shops produced clothing, shoes, even the pine caskets used to bury patients in the hospital's cemetery.
the hospital's original purpose as a bucolic rural retreat
was lost in the grim realities of the institutional life.
in the mid 1950's, they started using newly developed
antipsychotic drugs to control patients crammed
into ever-tighter living quarters.
more than 50,000 patients were admitted to willard
during its 126-year history,
and nearly half of those died there.
some of those grave markers are just a number.
most of them are un-marked.
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