ABSTRACT
Taunton State Hospital is a remote, seemingly idyllic spot, a nineteenth-century institution constructed of brick and green grass, with quiet quadrangles and paths from one building to the next. It is the second-oldest mental hospital in Massachusetts and was occupied originally during the 1860s by a population made up largely of postwar morphine addicts. Now it houses a variety of patients, most of them committed to locked wards by doctors or the courts: people with long-term mental illness, people who are mentally retarded, drug addicts, and female criminals who have been found to be insane.
