Tag Archives: Stockton State Hospital

The Worst Danger

Patients at the Chicago State Hospital walking outdoors on a snow-covered path, Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1910. The Chicago State Hospital (also called the Dunning Mental Institute) was located at West Irving Park Road and North Narragansett Avenue in the Dunning neighborhood

Patients at the Chicago State Hospital walking outdoors on a snow-covered path, Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1910. The Chicago State Hospital (also called the Dunning Mental Institute) was located at West Irving Park Road and North Narragansett Avenue in the Dunning neighborhood

Insane asylums were dangerous places (see last two posts), since both staff and patients could be the victims of attacks. The balance of power, of course, was always in the staff’s favor, and patients were far more often victims of violence than attendants. Tragically, patients sometimes turned violent against themselves despite all efforts to prevent it:

— Martha Grote suffered from melancholia after the death of a child. She evaded the notice of attendants and took some laudanum from the asylum’s drug closet. No one noticed anything wrong at 9:00 p.m. during the last doctor’s round, but attendants found her almost dead the next morning. They could not revive her. (Cook County Hospital for the Insane, 1897)

Edward E. McClintock committed suicide by tying one end of the cord of his bathrobe around his neck and fastening the other to a bar on a window in his room. He had suffered from several strokes the last three years “and his brain was affected,” wrote the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey. (Essex County Hospital, 1910)

James Toovillon had been in the Oregon State Insane Asylum for eighteen years and was considered completely trustworthy . . . but he managed to get hold of strychnine and took his life at the age of 55. (April 7, 1909)

Oregon State Hospital, circa 1900

Oregon State Hospital, circa 1900

Asylum superintendents despaired over these suicides, and not only because of the negative publicity surrounding them. “It is noteworthy that suicides in asylums occur in streaks,” said Dr. Asa Clark in a newspaper interview in 1905. (Clark was superintendent of the Stockton State Hospital in California.) “One will be followed by two or three others, almost invariably, as these things work upon the minds of other patients.”

That Clark’s belief may have been somewhat true is borne out by a short note in The Tennessean (Nashville) which wrote in 1901 that there was “an epidemic of suicide in [the] asylum for the insane in Shelby County.”

Stockton State Hospital, courtesy California State Library

Stockton State Hospital, courtesy California State Library

Clark took what steps he could to keep patients safe and to guard against them learning of other suicides, but he noted that there were “a thousand male patients with but fifty-three attendants.” According to Clark, until the number of attendants increased, it would be impossible to prevent suicides.

 

 

Paying the Bills

Many Eager Dreamers Rushed to California in 1849

Many Eager Dreamers Rushed to California in 1849

The idea that asylums were necessary had been widely accepted in America by the middle of the nineteenth century. Even far-flung regions like California provided for the care of the insane; it established an asylum at Stockton in 1853, only a few years after the 1849 gold rush.

Creating an asylum called for relevant legislation, and California’s first general law regarding the insane gave the responsibility for proper commitment to county judges:

“. . . [the judge shall] upon the application of any person under oath, setting forth that any person by reason of insanity was unsafe to be at large, or was suffering from mental derangement, forthwith cause the said person to be brought before him and cause to appear two reputable physicians, to examine the alleged insane person . . . .”

Though it seems that just about anyone prepared to swear to another’s insanity could begin the application process for commitment, this young state (created just three years earlier in1850) commendably included some practical safeguards. First, the initiator’s desire was not enough to force a commitment, and that person had to go through government channels to continue the process–surely a deterrent to some cases of spite or malice.

Second, not only did the two required physicians have to examine the proposed patient and declare him/her insane, they had to certify under oath that the diagnosis was correct. Then, it was still the judge’s decision to commit the person, based largely on the premise that the suspected person was not safe to be at large. The expenses incurred by any person so committed would be born by the state–and that even included expenses for the patient’s travel to the asylum. The latter may not have been an extremely powerful deterrent against frivolous commitments, but presumably judges in a newly functioning state would be careful about committing people to Stockton without considering the drain on public funds.

Most state institutions were designed primarily to help the poor, though many did take paying patients. California followed this pattern and allowed the non-indigent into its state asylums. However, the State Commission in Lunacy was to collect any appropriate charges for these latter patients, and could “bring action to recover such charges.”

Building at Stockton State Hospital

Building at Stockton State Hospital

Old Photo of Stockton State Hospital

Old Photo of Stockton State Hospital