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.

The farm does not lie. You plant in the spring what you hope to harvest in the fall, and the soil gives you back exactly...
05/31/2026

The farm does not lie. You plant in the spring what you hope to harvest in the fall, and the soil gives you back exactly what your labor and the weather and the worms allow.

For forty-seven years, Dr. Joseph H. Ladd served as superintendent of the Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded in Exeter, overseeing thousands committed to the State’s care.

Drawn from official reports, institutional letters, and records no one was meant to read again, House Dogs in the Turnips resurrects his voice as a posthumous memoir written in the aftermath of a murder accusation that brought his career to an end.

Out now in paperback and eBook.

Jenny Nuttall was seventeen when her boyfriend's brother started selling her, four men at a time.Her mother gassed herse...
05/29/2026

Jenny Nuttall was seventeen when her boyfriend's brother started selling her, four men at a time.

Her mother gassed herself the night Jenny was arraigned. Her father did the same thing two weeks later, in the same room, on a mattress he'd dragged in.

The state put Jenny in the Ladd School and said she'd become a common pr******te very quickly.

She outlasted every one of them.

Listen to "Nothing But Trouble To Face" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Ladd School had a name for the day the children wrote home: Writing Sunday.They asked for ribbons. They asked for a ...
05/24/2026

The Ladd School had a name for the day the children wrote home: Writing Sunday.

They asked for ribbons. They asked for a visit. They asked when they were coming home.

Most of them never came home.

Listen to "The Long Between" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on your favorite podcast app.

At the Ladd School, the children learned to wait.They learned how long a letter from Providence took. They learned how m...
05/22/2026

At the Ladd School, the children learned to wait.

They learned how long a letter from Providence took. They learned how many weeks an answer took. They learned how many Sundays a mother could miss before she stopped coming entirely.

Some of them waited their whole lives.

Listen to "The Long Between" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

A curiosity cabinet project? The brainchild of a transient eccentric?House Dogs in the Turnips is the memoir Dr. Joseph ...
05/15/2026

A curiosity cabinet project? The brainchild of a transient eccentric?

House Dogs in the Turnips is the memoir Dr. Joseph Ladd never wrote, and couldn't have published in his lifetime if he had.

It isn't a novel, though the cover may let you think so, and it isn't a history, though every fact in it is true. Summoned from nearly 1,000 pages of his own writing, it was borne of a ritual raising a man dead for half a century and reassembling his voice out of the paper he'd left.

"The farm doesn't lie," he said. "You plant in the spring what you hope to harvest in the fall, and the soil gives you back exactly what your labor and the weather and the worms allow."

My latest book, House Dogs in the Turnips, is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and on Kindle.

My latest book hits shelves in less than two weeks, May 12, 2026.For forty-seven years, Dr. Joseph H. Ladd served as sup...
05/03/2026

My latest book hits shelves in less than two weeks, May 12, 2026.

For forty-seven years, Dr. Joseph H. Ladd served as superintendent of the Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded in Exeter, overseeing thousands committed to the State’s care.

Drawn from official reports, institutional letters, and records no one was meant to read again, House Dogs in the Turnips resurrects his voice as a posthumous memoir written in the aftermath of an accusation that brought his career to an end.

Pre-order online at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

The Ladd School's superintendent was warned exactly what one of his boys was about to do.He decided to wait and see. So ...
04/25/2026

The Ladd School's superintendent was warned exactly what one of his boys was about to do.

He decided to wait and see. So did the staff, watching from a distance while a nineteen-year-old the state had been raising since he was two went about his business: supper, church, a clean shirt for Sunday.

Their own files said he had the mind of a five-year-old.

Listen to "Just Like Every Babyelse" on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

A nun without the habit. A social worker with the power to ruin your life.Mary Frances McTernan was the first social wor...
04/05/2026

A nun without the habit. A social worker with the power to ruin your life.

Mary Frances McTernan was the first social worker at Rhode Island’s Ladd School. She hunted down "wayward" women, interfered in marriages, and enforced a hard moral order on lives under her watch.

This week's episode of This Week in Dust traces the life of a woman who laid claim to souls in state custody, where obedience passed for salvation.

Listen to “The Quiet of the Cloister as Reprieve" now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The job was a trap.Between 1888 and 1974, ten men sat in the superintendent’s chair at Rhode Island’s State Hospital. On...
03/27/2026

The job was a trap.

Between 1888 and 1974, ten men sat in the superintendent’s chair at Rhode Island’s State Hospital. One died of pneumonia. One was fired over a straitjacket. One died at the piano. One was shot by a patient who’d escaped fifteen times.

The state never fixed the place. It just kept filling the chair.

Listen to “Another Body for the Chair” on This Week in Dust, now streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Rhode Island just got hit with a blizzard, so this feels like the right day to bring this one back."Lost In The Same Sto...
02/23/2026

Rhode Island just got hit with a blizzard, so this feels like the right day to bring this one back.

"Lost In The Same Storm" is one of my favorite stories from the Ladd School. It starts with a snowstorm and a search across the grounds, but it turns into something bigger: a story about getting lost, and finding your way back.

If you're digging out today, this is the episode.

Listen on This Week in Dust on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Exeter, RI
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