Читать книгу Sterilization of Carrie Buck - David Smith - Страница 12
ОглавлениеIn the fall of 1923, J. T. Dobbs and his wife, Alice, petitioned the Honorable Charles D. Shackleford, Justice of the Peace and Judge of the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for the City of Charlottesville, Virginia—the same court official who, three years previously, had committed Carrie’s natural mother, Emma Buck—to commit their foster child, Carrie Buck, to the State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded.
According to their testimony, Carrie, since the age of eleven, had exhibited symptoms of feeble-mindedness and epilepsy. Currently, they stated, these symptoms had worsened, making it impossible for them to control or care for her any longer. Though they had provided for her “as an act of kindness,” Mr. Dobbs’ monthly wages were no longer financially adequate to continue to do so.
Judge Shackleford appointed a Charlottesville physician, Dr. J. F. Williams, and the Dobbs’ family physician, Dr. J. C. Coulter, to examine Carrie, after which time he would institute a hearing at which the Dobbs family and Carrie herself would be required to testify as to the details of Carrie’s alleged illness.
The reports of the two doctors agreed that Carrie Buck was, in their judgments, “feeble-minded within the meaning of the law.”
When Carrie’s foster parents were questioned before the hearing, they added to the picture being painted of Carrie as a strange, ungovernable girl, subject to “hallucinations and outbreaks of temper” and born with a mental condition characterized by certain “peculiar actions.” Furthermore, they testified, she was dishonest and morally delinquent.
According to the Dobbs, Carrie had been born in Albemarle County and, at the time of her birth, her parents, Emma and Frank Buck, were unmarried. Later, they told the court, her mother had been diagnosed as feeble-minded and was now an inmate of the same institution in which the Dobbs desired to place Carrie. Her father’s whereabouts were unknown.
The Dobbs said they had received Carrie at the age of three from her mother, whom they referred to as Mrs. Emmett (sometimes called Emma Buck). Carrie had lived with them at their Grove Street house since then, attending school up to the sixth grade. She was, they stated, able to read, write, recognize and distinguish objects, but not to take “proper notice of things.”
Although the Dobbs family were quite certain that Carrie was feeble-minded, they were equally certain that she was capable of protecting herself against ordinary dangers without an attendant. They were equally uncertain about when her epileptic symptoms had appeared, saying at one point that her epilepsy had first appeared in childhood and, later, that they could not actually remember her being “subject to epilepsy, headaches, nervousness, fits or convulsions.”
Carrie had little to say at the hearing, assuming that whatever was about to be done for her would be in her best interests.
The hearing was held on January 23, 1924. At its conclusion, Judge Shackleford ruled, as he had in her mother’s case, that the doctors’ opinions of Carrie Buck were correct. His judgment was that Carrie Buck was a suitable subject for an institution for the care and treatment of the feeble-minded. He ordered her delivered to the Superintendent of the Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded at Lynchburg, Virginia without further delay. But a delay was unavoidable.
Seventeen…and unmarried…Carrie Buck was pregnant.
In March of 1924, a month before Carrie’s baby was due, Miss Caroline Wilhelm, the social worker to whom Dr. Bell had written abut Emma Buck, wrote to Dr. A. S. Priddy, the superintendent of the State Colony, concerning Carrie’s commitment papers. Miss Wilhelm was writing on behalf of the Red Cross in Charlottesville. In the letter, she mentions that the papers had been returned and were in the hands of attorney Homer Richey, who served on the Board of Public Welfare in Charlottesville and often attended to legal matters for the board:
My dear Dr. Priddy:
We are very sorry that the papers in this case have been so delayed. We did not know until a few days ago that they had been returned…for corrections and were still in the office of Mr. Richey who had agreed to make the necessary changes.
We are writing now to urge that the case be acted upon as soon as possible. Mrs. Dobbs, in whose care the girl has been, is expecting to be called away almost any day to care for her daughter during her confinement (late pregnancy and delivery) and she does not wish to leave the girl alone.
