The Ladd School Historical Society

The Ladd School Historical Society patreon.com/theladdschool This material is shared as part of an effort to preserve the history of the Ladd School.

Images of individuals are included for educational purposes only, with respect to their historical significance.

He built the Ladd School from nothing. One night, the snow swallowed it whole.Dr. Joseph Ladd ran that institution for 5...
12/07/2025

He built the Ladd School from nothing. One night, the snow swallowed it whole.

Dr. Joseph Ladd ran that institution for 50 years. When he was asked for one memory, he didn't talk about budgets or buildings. He talked about a blizzard. And the man who couldn't find the road.

Listen to "Lost In The Same Storm" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

His life's work bought him his own grave.Guy King arrived at Rhode Island's Exeter School in 1908 and never left. After ...
12/05/2025

His life's work bought him his own grave.

Guy King arrived at Rhode Island's Exeter School in 1908 and never left. After 50 years running that institution, Dr. Joseph Ladd was asked for one memory.

He didn't talk about budgets or buildings. He talked about the night two men got lost in the same storm and only one of them knew the way back.

Listen to "Lost In The Same Storm" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Rhode Island towns auctioned off their poor to the lowest bidder.Coventry. Portsmouth. Gloucester. Jamestown. In 1851, T...
11/30/2025

Rhode Island towns auctioned off their poor to the lowest bidder.

Coventry. Portsmouth. Gloucester. Jamestown. In 1851, Thomas Hazard visited all 33 towns and documented what happened when profit mattered more than people.

Listen to "Chained in the Fold: Stories from Rhode Island's Poor Farms" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Chains. Dungeons. Cages made from corn cribs.Flesh had grown around the iron. Splinters embedded deep from years on bare...
11/28/2025

Chains. Dungeons. Cages made from corn cribs.

Flesh had grown around the iron. Splinters embedded deep from years on bare boards. In 1851, investigators opened doors across Rhode Island and documented what towns had hidden for decades.

Listen to "Chained in the Fold: Stories from Rhode Island's Poor Farms" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

At Rhode Island's state asylum, patients were funding their own starvation. The institution raised mountains of food: ro...
11/23/2025

At Rhode Island's state asylum, patients were funding their own starvation. The institution raised mountains of food: rows of crops, steaming kettles, barns full of milk and produce. But the patients weren't eating any of it. They lived on a diet so empty it built a disease from scratch, while the fields around them overflowed with what could have saved their lives.

Hear the story in the latest episode of This Week In Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

A doctor swallowed what everyone else feared to touch. Then he asked his wife to do it too. Inside Rhode Island's state ...
11/21/2025

A doctor swallowed what everyone else feared to touch. Then he asked his wife to do it too.

Inside Rhode Island's state asylum, people weren't just getting sick; they were unraveling. Their behavior shifted. Their bodies changed. And the staff was convinced something dangerous was moving through the wards.

What happened next turned the medical world on its head.

Listen to “Feasting on Filth: Pellagra Inside the State Asylum” on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Before electroshock, there was the cold pack. Rhode Island's institutions used it for decades. The medical journals prai...
11/16/2025

Before electroshock, there was the cold pack. Rhode Island's institutions used it for decades.

The medical journals praised it. The people who experienced it called it something else.

Listen to "Frigid and Fevered" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Rhode Island's State Hospital and Ladd School had a treatment called hydrotherapy. The reality? Ice-water wraps used not...
11/14/2025

Rhode Island's State Hospital and Ladd School had a treatment called hydrotherapy.

The reality? Ice-water wraps used not for healing, but for compliance.

Our latest episode examines what medical records reveal about these practices.

Listen to "Frigid and Fevered" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

"Keep it up, and I'll send you to Sockanosset."For generations, that one threat could freeze any kid in Rhode Island. Bo...
11/09/2025

"Keep it up, and I'll send you to Sockanosset."

For generations, that one threat could freeze any kid in Rhode Island.

Boys as young as seven drilled like soldiers in front of Sunday crowds. They played baseball against patients from the asylum. Many graduated straight to the prison next door.

Ask around. Someone you know still remembers that threat.

Listen to "Showgirls and Soldiers: The Spectacle of 'Wayward Youth' in Rhode Island's Reform Schools" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

They called them "the Showgirls."At Oaklawn, Rhode Island's reform school for girls, teenagers locked up for "moral corr...
11/07/2025

They called them "the Showgirls."

At Oaklawn, Rhode Island's reform school for girls, teenagers locked up for "moral correction" were put on display every week, dancing and exercising on the lawn. Young men from local mills came to watch. They were locked in rooms with barred windows at night. And when men in flashy cars started waiting on the highway outside, the state finally built a fence.

Then they built another fence inside that one.

Listen to "Showgirls and Soldiers: The Spectacle of 'Wayward Youth' in Rhode Island's Reform Schools" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

You've seen the Sockanosset School's chapel a thousand times. But when's the last time you saw the dormitory looking thi...
11/05/2025

You've seen the Sockanosset School's chapel a thousand times. But when's the last time you saw the dormitory looking this pristine? Most never have.

New episode of This Week in Dust drops Friday, 7am.

They demolished every building. But something stayed behind.The Ladd School is gone, but the encounters haven't stopped....
11/02/2025

They demolished every building. But something stayed behind.

The Ladd School is gone, but the encounters haven't stopped. Witnesses decades apart reported the same things: shadow figures, voices, the feeling of being watched.

This Week In Dust brings you their accounts. Real people. Real experiences. You decide what it means.

Stream it now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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176 Main Street
Exeter, RI
02822

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