Rethinking mental retardation: Education and eugenics in connecticut, 1818-1917

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 90-111

  Goodheart, Lawrence B ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Connecticut; Dr. George H. Knight; Dr. Henry M. Knight; Eugenics; Lakeville School for Imbeciles; Mansfield State Training School and Hospital; Mental retardation

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ATTITUDE TO HEALTH; CONTRACEPTION; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; HISTORY; HUMAN; INSTITUTIONALIZATION; LEGAL ASPECT; MEDICAL GENETICS; MENTAL DEFICIENCY; MENTAL PATIENT; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RELIGION; RESIDENTIAL HOME; SOCIAL ISOLATION; UNITED STATES;

GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION;

ATTITUDE TO HEALTH; CONNECTICUT; EUGENICS; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; INSTITUTIONALIZATION; MENTAL RETARDATION; MENTALLY DISABLED PERSONS; PROTESTANTISM; RESIDENTIAL FACILITIES; SOCIAL ISOLATION; STERILIZATION, INVOLUNTARY;

EID: 85047690222     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrg043     Document Type: Review

References (159)

1. Peter L. Tyor and Leland V. Bell, Caring for the Retarded in America: A History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), pp. x-xi.
2. Similarly, David Wright in Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum, 1847-1901 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 191,
3. argues for an important change in the perception of the mentally retarded: "In the sixty years of Victoria's reign, therefore, the climate of opinion had shifted dramatically, from an optimistic environment espousing the training of idiot children so that they could take up their positions as full members of society, to a pessimistic, restrictive ideology of controlling the movement, and later, the fertility, of the 'feeble-minded' to prevent them sowing the seeds of future social failure." In a comprehensive textbook on the Western experience,
4. R. C. Scheerenberger, A History of Mental Retardation (Baltimore, Md.: Paul H. Brookes, 1983), adopted a comparable model. He called the nineteenth century "the age of progress" (pp. 51-87) but identified serious efforts at "prevention and control" (pp. 116-18) that emerge by the 1880s. In addition, he adds, "The first decades of the twentieth century represented the nadir of professional sensitivity toward mentally retarded persons, at least as a class or subpopulation." (p.138).
5. An earlier work, Leo Kanner, A History of the Care and Study of the Mentally Retarded (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1964), is more in the march of medicine model for which the "eugenic alarm" (pp. 128-38) is the exception.
6. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in an Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Pantheon, 1965);
7. and David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971) set the scholarly agenda for the argument that elite groups established mental hospitals and other institutions to discipline undesirable groups.
8. For a discussion of the extensive historiography, albeit with a focus on insane asylums, see Nancy Tomes, "Introduction: The Historian and the Asylum," in A Generous Confidence: Thomas Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum-Keeping, 1840-1883 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 1-18;
9. Lawrence J. Friedman, "The Demise of the Asylum," Rev. Amer. Hist., 1984, 12, 241-47;
10. Abraham S. Luchins, "The Rise and Destiny of the American Asylum Movement in the Nineteenth Century," J. Psychology, 1988, 122, 471-86;
11. and Gerald Grob, "Psychiatry's Holy Grail: The Search for the Mechanism of Mental Disease," Bull. Hist. Med., 1998, 72, 189-219.
12. James W. Trent Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 2-3.
13. His study rests on the premise that "in the name of care, then, control was most effectively secured." (pp. 279-80, n. 3).
14. Philip M. Ferguson, Abandoned to Their Fate: Social Policy and Practice Toward Severely Retarded People in America, 1820-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).
15. He maintains that during the antebellum period, "The reformers' optimism in the curative powers of social engineering was matched by the darker fears of creeping chaos if the lower levels of society were left to their own devices" (p. 32).
16. See John L. Thomas, "Romantic Reform in America, 1815-1860," Am. Quarterly, 1965, 17, 656-71.
17. "The Death of Dr. [George] Knight," J. Psycho-Asthenics, 1912, 17, 72-73, p. 73.
18. See Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizes: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995);
