A mental health-care facility converting a burial grounds into a pigsty gave rise to a grisly sport, according to an article in the November 24, 1886 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The opening:

“People in the rear of the Insane Asylum at Flatbush have been complaining recently that the skulls and bones of human beings were lying outside the fence. They had been thrown, they said, over a thirteen foot fence by the inmates. A complaint in the matter was made by Thomas M. French to Dr. J.S. Young of the Brooklyn Health Department, who in turn notified the Commissioners of Charities and Corrections. The latter called the attention of Dr. J.C. Shaw to the matter and a gang of men was put to work yesterday morning collecting the ghastly relics.

An EAGLE reporter to-day ascertained that a small passage way had been cut through the fence. A few small fragments of bones were discovered outside. The commissioners had been building a pig pen on the ground used for the burial of those who died of cholera in 1847-8, and the remains when disinterring became scattered over the field. Pieces of ribs and back bones could be seen. The reporter asked one of the patients how the skulls and other bones came to be found so far away on the other side of the fence. His reply was that two of the patients were trying to see who could throw them the greatest distance. Just then a carpenter informed the reporter that no person was admitted in the field. The reporter, however, still investigated and found that no person in particular was in charge and that a trench four foot square was nearly filled with about twenty-five skulls and other parts of human skeletons. In a shed beside the pig pen was a barrel nearly filled with more human bones.”