As Carrie Buck is expecting her baby about the middle of April, it is very important that she be admitted to the Colony before that time if it can be arranged.
Very truly yours,
(Miss) Caroline E. Wilhelm
Secretary
In response to her letter, as well as one from attorney Richey, urging that the commitment be expedited and arguing that all the papers were in order, on March 13th, Dr. Priddy insisted that the letter of the law be followed:
…am satisfied that due process of law has not been observed in this case.
I refer you to Sect. 1978 of the Code 1920, page 376 ‘Petition to have person declared feeble-minded.’ This section recites that no feeble-minded person shall be sent to any institution except as hereintofore…provided. It provides that a petition shall be regularly filed, which was done in her case, and in the following Section 1079 it says thereupon it shall be the duty of the Judge or Justice with whom such petition is filed, to execute a warrant ordering such alleged feeble-minded person to be brought before him and to summon her custodian, etc. The Court of Appeals of Virginia has in more than one case declared any commitment illegal in which there was no warrant issued and it furthermore requires the warrant to be read to the person suspected of being feeble-minded or insane and that he is acquainted with the charge. One of the cases to which I refer was that of Mallory vs. Va. State Colony for Feeble-minded …, so I must have a warrant properly executed or I cannot accept the ward as legal.
Very truly,
A. S. Priddy
Superintendent
The next day, Priddy wrote to Caroline Wilhelm and advised her that, even with her papers in order, Carrie Buck could not be committed until after she had delivered her baby.
My dear Miss Wilhelm,
I have your letter of 11th inst. relative to the admission of Carrie E. Buck and note that you say she is expecting her baby about the middle of April and it is very important that she be admitted to the Colony before that time. I am sorry but we make it a rule to positively refuse admission of any expectant mothers to the Colony. You will have to make some provision to keep her until the child is born and disposed of and then on notification we will take her when the law has been complied with in committing her. I have advised Mr. Richey that he will have to send me a copy of the warrant on which she was committed. Very truly,
A. S. Priddy
Superintendent
Dr. Priddy was quite aware of the importance of complying with the full letter of the law. He had already been involved in Mallory v. Priddy, a case in which he was found not guilty (March 1, 1918) of intentionally sterilizing an illegitimate young girl during a normal abdominal operation. In a later appeal, Mallory v. Virginia Colony for the Feebleminded (June 13, 1918), he was again acquitted of the charges, but the court concluded that certain practices were not quite within the confines of the 1916 law concerning feeblemindedness.
Although conscious of legal parameters, Dr. Priddy, nevertheless, considered his power as a physician absolute. At Carrie’s subsequent trial, he would aver, “I have a right to do whatever is best for the physical and mental advantage of the patient.”
On May 5th, a letter came to Dr. Priddy from Miss Wilhelm, explaining that Carrie’s baby had been born and she was now ready to enter the Colony. She also described the arrangements which had been made for the baby.
My dear Dr. Priddy,
It has been very difficult for us to decide what disposition to make in the case of Carrie Buck as we feel that a baby whose mother and grandmother are both feeble-minded ought not be placed out in a home for adoption. However, the people who have had Carrie in their home ever since she was a little girl, are willing to keep the baby with the understanding that it will be committed later on if it is found to be feeble-minded also. We are therefore anxious to send Carrie to you as soon as possible and should be glad to know when you can receive her.
Can you send someone for Carrie, or send us transportation for an attendant for her.
Very truly yours,
(Miss) Caroline Wilhelm
Secretary
Dr. Priddy responded to Miss Wilhelm on May 7th with a letter which opened the way for Carrie’s commitment to the Colony. This letter would alter the course of Carrie’s life, and her experience would effect the lives of thousands of other people.
