West Salem Insane Asylum

Practices and Scandals

The Two articles below and to the right are a series of three articles that showed up in the Daily Republican Leader that discuss the mispractices of discipline that were alledgedly used with the residents of the West Salem Asylum.

For those that wonder what the asylum did with there deceased, there was an Asylum Cemetery to the right is a bit from an article that was released from the La Crosse Tribune on April 3rd 1938

Asylum Cemetery:

To the rear of the main building stands barns, old garages, and sheds that were once a part of the main farm of the original structure, to the east of those buildings sits the asylum cemetery. only the inmates bodies that were not claimed or the relatives too poor to have their family burried elsewhere are interred there. Each grave is marked by a stone, and each stone has a number upon it. Each stone was also created by a person or resident with in the facility.

The article below is the second in the series of three that showed up in the Daily Republican Leader. The article discusses multiple instances in which the staff of the Asylum get abusive towards the residents; and the "practices of discipline that some of the staff used"

In this article: Superintendent M'Known's brother is reported to have beaten a resident across the face with a ring of keys. Striking the resident; John Apple, so hard that it drew blood, and caused the individual keys to fall off of the ring and scatter across the floor

Staff members are accused of starving a woman for days by leaving her locked in her room.

Another staff member is reported to be seen hitting another resident across the face causing him to fall onto the ground and then later seen kicking the resident in the stomach.

As well another women is left with her hand soaking in a bucket of suds; while other patients get neglected and frost bitten.

The article to the right is the third article in the series of three that talk about the mispractices that had allegedly been taking place at the west salem insane asylum and reveals the occurences of abuse from the point of view from the staff members at the asylum; all in accordance with each other's stories the article simply goes over each incident and each staff member that was involved appeals him or herself generally by revealing more of the story, or another version of the incident.

The article that appears below came from the Daily Republican Leader as well, and clarifies what all exactly happened between the Superintendent's Brother M'Known and multiple residents that he had been reported to have been abusing, one of those being John Apple. The article is written off of the happenings of M'Knowns court proceedings.