Joseph Wiseman's searing documentary of the poor medical and social services on view at Massachusets Correctional Institution Bridge can still make. this viewer wince more than half a century later.
At the time, the government of Massachusetts claimed it was biased and purposefully sensational. Doctors and nurses going through their routines tend to look uncaring. However, details like the dirty water hydrotherapy patients are stuck in tell a different story. Massachusetts fought its release for years, and it was banned from showing in that state for decades.
Titicut had a long and troubled history. At times a almshouse, a workhouse and a prison for the criminally insane, at the time this movie was made, the staff was short-handed and undercrtrained, and the administration was a disgrace. There was one 'patient' who had been sent there in 1910 for an evaluation during his two-year prison term, and was still there in 1968.
Bridgewater is still open.
At the time, the government of Massachusetts claimed it was biased and purposefully sensational. Doctors and nurses going through their routines tend to look uncaring. However, details like the dirty water hydrotherapy patients are stuck in tell a different story. Massachusetts fought its release for years, and it was banned from showing in that state for decades.
Titicut had a long and troubled history. At times a almshouse, a workhouse and a prison for the criminally insane, at the time this movie was made, the staff was short-handed and undercrtrained, and the administration was a disgrace. There was one 'patient' who had been sent there in 1910 for an evaluation during his two-year prison term, and was still there in 1968.
Bridgewater is still open.