Dear Miss Wilhelm:
Replying to your letter of the 5th about Carrie Buck will say that I cannot advise you what disposition to make of the baby other than to place it in the City Almshouse. Of course, should this child be ascertained to be feeble-minded we will receive it here. However, the law puts a limit of 8 years in feebleminded cases and we could not take it until it is eight years of age. I am enclosing transportation for attendant and her (Carrie) to Lynchburg. If you will kindly fill in name of attendant and advise me on what train she will arrive we will meet her at the station. The early morning local train comes into the Union Station at 9 A.M. and is the most convenient one for us to meet and whoever comes with her could return on the 12 o’clock train.
Very truly,
A. S. Priddy
Superintendent
Boarding the early train, Carrie and Carolyn Wilhelm made their way to the hospital in Madison Heights, overlooking the James River, Lynchburg and the mountains.
The 1905 will of S. R. Murkland of Amherst County had left a parcel of land to Western State Hospital. It consisted of about two hundred acres on the James River looking down from the heights north of Lynchburg. The purpose of this gift was to provide “extra comforts” for the patients of that hospital. Mr. Murkland’s epileptic son was being cared for in that institution, which was nearly eighty miles away from the farm willed to it.
In February of 1906 the Virginia State Legislature passed an act authorizing the Board of Directors of Western State Hospital and the General Board of State Hospitals to build on the Murkland tract a facility for the care, treatment and employment of three hundred epileptic patients. Through Mr. Murkland’s generosity and compassion, the Virginia State Epileptic Colony was to become an institution of the State of Virginia.
This action, however, did not come easily. The legislature had not yet acted on the matter in 1906 when Senator Aubrey Strode of Amherst explained, in a letter to a physician friend, Dr. George Harris, that the bill was meeting with some resistance. Apparently the economic benefits of the placement of the institution had become a matter of considerable political interest:
Dear Doctor:
We have only a fair chance of getting our Epileptic Colony Bill through. The House Committee on Prisons and Asylums gave the bill a unanimously favorable report and it is now on the calendar in the House. In the Senate committee, however, we have as yet been unable to take up the bill because of the press of other matters, but hope it will reach it next week.
We will need all the help we can get, as such institutions are much sought after and even if we succeed in having it established, some other locality may endeavor to offer inducements to switch it away from the Murkland farm, but we will do the best we can in the matter. It would not be a bad idea if you could get any of your friends in Lynchburg interested in the matter…
The Board of State Hospitals was also slow in moving the matter along. Again Strode intervened. In February of 1907 he wrote about the situation to L. W. Lane, the Commissioner of Hospitals:
Dear Sir:
Please kindly advise me of the latest action taken by the Hospital Board in reference to the Epileptic Colony which it was directed to establish on the Murkland land in Amherst County by the act approved February 20, 1906, and for which $25,000.00 was appropriated, one-half thereof being available before March 1, 1907.
Any information that you can give me in reference to the steps taken by your board up to this time to comply with this act will be appreciated.
Yours respectfully,
A. E. Strode
Throughout the establishment process, Strode, who was later to be the prosecuting attorney in the case of Buck v. Bell, exerted his personal energy and political influence. Contained in his collected papers are copies of letters he constantly wrote to other politicians, hospital superintendents and State Hospital Board members on matters related to the establishment of the institution. He was clearly an important force, indicated by the fact that when the Governor finally appointed the three members of the Board of Directors to manage the affairs of the new Colony for Epileptics, Irving P. Whitehead was one of the prominent members.
Irving P. Whitehead had been a childhood friend of Aubrey Strode. They had grown up on adjoining Amherst farms and remained friends and professional associates throughout their lives. Ironically, but not completely by accident, Irving Whitehead was later to be the attorney appointed to defend Carrie Buck’s interests in her sterilization test case.
The Board of Directors assumed their offices in April of 1910. That same month, they selected Dr. Albert Sidney Priddy to be the first superintendent of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics.
Albert Priddy was born of an old and respected Virginia family in 1865. His genealogy traced back to an ancestor who had come to the Colonies in 1650.
