Twenty-nine-year-old Mathilda Johnson, a mother of four children, including a 17-month-old toddler, wentÌý to the Nebraska Asylum for the Insane in Lincoln on Feb. 21, 1908.
Her symptoms were described: careless about her personal appearance and her housework, the first symptoms appearing about four months previous. In her records, handwritten in a ledger book, she was said to have a "high temper" at times.
Doctors diagnosed her with premature dementia, later termed schizophrenia. But Mathilda also was physically illÌý the day she arrived.
She had a fever, high heart rate, rapid breathing and rattling lung sounds. She coughed.
She would live the rest of her short life at the state hospitalÌýsouth of Lincoln. She died 14 months later of tuberculosis and was buried in a small cemetery owned by the hospital. At one time, her grave may have been marked by a 5-by-5-inch concrete block, possibly with her patient number.
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Today, even someone who knows she is in Section 1, Row 3, Plot 26, at Calvert Cemetery near the Lincoln Regional Center could not find her resting place. All that remains is earth and grass and ant hills. On most days, the only visitors are crickets, yellow butterflies, grasshoppers and passing mail and garbage truck drivers.
But an effort was made Wednesday afternoon to lift her name from obscurity, reading it aloud along with the names of more than 700 others who died and were buried at two Regional Center cemeteries in Lincoln.
In Hastings and Norfolk, the names of nearly 2,300 past patients were read simultaneously, shortly after 3 p.m. And a moment of silence was observed to shine a light on the people who once breathed and walkedÌýand lived in Nebraska's mental institutions.
"Today we say we remember and we will not forget the shameful acts of humanity," said Carol Coussons de Reyes, director of the state behavioral health office of consumer affairs.
"We reach back and remember you, to end this type of undignified segregation and separation," she said to the approximately 20 people gathered at the LincolnÌýcemetery for the remembrance.
Among the names read in Lincoln were 16 who died in 1925, among them Cora Hill, Amelia Larson, Ed Henry, Nellie Cain and Frank Kinner -- most of them left in Ìý mortuaries forÌý family members to claim their bodies. When no one did, they were buried in the Calvert Street Cemetery, once known as Yankee Hill Cemetery. Their obituaries noted only that they died atÌý local hospitals.
People no longer are buried at regional center cemeteries. Those who are unclaimed are buried in their counties of residence.
There is a movement, not only in Nebraska but nationwide, to better identify those unclaimed souls from the past, to designate veterans and children, to bring them dignity, Coussons de Reyes said.
Remembering the former residents here started three years ago, Coussons de Reyes said. Hospital staff, those who feel a connection to the past and people who live with psychiatric diagnoses come to the memorials.Ìý
"Reading everyone's name has become a really important experience," she said. "It's important to us that we hear the names, because it's a deep connection to our history and our culture and things that we've evolved from."
Acknowledging how people were treated in the past and how they should be treated affects how we treat each other today, Coussons de Reyes said.
In the past, as today, people were admitted to state hospitals for treatment of mental illnesses. But they also were admitted for domestic troubles, disappointment in love, homesickness, overwork, sun stroke, menopause,Ìý postpartum depression and drug addiction.
Now, the Lincoln Regional Center has a few more than 200 people who receive intensive residential treatment, including sex offender treatment and treatment in a secure area of those who have committed crimes.
It's unknown why no family members claimed Mathilda Johnson's remains. Her husband lived in Sidney, Iowa. She came to the hospital from Otoe County.Ìý
During her stay,Ìýher physical health improved for a time. Her mental and emotional health did not. She was said at times to be untidy, at other times irrational, incoherent, destructive.
In early April 1909, she began to fail physically, and on April 20, she died.
The last sentence written in her record noted: Remains are buried in the hospital cemetery at the request of her son.