19. Phyllis K. Valentine, "American Asylum for the Deaf: A First Experiment in Education, 1817-1880" (Ph.D. diss.: University of Connecticut, 1993);
20. and Lawrence B. Goodheart, Mad Yankees: The Hartford Retreat for the Insane and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003).
21. Annual Report, Linus B. Brockett, "Idiots and Institutions for their Training," Am. J. Ed., 1855, I, 593-608, pp. 596-97;
22. William W. Turner to L. P. Brockett, 3 March 1856, Box 80, Folder 10, General Assembly Papers, 1856, Record Group 2, Connecticut State Library;
23. and Fourth Annual Report (1865), Connecticut School for Imbeciles, 19.
24. On French developments, see Tyor and Bell, Caring for the Retarded, chap. I;
25. and Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind, chap. 2.
26. Third Annual Report (1827), Hartford Retreat for the Insane, 14;
27. Fourth-Sixth Annual Reports (1827-1830), HRI, 8, 10, 14;
28. and Monthly Register (April 1830-July 1836), HRI, n.p. All are at the Medical Library and Archive, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut.
29. Linus P. Brockett, "Sequin's Physiological School," New York Times, 29 October 1882, p. 5.
30. Turner's essay is cited in the Fourth Annual Report (1865), CSI, 19;
31. "Asylums and Schools for Idiots," Am. J. Insanity, 1846, 2, 392-94;
32. John Conolly, "Imbecility of Mind in the Young," Am. J. Insanity, 1847, 3, 141-44;
33. and Message of... William T. Minor, Governor, 1855, 9.
34. Report of the Joint Select Committee on State Humane Institutions on So Much of the Governor's Message as Relates to the Idiotic. Document 8, 1855, pp. 1-4.
35. See also Brockett, "Idiots and Institutions," which was reprinted as a pamphlet, Idiots and The Efforts for Their Improvement (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Tiffany, 1856);
36. and Edward Sequin, "Origin of the Treatment and Training of Idiots," Am. J. Ed., 1856, 2, 145-52.
37. Report of the Commissioners on Idiocy, to the General Assembly of Connecticut... 1856, pp. 6-14. A manuscript copy is in Box 80, Folder 10, General Assembly Papers, 1856 (RG 2), CSL. Five thousand copies of the Report were printed for distribution.
38. These reports from clergy arid physicians are in the Henry Martyn Knight Papers, Knight Mss. 1850-1890, Frank Knight Sanders Papers, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, Yale University (hereafter YDSL, YU). Emphasis in original.
39. Report of the Commissioners on Idiocy, 26.
40. Brockett, "Idiots and Institutions," 600.
41. Report of the Commissioners on Idiocy, 26.
42. Ibid., 17. Emphasis in original.
43. Ibid., 16.
44. Message of... William T. Minor, Governor, 1856, p. II.
45. Turner quoted in Report of the Commissioners on Idiocy, 64. See William W. Turner to L. P. Brockett, 3 March 1856, Box 80, Folder 10, General Assembly Papers, 1856 (RG 2), CSL.
46. Fourth Annual Report (1865), CSI, 17;
47. and Journal of the Senate... Connecticut... 1857, pp. 379-80.
48. On Henry Martyn Knight, see Linus P. Brockett, "Cretins and Idiots: What Has Been Done and What Can be Done for Them," Atlantic Monthly, 1858, 415-19, p. 415;
49. "Henry M. Knight, M.D., Lakeville," Proceedings of the Connecticut Medical Society (1880), 180-85;
50. Gurdon Wadsworth Russell, Memorial Sketch of Henry Martin Knight, M.D., Late Superintendent of the School for Imbeciles at Lakeville, Connecticut (Hartford: Case, Lockwood and Brainard, 1891);
51. and Frank Knight Sanders, "The Life and Work of Henry Martyn Knight," Addresses at the Dedication of the Knight Hospital of the Mansfield Training School and Hospital at Mansfield Depot, Connecticut, October 18, 1926 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1927), n.p.
52. Russell, Memorial, 13; and Henry M. Knight's book list in the Sanders Papers, YDSL, YU.
53. Sanders, "The Life," n.p.;
54. Brockett, "Cretins," 418;
55. and Second Annual Report (1863), CSI, 12.
56. Second Annual Report (1863), CSI, 12;
57. and "Incorporating the Connecticut School for Imbeciles" (May 1861), Private and Special Laws of Connecticut, 1857-1865, vol. 5, pp. 423-24.
58. Report of the Superintendent of the School for Imbeciles at Lakeville, Connecticut, to the General Assembly, May Session, 1861, pp. 4, 7, 13-14. Emphasis in original.
59. First Annual Report (1862), CSI, 10-11
60. and Second Annual Report (1863), CSI, 14.
61. Henry M. Knight, undated ms., Sanders Papers, YDSL, YU;
62. and Second Annual Report (1863), CSI, 16.
63. H. M. Welch to Gov. Buckingham, 2 March 1863; Dr. Knight to Gov. Buckingham, 19 March 1863, 14 July 1863, Box 102, Commitment Papers (RG 5), CSL.
64. H. M. Knight to Gov. Buckingham, 5 November 1862, Box 102, Commitment Papers (RG 5), CSL.
