PROFILE: BEDLAM ASYLUM
For decades beginning in the 1830's, Forrest City operated an overcrowded mental institution known as Bedlam Asylum for the Mentally Insane. The patient overcrowding progressed to the point that physicians made little pretense of actually treating the patients. In the early 1900's, a serial killer called the Night Man struck at Bedlam Asylum, abducting and killing several patients. The now defunct Bedlam Asylum housed patients until 1924, when it was purchased by the Lancaster and Savage families and closed. After the remaining patients were relocated, Bedlam Asylum's front doors were locked and the facility has remained largely undisturbed since 1924.
