Damnation Island
Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York
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Narrated by:
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Pam Ward
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By:
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Stacy Horn
About this listen
Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse.
Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island, what politics shaped it, and what constituted charity and therapy in the 19th century. Throughout the book, we return to the extraordinary Blackwell's missionary Reverend French, champion of the forgotten, as he ministers to these inmates, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Corrections Department and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man's inhumanity to man.
For history fans, and for anyone interested in the ways we care for the least fortunate among us, Damnation Island is an eye-opening look at a closed and secretive world. In a tale that is exceedingly relevant today, Horn shows us how far we've come - and how much work still remains.
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- Narrated by: Jack Reynolds
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Old Sparky covers the history of capital punishment in America and the "current wars" between Edison and Westinghouse, which led to the development of the electric chair. It examines how the electric chair became the most popular method of execution in America before being superseded by lethal injection. Famous executions are explored alongside quirky last meals and poignant last words.
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Information not a sermon.
- By Jakk on 10-24-16
By: Anthony Galvin
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The Colony
- The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles on Molokai
- By: John Tayman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In 1866, 12 men and women and one small child were forced aboard a leaky schooner and cast away to a natural prison on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Two weeks later, a dozen others were exiled, and then 40 more, and then 100 more. Tracked by bounty hunters and torn screaming from their families, the luckless were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have leprosy, and most of those who did were not contagious.
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Interesting
- By Matt on 10-31-06
By: John Tayman
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Duel with the Devil
- The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America's First Sensational Murder Mystery
- By: Paul Collins
- Narrated by: Mark Peckham
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Story
In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached - with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge - their animosity reached a fever pitch.
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The Trial of the Century
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Gulag
- A History
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 27 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The Gulag - a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners - was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
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Nice compliment to Solzhenitsyn
- By Thucydides on 08-03-17
By: Anne Applebaum
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The Eternal Nazi
- From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim
- By: Nicholas Kulish, Souad Mekhennet
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Dr. Aribert Heim worked at the Mauthausen concentration camp for only a few months in 1941 but left a devastating mark. According to the testimony of survivors, Heim euthanized patients with injections of gasoline into their hearts. He performed surgeries on otherwise healthy people. Some recalled prisoners' skulls set out on his desk to display perfect sets of teeth. Yet in the chaos of the postwar period, Heim was able to slip away from his dark past and establish himself as a reputable doctor and family man in the resort town of Baden-Baden.
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Not certain about this one...
- By Nancy on 11-24-22
By: Nicholas Kulish, and others
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The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
- By: David I. Kertzer
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene - one that would haunt this family forever - David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping.
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Too much detail
- By L. WILLIAM on 03-03-24
By: David I. Kertzer
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The Wicked Boy
- The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
- By: Kate Summerscale
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
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Early in the morning of Monday, July 8, 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his 12-year-old brother, Nattie, set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbors, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next 10 days, Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate.
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Amazing True Story
- By Lisa Belle on 01-08-17
By: Kate Summerscale
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The Lives They Left Behind
- Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
- By: Peter Stastny, Darby Penney
- Narrated by: Alex Paul
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
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Performance
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More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.
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Not really the book I expected
- By B. Shaff on 11-09-17
By: Peter Stastny, and others
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The Sewing Girl's Tale
- A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America
- By: John Wood Sweet
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah’s and her assailant’s lives.
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Great for history buffs!
- By LibertyHillbilly on 02-09-23
By: John Wood Sweet
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The Assassin's Accomplice
- Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln
- By: Kate Clifford Larson
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In The Assassin’s Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known conspirator in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government. A Confederate sympathizer, Surratt ran the boarding house where the conspirators met to plan Lincoln’s assassination. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, The Assassin’s Accomplice tells the intricate story of the Lincoln conspiracy through the eyes of its only female participant, offering a fresh perspective on America’s most famous murder.
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Did She or Didn't She
- By c a cornelius on 06-04-21
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American Witches
- A Broomstick Tour through Four Centuries
- By: Susan Fair
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
On a tour through history that's both whimsical and startling, we'll encounter 17th-century children flying around inside their New England home "like geese". We'll meet a father-son team of pious Puritans who embarked on a mission that involved undressing ladies and overseeing hangings. And on the eve of the Civil War, we'll accompany a reporter as he dons a dress and goes searching for witches in New York City's most dangerous neighborhoods.
