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Anonymous no more: Gravedigger finally will get his due at psychiatric hospital

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Dissent

Dan Barry of the NY Times reports:

Over several decades, an immigrant dug more than 1,500 graves for his fellow patients at Willard State Psychiatric Hospital in upstate New York. He took pride in his shovel’s precision. And when he died in 1968, he joined them in anonymity, his grave — like all the others — marked not with a surname on a headstone but by a numbered stake.

That is about to change. After researching the matter, the New York State Office of Mental Health, which oversees some two dozen hospital cemeteries, has agreed to permit a memorial on the grounds to the gravedigger, whose name was Lawrence Mocha.

It is the latest development in a disagreement between the agency, which says state law protects the privacy of patients with mental illnesses even after death, and volunteers who say the practice only reinforces the prejudices surrounding mental illness. In recent years, these volunteers have worked to uncover the numbered plaques, using shovels and weed killer to remove overgrowth that underscored the anonymity.

Read more on The Seattle Times.

This is an issue that I’ve discussed before on this blog – the anonymity of mental health patients’ graves (cf, this Nebraska case). It will be interesting to see what happens next in New York.

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