Archivist note: This article is from an older recovered archive and might be obsolete or in need of updating.
Most recent revision is shown below, by Galactic Baroque.
The Dunsany Institution for Social Reform was founded by Dr Joseph Foehammer in Clockhaven. The Institute was originally chartered as a boarding school for troubled youth. It was operated as a boarding school and a sanitarium for several years. Prior to the Great Fire, persistent rumors of abuse and experimentation on residents of the school caused the city fathers to launch an inquiry into the practices of the staff and especially to answer the unresolved accusations of torture and medical misconduct on the part of the director. Before the investigation could be completed, the staff and all of the residents vanished leaving the grounds unoccupied. The grounds stood unoccupied for several years until they were demolished to make way for new construction.
The rumors and stories about the place led to the tales that this was where bad children would be taken to ‘straighten up’, and the practice of the orderlies coming to escort the new students to the facility after nightfall so as to not disturb the neighbors became fodder for the local tale that speaking the name of the Institute three times would cause the speaker to disappear during the night.
There have also been persistent tales told that the staff led the residents underground to live in a cavern under Clockhaven, but they have as yet been unsubstantiated.
The Dunsany Institution has become something of an urban legend amongst the youth of New Babbage, with tales of torture and cannibalism amongst the forgotten survivors beneath the streets running rampant.
