Blythewood Sanitarium, Inc.

I never even heard of Blythewood until my grandmother mentioned it.
My maternal grandmother's father was a Greenwich milkman in his day (1920s/30s), and would tell my grandmother all about what a strange place it was. He even brought home a cat he took from there, apparently they weren't wanting to keep it. As sharp as Mama is being in her 70s, she doesn't remember details, but told me that her father would speak strange deaths and hushed-up experiments. I decided to research this Sanitarium, find out where it was, and just what went on there.

One article certainly captured my attention and began all the feverish research:

FIND MEMPHIS WOMAN IN GREENWICH LAKE; Her Body Weighted With Stones Leads Officials to Believe Mrs. Biggs a Suicide.
September 08, 1921
"GREENWICH, Conn., Sept. 7.--Within a few hours after she had wandered away from Blythewood Sanitarium on the Stanwich Road here, the body of Mrs. Albert Biggs, a prominent resident of Memphis, Tenn., wss found in a lake on the Maurice Wertheim estate in Cos Cob, formerly the Ernest Thompson Seton property."

This lake is a five minute walk from my house.

I wasn't sure it was this actual pond-it was called a lake then, and additionally the only body of water on Wertheim estate.

At first I couldn't find where the Sanitarium was located. I searched my butt off on Google and web articles, looking for anything with an address on it. Unfortunately, when Blythewood existed, it refrained from using a formal address, apparently for privacy reasons... I was told this by an employee at Greenwich Library that I had working on the case. I was eventually let known that the property existed where Greenwich Baptist Church is today, on Indian Rock Lane (off of Stanwich Road, across from Central Middle School).

The article states that the lake that Mrs. Albert Biggs drowned herself in was 1/4 mile from the Sanitarium, so I pinpointed it as the one by my house.

What raised suspicions to me concerning the article is this...

"In her clothing were found stones with which she had evidently weighted herself down. There was also a note stating that her body would be found in the lake on the Wertheim estate."

Isn't it a bit redundant to drown yourself in a lake, all while having a note stating where you'll be found?
I'm not sure if I'm hinting more towards foul play with that one, but it seems to be fishy to me.

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Now, not that I'm a tightwad, but pay articles through New York Times (or any other publication) on the internet are not cheap. I discovered a few more interesting and shady articles involving disappearances and more drownings..

I can't buy every article, so I just gathered all the information I could by the short descriptions, etc.

Here are a few:

Local Youth Gone From Sanitarium
June 29, 1935
"Arthur M. Collens, Jr., 22. of this city, son of Arthur M. Collens, president of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company, disappeared from the Blythewood Sanitarium in Greenwich shortly before 5 p. m. Thursday. His disappearance was made known Friday when he failed..."


BODY FOUND IN POOL.; Inmate of Sanitarium Believed to Have Drowned Himself.
June 30, 1935 (14 years after Mrs. Biggs)
"...few miles from the spot where the body of Joseph Goodglass, apparently the victim of gangsters, was found, an attendant of Blythewood Sanitarium, here, ..."


ANOTHER pool death:
Ends life on Wertheim Estate
Aug 22, 1941
COS COB, Conn., Aug. 21 Offline body of Miss Rena Seeley, 45year-old nurse of 3366 Bronx Boulevard, New York City, was found floating in a swimming pool on ...


MRS. A. ALEXANDER LEAPS UNDER TRAIN; Lawyer's Wife, a Sanitarium Patient, Eludes Nurse at Greenwich and Is Killed.
Nov 16, 1935
"..Mrs. Susan Tilton Alexander, 27 years old, of Bernardsville, N.J., whose marriage to Archibald Stevens Alexander, a lawyer, was one of the events of the New York social season of 1929, killed herself here today by jumping in front of a train.."

BODY OF O.W. JAQUISH, ARTIST HERE, IS FOUND; Authority on Design Had Been a Patient in Greenwich Sanitarium.
Sep 9, 1931
"..body of Orrin William Jaquish, who has been missing since Aug. 27 from Blythewood Sanitarium on Stanwich Road, Greenwich, where he was a patient, ..."
(Court case against Blythewood involving liability of his disappearance and death)


WALTER LEWISOHN HELD IN SANITARIUM; Has Been Detained at Greenwich, Conn., Since May 22, Court Action Brings Out.
Sep 14, 1923
"..Walter Lewisohn, member of the firm of Lewisohn Brothers, bankers of 11 Broadway, has been an inmate of the Blythewood Sanitarium for the insane at Greenwich, Conn., since May 22, it was disclosed yesterday. He has written many letters to friends and to his attorney begging them to obtain his release..."

Walter Lewisohn Victim Of Fumigation Poison
Aug 2, 1938
"...Former Banker, Friend Of Elwell Of Murder Mystery Case, Dies At Greenwich Sanatorium Greenwich, Conn., Aug. 1 ..."

