A visitor, taking in the manmade lake and the wide porches on the buildings, might have thought the place a summer camp or a university. Some 70 redbrick buildings with white columns were nestled on Whitfield’s green lawns and connected by paved walking paths. They traveled along Highway 80 before turning onto a long gravel drive lined with young trees and freshly planted flower beds. Over the course of several days, patients in Jackson were loaded onto buses in groups. It was built on the site of a former penal farm and dubbed Whitfield, in honor of the governor-Henry L.

X’s arrival, the institution moved to a brand-new campus about 15 miles outside Jackson.

One blaze after another destroyed parts of the facility, necessitating reconstruction. Worse yet, the hospital was a firetrap-its buildings were full of mattresses, linens, and other combustible material. For reasons no one could discern, his past was beyond his reach.įormerly known as the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, in 1931 the hospital was a warren of overcrowded barracks so decrepit that patients kept getting injured by pieces of plaster that fell from crumbling ceilings. X remained at the hospital, and the mystery of his identity lingered. Who was he? Where had he come from? How did he wind up alone on a street in the Deep South, at the beginning of the Great Depression, without his memory? Months passed, then years. Upon his arrival at the facility, the man, who was estimated to be about sixty, was entered into the patient ledger as “Mr. Mitchell, superintendent of the Mississippi State Hospital. After a few days, he was placed in the custody of Dr. He was unable to supply his name, his address, or an explanation for why he was in Jackson. When police questioned him, the man seemed dazed. In his pocket was a cheap watch and a single penny.

He had shell-rimmed eyeglasses and a belt buckle with the letter L on it. McRae’s department store on West Capitol Street. His clothes were worn and rumpled, but on his feet were a pair of tan Borden low-quarter dress shoes, the kind that sold for more than ten dollars at S. He was white, with gray hair and a thin, angular face. On a summer day in 1931, a man was found wandering South State Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Find her on Twitter at Listen to Carns talk about reporting “Searching for Mr. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Quartz, and Electric Literature, among other publications. Laura Todd Carns is a writer based in suburban Maryland.

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