Stacy Horn
Author
Publisher
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Pub. Date
2018.
Edition
First edition.
Physical Desc
xii, 284 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York’s Blackwell’s Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals, quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, "a lounging, listless madhouse." Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Stacy Horn tells a gripping narrative through the voices of the island’s inhabitants....