that honor had gone to Esther… Esther died in 2004 at age eighty-seven.
FIVE: Missing Pieces
one of the worst urban riots in U.S. history… On July 28, 1967, following the Newark and Detroit disturbances, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, better known today as the Kerner Commission, after its chairman, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. The eleven-member panel, after studying twenty-four disturbances in twenty-three cities, found that while there was no “typical” riot, each grew out of social and economic conditions and “constituted a clear pattern of severe disadvantage for Negroes compared to whites.” In its most famous single statement, the committee concluded: “To continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies; one largely Negro and poor, located in the central cities; the other, predominantly white and affluent, located in the suburbs and in outlying areas.”
leaving forty-three dead… Sources abound on the Detroit riots. Like many researchers of Detroit’s history, I consulted (and often marveled at) Robert Conot’s American Odyssey (New York: Morrow, 1974), an epic chronicle of the city from its founding to its emergence as a world economic power to its disheartening decline. Conot documents the conditions leading up to the riots, as well as the riots themselves.
the classical columns of Northern High School… Northern closed in 2007, a victim of the school system’s declining enrollment. The building now houses the Detroit International Academy, the state’s first all-girl public school.
her life-sized portrait… This is one of two paintings that Eloise’s father, Freeman Dickerson, loaned to the institution. One hung for many years in the boardroom, directly behind the president’s chair that Dickerson earlier occupied for two years.
the 1982 history of Eloise… No one has written a comprehensive history of Eloise, but the hospital’s overseers twice commissioned employees to compile a record of Eloise’s accomplishments. These works are not histories in a broad sense, but both contain a wealth of information.
The first, History of Eloise: Wayne County House, Wayne County Asylum, by long-time Eloise bookkeeper Stansilas M. Keenan, appeared in 1913; he updated his work in 1933, and after a delay caused by the economic fallout from the Depression, a small number were published in 1937. The story of Eloise’s name comes chiefly from the second history, Alvin C. Clark’s A History of Wayne County Infirmary, Psychiatric, and General Hospital Complex at Eloise, Michigan, 1832–1982, published in 1982 by Wayne County on the 150th anniversary of the institution’s founding.
The newest addition to the Eloise canon is Patricia Ibbotson’s 2002 photographic book, Eloise: Poorhouse, Farm, Asylum, and Hospital, part of Arcadia Publishing’s Image of America series. Ibbotson, a former nurse at the general hospital, is a meticulous researcher who has mastered the art of writing fact-filled yet concise captions.
“The name was at once accepted”… When the hospital acquired its more formal name in 1945, it still did not cast Eloise aside entirely, officially calling itself the Wayne County General Hospital and Infirmary at Eloise, Michigan. Whether the new name was too much of a mouthful, or whether this was a case of old habits dying hard, Eloise was what many Detroiters continued to call it. Meanwhile, the Eloise Post Office, the birthplace of all the fuss, maintained its name until it went out of business in 1979.
“the largest of its kind in the world”… A statistic like this is tough to track down with any certainty. The 1940 Census records on U.S. mental hospitals, which do not identify specific facilities, show several with populations in excess of five thousand. But none had infirmaries with resident populations of substantial numbers, which might mean that Eloise was the largest “of its kind,” at least in the United States.
SIX: Actually Insane
no transcript or summary of what was said at her hearing… Normally, the court reporter assigned to the case would only make a transcript for an appeal, or if someone had requested one. As a result, there’s no record of Annie’s hearing.
two “reputable physicians,” who did not need to be psychiatrists or neurologists… This provision might suggest that the state relied on people without any particular expertise, but it was intended to protect the patient from overzealous psychiatrists who might think that everyone could benefit from treatment.
The law also required the appointment of physicians who did not work for the mental institution where the patient was likely to go; based on the several dozen cases I reviewed, that provision was followed. Occasionally, though, the probate judges appointed someone who had a consulting position at Eloise, which could be seen as contrary to the spirit of the law.
the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in several cases… A 1936 case, In re Myrtle Davis, reflects the court’s view of the need for a full investigation and the “taking of proofs.” The case arose from a petition by Davis’s sister. On the same day that the two court-appointed physicians certified Davis, thirty-six, as insane, the probate court held its hearing. The only testimony came from federal probation officer Walter Hoffman, who was asked “What’s the matter with her?” He replied: “Insane.” On appeal, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Davis had been confined illegally at Eloise, and ordered her release. “In our opinion [Hoffman’s] testimony was inadmissible; it is nothing more than an opinion, nothing was shown by the witness upon which such an opinion could be based.” The court also rebuked the probate judge for the skimpiness of the hearing, saying “there is no showing that the judge conducted an inquest as provided by law.”
the procedures themselves remained much as before… Case files from this period show that a “full investigation” and the “taking of proofs” rarely took place. The difference for Myrtle Davis was that someone (unnamed in the court’s ruling, although it could have been Davis herself) challenged her commitment.
my spontaneous answer… It was too hard to take notes on my own comments during this part of my conversation with Sandy Ellison, so I wrote down as much as I could remember after the interview ended and checked it with Sandy.
SEVEN: Welcome to Eloise
Wayne County deputy sheriff John McLean… Annie’s court record contains the facts that allow me to describe her trip to Eloise. Other details, such as the grillwork, come from photographs of Eloise during that era.
Two or three new patients arrived almost every day…. Eloise’s annual reports from this era provided statistics on the number of new admissions and parolees, as well as on the institution’s yearly food production, the number of employees, and the progress of construction.
Eloise’s herd of cows sent more than 120,000 gallons of milk… The 1937 annual report states that Eloise’s farm production—milk, beef, veal, pork, vegetables, and tobacco—had a value of $80,907.99. In today’s dollars, that’s equivalent to $1.2 million.
1,800 loaves of bread an hour… Clark, p. 114.
a public outcry over the horrifying murder… Police found the body of eleven-year-old Lillian Gallaher in a trunk in an apartment rented to twenty-six-year-old Merton W. Goodrich and his wife. The girl had been missing a week; she disappeared while selling game-of-chance tickets door-to-door, part of a fundraising effort for her Catholic school. See extensive coverage in the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, September 27, 1934, and the days following. A year later, after a nationwide manhunt failed to find the Goodrich couple, unsuspecting police arrested a suspicious man for annoying the children at a wading pool in New York’s Central Park; his fingerprints turned out to be Goodrich’s. See The New York Times, “Slayer of Girl, 11, Caught by Chance,” July 4, 1935, p. 1. After his trial in Michigan, Goodrich was sentenced to life in prison.
Gruber directed the hospital staff to stamp… For an account of Gruber’s concern about the proposed law and his creation of the “Red Star” ward, see Eric M. Eisenhardt, “Sexual Deviants in a Mental Hospital,” 1954 master’s thesis, Wayne University, School of Public Affairs and Social Work.
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Her name was Bridget Hughes… All the Eloise histories recount the story of Biddy Hughes. I relied on Alvin Clark’s 1982 history, p. 43. His book is also an invaluable source for much of the early history; it includes sketches of the first, second, and third Wayne County Houses, as well as photographs of many of the dozens of buildings that once occupied the grounds, pp. 1–9.
“that ‘awful wilderness’”… Clark, p. 4.
the pioneering efforts of Dorothea Dix… Several good accounts exist of Dix’s work in Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, and elsewhere, including the books of Rutgers professor Gerald N. Grob, probably the foremost authority on the history and evolution of mental health treatment in the United States.
an organization of mutual support… For most of the nineteenth century, the Association of Medical Superintendents of the American Institutions of the Insane was the voice of the American psychiatric community, for all practical purposes. Working with the insane in the nineteenth century meant working in an asylum. No specialty known as psychiatry existed (the early psychiatrists were known as “alienists,” reflecting the prevailing view that mental illness was outside our understanding). Private psychiatric practice is a twentieth-century development. In 1894, the Association of Medical Superintendents changed its name to the American Medico-Psychological Association, and then in 1921, it became the American Psychiatric Association, as it is known today.
the Kirkbride plan… The American Psychiatric Association’s one-hundredth-anniversary volume, One Hundred Years of American Psychiatry, contains a collection of essays on the history of the nation’s mental hospitals, including the Kirkbride plan. I have drawn on two in particular from the 1944 anniversary book: “The Founding and Founders of the Association,” by Winfred Overholser, then the superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., and “The History of American Mental Hospitals,” by Samuel W. Hamilton, of the U.S. Public Health Service.
“sickening circumstances of inhumanity”…The 1878 Lancet editorial was written by Dr. H. A. Cleland, the medical journal’s editor; it is cited in William J. Kay’s essay, “State Psychiatric Hospitals and Medical Establishments for the Mentally Retarded,” in Medical History of Michigan, vol. 2 (Minneapolis/St. Paul: Bruce Publishing Co., 1930), p. 732. I thought it was significant that an insider such as Kay, then superintendent of the state’s institution for the feeble-minded at Lapeer, would choose to take note of such a strong condemnation of the Wayne County Asylum.
Kay’s essay also provides a capsule history of institutional treatment for the mentally ill in America. In 1773, before the American Revolution, Virginia became the first colony to erect a separate hospital for the insane; New York became the first state to build one, in 1809. Kay takes special note of the 1823 founding of the Hartford Retreat for the Insane in Connecticut, “the first hospital of its kind to be devoted, exclusively, to the care and treatment of the insane.” The State Medical Society of Connecticut contributed money to build the Hartford Retreat, an early example of the medical profession’s direct involvement in improving the conditions for treating the mentally ill, Kay asserted. See Medical History of Michigan, p. 730. Closer to home, Kay claimed that Michigan’s care for the insane “has never come in for serious criticism” (that would come later), lamenting only that the state’s facilities, like those “in the rest of the world,” have never been adequate to meet the demand, p. 756.
“permanently removed the chains, shackles and dim cells…” Clark, p. 45.
the “Poor Old Guys in Eloise”… Some references offer “Gentlemen” for “Guys.” Ed Missavage scoffed at the more polite version, and said “guys” was the word he always heard at the hospital.
construction crews of 350 worked almost around the clock… The project required
so much material that local suppliers could not keep pace. One brick manufacturer sent his company’s entire daily production to Eloise, more than twenty thousand bricks a day for three months. Meanwhile, twenty gravel trucks formed a kind of continuous conveyor line from Detroit to the hospital grounds, hauling the ten thousand cubic yards needed to mix the concrete. Clark, p. 24.
the largest institutional kitchen in the country… The claim appears in Ibbotson, p. 52.
flow of the brew into a two-hundred-gallon reservoir… Details on the kitchen from Clark, p. 25.
the infirmary rolls showed 7,441 patients… Clark, p. 25.
new definitions of what constituted a mental disorder… The difficulty of counting the nation’s mentally ill, and how to define a mental “defective,” was an ongoing debate at the Census Bureau. For a brief history of this debate, and how it reflected the country’s changing attitudes toward the mentally ill, see Atlee L. Stroup and Ronald W. Manderscheid, “The Development of the State Mental Hospital System in the United States: 1840–1980,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 78, no. 1, March 1988, pp. 58–69.
the number of mentally ill residents in hospitals soared… The Census Bureau made its first attempt at counting the “defective classes” in 1840, and issued periodic reports on the “Defective, Feeble-Minded and Insane” from 1880 to 1923. From 1938 until 1966, the bureau published Patients in Mental Institutions. That publication ceased about the time that the population in mental hospitals began its steep decline following development of medications that allowed more patients to be treated on an out-patient basis and the legal/moral protest that led to the strong patient rights that exist today, particularly regarding the involuntary commitment process.
EIGHT: I Am Family
For years, Tillie had been riding the bus… Schedules from that era suggest that Tillie took a bus downtown and then transferred to the Michigan Avenue line, which served the Ford assembly plant in Dearborn before continuing on to Eloise.
Tillie was one of ten children… My search for Tillie’s siblings led me to other Schleins from Radziwillow, but their descendants did not know my grandparents or the names of Tillie’s brothers and sisters.
the Radziwillow records from that era… The birth records for Radziwillow Jews born in the late nineteenth century may not exist any longer, according to Alex Dunai, my researcher in Ukraine. An American genealogy group has compiled an index of births recorded in Kremenets, a larger nearby town; it includes some births, marriages, and deaths from Radziwillow, but my grandparents’ names do not appear among the several thousand names in the index.
NINE: Lost and Found
before comprehensive physicals and lengthy questionnaires replaced the more generic permission forms… I don’t remember the medical form. I spoke to John Johnson of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, which develops eligibility rules; he said that the card signed by physicians in the 1960s did not require any statement of specific medical issues as long as athlete’s physical condition allowed him or her to play.
In 1915, it was illegal for first cousins to marry in Michigan… Sections 551.3 and 551.4 of Michigan’s compiled laws, first enacted in 1903, prohibit marriage to a “cousin in the first degree.” Before 1903, Michigan allowed first cousins to marry.
one of twenty-four that still prohibit first cousins to marry… Five additional states have restrictions that prevent first-cousin marriages if the partners can have children; for example, first cousins can marry in Illinois only if both are older than fifty, or one is unable to reproduce. See “State Laws Regarding Marriages Between First Cousins,” the National Conference of State Legislatures, www.ncsl.org/programs/cyf/cousins.htm.
risk of birth defects for the children of married first cousins… A 2002 study calculated the increased risk at 1.7 to 2.8 percent above the norm. “Genetic Counseling and Screening of Consanguineous Couples and Their Offspring,” Journal of Genetic Counseling, vol. 11, no. 2, April 2002, p. 105.
TEN: Castles in the Air
just as the draft eligibility rules were changing… In the summer of 1942, with the military’s manpower needs becoming more critical, Congress modified t
he Selective Service Act to boost the pool of eligible men. That led the Selective Service to create a new rank order for induction. Single men with no dependents were deemed the most eligible, followed by single men with dependents but who did not have a job that contributed to the war effort. See “Family Men to Go Last, Draft Rules; Seven Classifications Set Up to Comply With Changed Law Are Announced,” the Associated Press, published in The Washington Post, July 14, 1942, p. 1 and p. 15.
the newspapers were full of talk… One example: “Married Men Face Draft This Year, Hershey Says,” The Washington Post, August 22, 1942, p. 1.
ten million able-bodied men, out of the sixteen million registered… Figures from the Selective Service, cited in William A. Tuttle, Daddy’s Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America’s Children (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 32.
ELEVEN: The Old Neighborhood
“no jury of sane men would convict me”… The quotes from Haiselden in this chapter come from “Doctor to Let Patient’s Baby Defective Die,” the Chicago Daily Tribune, November 17, 1915, p. 1; available online at www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/docs/1231card.htm. The Disability History Museum has a digital archive of newspaper coverage of Haiselden’s crusade, largely from the Chicago American and the Chicago Daily Tribune.
a very public platform for his ideas… The best account of Haiselden’s campaign and career appears in Martin S. Pernick’s book, The Black Stork: Eugenics and The Death of “Defective” Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
pleas from anguished parents… Pernick, p. 5.
an hour-long feature film starring Haiselden… An ad for the movie, published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on April 2, 1917, promoted it as “A vivid pictorial drama that tells you why Dr. Haiselden is opposed to operating to save the lives of defective babies.” Available online at www.disabilitymuseum.org/lib/stills/501.htm.
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