I've made this section a little easier to navigate. All older letters on Byberry will be archived for you to read. All new letters will be posted right here. This way you don't need to sift through all the old stuff.
Byberry wasn't totally closed until the late 1980's. My husband was employed as a member of one of the "community treatment teams" whose function was to place the former patients in the community, either in homes or independent living, and to follow them to make sure that they were okay, continuing to take their medications, and going to programs. He was inside of Byberry when the last of the patients, the most chronic and severe, were still there, as they were the last to be placed out of Byberry. He described some pretty disturbing scenes such as people openly masturbating in the middle of the floor. However, he also said that in its prime, it provided a more homelike environment such that some of these former patients will never see again, including a bowling alley, farming, movies and a barber shop. The problem was that the staff that was hired to take care of the patients were increasingly from lower and lower rungs of society until in the end the techs were high school drop outs and criminals on parole from jail.
When they closed Byberry once and for all, each worker, including my husband, was given a brick from one of the buildings with a little plaque on it commemorating the date. He glued one of the actual ward keys to his brick!
If you have any questions, please feel free to e mail us.
Submitted by: Nessa E-mail
Hi everyone,my name is vic and I live in the area.I'm 36 years old now and I worked at Byberry the last two years it was opened,many of the stories I have read here are true many are bs.I worked on the plumbing and the electrical at byberry so I can say i know every square inch of the place.Let me say first that many of the rooms at Byberry especially the doctors and nurses rooms had escape passages in their rooms that were used incase of a needed escape mostly they were afraid of patients making an uprise and taking over the hospital.They were bricked up the last year I worked there and in many of these passages they hid the medical records of the patients to keep them safe from the family.
These passages led to the tunnels where they could hide until help arrived if needed.The tunnels were another story I will tell later just STAY OUT OF THEM.And I will say many of the tunnels are un safe now and there is no person with a knife in there either.I was told that many of the tunnels were bricked up behind walls to seal them and their contents up,reading these letters I know no body has discovered all the tunnels but stay out of them because they contain things that you don't ever want to find.
I would like to go back to Byberry to look around but none of my friends will go back with me even the ones that I worked with at Byberry.
Any questions write me here.
Submitted by: Vic
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