The Quaker Whistleblower Who Sparked Mental Health Reform

Charlie Lord
We’re looking in Life magazine for the article, which had my pictures, and it…
Here’s the original one here.Bedlam, 1946. This is dayroom. With dozens of naked men along the left wall, far in and…It was just terrible neglect. I had this Quaker and Christian attitude of wanting to help people and do something good with my life. And I just thought the outside world needed to know what conditions were like in that hospital.

Ron Lord
Yeah. My dad is here. Charlie and two younger brothers, on a farm outside of Grinnell, Iowa. Dad was born in 1920. The influence was really from his mother, who was the daughter of a Quaker pastor. The foundation, of course, with George Fox: to live your life in a way that takes away the occasion for war.

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Submitted without a struggle as Nazi Germany, in a lightning stroke, swept the war into Denmark.

Ron Lord
And right after college, that was when Dad was being drafted, and so he chose to be a conscientious objector. He was assigned to Byberry mental hospital, Philadelphia.
So he would change the sheets and do the laundry and clean the room, do… but he was pretty shocked at the conditions. He just decided that he, you know, had to do something.

Charlie Lord
Mother gave me a box camera when I was 14. And I’ve been part-time professional photographer all my life. A small camera would just fold and sit in my pocket and I could slip it out, take a picture. But I never lifted it up to my eye. Nobody really knew I was taking these pictures. I was lucky I didn’t get caught because if I’d been caught, oh, you know, would’ve. This is the one with the close-up of the one man standing and all the naked men sitting. The smell was just awful because the men just went anywhere, wherever they were. It was on the floor, and in the dayroom and dining room, and everywhere. Oh, man. They were put full cuffs and straps in the restraint room. And in bed. That was the maximum.

Charlie Lord
If they had family that visited, which not very many did, you had to rush around and find a shirt and a pair of pants from somebody and get them out so their company could visit them, and just try to show brotherly love to them as much as I could. And I just thought the outside world needed to know what conditions were like in that hospital. Very happy that Life magazine did the story on it. It was then picked up by newspapers all around the East.The Philadelphia papers and New York— they had stories on it.

Hal Barton told Eleanor Roosevelt the conditions were like, and she wouldn’t believe it.
And then he brought out my pictures and showed her, and she said, “Oh, my stars, what in the world? This must have been in the Deep South.” He said, “No, it’s within 90 miles of here.” So she helped get influential friends to sign on as sponsors for our little mental health foundation.

The evidence is right there before you. It’s not somebody’s writing to describe something. They can use flowery words—
But if the photograph is there, you can’t deny it.
I’m happy that I was able to take them and raise the awareness of this problem in America.
Let’s just thank God for giving me the opportunity to do this.

Ron Lord
Scandal results in real reforms. A very, very big splash. And it caught the attention…
I know that the project was something he felt very deeply about, that it would help improve the lives of these people who were really not being treated very well. The thing I’m most proud of is his integrity and honesty. You know, the Quaker testimony was truthfulness.
And he had picked that up.  He wanted to live those things.

My mother had a mental illness. Her bipolar—  Only later in her life did it become more obvious. And the way that he took care of her or just showed his love was really amazing.