I'm not sure if there's really still a town here, or if it the mental hospital is the only thing still there.
At one point, it was definitely a town. Here are some news items from the New Jersey Mirror about the people
who lived there:
MAY 25, 1881 At Camden last week, James M. Allen, who it was alleged tried to establish a free love, Mormon,
communistic and socialistic colony at Ancora, was arraigned for trial. He was accompanied by two women, said to be his
wives, neither of whom is over thirty years of age, and one of his fathers-in-law sat beside him. One of the wives wore a
neat suit of blue and the other wore a Bloomer costume. They were very affectionate toward each other and their joint husband
. Allen said that he would act as his own counsel. The case was finally dismissed, on the ground that no breach of the law
had been shown.
from the Hunterdon Democrat, 15 May 1883:
A sad story comes from Ancora, a little village on the line of the Camden and Atlantic Railroad, in Camden county. A six-year-old daughter of Edward Fowler, a prominent resident of Ancora, was taken sick a week ago with smallpox. The father became alarmed and sent for the wife, who had been separated from him for over five years, to return to her home and nurse her child. The mother had only a short time before recovered from an attack of smallpox. She came to the bedside of her suffering daughter, and there did all that a fond mother could. The disease assumed a complicated form, and Dr. Junkey, of Hammonton, it is said, was telegraphed for, but for some unknown reason failed to respond to the summons... On Wednesday night the child died. As there was not an undertaker within several miles the parents set at work to prepare the body for burial themselves... By the pale light of the moon the coffin was lowered into the grave.
APR 7 1909: Rolling beneath the wheels of the Mount Holly 6.30 train as it was leaving the Pennsylvania Railroad
terminal at Camden, on Saturday evening, Robert F. MacDougall, one of the best known newspaper men in South Jersey was
instantly killed. He was cut in twain, the body being mangled. With Frank Chew, of Ancora, MacDougall tried to catch what
they believed to be the Waterford train. Both ran after the latter as it was going out of the terminal. Chew safely boarded
the train, but MacDougall missed the hand rails and fell to the platform. The next instant he rolled beneath the wheels,
the latter passing diagonally across his body. There was some evidence of life when the ambulance crew reached him and a
run was made to the Cooper Hospital. Long before that institution was reached, however, life had fled. The body was
practically cut in two by the car wheels. MacDougall was 54 years old. A widow and three sons survive him. He had been in
the newspaper business for over a quarter of a century.
AUG 11 1937: William Sanatora, 27, of Hammonton, accused as an operator of a still which exploded last week, killing
one man and setting fire to 250 acres of woodland near Hammonton, was held in $2500 bail for the federal grand jury yesterday
by Commissioner Wynn Armstrong in Philadelphia. Two others arrested with Santora, John DiMiglio, 39, and Joseph Aflin, 32,
both of Ancora, N. J., are under $1,000 bail for a further hearing Monday. The man killed was William Pavlino, 21, of Ancora.
Lately the situation at the Ancora mental hospital has been in the news a lot. If the stories below are any indication, Ancora is truly a horrific place. These are just some of the incidents that have been reported in the last two years:
| Jul 14, 2006 (from the Star Ledger): Seven state employees, including two psychiatrists, were suspended yesterday for "neglect of duty" and other mistakes that allowed a patient at a state hospital to be killed by her roommate, a Human Services spokeswoman said. Acting Human Services Commissioner James Smith also dismissed two temporary nurses who were working at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County on July 14, the day 54-year-old Margaret Cetrangolo was strangled in her bedroom. State Police arrested patient Salwa Srour, 36, who was the victim's roommate for less than a day. She has been held at the Ann Klein Forensic Center in Trenton since her arrest. The disciplinary charges expose a breakdown in communications and a failure to follow hospital policy days before the homicide and an attempt to cover up mistakes after the fact. "It was human error every step of the way," Human Services spokeswoman Ellen Lovejoy said. "It's unacceptable." The problems began 11 days before the killing, when one of the hospital's chiefs of psychiatry "prescribed more than the maximum recommended amount" of medication for Cetrangolo. The psychiatrist, who was suspended for 11 days, also failed to keep the patient's files current for two months, Lovely said. On the day she died, the hospital moved Cetrangolo to a different unit and paired her up with Srour. One nurse failed to ensure Cetrangolo's medications came with her when she moved, so the patient went from being over- medicated