The 18 July 2021 NY Times includes an article entitled ‘The tug of war over Hart Island.’ A mile long, Hart Island is in Long Island Sound and is part of the Bronx (New York, US). Hart Island is still used as the ‘potter’s field’ for the city, with over a million New Yorkers buried on the island in common graves. Significant numbers of people who died from COVID were likely buried on the island. In the 1980s, people who died of AIDS were also likely buried on Hart Island.
At different times, Hart Island has served as a location for multiple devalued groups in various settings, including the following:
- a prison camp for Confederate soldiers during the US Civil War
- an isolation site during a yellow fever epidemic
- a charity hospital for women
- an insane asylum for women (with up to 300 women living in the asylum)
- a jail for prisoners whose job was to bury the dead
- a homeless shelter
- a tuberculosis hospital for women
- a reformatory for young men
- an overflow jail
- a disciplinary barracks for the US Navy
- a narcotics rehabilitation program
Oddly, during the Cold War, Hart Island was used as a missile site, from the 1950s until the 1970s.
For additional stories on Hart Island, see:
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1016122868/nyc-burial-mass-graves-unclaimed-harts-island-covid
http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/html/hart.html