Stacy Horn

This muckraker author has done us all a service in disclosing how a Brooklyn neighborhood and its residents are murdered, by street violence, police neglect, and corruption by the FHA, banks, and mortgage brokers. It was a precursor to the 2007-2008 mortgage collapse, but without the worthless tranches created by greedy investment house and banks - for which NO ONE went to jail. Not many did here, either - though the greed in selling unfit homes to poor people and collecting big government show more subsidies for cheating them is a true horror show. The exposure of the corruption, which occurred nationwide, was ignored by the federal government, although George Romney, HUD Secretary, tried and was naively stunned by the criminal activities. There were small successes by community organizations, despite all odds. Author Horn not only describes the investigations, indictments, and trials, but also includes a valuable coda and an epilogue with two of the key players, who make the case that this exploitation of the poorest people in our country continues apace. This is an incredibly valuable record of a particularly disgraceful era. show less

This book has taught me more about choral music than I ever knew before, and for that I am grateful. I have attended a number of choral performances in several countries and have friends and relatives who sing in choirs, but have never previously understood the intricacies of both a choir singer's and a conductor's task. Stacy Horn does an admirable job of explaining these. As a historian, I also found Ms. Horn's historical overview of choral singing in the Western tradition very show more interesting.

A weaker point of the book for me was that it contains no awareness of the existence of choral music beyond the West (or none to speak of). Much of what she said about singing in a church setting reminded me of Sufi chanting, but she did not make links like that to any non-Western tradition.

I realise, of course, that the book is by and about a woman singing in a church-based choir, so the lack of references to non-Western musical traditions makes some sense. What bothers me on the level of intellectual honesty is the author's exuberant joy at singing Christian religious music combined with her professed near-absolute disbelief in the message of the words she is singing. This disbelief is not incidental to the book, but rather central to it. She keeps stressing it in chapter after chapter. Now affirming a faith with your mouth by singing the associated religion's sacred music in its place of worship while believing in your heart that the message promoted by this faith is a metaphor at best and a delusion at worst strikes me as verging on hypocrisy. And that, ultimately, is why this book, despite its many merits, made me deeply uncomfortable. show less

Wow, what a book!

Stacy Horn did a tremendous amount of research for this. Her book tells of Blackwell’s Island and the different people who lived and worked there. She devotes different sections of her book to the different institutions on the island: the madhouse, the almshouse, the workhouse, the penitentiary, and the charity hospital. This is an incredibly broad scope, but she handles it well, telling her story—or perhaps many stories—with clarity and order. She chose to focus her show more history on the island’s missionary, Reverend French, who accessed each of the institutions on the island and witnessed many of its sorrows. He is the common thread in all of this book’s sections, and as readers, we experience Blackwell’s Island through his eyes. Like him, we are appalled by the violence, neglect, and danger that throve on the island. He worked hard to improve conditions and was met with resistance at almost every turn. He risked his life to minister to the people when the island was quarantined because of illness, he called attention to bad management and lack of funds, and he was behind many of the improvements on the island. He was truly a hero, and I’m grateful to Stacy Horn for sharing his story. Plus, he was responsible for acquiring books and making a library, so it’s obvious he was a great guy!

This was not an easy book to read. Despite many people’s best intentions, a whole lot of bad things happened. There are parts that are horrifying, and I am still saddened to think that these incidents were real. Illness, murder, madness, neglect, infant mortality, child abuse, wrongful convictions, unsanitary conditions, lice, poor ventilation, prejudice, greed—the list goes on and on. The death rates were staggering, and the description of medical “experiments” on a little dog just about broke my heart. Some issues are still relevant today; this book depicts a financial tug-of-war between people who wanted to care for the poor and people who wanted to cut their funding. This book also shows the journey toward something better, as the nurses’ training became more structured and the island’s standards began to improve. This book also touches on the services that prevent (or stop) child abuse. Horn describes the landmark case that changed the way the courts saw child abuse; here, you can read about the little girl who was represented by the ASPCA, because there wasn’t yet a society for the prevention of cruelty to children. Some of the rights we take for granted now had their origin in the reforms described here. Fascinating history, and very poignant.

What I liked: maps, photos of the different buildings, one book section for each island institution, tremendous level of detail, specific information on many individuals, tracking of changes and reform throughout the decades, and clear descriptions that tied up loose ends whenever possible. There were really only two things I didn’t like. First, although the book describes many different people—not just Rev. French, but also reporters, polititians, activists, and, of course, patients and inmates—there were very few pictures. There were more photos on the author’s website. I would have liked to know, while I was still reading, what some of these people looked like, or what the buildings looked liked, or even the island. Since these images exist, I don’t know why they weren’t used. Finally, the chronology was a little difficult to follow. She divides her book into sections for the different institutions, which is great, but it means that she constantly jumping around between different years, even different decades. It’s difficult to know when certain things happened, not just by year, but even in relation to other events elsewhere on the island. Still, a remarkable book that illuminates some very disturbing history. Anyone might learn from this, but it might be of special interest to people who want to learn about the history of New York, of mental illness and its treatments, of criminal justice, of social justice, or of nursing. This was gritty, memorable, and deeply disturbing. show less

Stacy Horn has pieced together a history of the institutions on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) in New York City in the 19th century. The book is structured in sections that align with the buildings – an insane asylum, workhouse, almshouse, penitentiary, and hospital. These structures were almost instantly overcrowded and underfunded, leading to appalling conditions – limited ventilation, infestations of vermin, rampant diseases, starvation, violence, and prisoners serving as show more attendants. The author shows how good intentions went horribly awry.

Considering that records had largely been destroyed, it is apparent that Stacy Horn has done extensive research to find these detailed stories of people who lived, worked, and were confined on the island. She highlights the lives of abused, neglected, and murdered patients as well as those that tried to change the system or lessen the dreadful conditions.

This account is extremely detailed. Horn examines the flawed legal system and misguided social milieu that lumped together the poor, mad, sick, and criminal. She shows how these blurred lines have contributed to issues that persist today.

Memorable quotes:

“Although the insane were no longer thrown in prison (mostly), the criminal and the insane still formed one group in people’s minds, along with the poor, who were often thought of as defacto ‘guilty.’”

“Today around 28 percent of Americans suffer from some form of anxiety disorder, an affliction that would have been enough to get you committed in the nineteenth century.”

“In reality it was as easy to get an innocent person sent to the Workhouse as it was to get a sane person committed to an asylum.” show less