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Christan witch book
- By Nicole on 09-01-20
By: Susan Fair
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New York Burning
- Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Beth McDonald
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Abridged
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Performance
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Story
Over a few weeks in 1741, 10 fires blazed across Manhattan. With each new fire, panicked whites saw more evidence of a slave uprising. Tried and convicted before the colony's Supreme Court, 13 black men were burned at the stake and 17 were hanged. Four whites, the alleged ringleaders of the plot, were also hanged, and seven more were pardoned on condition that they never set foot in New York again.
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Interesting
- By Phillip Goodson on 05-15-09
By: Jill Lepore
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In the heart of the rolling green hills of Ireland a huge abandoned psychiatric asylum looms large and holds its secrets close, until one family fights to find the truth about their long lost great grandmother. Presented by Irish celebrity and mental health advocate Niall Breslin - this is the untold story of the quest to find patient Julia Leonard, alongside many others, who came to die in St Loman’s Hospital near Dublin. Why was Julia in St Loman’s? And what happened to her and other patients who found themselves within its walls?
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It was a cool, quiet evening at Calumet Farm, where the most valuable racehorses—including the prolific stallion Alydar—had settled into their stalls for the evening. Alton Stone, filling in for the regular night watchman, completed his rounds at the barn. Although nothing seemed out of the ordinary, an inexplicable hunch led Stone to check on Alydar. What he found—a grievously injured horse with no discernable cause—jump-started one of the biggest mysteries to ever hit the horse racing world.
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What listeners say about Damnation Island
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tiffany M Bitting
- 10-19-22
Just ok.
It was wonderfully researched and actually very interesting. I can’t explain why I couldn’t wait for it to end, but about halfway through I wanted it to stop. Of course I had to finish, but I’ve never been so happy for finish a book. It wasn’t bad. The narrator was ok. The stories were ok. They were just all so similar and it felt like different variations of the same story on repeat.
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- Carla Jo Lewis
- 12-10-19
Solid Read
Loved that this took French's POV. Made the book more personal. If you like medical history or history this is worth your time.
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- notnow
- 04-20-22
Tedious
Lots of interesting information, but goodness it was tedious! I ended up skipping some chapters, but glad to find out what went on there.
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- tamborine
- 08-06-18
Fascinating!
This history of NY's Blackwell's Island will make your skin crawl! The narrator is excellent. All of the injustice, filth and cruelty that occurred there are brought to life. It's amazing how little things change over the years.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Jess Post
- 11-27-18
Great look at a dark piece of NYC history.
Fascinating but tragic subject. The book is smart and interesting, with a great narrator. Recommended for any NYC, crime and/or medical history buffs.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Heather D.
- 01-17-23
Interesting but hard to follow
It seemed to jump around which made it a little hard to follow, the stories that were told were mind blowing though. Might be better as a hardback than as an audiobook.
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- Lawrence Withrow
- 01-31-19
Good to know the past
The depressing part is just how much things haven't changed. Many of the shortcomings of the 19th century still hold true in the 21st century.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Matthew
- 06-27-21
Enlightening, but depressing
This book basically lays out the failures of 19th-century New York in dealing humanely with its staggering number of criminals, the sick, the destitute, and the mentally ill. The book's organization takes these subjects in turn.
The evolution of Blackwell's island, as presented here by Horn, illustrates 19th century thought on how to deal with these 'undesirables.' The story felt like a bit of a slog at times and I ended up skipping through some chapters. Still, I found it valuable for understanding how crime, poverty, and insanity were thought of and dealt with in the antebellum years and "Gilded Age." I happen to be doing some research on this time period, so this book was helpful with that. I don't know if I would recommend it as a "casual read" since it does deal with some pretty harrowing subjects.
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- missgrundy
- 10-01-18
Interesting Listen
I found this book very interesting, horrifying in many of its details. It was well written. My only qualm was that I found something annoying about the narrator's voice -- not enough to turn the book off, though. Overall, a good listen.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Cdub29
- 12-29-20
Research combined with human stories
The research done to write this book must have taken years. Woven throughout the facts are the life stories of many different individuals who either suffered here, tortured here or tried to help here on Blackwell Island. This book leaves the reader wondering how far have we really come in separating our view of criminals and the poor. Or criminals and the mentally ill. And what can be done? I think this history makes a clear case that government oversight of the poor and mentally ill and even criminality have not worked due to political corruption and the implementation of institutions. Institutions, by definition, do not see the individual. These problems from the 1800’s are still plaguing our society today. Thought provoking and well written
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5 people found this helpful