Officers describe “alterations that no surgeon could account for”
Director of Research missing; laboratory abandoned within the hour
Of twenty enclosures, three were found open
Officers of the Piltover Bureau entered the Ferros Memorial Chest Hospital at Ashlin Row shortly before four o'clock on Tuesday morning and recovered seventeen living persons from a level of the building that appears on no plan filed with the Bureau of Works, in what the Chief Officer last night called “the worst thing I expect to see in this profession.”
The seventeen, all adults, all admitted to the Institute between 1986 and the present year for respiratory complaints contracted in the Lanes and at the works along the lower embankment, were taken by ambulance to the Kiramman General under Bureau guard. Their condition has not been released. The hospital has declined to say how many remain alive.
An officer present at the entry, speaking on condition that he was not named, told this newspaper that the men and women below stairs had been subjected to “alterations that no surgeon could account for,” and that four of his colleagues had been relieved of duty at the scene and sent home.
The lower level is reached by a stair at the rear of the east wing. It comprises a corridor of some forty yards with twenty enclosures let into the north wall, each fitted with a steel door, a floor drain, and restraint rings bolted through into the foundation.
There is no ward register. There is no nursing station. There is no light fitting in any of the twenty rooms, and the corridor lamps are wired to a switch outside the stair door, so that a person below could not turn them on.
Residents of Ashlin Row have complained of noise from the Institute at night since at least 1987. The Bureau confirms that two hundred and eleven such complaints were logged. No officer was sent on any occasion. A duty sergeant recorded against one of them, in 1989, that the sound was “dogs, most likely.”
Nine bound notebooks were removed from the laboratory at the end of the corridor. The Bureau has released three passages. Their language has not been altered.
“Subject 9 refuses the compound now, and refuses it deliberately, turning his head before I have raised the syringe. This is the first behaviour I would call will. I am encouraged.” — 2 March 1989
“The screaming ends around the fourth week in every case. For two years I recorded this as improvement.” — 11 August 1990
“Subject 11, day forty. The dentition is now unmistakable and the forelimb has finished. He continues to answer to his name. I do not yet know whether that is a comfort to him or to me.” — 30 September 1991
Dr. Aurel Revek, Director of Research at the Institute since 1981, has not been seen since Monday evening. His office was found emptied of paper and his residence at 14 Kestrel Walk vacant, the door standing open and a meal left on the table.
A child was recovered from the property on Tuesday afternoon, a boy of eight years, who had been alone in the house for an unknown period and who is now in the care of the local authority. He is not named. The Bureau has said only that he is unhurt and that he has answered every question put to him.
The Department of Public Health confirmed last night that the Institute will be sealed at every entrance and that no order for demolition has been sought. The lower level will not be emptied. Asked why, an official who declined to be named said that the matter had been considered and that the Department “sees no purpose in disturbing it.”
Of the twenty enclosures, seventeen were occupied on Tuesday morning. Two were empty and had been swept.
The last was open. The Bureau's report notes, without further remark, that the bolt on that door was drawn from the inside.