to taking no medication in a single day, Lovejoy said. Another nurse looking after Srour failed to tell her supervisor the patient "had been acting out" and needed medication to control her behavior. Both nurses were suspended for 30 days. Two nursing supervisors also made critical errors by failing to note in Cetrangolo's file she was prone to aggressive behavior and needed to be monitored carefully. Both have been suspended for 30 days, Lovejoy said. At 7:15 p.m. on July 14, Srour slapped one employee across the face and another on the arm. When one of the temporary nurses called the hospital's other psychiatry chief for advice, "the psychiatrist hung up before the nurse could fully complete his report to her and get an assessment and recommendation for treatment," Lovejoy said. The state ordered the psychiatrist suspended for 90 days, she added. The state also meted out a 45-day suspension to a Human Services assistant who gave conflicting statements and falsified records about when she knew the victim needed closer supervision. According to a police report, after the attack that evening Srour told a hospital worker, "I killed Margaret.... I strangled her and then put a pillow over her face and sat on her." The staff found Cetrangolo's body in her bedroom, which had a large window to allow staff to monitor patients inside, police said. The state withheld the identities of the disciplined state employees, citing confidentiality requirements. Ancora is a 730-bed adult inpatient facility in Winslow Township and one of five psychiatric hospitals operated by the state. |
| Jul 17, 2006 Authorities have charged a patient at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County with killing another patient. Salwa Srour is held on $250,000 bail and is undergoing a psychological evaluation at the Ann Klein Forensic Center in Trenton. Authorities say the 36-year-old strangled Margaret Cetrangolo. The 54-year-old was found unresponsive in her room on Friday night. |
| Jan 11, 2007 A 52-year-old patient at Ancora State Hospital died after suffering abdominal injuries in an alleged assault at the hospital on New Year's Day. Robert Williams died Wednesday night at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where he had been a patient since the alleged attack. Another patient, Tyrell McAllister, 23, was charged last week with aggravated assault in the case, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said Thursday. He is being held at the Camden County Correctional Facility in lieu of $50,000 bail. An investigation is continuing to determine whether the charge against McAllister will be upgraded to criminal homicide, the prosecutor's office said. Investigators say McAllister punched Williams in the stomach during an apparent argument over a cigarette. Williams did not report the assault immediately, but told a staff member hours later that he was suffering from intense abdominal pain. He was then taken to the hospital. The killing is the second at Ancora, a 730-bed state psychiatric hospital, in six months. On July 14, patient Margaret Cetrangolo, formerly of Lakewood, was found strangled in her bedroom. Her roommate, Salwa Srour, 36, was charged with murder. Seven employees were suspended after that attack for neglecting their duties. |
| CBS News reported on Sep 11, 2007: An admitted killer who walked away from a southern New Jersey psychiatric hospital over the weekend has been captured, CBS 2 and wcbstv.com have learned. William Enman was found in Ancora, wearing camouflage clothing in a wooded area behind the Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, where he had escaped from on Monday, authorities said. He was taken into custody without incident. Enman now faces charges of escape. "He banged his head after scaling a fence the first night and remained in the area ever since," State Police spokesman Steve Jones said. Enman, 64, was taken back to Ancora after being discovered by a State Police detective and two Human Services police officers. Jones said he was unarmed and taken into custody without incident. The arrest ended 48 hours of frantic searching that had authorities chasing several leads that ended nowhere. Now that Enman has been caught, he will likely face criminal charges of escape. If convicted, it is possible he will end up in a state prison. His apprehension still leaves unanswered questions about the extent of Enman's privileges to walk on the hospital grounds without an escort and overall security at psychiatric hospitals in New Jersey. Though he is a slight 5-foot-6, Enman's escape struck fear in the neighborhoods near Ancora. In the 1970s, Enman was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the deaths of his roommate and the man's 4-year-old son in Morris County. He admitted beating them with a baseball bat. He has been involuntarily committed to state hospitals ever since, including Ancora since 1992. He has frequently asked judges to release him and was scheduled for another such hearing Thursday. "As far as we're concerned he's still