Dr. Priddy received his academic preparation in a private school then known as Shotwell Institute. He later studied medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore. He practiced medicine in Keysville, Virginia, his hometown, until 1901. It was then that he took a position as assistant physician at Southwestern State Hospital. In 1906 he was appointed superintendent of that institution.
Priddy had always taken an active interest in politics, successfully merging his two professions. He represented Charlotte County in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1893 until 1894 and again from 1900 to 1901. During his service in the General Assembly he was a member of the committee on prisons and asylums, and was one of the authors of a law providing pensions for Confederate veterans who had become disabled since the war. In 1900 he was patron in the House of a successful bill which addressed issues relating to the governance of state hospitals and the care of the “insane.” In 1901 he was a member of the joint committee which adopted plans for the improvement and rebuilding of the Virginia Penitentiary.
The choice of Albert Priddy as the Colony’s first superintendent was understandable in light of his past experience as superintendent of Southwestern State Hospital and his political involvement with matters concerning state institutions. He had political connections with Aubrey Strode, since both were Democrats and from the same region of the state. He also had both a political and professional relationship with Dr. J. S. DeJarnette, the superintendent of Western State Hospital. DeJarnette was a power and influence broker within the system of state institutions, and a true believer in eugenics.
Politically and philosophically, Albert Priddy was the perfect choice.
Almost immediately after assuming the superintendency, Priddy cemented his DeJarnette connections by making clear in the institution’s public record that he subscribed to the eugenic philosophy advocated by DeJarnette and others in the state hospital bureaucracy at that time. In his first annual report, written in 1910, he made it very clear that he believed epilepsy to be a genetic problem:
…The epileptic remains with us always, alike the poor, as one of the most pitiful, helpless and troublesome of human beings, with their various and numerous afflictions, and worst to contemplate is the fact that of the known causes which contribute to the development and growth of epilepsy, that of bad heredity is the most potent, and with the unrestricted marriage and intermarriage of the insane, mentally defective and epileptic, its increase is but natural and is thus to be reasonably accounted for.
Dr. Priddy’s second annual report in 1911 included an invocation that he was to repeat over and over for a decade. He issued a challenge to the state’s lawmakers that was to finally reach fruition in 1924.
It is reasonable to anticipate a rapid increase in epileptics and mental defectives. Therefore, it seems not inopportune to call the attention of our lawmakers to the consideration of legalized eugenics.
Thus a public call for compulsory sterilization had been issued.
From the time it was established, the Colony had admitted some people who were mentally retarded as well as epileptic. During its early years, increasing numbers of people who were mentally retarded but not epileptic were admitted. Finally, by 1914, the mission of the Colony had been officially expanded to include people classified as feeble-minded. Soon, Priddy was focusing his eugenic concerns on that group and emphasizing connections between feeblemindedness, crime, alcoholism, prostitution and other social problems. In his 1915 report from the Colony he spoke of feeblemindedness in forewarning terms:
This blight on mankind is increasing at a rapid rate…unless some radical measures are adopted to curb the influences which tend to promote its growth, it will be only a matter of time before the resulting pauperism and criminality will be a burden too heavy…to bear.
Priddy’s statements in his annual reports concerning the “menace” of hereditary feeblemindedness and the socially therapeutic effects of sterilization increased in length and intensity. This escalation seems to have reached its peak in his 1922-23 biennial report. This would be the last report he would write prior to the successful passage of the Sterilization Act and the initiation of the Carrie Buck test case. In this report, Priddy targeted the “high grade defective” or “moron” as a major source of social problems and as the most appropriate candidate for sterilization.
