Blood on Their Hands

From the day she was born in January 1883 and every day thereafter Reno Nev. native Emily Ann Cox was as straight as an arrow; she was as trustworthy as the sun coming up in the east over Sparks. She after all graduated from the top of her class in high school and was salutatorian with a degree in English from the State University of Nevada in Reno. Her work and her character were impeccable; it was no wonder she left her friend and student newspaper colleague Brad Porter behind and enthusiastically went to work at Mission Dolores the California mission in San Francisco the summer of her graduation. So how was it a prim and proper young woman and intelligent to boot who doesnt have a problem in the world one day and then within a few short weeks ends up being a resident a high-grade (less insane) inmate by definition of the state mental asylum in Yountville? Due to situations beyond her control namely her mother and her snoopiness and rush to judgment Emily became defenseless in the practices of the Superior Court. She believed her explanations of what really happened inside the church at Mission Dolores that fateful day and not her mothers assumptions would be heard and believed and then shed be acquitted in short order. After all the truth was the truth in Emilys book. That of course wasnt the case. Emilys mother bought the verdict she was looking for; a buy that wasnt all that too uncommon with the judges in the San Francisco Superior Court system as it was later learned. Emily was railroaded and little did she know or suspect anything was working against her. Despite harboring resentment against her mother for the womans unbelievable act her reason for getting Emily committed was taken supposedly to prevent Emily from assuming and accepting a promiscuous life style she accepted her fate and tried to fit in among the Yountville population as best she could. She even made friends quickly with some of the residents in her residence building Stoneman Hall. Like everyone else at Yountville. Emily had to go to school an asylum requirement even though she was a college graduate. She also had to work in two of the institutions industries and chose the Sewing Room and the Farm. She especially liked the farm; not so much the chickens but the hogs. No matter who her supervisors were Lefty on the farm Miss Rose in the Sewing Room or Sarah in the superintendents office she took to them quickly as they did to her. Emily was after all completely sane and was quite capable of relating to her supervisors just like any intelligent woman would. The shifty medical superintendent Dr. Josey Anselmo was sharp in his own way. He knew all the details that worked against Emily to make her a resident at Yountville so he took advantage of her outstanding clerical skills and made her his assistant secretary a position seriously questioned by Anselmos wife Mona who was also the hospitals nursing director. Never before had an inmate been tapped for work in the Administration Building much less the superintendents office but Dr. Anselmo persuaded everyone including Mona that he had the situation as well as Emily under his control. In the end nothing could have been farther from the truth. Little did the superintendent know that Emily vowed to retrieve and record as much dirt on the institution as she could find this following the botched sterilization of her close friend Katie Brewster who ended up in the asylums cemetery instead of her residence hall. Emily saw the horror of the nurses dragging Katie off to the hospital one night in April 1909 and being the curious one she was overheard all of Katies pleadings moaning and cries prior to being anesthetized and then butchered in the hospitals operating room an experiment Superintendent Anselmo called her a guinea pig so doctors and nurses could learn how to perform and what to expect fro