The Mansfield Training School has been closed for more than 30 years. A team of researchers from the University of Connecticut is working to uncover what happened at the controversial institution that used to house disabled people.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Emilia Otte to discuss her article, “UConn grapples with the legacy of a CT institution for the disabled,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Emilia’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Emilia. A professor and a former UConn student sparked your interest in the story. How did that happen?
EO: I was friends with one of the students who worked with Professor Brueggemann on the project around the Mansfield Training School Archives when she was a senior at UConn, and she had contacted me. She's also a journalist. And she had contacted me, letting me know that Professor Brueggemann might be interested in talking to me. And I found the story just fascinating.
WSHU: What was so fascinating about the story? Because there was a time when institutions like this were top of the news, but it seems to have faded away. Why is it important to keep that memory?
EO: So I'm not from Connecticut. Originally, I'm from New York, and I knew nothing about the Mansfield Training School. So to me, this kind of history tells us so much about how we think about people who are neurodivergent or have disabilities, and how society evolves over time. It tells us a lot about ourselves as human beings and as people. And the interesting thing about this story was that it's not just a Connecticut story. It's paralleled all over the country with these institutions, and there are multiple states across the country that have been trying to revive the history of these institutions to understand better what was going on in the past.
WSHU: Could you give us a brief background of the history of the Mansfield school itself? How did it start, and how did it evolve?
EO: So, Dr. Brueggemann would definitely be a better person to talk to than I would about this, but it began with a doctor named Henry Knight in the 1850s, and he had wanted to run this kind of a hospital for people with special needs. He had asked for state support, and did not initially get it, so he funded it himself, and the hospital evolved from there. It did eventually get state support. It became kind of a labor farm in the 1920s where people were living there, but also doing different things like farm work, sewing work, and different industries, basically to fund the institutions. And it evolved over time to become sort of these dormitories for people, where, you know, giant dormitories where people were living with different disabilities. In the 1960s, it allowed UConn to come in and do some experiments there on people, you know, testing brain function and things like that. And as our understanding of the rights of people with disabilities changed, the school tried to become more of a place where people were given small cottages to live, instead of being placed in these big barracks-type rooms, and trying to incorporate people more into the community. There were all kinds of abuses that were exposed in the 1970s, and there was a large court case that happened, which ultimately led to the closing of the school.
WSHU: Now, something interesting that comes out in your story is that Professor Brueggemann and her crew of researchers found much more interesting information outside of the actual archives of the Mansfield school. Could you just tell us a little bit about that?
EO: So I think you're probably referring to the family members themselves that they talked to. The archives obviously gave them a background on the history itself. Professor Brueggemann also came into contact with some family members who had siblings who were residents of the training school at one time, and I was also able to talk to a couple of those people and hear their stories. And this is another reason, going back to your question about why this is important. It affected families, and it still affects the history of families today who want to understand what their siblings experienced while they were at the training school. And Professor Brueggemann also talked to former employees at the training school who remembered the different iterations of the school as it progressed from being more barracks-like and institutional to a more community-focused type of place, if you can call it that.
WSHU: Now, one interesting thing that I saw when I was reading your article was the fact that there are concerns that develop on that site, that there might be some people buried there, because similar situations happened in other states where institutions like this were redeveloped.
EO: Yeah. So there have been questions about that. As you said, in other states where these institutions have been researched, they have found bodies buried on the property, and there was some question about whether there might be some human remains on the property. During the 1918 flu epidemic, a lot of people died at the institution. As of now, they have not found any evidence that there are bodies buried on the property. But, you know, they haven't tested the entire property. So I know one of Professor Brueggemann's students has been looking into this and seeing if there is a possible way to narrow down where human remains might be found on this property, because it's quite large.
WSHU: What's happening to the actual site right now?
EO: Nothing, honestly. The site and the buildings are not usable for the most part. They are old and broken down. The site itself has just sort of languished. There's a piece of it that is being turned into a new Windham Technical High School, but that's a small area, and there were conversations about turning part of the site into an autonomous vehicle driving race track to supplement the Transportation Center at UConn. But it looks like that will not be going through. So right now, not much is happening with that property.
WSHU: In the meantime, Professor Brueggemann and her crew of researchers are still deeply involved in trying to piece together what has happened.
EO: Yes, Brueggemann wants to do an oral history of the school, and that's part of the reason she's talking to family members. They just created a new website about the school with an excellent timeline that I referenced in my reporting. They've done a lot of really great work, and I look forward to seeing what else they do.
