Episode 2.10 // Terror at the Tewksbury State Almshouse
Mar 14, 2022
1 min read
Almshouses in the 19th and early 20th centuries were meant to help society's most vulnerable, but in the 1880s, one in Tewksbury, Massachusetts was accused of such shocking treatment that the governor ordered a months-long investigation that dominated headlines nationwide. Among the claims: that the skin of patients who died was tanned and turned into curiosities for sale.
At the moment I read this, I was idly scrolling through https://paypalcasinosite.net, but the bit about tanned skin stopped me cold. It’s one thing to hear about overcrowding or poor sanitation, but that detail makes you realize how completely the poor were viewed as less than human. It makes me wonder how many other everyday atrocities went unreported in smaller almshouses.