The Ladd School

While the formal purpose of the Templeton Colony and its Rhode Island counterpart was to train young people with disabilities in the application of farm work and mechanical trades, the institutions' forefather, Dr. Walter Fernald, was a famous eugenicist whose doctrine was to remove the feeble-minded from society in an effort to cleanse the nation's population of inferior and "defective" genes.

Adopting a purpose more characteristic of a custodial or penal institution, the Exeter School's policy became focused primarily on detaining people indefinitely as a means of segregating them from free society.

[7] Though effective in increasing financial support from the state, disavowing the Exeter School's role as a custodial institution for the immoral and criminally-inclined "defective delinquents" would prove impossible to achieve absolutely.

In 1955, the situation finally reached a head when a 20-year-old inmate - a lifelong state ward and court-committed defective delinquent - was implicated in the murder of a severely disabled child.

Citizen-run advocacy groups began to take form, and employees took to the street picketing for higher wages and improved working conditions,[10] while fierce bureaucratic conflicts erupted behind closed doors as Smith's political opponents tried time and again to oust him from office for mismanaging funds and abusing his executive authority.

[citation needed] In November 1977, scandal erupted again when a State-appointed investigation into conditions at the Ladd School's hospital building reported an assortment of disturbing health violations at the dental clinic.

The resulting onslaught of legal inquisition in the face of damning evidence would finally prove to be more than Smith's predominance could combat; in January, 1978, Governor J. Joseph Garrahy fired the doctor from office,[12] and another era came to a close.

The dust had finally settled on a class action lawsuit filed against the State of Rhode Island after the dental scandal of 1977, ending with a court ruling that the institution adopt a wholesale revision of its policies and practices and reduce its population by half.

[14] The 2015 supernatural thriller Exeter (released in the UK as The Asylum) was filmed on location at the abandoned Ladd School prior to the final four buildings being demolished in August 2013.