A Patient Fell to His Death. Then the Asylum Went Silent.
A Spokane informant says a patient at the Medical Lake asylum died after a third-story fall—and that no coroner’s inquiry followed. Old employees, meanwhile, were being pushed out.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
MEDICAL LAKE, Aug. 27.—[Special.]—A citizen of Spokane, not connected with the asylum, writes to the Post-Intelligencer:
‘On the morning of August 21 a patient at the insane asylum here threw himself from a third-story window and died from the effects of his fall in about an hour. Up to the present (August 27) the local papers have made no mention of the accident or of any inquiry as to causes by the coroner. Strange that in this day and age any one man is given such absolute power and authority that no investigation of his methods are necessary.
‘Within the past month three of the old employes, men who had been called on the carpet during the Shadie investigation, have been asked to resign, and that without any cause being given. Their places will probably be given to Eastern men, direct from the East, as has been the rule in the past.’
“Strange that in this day and age any one man is given such absolute power and authority that no investigation of his methods are necessary.”
State institutions for the mentally ill were among the most closed-off places in 1900, and whistleblowers often had only a letter to the editor. The complaint—a death without public inquiry and patronage-driven firings—echoes modern fights over oversight in prisons, hospitals, and other state-run institutions.
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