Winslow Park, the heart and center of our very own Westport, has a darker past than some may know. To most Westport residents, Winslow Park is where dogs can roam free and long scenic walks are taken. But before it was the town’s park, it was home to one of Connecticut’s most notable psychiatric facilities. Winslow’s history is that of a whisper, but there’s no reason why we should turn a deaf ear to it.
What began in the 19th century as a beautiful mansion, was later transformed into the Westport Sanctuary within a 40 year period, reports “Westport’s Virtual Museum”. The Winslow property history is stamped with controversial treatments, tragic events and persistent rumors.
The mansion was built by Richard Henry Winslow and Mary Fitch Winslow. They hosted elaborate 4th of July parties with fireworks that spelled out “Compo”. During one of the Fourth of July celebrations, he had invited Millard Fillmore (13th U.S. President) to experience the fireworks show on his property.
After Winslow had passed, Stephen Alden purchased the estate but wasn’t known for his good reputation.
“Stephen Alden was… known for doing a lot of bad things,” Ramin Ganeshram, Westport Museums Executive Director said. “ Alden was burning down buildings on the property to collect insurance”.
Because of this, some of the original foundations and buildings had been destroyed. This destruction set the stage for a complete transformation under the next owner. After Alden, Frederick Ruland, an alienist or what is now referred to as a psychiatrist, bought the Winslow property. Ruland was on the Psychiatric Board of Connecticut and he had hopes of running a sanitarium and the Winslow land was exactly what he was looking for. Ruland transformed the 100-acre property in 1891 and ran until 1960 as the Winslow Sanitarium.
“Patients were admitted for everything from psychiatric issues like depression to alcoholism or addiction to laudanum” Ganeshram said.
Some of the patients’ narratives told about the facility sound like something from old tales. One man was arrested for talking to his imaginary friends, while another was admitted for trying to shoot at Redcoats. Another woman had set the Compo Inn on fire in an attempt to get rid of spirits. People suspected that the grief of losing her husband prior to her admission led up to these accounts 06880 in oral lore.
There were multiple lawsuits from patients and families against both the Winslow Sanitarium and the other Westport Sanitarium. The Hall-Brooke Sanitarium, operated around the same time as the Winslow Sanitarium.
“There were several cases alleging patient abuse. Most of the cases, they were acquitted of it…” Ganeshram said. “Given the amount of patients that came to the sanitarium, you know, not really a significant number, although any allegation of abuse is significant, right?
One case was taken to the Supreme Court of Connecticut, Charles Felix vs. Hall-Brooke Sanitarium. Felix accused the Hall-Brooke Sanitarium of false imprisonment, unnecessary shock therapy, battery and assault, but the court had ruled in favor of the sanitarium because there was no plausible evidence, Justia Law accounts. It was soon after that the Hall-Brooke Sanitarium was in the New York Times to report the strangulation of Miss Fouchere by Amelia Bloch, both of whom were patients, in an incident that happened during a lapse in nursing supervision.
“But you have to understand, during this period of time, there were really no laws regulating how sanitariums treated people,” Ganeshram said.
After the sanitarium closed, it was sold to a man named Baron Walter Langer von Lagendorf who owned Evyan perfumes. The greenhouse, that was once used for occupational therapy in the sanitarium, was then used as an experimental perfumerie as means for growing florals and plants to experiment with scents.
“Eventually, it fell into disarray, and it was the town that purchased the property to make it into a public park[…],” Ganeshram said. “The building was torn down in the 70s.”
But that was the last of the land to be occupied with any permanent buildings or institutional use.
Today at Winslow, all that’s left is little of the original foundation, a manmade valley and an extensive history many still don’t know about. While the history that lies in Winslow and within Westport is dark, it offers a revealing glimpse into how society once treated mental illness and how far we have come since then.
But if you walk the quiet trails at dusk, you might just feel the weight of the past lingering within the soil, trees and air, just beneath the surface of Winslow Park.
