New York (AFP) - Most New Yorkers don't even know it exists. But a million forgotten souls are buried in mass graves dug by convicts on a tiny, forbidden island east of the Bronx.
Since 1869, still-born babies, the homeless, the poor and the unclaimed have been stacked one upon the other, three coffins deep, on Hart Island.
Corpses are interred in great, anonymous trenches. There are no tombstones. Small white posts in the ground mark each 150 adult bodies. A thousand children and infants are buried together per grave.
It is one of the largest cemeteries in the United States. And the least visited.
The men doing the digging are convicts from Rikers Island, petty offenders tasked with carrying bodies to their final resting place.
Nearly 1,500 fresh corpses arrive each year, says visual artist Melinda Hunt, who heads the Hart Island Project, which campaigns to make the cemetery visible and accessible.
The authorities say nearly a million people have been buried here since 1869.
It is forbidden to film and photograph the uninhabited, windswept island. Visits must be authorized by the Department of Corrections, which runs the island.
One million buried in mass graves on forbidden New York island
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