a danger to others," Robyn D'Onofrio, a spokeswoman for the Morris County Prosecutor's Office, said Monday. Enman had privileges to walk unescorted around the 657-acre grounds of the hospital, and on Sunday he failed to return from a routine, unsupervised walk that was supposed to last less than an hour. He has walked away from hospitals in the past and has been something of a poster child for permissive rules regarding the criminally insane in state mental institutions. State Sen. Richard J. Codey brought up Enman in a 1995 state hearing and talked about how he had walked away from hospitals. In the 1990s, Enman was caught with marijuana. And at one point when he was at a psychiatric hospital in Marlboro, he was caught with a crossbow. From about 1993 until 2000, he was allowed to leave the hospital occasionally. During that time, he got married to a woman who lived in Hammonton and fathered a child with her. A judge reprimanded him for doing so without permission. By the end of the 1990s, though, his wife stopped visiting him in the hospital, according to testimony from annual court hearings to review his status. It was unclear why he lost the privilege to leave the hospital's campus. However, Jones said it's safe to assume he won't have that privilege or the right to be on the hospital grounds without an escort. |
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Another version of that story showed up in the Courier-Press on Sep 12: The search spread from Cape May County to Canada, but William Enman didn't go very far at all. The 64-year-old paranoid schizophrenic who admitted to a 1974 double killing was found in a wooded area on Ancora Psychiatric Hospital's 657-acre grounds around 3 p.m. Tuesday, officials said. He was wearing camouflage. Enman was believed to have walked away from the hospital Sunday afternoon when he failed to return from an unsupervised walk. A search for him included a state police helicopter, infrared scanners and police dogs, but it was two staff members looking out a window who recognized Enman as he wandered the hospital's grounds, said Ellen Lovejoy, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services. The staff member got into a car and followed Enman until a state trooper and members of the hospital's police staff arrested Enman. He had banged his head after scaling a fence and, despite concerns of a flight to property he owned in Nova Scotia and a rumored sighting at Cape Regional Medical Center in Cape May Courthouse, Enman remained in the area during the 48 hours he was missing. Lovejoy said Enman was taken back to Ancora and will be transferred to Ann Klein Forensic Center in Trenton. He is under one-on-one supervision, Lovejoy said. He was unarmed and taken into custody without incident. Though he did have a backpack with him, Lovejoy said it was "more like a toiletry bag." It contained toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, candles and Band-Aids. Enman faces a criminal charge of escape, Lovejoy said. If convicted, it is possible he will end up in a state prison. "It's a relief," she said. "We were making a diligent effort to apprehend him." Enman's disappearance frightened residents who live near the hospital and some said they slept with baseball bats in the event they would have to fend off the slightly -built man. Enman is 5 feet 9 inches tall and 145 pounds. In 1975, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity for murdering his roommate, Peter LeSeur, and LeSeur's 4-year-old son, Eric, in Morris Plains, authorities said. Since then, he's been in state psychiatric hospitals. Morris County Prosecutor Robert A. Bianchi said Enman has a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Within a few years of being housed in a psychiatric hospital, Enman began petitioning the court to buy a motor vehicle -- which was not allowed -- and to open bank accounts, according to court records. He was caught with marijuana and a crossbow in the 1990s. Between 1993 and 2000, he was allowed to leave Ancora's grounds and married a woman who lived in Hammonton. He also fathered a child with her, officials said. Over the years, Enman has refused to take psychotropic medications -- a decision that was upheld by a Superior Court judge in Morris County -- but was still deemed to be in remission from his mental illness a few years ago. At the time of his disappearance, a court order permitted Enman to take unescorted walks on the hospital's property. Those privileges were revoked Tuesday, Lovejoy said. His Sunday walk, which began at 2:10 p.m. was scheduled to end at 3 p.m., officials said. But hospital officials should not shoulder the blame for the incident, said Phillip Lubitz, director of advocacy for the New Jersey chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. "It wasn't a haphazard decision about letting a guy have grounds privileges," Lubitz said. "This was a guy who was allowed -- as a result of the judge's decision -- not to take medication. You have to consider that as a contributing factor in what has