Howard! 1900 A.D.

Around 1900, Rhode Island sent its insane, its criminals, its poor, its sick and its wayward children to one place: the State Institutions at Howard, in Cranston.

These are the photographs taken inside. A boy at the forge in the Sockanosset School for Boys. Girls at work in the Oaklawn School's sewing room. The hydrotherapy room at the Asylum for the Insane. The cells of the State Prison. Tuberculosis patients sleeping in tents and on open porches. Inmates making shoes and toys. The almshouse kitchen. The operating room.

Every photograph has been restored and colorized, and they appear beside the words of the man who ran the State Infirmary, its first medical superintendent, Dr. Henry Aaron Jones.

This is what life inside Howard looked like.