Tales Of Fairfield Hills: Two Nurses’ Views

By nancy K. Crevier

(This is the seventh in a series of Tales of Fairfield Hills, stories shared by those who worked and lived there when the property was a functioning psychiatric institution. Now owned by the Town of Newtown and being re-created, the property’s past has been the subject of stories, some of which may be tainted with truth, some which may be purely fabrication. These tales, though, come from the hearts of those who knew it best.)

Alyce Block of Monroe was a student nurse from Norwalk School of Nursing during her senior year, the winter of 1951-52, at Fairfield State Hospital (later known as Fairfield Hills Hospital).

“Nursing was a big achievement in my lifetime,” recalled Ms Block, “and Fairfield Hills was just a small part of it.” It was, however, a memorable part of her introduction to nursing.

“We lived in Norwalk House, a bunch of students and a house mother, and we rarely left campus,” said Ms Block. Not having had much interaction with psychiatric patients at that point, most of the student nurses were apprehensive, at first, she said. “We were always behind locked doors, many times in a room full of patients by ourselves. There were all levels of patients, from mild to severely insane,” Ms Block said.

As a student nurse, her duties were varied. “We made sure all of the patients got their baths, kept records, visited with the patients and doctors. It was a regular full shift on the floor so I had a lot of interaction with the patients,” she said.

Shock therapy was a regular form of treatment at the time, and it was an experience she did not like. “I never liked to see that, but it really did help some patients,” she said. “I felt sorry for some [of the patients] who knew they had an illness or problem and tried to face it.”

She was no stranger to the tunnels that have made Fairfield Hills Hospital a stomping ground for those seeking paranormal activities in recent years, but the winter that Ms Block worked at the hospital, they were simply a convenient way to move patients from one building to another.

“The tunnels weren’t my favorite place, and I can see why people like to imagine ghosts there. We used the tunnels to bring 15 or more patients at a time to the cafeteria. Most were pretty good,” she said, “but once in a while a brawl broke out with other patients. I remember bringing patients to get their hair cut, too, because there was a hair salon in the tunnel area. We were always still under lock and key, though.”

The tunnels were also the required means of traveling between buildings after the midnight shift, too, she said. “I didn’t like going back to our dorm that time of day. We had to go by ourselves if no one else was on our shift. My roommate and I used to wait up for each other. I never heard of any incidents with my classmates,” she admitted, “but you still wondered… Every now and then, a patient wandered away.”

What the student nurses did not worry about then, were ghosts. “We were more worried about the living,” she laughed.

Once she was used to the hospital and patients, only one time does Ms Block remember feeling in danger. “Someone left a door unlocked to a ward, with about 40 people in it. I had just come on duty. A woman in her bare feet came out of the main ward and started chasing me. Luckily, with the tile floor and her bare feet, the head nurse heard and opened the door to her office and grabbed the woman. There was nowhere I could have gone, and no time to use my keys,” recalled Ms Block. “I felt like a very lucky person.”

Ms Block remembered Fairfield State Hospital as a beautiful place, with manicured grounds. Many of the patients, she said, cared for the farm animals.

“There were quite a few patients who I felt badly for,” said Ms Block. “No family ever came to see them. I can remember patients waiting on a Sunday and nobody showed up. We’d sit and talk to them…”

Ms Block went on to become a substitute school nurse and a Girl Scout nurse. “I never was in a full-time hospital again,” she said.

Memorable Patients

Beverly Karas’s nursing career also started at Fairfield State Hospital, as a student nurse, in 1953. Ms Karas, however, returned to the Newtown hospital after graduation, and she stayed there until retiring in 1987.

Student nurses were affiliated at Fairfield State Hospital for about three months, Ms Karas said, and came from five different area hospitals. “This was just after the war, so there were also a lot of guys working there as aides. They liked that there were new nursing students every couple of months,” she laughed. “That’s how I met my husband, John. He had been what they call today a Navy Seal — underwater demolition team, then. He couldn’t find work after the war, so started at Fairfield Hills. He stayed there for 30-some years,” said Ms Karas.

The newlyweds lived for six months in Stamford House, in one room that they shared. “We had a community bathroom, for single men and married couples. Then we got an apartment in Danbury,” she said.

“I was a staff nurse when I started, and worked in the operating room, on the third floor of Greenwich House,” said Ms Karas, who now lives in North Carolina. “There were no surgeons at the hospital then, they all came from the outside,” she said.

Mostly, the surgery was something like hip pinning, said Ms Karas, but lobotomies were also performed at that time. When Cochran House opened in 1956, Ms Karas moved from surgery to female admissions.

“I worked as a staff nurse there, and later became the head nurse, then supervisor, then the director of Nursing I. The director of Nursing I, and I think there were about five of us, worked the evening shift. I was in charge of the whole hospital then. I worked on the wards at Cochran House, too. It was more or less a regular job,” recalled Ms Karas. “There were times, of course, when things got a little rough, but we took it in stride,” she said.

In the early days that she worked at the hospital, there were no psychiatric medications available. Instead, electric shock, insulin shock, and hydrotherapy were methods used to subdue patients.

“Insulin shock therapy was for the uncontrollable patients. It was a large dose of insulin administered to the patient. We would watch for things as the patient went down into a coma. When the patient had gone down into a comas as far as the doctor wanted, we would use a lavage tube and give them a tea with a large amount of sugar in it. That would kind of bring them out of the coma. It was sort of interesting,” she said, “but I don’t know that it did any good. I think the electric shock therapy did help with the depressed patients.”

Hydrotherapy was another means of calming distressed patients, she said. A tub of water was held at a certain temperature, she explained, into which the patient, on a canvas sling, was lowered. Another canvas cover went over the patient, up to his or her neck. Lighting in the room was subdued, and soft music played. The patients liked it.

“We had one patient, who was such a character. When she was in the tub, she would know when the elevator in the hallway outside the room stopped, who got off. She could tell by the footsteps. She had a nickname for everyone,” said Ms Karas.

There were many memorable patients over the years, she said. “Most of us really enjoyed the patients. There was one who used to parade outside by the flagpoles and yell at all the visitors. She didn’t bother the visitors. She was not assaultive in any way. She just had a filthy mouth — and she was an old lady!”

Treatment over the three and a half decades she was at Fairfield State Hospital changed, said Ms Karas. “When drugs came in, I think a lot of them were experimental, and at first they were experimenting with the dosages. There were no names for the drugs, just numbers. Sometimes, the patients were overmedicated, I think, and they were like zombies. But we did have patients that the drugs calmed down,” added Ms Karas.

She remembered the hospital as being completely self-sufficient in the early years that she worked there. “We had our own power house, our own fire department, and a farm that fed all of the patients and the staff. We didn’t rely on the town for anything,” she said.

The farm was a positive experience for the patients, said Ms Karas. “They enjoyed going out to the farm. It really aggravated me that do-gooders from the community thought we were exploiting the patients. The patients took a great deal of pride in what they did. It was sad when we had to give it up.

“Then,” said Ms Karas, “those same people said we needed occupational therapy. Well, we kind of had it already. The farm was occupational therapy. But they meant in groups, inside the hospital.”

Fairfield Hills was a beautiful place to live and work, said Ms Karas.

“I have wonderful memories. I made a lot of good friends that I still have, and we’re all getting up in our 80s. [Working at Fairfield Hills] was our life, and we had,” she said, “a wonderful life.”