65. George Mansfield to Gov. Buckingham, 22 July 1862, Box 102, Commitment Papers (RG 5), CSL.
66. H. M. Knight to Gov. Buckingham, I April 1864, Box 102, Commitment Papers (RG 5), CSL.
67. i b i d.
68. Henry H. Wolcott to H. M. Knight, 19 February 1864, Box 102, Commitment Papers (RG 5), CSL; Knight to Gov. Buckingham, 3 March 1864, Box 102, Commitment Papers (RG 5), CSL.
69. Proceedings of the Connecticut Medical Society, 1880, 181.
70. Second Annual Report (1863), CSI, 5-8;
71. and Fourth Annual Report (1865), CSI, 7.
72. Sanders, "The Life and Work."
73. Russell, Memorial Sketch, p. 12.
74. Fourteenth Annual Report (1872), CSI, 10.
75. Sanders, "The Life and Work."
76. I b i d.
77. The description is in Russell, Memorial Sketch, p. 7.
78. See Richard L. Dugdale, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity (New York: Putnam's, 1877);
79. Mrs. C. W. Brown, "Prevention of Mental Disease," [14 June 1877], Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons (1876-1886), pp. 25-28;
80. and Isaac N. Kerlin, "Etiology of Idiocy," [1880], Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons (1876-1886), pp. 150-62.
81. Twelfth Annual Report (1870), CSI, p. 10.
82. "Status of the Work Before the People and Legislatures... 1878 and 1879," Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, 1876-1886, vols. 1-10, 96.
83. Ms., untitled and undated, Sanders Papers, YDSL, YU.
84. Fourth Annual Report (1865), CSI, 10;
85. Annual Report of the [Connecticut] Board of Education (1869), 101;
86. "Bibliography," Am. J. Insanity, 1871, 27, 39;
87. and Twentieth Annual Report (1878), CSI, pp. 6-7.
88. General Statutes of Connecticut (1877), chap. 113, section I and section 2, p. 210, which was approved on 23 March 1877. Knight actively lobbied for the new law; see Henry M. Knight to Editor, 1 January 1877, Sanders Papers, YDS, YU.
89. Proceedings of the Connecticut Medical Society (1880), 13, 23;
90. Twenty-Second Annual Report (1880), CSI, 14;
91. and "Fifth Annual Session, 1880," Proceedings... Feeble-Minded, 1876-1886, vols. 1-10 (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1964), p. 112.
92. Report of the Comptroller (1880), 41;
93. Twenty-Second Annual Report (1880), CSI, 5;
94. and Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities... for the Years Ending September 30, 1899 and 1900, pp. 110-12. Dr. Robert Knight administered Lakewood from their father's death until 1885, when George succeeded him. From 1879 to 1885, George was the first superintendent of a school for the mentally retarded in Faribault, Minnesota.
95. See Isabell Barrows, "George Henry Knight," J. Psycho-Asthenics, Sept. 1913, 18, 3-7.
96. George H. Knight, "The Colony Plan for All Grades of Feeble-Minded," Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction at the Nineteenth Annual Session... 1892 (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1892), p. 159;
97. "Discussion," 28 May 1895, Proceedings... Feeble-Minded Persons (1887-1895), vols. 11-19 (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1964);
98. J. Psycho-Asthenics, 1859, 1, 591;
99. and see E. P. Bicknell, "Custodial Care of the Adult Feeble-Minded," J. Psycho-Asthenics, 1896, 1, 51-63.
100. Annual Report (1885), Connecticut State Board of Charities, 44;
101. and William B. Fish, "Custodial Care of Adult Idiots," (1891);
102. Proceedings... Feeble-Minded Persons (1887-1895), vols. 11-19, 203-11. George H. Knight's comments are part of the discussion of the talk on p. 218.
103. Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).
104. Knight, "The Colony Plan," 158-59.
105. See Isaac N. Kerlin, "Moral Imbecility" (1887), Proceedings... Feeble-Minded Persons (1887-1895), vols. 11-19, 32-37.
106. Knight, "The Colony Plan," pp. 158, 160.
107. George H. Knight, "The State's Duty toward Epileptics," Proceedings of National Conference, of Charities and Corrections (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1886), pp. 298-302;
108. Thirty-Fifth Annual Report (1893), CSI, 6;
109. George H. Knight, "Two Cases of Epilepsy," 10 October 1884, Proceedings... Feeble-Minded Persons (1876-1886), vols, 1-10, 302-4;
110. and Knight, "On a Broader Provision for Epileptics," 30 September 1886, Proceedings... Feeble-Minded Persons (1876-1886), vols, 1-10, 423-27.
111. Bruce Fraser, The Land of Steady Habits: A Brief History of Connecticut (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Commission, 1988), pp. 40-46.
112. See Barry A. Lazarus, "The Practice of Medicine and Prejudice in a New England Town: The Founding of Mount Sinai Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut," J. Am. Ethnic Hist., 1991, 10, 21-41.
113. Biennial Report of Connecticut School for Imbeciles... 1911-1912, pp. 9-19;