occurred." Under state law, Lubitz said, physicians can order hospitalized psychiatric patients to be medicated involuntarily. But patients are provided the right to appeal those recommendations, said Sarah Mitchell, a lawyer with New Jersey Protection and Advocacy Inc. It's rare, she said, for a judge to overrule a state recommendation. Lubitz said Ancora and the state's other psychiatric hospitals have recently made strides in overcoming long-standing struggles with aging facilities, overcrowding and a lack of resources for programming. The state has recently brought in a team of veteran mental-health managers to serve as mentors and begun collaborating with concerned families of patients, Lubitz said. "I really have to give them credit for making a sincere effort to take outside input and make efforts to improve the hospital," Lubitz added. |
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From Feb 17th, 2008: Allegations of nepotism, employees sleeping on the job and payroll abuse have brought normally private administrative hearings into the public eye at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital. Debra Weisman, a nurse at the hospital, says that over the past two years, she has complained about fellow nurses sleeping on the job, patient rounds being conducted by unqualified orderlies, and staff members claiming credit for hours they didn't work. She said her complaints go to Anita Jackson, the local union chief for nurses at Ancora. Weisman said she asked Jackson to take the complaints to Wilhemina Tameka Martin, the head nursing administrator for psychiatric services. Jackson and Martin are sisters. "I think that's a conflict of interest," Weisman said. "How can it not be a conflict when the union head is directly related to the boss above her?" Weisman said other nurses are reluctant to complain because they are afraid of retribution. She produced an Aug. 24, 2007, memo from Martin asking her to report for employee counseling. The memo from Martin says, "Based on previous conversations I had with you, your major concerns had to do with staffing on the unit and patient care. I am most concerned with the times you stated you "did not sleep' because of the numerous calls you felt obligated to make to departments both inside and outside the organization." Weisman said Martin was annoyed that she contacted outside agencies, including the governor's office. She interpreted the memo as "retaliation" for complaining about conditions. Martin, who was paid $81,434 in 2006, did not return calls seeking comment. But Jackson, who was paid $53,932 in 2006 as a management assistant, responded by discussing details of normally private administrative charges filed against Weisman. She divulged the charges in a conference call with Carolyn Wade, president of Local 1040 of the Communications Workers of America. Wade said employee disciplinary actions are normally kept secret, but she would make an exception in Weisman's case "since she ran to the newspapers." "This woman (Weisman) hit another employee in the head," Wade said. "She's got problems.""Serious ones," Jackson said. "She has gone everywhere," Wade said, "with innuendos and what-have-you." Jackson acknowledged that she and Martin are sisters. Said Wade: "What's that have to do with anything? . . . They do their jobs." As a branch president for CWA at Ancora, Jackson "doesn't really handle any problems," Wade said, adding that "we watch over Anita's shoulder." Weisman confirmed that what she called "fake charges" were recently submitted against her by another nurse. Weisman said that she had complained, several times, that this other nurse, a longtime employee, had routinely slept on the job during the night shift. "I hit a desk with a magazine and I said, "Wake up!' because she was sound asleep," Weisman said. "By morning she was claiming I hit her in the back with a magazine."
In a separate interview, Weisman detailed other complaints, which Jackson and Wade said they knew nothing about.
On Dec. 24, 2006, Weisman said, she saw an Ancora staffer signing in at the beginning of a shift, then leaving the hospital
to spend the holiday with his family. At the end of the shift, the worker returned to sign out as though he'd been on the
job the entire time. "The coordinator on duty was (the male staffer's) drinking buddy. The day shift coordinator told me,
"I'm retiring in six months, and I don't want to know about it,' " Weisman said. Weisman said she wanted to be fair to her
co-worker. "Many of the nurses and many of the staff members do an excellent job," she said. "They really care about their
patients." But the nurses and other staffers who abuse the system not only endanger patients, but they sabotage morale at
the institution, she said. |
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On Feb 19th, 2008, the APP ran this story: WINSLOW � Slowly, progress is being made toward fixing years of long-standing problems at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, says Assistant Human Services Commissioner Kevin Martone.
