Visitors

Charles Dickens – described conditions at the "Octagon", an asylum for the mentally ill then located on the northern portion of the island, in his American Notes (1842)[11]

William Wallace Sanger – physician-in-chief at the Blackwell's Island Hospital,[491] wrote here the book The History of Prostitution including his experiences as physician-in-chief[492]

Joseph Lister - near the end of his trip to the United States, performed an operation at Charity Hospital on Blackwell's Island (1876)[493]

Nellie Bly – went undercover as a patient in the Women's Lunatic Asylum and reported what happened in the New York World as well as her book Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887)[494]

Egon Erwin Kisch – visited the Welfare Island penitentiary under a false name (Mister Becker) for the report "Prisons on an Island on East River" as part of his reportage Volume "Paradise America" (1930)[495]