114. Stephen J. Maler, "George Henry Knight, M.D, Lakeville," Proceedings of the Connecticut State Medical Society, 1913, pp. 300-302;
115. and John Sproat, The Best Men: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).
116. Public and Special Acts of Connecticut, chap. 325, pp. 667, 710;
117. General Statutes of Connecticut (Revision of 1902), p. 382 (#1354, #1355, #1356);
118. and George H. Knight, "States's Duty toward Epileptics," 298.
119. See Edward W. Spencer, "Some Phases of Marriage Law and Legislation from a Sanitary and Eugenic Standpoint," Yale Law J., 1915-1916, 25, 58-73.
120. An anecdote, popular among reformers, told how frugal town fathers in a Connecticut village had a retarded woman on the dole marry a male idiot who was self-supporting. The unintended consequence was the couple had three children, and the town now had to support all five.
121. William N. Ashman, "A Medico-Legal Study of Insanity," (1887) Proceedings... Feeble-Minded (1887-1895), vols. 11-19, p. 29.
122. Public and Special Acts of Connecticut (1895), chap. 325, pp. 667, 710.
123. Biennial Report... State Board of Charities... 1895, p. 47;
124. and George H. Knight, "Prevention from a Legal and Moral Standpoint," Annual Report (1898), CSI, 12.
125. The latter also appears with the same title in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1899), pp. 304-8.
126. Public and Special Acts of Connecticut (1895), chap. 325, p. 667, 710;
127. Annual Report (1895), CSI, 12;
128. and Annual Report (1897), CSI, p. 12.
129. Annual Report (1897), CSI, p. 10.
130. Knight, "Prevention," p. 13.
131. Ibid., pp. 14-15.
132. Ibid., pp. 15, 18.
133. Gould v. Gould, 78 Conn. (1905), p. 265.
134. I b i d.
135. Harry Hamilton Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (Chicago: Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, 1922), 19;
136. chap. 209, "An Act Concerning Operations for the Prevention of Procreation," Public Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut in the Year 1909 (Hartford: published by the state, 1909), pp. 1135-36;
137. and William H. Carmalt, Heredity and Crime: A Study in Eugenics (New Haven: Connecticut Medical Society, 1909), pp. 37-38.
138. See Philip R. Reilly, The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 1-55, for the period circa 1880-1920;
139. and Steven Noll, Feeble-Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 65-80, observes that sterilization in the South lagged behind the North.
140. On the concept of "degeneration" during the late nineteenth century, see Charles E. Rosenberg, "The Bitter Fruit: Heredity, Disease, and Social Thought in Nineteenth-Century America," Perspectives Am. Hist., 1974, 8, 189-235;
141. Ian Dowbiggin, Inheriting Madness: Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991);
142. Dowbiggin, Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997);
143. Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (New York: Wiley, 1997), pp. 93-99;
144. and Mathew Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy, and Social Policy in Britain, c. 1870-1959 (London: Oxford University Press, 1998).
145. On the emergence of eugenics, see Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Knopf, 1985);
146. and Mark H. Haller, "Prelude to Eugenics, 1890-1905," in Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984), pp. 40-57.
147. Brockett, "Sequin Physiological School," p. 5.
148. George H. Knight, "The Feeble-Minded," May 1895, Proceedings... Feeble-Minded Persons (1887-1895), vols. 11-19, 559-63.
149. Derived from the Annual Reports of the Connecticut School Imbeciles; Connecticut Public Documents, 1861-1900;
150. and Reports of the State Board of Charities.
151. "Status of the Work Before the People and Legislatures... 1878 and 1879," Proceedings... Feeble-Minded Persons. (1876-1886), vols, 1-10, 96.
152. Knight, "The Feeble-Minded," May 1895, pp. 560-61.
153. Biennial Report of the Mansfield State Training School and Hospital for the Two Years Ended Sept. 30, 1915-16, p. 8;
154. Biennial Report... Sept. 30, 1918, pp. 5-6;
155. [Connecticut School for Imbeciles], and The Menace of the Feeble-Minded in Connecticut (Lakeville: Connecticut School for Imbeciles, between 1912 and 1915).
156. Report of the Special Commission on the Condition and Care of Epileptics (Hartford: Case, Lockwood and Brainard, 1907);
157. and "Report of the Committee on a Colony for Epileptics," Proceedings of the Connecticut State Medical Society, 1910, pp. 56-59.
158. Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, p. 61;
159. arid Reilly, The Surgical Solution, p. 140, reports that even through the 1960s he was "unable to discover any evidence that eugenic sterilization had ever been performed" on the mentally retarded in Connecticut.