Excavations at the cemetery documented the remains of 186 individuals. They had been interred within three somewhat irregular rows that paralleled the hospital’s 1839 northwestern property line. Within this area, investigators recorded 69 grave shafts: 35 had single interments and 34 had multiple interments. The multiple interments, which represented from 2 to 10 individuals, may have been linked to a single burial event, such as one of the several mid-nineteenth-century cholera epidemics. As patient deaths peaked during the disease outbreaks, hospital staff may have attempted to inter the dead as quickly as possible in an effort to stem the spread of the disease.
At death, Eastern State Hospital residents appeared to have been treated in the same ways as those interred in other mid-nineteenth-century cemeteries - in both urban neighborhood and rural family cemeteries. The deceased was carefully laid to rest in a hexagonal wooden coffin. Arms were placed in the appropriate position following family, cultural, or religious traditions. Men were buried in shirts, jackets and pants, and women, in dresses and shifts. A few were buried with a hair comb or necklace.
According to historic documents, those interred within the cemetery came from a variety of social and economic backgrounds, and they were brought to the hospital from counties throughout the state. In many ways, their lives paralleled those of the communities within which they had lived. Their bones showed that most had experienced considerable amounts of hard labor before and after they entered the hospital. Evidence of restraining garments and of binding legs and arms may reflect some of the treatments for the mental disorders from which these patients suffered.
Bioarchaeological data indicated that these people experienced health challenges common among pre-antibiotic nineteenth-century societies, in which malnutrition and infectious disease were common. These deficiencies, coupled with poor sanitation, often made people susceptible to infectious diseases, like respiratory infections and sinusitis. The onset of these conditions could have begun before people entered the hospital, or after patients were admitted.