The Ladd School Historical Society

07/02/2025

Two volumes. Six lives. One untold history.

Exeter Girls is a true story told through letters, documents, and voices nearly lost to time. Across both volumes, you’ll follow six women sent to the Ladd School in the early 20th century — committed not for illness, but for being poor, different, or simply unwanted.

Read the full series here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLHLKCP8

07/02/2025

The grave of Orville Murphy, the Ladd School’s 'boss farmer.' Woe betide the boy who crossed Mr. Murphy; he was known to keep a switch close at hand and discipline swift.

07/01/2025

1984

07/01/2025

Ladd School, 4th of July, 1978

06/30/2025

Ladd School 4th of July parade, 1973

06/30/2025

Paul Dever in Taunton was one of those mid-century “solutions.” Opened in 1949 on the grounds of a WWII Navy base, it grew into a sprawling campus for people labeled with developmental disabilities. At its peak, thousands lived there. By the early 2000s, it was abandoned - left to rot, tag, and burn.

06/28/2025

The old road to Ladd School

06/27/2025

06/25/2025

A thousand patients dined beneath gilded organ pipes.

In 1926, a pipe organ was installed inside a Rhode Island asylum — not as a curiosity, but as an experiment in healing.

Vox Humana tells the true story of the singing hospital, and the doctor who believed music could reach where medicine could not.

https://a.co/d/ghHccJh

06/25/2025

The grave of Dorothea Dix, celebrated reformer whose campaign for humane treatment led to the rise of state-run asylums—an effort that changed mental health care for generations, for better and worse.

06/24/2025

1966