This episode explores the real letters of three women — Evelyn, Cora, and Dorothy — committed to the Exeter School (later known as the Ladd School) in the 1920s and 30s. Their words reveal a harrowing reality: forced sterilization, denied correspondence, institutional confinement, and lives governed by eugenic ideology. Drawing from Exeter Girls: Letters from a Feeble-Minded School, we examine how reproductive control and moral judgment shaped the fate of women labeled “feeble-minded” in early 20th-century Rhode Island.
Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.