A community warning system, which failed in December, has been improved so that nearby residents will be called the next
time a patient escapes from the hospital grounds, Martone said. Staff must now contact police immediately if a patient is
unaccounted for instead of looking for the patient first. A new, higher fence outside and new cameras inside will improve
security. |
| And then there was this story: WINSLOW � When the phone rang on a Saturday morning, the voice on the other end gave Bill Toth grim news. His brother, John, had just died at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, the caller said. Could he please come and identify the body? "Wait a minute. That can't be right," Toth said into the phone. "I just saw John yesterday." Ancora had called in 2001 about the wrong John Toth, confusing him with another patient who was 20 years older, medical records show. But his brother's "death" was not simply a case of mistaken identities. Because Ancora mixed up the medical files, Bill Toth said he authorized at least three surgeries on a John Toth he did not know and never met. "It was just gross incompetence," said Toth, a Toms River resident. "There's no excuse for it." Even though he told the hospital his brother was certainly alive, staffers cut off his medication. "I had to call the next Monday. I had talked to my brother, and he couldn't understand why he wasn't getting any medicine," Bill Toth said. He was concerned his brother, who had been making progress, would be destabilized and suffer withdrawal symptoms, Toth said. He had to argue with Ancora officials to get them to acknowledge his brother was still alive. The fact that his brother was standing in the hospital was not proof enough, Toth said. "They were confused because his file had been closed," Bill Toth said. "His file read that he was deceased." State Human Services spokeswoman Ellen Lovejoy declined comment, citing the confidentiality of patient records. John Toth has moved away from the area and could not be reached for comment. The quality of patient care at the state's largest psychiatric hospital has been under scrutiny ever since a patient hanged himself on Dec. 10 while he was supposed to be monitored by two hospital orderlies. Disciplinary actions against staffers have followed the deaths of at least four patients in the last 20 months. On Sunday, the Asbury Park Press profiled the case of Lakewood resident Jerry Postel. Ancora staffers had filled out a chart, saying Postel's condition had been checked every 15 minutes. But when his body was discovered at 6 a.m. June 12, rigor mortis had already set in. That shows staffers failed to notice Postel had been dead for hours, said Ted Novak, state deputy public advocate. At 2 p.m. Feb. 28 in the Statehouse in Trenton, the Assembly Human Services Committee will convene a special hearing to find out about conditions at Ancora and discuss what can be done. In interviews, family members and past and current patients described what they have experienced: Morton Reeves, 33, of Millville. Reeves had a bad reaction to medication, and doctors had to cut a hole in his throat to save his life. He walked around with the open tracheotomy in his throat for more than a year, he said, because he could not convince Ancora's doctors to sew it shut. Deputy Public Advocate Ted Novak, a state employee who represents Ancora patients, said he had seen the hole in Reeves' throat and helped him get the medical attention he requested. Ancora officials refused to permit Reeves to be interviewed or photographed, saying his medical team advised against it. Novak arranged for Reeves to call from inside the hospital. "He has constitutional rights," said Novak, "especially since a judge has ruled he shouldn't be here." Reeves is one of more than 350 patients ordered released by the courts who are stuck in the institution because there is no place to put them. Some need placement in group homes or low-income housing because they cannot afford to pay rent. "Ancora is a place of utter horror and disgust," said Reeves, a longtime Ancora resident. Carl D'Arpa, 48, of Elizabeth. D'Arpa had a cast on his hand. Doctors tried to remove the cast � a simple procedure, according to D'Arpa's brother, Joseph. But doctors botched the operation and sliced into the skin below the cast, D'Arpa said. Carl D'Arpa is a longtime patient, his brother said. He was a former patient at Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital in Monmouth County. But when that facility was closed in 1998, D'Arpa was relocated to Ancora, "which is much further from his family and makes it hard for them to visit him," Joseph D'Arpa said. Anthony Parisi, 39, of Gloucester City. Parisi, a former patient, is also a former Golden Gloves boxer who is proudest of pictures taken of him posing with the Los Angeles Lakers cheerleaders. But in March 2007, depressed that his boxing career hadn't panned out, he spent time in Ancora. Parisi said he witnessed a sexual assault of a young woman while he was in the hospital. Although some staff members cared a great deal about their patients, Parisi said others showed "a complete lack of professionalism." Instead of monitoring their patients, staff members too often are "playing cards or watching Jerry Springer," Parisi said. "The place is a zoo. There's no therapeutic atmosphere where sick people can heal." He complained about the hospital's centralized laundry system. Inmates from the nearby Bayside State Prison do the laundry, Parisi said, and "if there's anything good, anything new, the prisoners take it." Therron Green, 35, of Penns Grove. Green also complained about clothes being stolen. When he was admitted on Jan. 7 of last year, he said, his wife sent his Christmas presents with him to make him feel better. "She sent new clothes . . . a coat, boots, a couple pair of jeans, some shirts, sweaters. A couple pairs of socks. She knew I was going to be there for a while," Green said. But when he checked in, he was required to surrender his Christmas gifts, and "I never saw them again." Assistant Human Services Commissioner Kevin Martone confirmed that prisoners do the laundry for the roughly 760 Ancora patients. Prisoners are approved by the Bayside State Prison to perform that task, he said. "It would be unfair for me to place blame on anyone," Martone said. "We do get questions or allegations that a particular piece of clothing is stolen." Most complaints are "unsubstantiated," Martone said. About the professionalism of the staff, Martone said he believes the hospital has "turned the corner" after the recent patient deaths and that new policies and procedures � including more treatment programs for patients � will make a difference. |
This link gives the location of the town.
If you have any other info regarding this town, please send me an e-mail