Trio Cleared In Gas Death At Sanitarium
Aug 28, 1938
Bridgeport, Aug. 27.--(AP.)--On the basic of his speculation that escaping gas probably caused the three persons who were supposed to be guarding the door of Sunset Cottage at Blythewood Sanitarium Greenwich, to fall asleep on their posts. Coroner Theodore E. Steiber...

Sanitarium Operator To Face Charge
Jun 17, 1953

GREENWICH, June 16 (AP)-- William H. Wiley, 37, operator of Blythewood Sanitarium here is under arrest on a charge of operating a mental institution without a license.

DR. WILLIAM WILEY DIES IN GREENWICH; He Founded the Blythewood Psychiatric Sanitarium With Wife in 1906. UNUSUAL METHODS' USED
November 08, 1936

Negro Maid Held For Theft of Ring

Feb 27, 1927
Eliznbotn Kennedy 17 viu arrested today charged with of a ring valued At 1000 As chambermaid at Blythewood Sanitarium la Greenwich she 18 ...


WOMAN DIES, MAN HELD.; Police Are Told That Car Struck Victim on Cos Cob Road.
May 9, 1932
Mrs. Mary Marley, an attendant at Blythewood Sanitarium, died at the Greenwich Hospital early this morning: from injuries received late Friday night. ...


WATSON F. BLAIR, CAPITALIST, DEAD; Chicagoan, Who Retired 37 Years Ago, Victim of Pneumonia in Greenwich, Conn.
"Watson Franklin Blair, retired Chicago capitalist and grain commission merchant, died yesterday of pneumonia in the Blythewood Sanitarium, Greenwich, Conn., where he had long been a patient. He was 74 years old. Funeral services will be held tomorrow at his home, 720 Rush Street, Chicago."

ALEXANDER F. ULLMAN; at Former Betting Commissioner Saratoga Dies at 84
Sep 4, 1943

Ullman, onetime betting commissioner at Saratoga and other York tracks, died on Thursday at the Blythewood Sanitarium, Greenwich, Conn., at tile age of 84. ...

BLYTHEWOOD HALL BURNED; Fire Destroys Gymnasium of Sanitariu..
Dec 22, 1939

"... The large gymnasium and recreation building on the Blythewood Sanitarium grounds, on Stanwieh Road, was burned early this-morning at--a--loss estimated ..."

WARREN DIES AT 47, A VICTIM OF STRAIN AS HEAD OF POLICE
Aug 14, 1929
"Joseph A. Warren, former Police Commissioner, died of general paralysis yesterday morning in the Blythewood Sanitarium at Greenwich, after a gradual decline ..."

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In all my research, I've come to find that the most well known patient from Blythewood seems to be Mrs. Marty Mann, a pioneer in the understanding of female alcoholism.
Her name outnumbers Blythewood articles, but in digging into her articles I was able to find more information on the Sanitarium itself:

"Perhaps fortunately for Marty's remaining shreds of pride, charity patients were never identified at Blythewood. As she rode through the big iron gate of the sanitarium, the contrast with Bellevue was "like going from Hell to Heaven.

Blythewood Sanitarium, once a private estate belonging to the notorious Boss Tweed, had opened in 1905 under the direction of Mrs. Anna C. Wiley, a nurse who had proved exceptionally successful with mentally disturbed patients.

Situated on fifty acres of rustic, wooded land bisected by a meandering stream, Blythewood at it's peak had eight main buildings, eight cottages, a chapel, a building for occupational therapy, and even a little golf course. Handsome naturalistic landscaping and shrubbery graced the grounds."

Most of the buildings are gone today, it was hard to figure out what building was what, but on my visit up to the present-day Church, I saw that the Chapel is still there.

Four separate buildings housed the seventy-five patients. Marty checked in at the main house next to the gate. This gracious mansion with white columns was the estate's original house. Blythewood's administrative center, it contained the doctors' offices as well as the "graduate house" for patients soon to be discharged...

..After being admitted, patients were sent to the "lockup house." There they would be held a few hours or days for observation. Farthest from the road was what was called the "violent house." Many of the patients in this building arrived by ambulance. The violent house contained a padded cell. Marty could hear occasional screams when she was walking back from pottery class. Patients in the violent house were often restrained, with their hands tied. Closer to the road was the "middle house". It had two floors, a finished attic, common rooms, and a small central dining room."

.......

"Though the sanitarium had been established as primarily a psychatric facility, its location in Greenwich was ironic regarding services to alcoholics. The town, a moneyed, educated, urbane bedroom community of New York City, had a reputation for widespread inebriety. As late as 1979, the problem of alcoholism was so pronounced that national study, reported in the Greenwich Time of July 30, 1979, called Greenwich the alcoholic capital of America, second only perhaps to the San Fernando Valley of California."

-read more here-

-blythewood sanitarium, inc. in pictures-

-records of other Greenwich and Fairfield County, Connnecticut Sanitariums (Crestview, Ardendale)-

Greenwich map, 1938: