The Orphans of Davenport

by Marilyn Brookwood

  27.Barbara S. Burks, “The Relative Influence of Nature and Nurture upon Mental Development: A Comparative Study of Foster Parent-Foster Child Resemblance and True Parent-True Child Resemblance,” in National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook (Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing, 1928), 309.

  28.Marie Skodak Crissey, “Beth Lucy Wellman,” in Women in Psychology: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook, ed. Agnes N. O’Connell and Nancy Felipe Russo (New York, Greenwood Press, 1990), 355.

  29.Skodak Crissey, “Beth Lucy Wellman,” 354.

  30.Marie Skodak Crissey, “Harold Manville Skeels,” American Journal of Mental Deficiency 75, no. 1 (1970): 1.

  31.Skodak Crissey, interview by Senn, 1978, 3, MJES.

  32.Marie Skodak Crissey, interview by Henry L. Minton, January 15, 1982, MSC.

  33.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in Models, 10.

  34.George D. Stoddard, Informal Discussion III, in “Issues Emerging from the Discussion of Intelligence in the Yearbook,” in The Thirty-Ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, ed. Guy Montrose Whipple, Addresses and Discussions: “Intelligence: Its Nature and Nurture” (Salem, MA: Newcomb and Gauss, 1940) 41.

  35.David Seim, Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Social Science (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013), 107.

  36.Cravens, Before Head Start, 61–63.

  37.George D. Stoddard, interview by Milton J. E. Senn, February 4, 1971, 24–25, interview 69.

  38.Harold M. Skeels and Eva A. Fillmore, “The Mental Development of Children from Underprivileged Homes,” Journal of Genetic Psychology 50, no. 2 (1937): 427.

  39.Skodak Crissey, interview by Duane Fischer, December 16, 1969, 14, MSC.

  40.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in History, 60–61.

  41.Marie Skodak Crissey, “How It All Began: Festschrift for George Stoddard, 1968” (unpublished manuscript, ca. 1968), 7–8, MSC.

  42.“Orphan Internments, 1866–1959,” Oakdale Memorial Gardens, Davenport, IA (unpublished).

  Chapter Three: Transparent Waifs, Pitiful Creatures

  1.David Pfeiffer, “Bridging the Mississippi: The Railroads and Steamboats Clash at the Rock Island Bridge,” Prologue, Summer 2004, 40–47.

  2.US census. http://www.webcitation.org/6YSasqtfX?url=http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html.

  3.Harold Skeels, “Adult Status of Children with Contrasting Early life Experiences: A Follow-Up Study,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 15, no. 3 (1966): 3.

  4.Bernadine Barr, “Educating Orphans and Educating Psychologists: The Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home 1900–1945” (unpublished manuscript, 2003), 1.

  5.Barr, “Educating Orphans,” 27, quoted from Annie Wittenmyer Oral History Project, Davenport Public Library.

  6.Barr, “Educating Orphans,” 35.

  7.H. A. Mitchell, “Thirty-Fifth Biennial Report of the Superintendent and Fifteenth Biennial Report of the Placement Department of the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home,” 1935, Archives Davenport Public Library, Davenport, IA.

  8.R. L Woolbert, “Proposed Remedies for Crime in Iowa,” Iowa State Planning Board, 1935, 4–5.

  9.Harold M. Skeels and Marie Skodak, “Adult Status of Individuals Who Experienced Early Intervention” (1966), draft of talk presented at the 1966 meeting of the Society for the Study of Mental Deficiency, 2, MSC.

  10.Skodak Crissey, “How It All Began,” 5, MSC.

  11.Louis C. Branca, interview Marilyn Brookwood, June 4, 2015.

  12.Harold M. Skeels, “Records of Experimental and Contrast Group Cases, 1933–1966,” unpublished, MSC.

  13.Skodak Crissey, 1968, “How It All Began,” 5. MSC.

  14.Barr, “Educating Orphans,” 31.

  15.Skodak Crissey, interview by Senn, 25–27.

  16.Skodak Crissey, “How It All Began,” 8, MSC.

  17.Marie Skodak Crissey and Harold Skeels, “A Final Follow-Up Study of One Hundred Adopted Children,” Journal of Genetic Psychology 75, no. 1 (1949): 86–87.

  18.Boyd R. McCandless, interview by Milton J. E. Senn, March 17, 1971, interview 47, MJES.

  19.Harold M. Skeels, “Mental Development of Children in Foster Homes,” Journal of Genetic Psychology 49 (1936): 92.

  20.Skodak, “Adult Status,” draft, 10, MSC.

  21.Barr, “Educating Orphans,” 35.

  22.Skodak Crissey, interview by Fischer, 7, MSC.

  23.Skodak, interview by Senn, 10, MJES.

  24.Skodak Crissey, “Harold Manville Skeels,” 1–2.

  25.Marie Skodak, interview by Henry L. Minton, January 15, 1982, 6, MSC.

  26.Paul D. Chapman, Schools as Sorters: Lewis M. Terman, Applied Psychology, and the American Intelligence Testing Movement, 1890–1930 (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 84.

  27.H. A. Mitchell, Thirty-Fifth Biennial Report of the Superintendent of the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home (Eldora, IA: Board of Control of State Institutions, 1934), 7.

  28.Arnold Gesell, “Infant Behavior Research,” Biological Medicine 7 (May 1935): 453–55.

  29.Skodak, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in History, 60.

  30.Skodak, 1978, interview by Senn, 12–13, MJES.

  31.Skodak Crissey, “How it All Began,” 9–10, MSC.

  32.Skeels, Records, Case 5, MSC.

  33.Neil, J. Van Steenberg, “An Independent Evaluation of the Skodak Data on Foster Children,” cited in George D. Stoddard, The Meaning of Intelligence (New York: Macmillan, 1943), 361–63.

  34.Vogel, “Regulating Degeneracy,” 131, 137.

  35.Vogel, “Regulating Degeneracy,” 132.

  36.Lutz Kaelber, “Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States.” http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/.

  37.Vogel, “Regulating Degeneracy,” 138.

  38.Skodak, interview by Senn, 1978, 20, MJES.

  39.Wayne Dennis and Pergrouhi Najarian, “Infant Development under Environmental Handicap,” Psychological Monographs 71 (1957): 2–3; Samuel Frant and Harold Abramson, “Diarrhea of the Newborn,” Journal of Pediatrics 11, no. 6 (1937): 780.

  40.Henry D. Chapin, 1915, “Are Institutions for Infants Necessary?” Journal of the American Medical Association 64, no. 1 (January 1915): 2–3.

  41.Tobias Grossman and Mark H. Johnson, “The Development of the Social Brain in Human Infancy,” European Journal of Neuroscience 25, no. 4 (2007): 909–14.

  42.“Serve & Return Interaction Shapes Brain Circuitry,” National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_5u8-QSh6A.

  43.Charles A. Nelson III, Nathan A. Fox, and Charles H. Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 213.

  44.Skeels and Skodak, “Adult Status of Individuals,” draft, 3, MSC.

  45.Sally Provance and Rose Lipton, Infants in Institutions (New York: International Universities Press, 1962), 128.

  46.Van Steenberg, “An Independent Evaluation,” 361–3.

  47.Skeels, Records, Case 8.

  48.Skeels, Records, Case 8.

  49.Skeels, “Adult Status of Children,” 4.

  50.Skeels, “Adult Status of Children,” 3.

  51.Skeels and Skodak, “Adult Status of Individuals,” draft, 3, MSC.

  52.Skeels et al., “A Study of Environmental Stimulation,” 11.

  53.Skodak, “Adult Status,” draft, 9, MSC.

  54.Skeels, Records, Case 8.

  55.Skeels and Dye, “Study of the Effects of Differential Stimulation,” 116.

  56.Skeels and Skodak, “Adult Status of Individuals,” draft, 4. MSC.

  57.Skeels, “Adult Status of Children,” 5.

  58.“Weather Proves Iowa’s Best 1934 News Story,” Los Angeles Times, December 23, 1934.

  59.“Iowa’s Best 1934 News Story.”

  60.Skeels and Skodak, “Adult Status of Indiv
iduals,” draft, 4, MSC.

  61.Bernard Asbell, “The Case of the Wandering IQs: How an Accidental Discovery about Two Feeble-Minded Children Triggered a 30-Year Search—and Shattered All Assumptions Psychologists Had Made about a Baby’s Intelligence,” Redbook, 33.

  62.Skodak, “Adult Status,” draft, 3.

  63.Skodak and Skeels, “A Final Follow-Up Study,” 86.

  64.Skeels and Skodak, “Adult Status of Individuals,” draft, 4, MSC.

  65.Skeels and Skodak, “Adult Status of Individuals,” draft, 4, MSC.

  66.Elmer G. Powers, The Farm Diary of Elmer G. Powers, 1931–1936, ed. H. Roger Grant and L. Edward Purcell (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1976), 86.

  Chapter Four: From a Dog You Do Not Get a Cat

  1.Lewis M. Terman, “Trails to Psychology,” in A History of Psychology in Autobiography, ed. Carl Q. Murchison (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1930), 297.

  2.Terman, “Trails to Psychology,” 310.

  3.Terman, “Trails to Psychology,” 312.

  4.Terman, “Trails to Psychology,” 316.

  5.Terman, “Trails to Psychology,” 311.

  6.Bernadine Barr, “Thinking Psychology, Discovering Normalcy: Lewis Terman and the Stanford-Binet Test of Intelligence,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Cheiron, the International Society of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, June 27, 2002, 11.

  7.Raymond E. Fancher, The Intelligence Men: Makers of the IQ Controversy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 139.

  8.John Carson, The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 5.

  9.Lewis M. Terman, “A Report of the Buffalo Conference on the Binet-Simon Tests of Intelligence,” Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology 20, no. 4 (1913): 554.

  10.Theta Wolf, Alfred Binet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 203.

  11.Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 27.

  12.Terman, Measurement of Intelligence, 20.

  13.Steve McNutt, “A Dangerous Man: Lewis Terman and George Stoddard, Their Debate on Intelligence Testing, and the Legacy of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station,” Annals of Iowa 72, no.1 (2013): 10.

  14.Wolf, Alfred Binet, 203.

  15.Terman, Measurement of Intelligence, 92–93.

  16.Lewis M. Terman, “A New Approach to the Study of Genius,” Psychological Review 29, no. 4 (1922): 318.

  17.Lewis M. Terman, “Intelligence in a Changing Universe,” School and Society 29, no. 1330 (1940): 470.

  18.Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 224.

  19.Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 231.

  20.Allan Chase, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism (New York: Knopf, 1976), 246.

  21.Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 82–83.

  22.Digital Public Libraries of America, accessed October 1, 2017, https://dp.la/exhibitions/history-us-public-libraries/segregated-libraries.

  23.Alexander Clark and the First Successful School Desegregation Case in the United States. Iowa Pathways, Iowa PBS, accessed November 9, 2020, http://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/artifact/alexander-clark-and-first-successful-desegregation-case-united-states.

  24.Franz Samelson, “Putting Psychology on the Map: Ideology and Intelligence Testing,” in Psychology in Social Context, ed. Allan R. Buss (New York: Irvington, 1979), 106.

  25.Samelson, “Putting Psychology on the Map,” 106.

  26.Leon J. Kamin, The Science and Politics of IQ (Potomac, MD: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1974), 18.

  27.Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 81.

  28.Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 104.

  29.Fancher, Intelligence Men, 139–141.

  30.Lewis M. Terman, “The Mental Test as a Psychological Method,” Psychological Review 31, no. 2 (1924): 106.

  31.Henry L. Minton, “Lewis M. Terman and the ‘World’ of Test Publishing,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, 1985, 2, MSC.

  32.Edwin G. Boring, Lewis Madison Terman, 1877–1956: A Biographical Memoir (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1959), 104.

  33.Wispe and Ritter, “America’s Recognized Psychologists,” 640–64.

  34.Jennifer R. Crosby and Albert H. Hastdorf, “Lewis Terman: Scientist of Mental Measurement and Product of His Time,” in Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, ed. Michael Wertheimer and Gregory A. Kimble (London: Psychology Press, 2000), 142.

  35.Theresa Richardson and Ewin V. Johanningmeier, “Intelligence Testing: The Legitimation of a Meritocratic Educational Science,” International Journal of Educational Research 27, no. 8 (1998): 707.

  36.“German Jewish Refugees,” United States Holocaust Museum, accessed August 11, 2017, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-jewish-refugees-1933-1939.

  37.Marie Skodak Crissey, interview by Milton J. E. Senn, MJES.

  38.Geoffrey Searle, Eugenics and Politics in Britain, 1900–1914 (Leyden, Netherlands: Noordhoff Publishers, 1976), 20.

  39.Francis Galton, “Hereditary Talent and Character,” Macmillan’s Magazine, May 1, 1865, 326.

  40.Fancher, Intelligence Men, 36.

  41.Francis Galton, “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims,” Nature 70 (May 26, 1904): 82.

  42.Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences (London: Macmillan, 1869): 1.

  43.Francis Galton, “Hereditary Improvement,” Frasier’s Magazine 7, no. 37 (1873): 116.

  44.Galton, “Eugenics: Its Definition,” 82.

  45.Galton, Quoted in Caleb W. Saleeby, Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics (London: Cassell, 1909), 303.

  46.Ruth C. Engs, The Eugenics Movement: An Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 161, 182.

  47.Leslie C. Dunn and Theodosius Dobzhansky, Heredity, Race and Society (New York: Mentor Books, 1952), 44.

  48.Mario Livio, Brilliant Blunders from Darwin to Einstein: Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 57.

  49.Charles Rosenberg, “Charles Davenport and the Beginning of Human Genetics,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 35 (1961): 268.

  50.Daniel Kevles, “Eugenics in the United States and Britain, 1890 to 1930,” Humanities Working Paper 19 (1979): 2, accessed January 18, 2018, https://authors.library.caltech.edu/14563/1/HumsWP-0019.pdf.

  51.Quoted in Stanley P. Davies, “Social Control of the Feebleminded: A Study of Social Programs and Attitudes in Relation to the Problems of Mental Deficiency” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1923), 39–40.

  52.Daniel Ritschel, “Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth Century Britain,” History of Education Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1991): 543.

  53.Samuel J. Holmes, The Trend of the Race: A Study of Present Tendencies in the Biological Development of Civilized Mankind (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1921), 139–40.

  54.Saleeby, Parenthood and Race Culture, viii.

  55.Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 61–62.

  56.Lewis M. Terman, “Were We Born That Way?” World’s Work 44 (1922): 658.

  57.Ben Harris, “Arnold Gesell’s Progressive Vision: Child Hygiene, Socialism and Eugenics,” History of Psychology 14, no. 3 (2011): 313.

  58.Arnold Gesell, “Village of a Thousand Souls,” The American Magazine 77, no. 4 (1913): 12.

  59.Gesell, Village, 12–13.

  60.Gesell, Village, 15.

  61.Harris, “Arnold Gesell’s Progressive Vision,” 321.

  62.Harold J. Laski, “The Scope of Eugenics,” Westminster Review 174, July (1910) 30.

  63.Galton, “Eugenics, Its Definition,” 1.

  64.Harris, “Arnold Gesell’s Progressive Vision,” 321–
22.

  65.Jonathan P. Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2009), 395–96.

  66.Charles Davenport, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding (Rahway, NJ: Quinn & Boden, 2010), title page.

  67.Herbert Spenser Jennings, quoted in Bentley Glass and Curt Stern, “Geneticists Embattled: Their Stand against Rampant Eugenics and Racism in America During the 1920s and 1930s,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 130, no. 1 (1986): 144.

  68.Carleton E. MacDowell, “Charles Benedict Davenport, 1866–1944,” Bios 17 (1): 14.

  69.Garland E. Allen, “The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940: An Essay in Institutional History,” Osiris 2 (1986): 230.

  70.Davenport, Eugenics, 80.

  71.Davenport, Eugenics, 263.

  72.Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 239.

  73.Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 239, 243.

  74.Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 245.

  75.Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 236.

  76.“Eugenical Ideas in Tennessee,” “Quality, Not Quantity of Population,” “Prenuptial Examinations in Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany.” Eugenical News 12, no. 8 (1927): 104–124.

  77.Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 227.

  78.Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 122.

  79.Rachel Gur-Arie, “Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1889–1943),” Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences, Center for Biology and Society, Embryo Project Encyclopedia (2014), accessed January 26, 2018, https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/harry-hamilton-laughlin-1880-1943.

  80.Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 103.

  81.Cohen, Imbeciles, 61.

  82.Albert Wiggam, The New Decalogue of Science (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1922), 127.

  83.“Thinks Intelligence of Race is Decreasing,” New York Times, December 25, 1922, 2.

  84.Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 199.

  85.Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 140.

  86.Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 148.

  87.Mark H. Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 73.