A few years earlier, Henry Goddard had coined the term “moron” from a Greek word meaning foolish. The label soon came to be applied widely to people who were considered “high grades”—those who were not retarded seriously enough to be obvious to the casual observer and who had not been brain damaged by disease or injury. Morons were characterized as being intellectually dull, socially inadequate, and morally deficient. Priddy wrote:
High Grade Morons of the Anti-Social Class
Each day (working) in the custodial care of delinquent high-grade moron girls and women of good physical strength and health impresses me with the gravity of the responsibility which the…management of institutions for the feeble-minded assume in keeping these people…indefinitely to enforce morality in act or rather to restrain them from overt acts of immorality. If they are to be kept from indulging in sexual immorality it means they are to be kept a lifetime in institutions under the strictest custody…This to any fair-minded thinker must appear to be a cruel and unjust degree of punishment for their weaknesses…Besides the humane aspect of it a large percent of the girls and women of this class should be earning their own living in work for which they are mentally and physically adequate, rather than to constitute lifetime burdens on the taxpayers of the State. If they are to be kept in institutions and supported at the expense of the State for the child-bearing period covering at least thirty years, to prevent them from bearing children to increase the population of mental and physical defectives and dependents…it certainly seems more humane and just to them to give them the benefit of a milder and less severe method of attaining the desired end…Therefore, every reasonable and fair-minded person must concede that the withdrawal of the right to propagate their kind could and should be given to society in such cases of females as have demonstrated their constitutional mental and moral inability to use the right of child-bearing as a blessing to humanity rather than a curse.
Priddy goes on to state that many women were being classified as feeble-minded primarily on the basis of their sexual behavior rather than evidence of impaired mental function. In Priddy’s eyes at least, “moral deficiency” had become synonymous with “mental deficiency.”
…the admission of female morons to this institution has consisted for the most part of those who would formerly have found their way into the red-light district and become dangerous to society…If the present tendency to place and keep under custodial care in State institutions all females who have become incorrigibly immoral it will soon become a burden much greater than the State can carry. These women are never reformed in heart and mind because they are defectives from the standpoint of intellect and moral conception and should always have the supervision by officers of the law and properly appointed custodians.
Priddy continued his comments with a discussion of sterilization. He revealed that sterilization had evidently already become a practice at the Colony, at least in his operating room.
No one could be more opposed to a drastic and far-reaching law providing for the sterilization of mental defectives without careful safe-guard…(however) I view it as the only solution of the problem of the custodial care of them by the State…Within the last seven years between seventy-five and a hundred young women patients in this institution have had operations for pelvic diseases which rendered them sterile, and, after long observation, discipline and training, the most of them have been paroled in good families and have earned their living and led happy and useful lives, and I cannot recall that a single one has ever returned to the institution or against whom complaint has been made by officers of the law as to immorality. Many of them have married hard-working men of a slightly higher mental grade and have conducted themselves properly as married women. The paroling of unsterilized, physically attractive young women from the institution (to the) best of families is not without danger… it is not infrequent for them to be returned to the institution pregnant despite the best of care which was given them. The operation (sterilization), when carefully performed by a skillful operator, is as free from danger to life as any minor surgical operation can be, and it in no way effects the general health and normal functioning of any woman…
The superintendents of the four State hospitals and the Colony have been appointed a committee by the General State Hospital Board to draft a bill to be presented in the coming General Assembly for a law authorizing the sterilization of such patients as may be found capable of earning their own living and of being released under proper custodial care, without danger to themselves and the public. It is to be hoped that with the best legal talent to draft such a bill, it can come within constitutional limits and enacted into a law.
The fact that Albert Priddy had diagnosed so many cases of pelvic disease, and that the surgery he performed in these cases so often rendered his patients sterile, is difficult to accept as a coincidence. It seems evident that the medical diagnosis of pelvic disorder allowed Priddy to intervene in the reproductive potentials of these women. He was able to do, in the name of disease, what he could not as yet legally do in the name of eugenics.
Priddy had included similar statements concerning pelvic diseases and sterilization in previous reports. His didactic account in 1923, however, is even more remarkable in light of the fact that one of his earlier “therapeutic” sterilizations had resulted in Mallory v. Priddy.
In November of 1917, A. S. Priddy received a letter concerning one of the residents of his institution. Although the mechanics and grammar of the writing lacked precision and polish, the message and intent was quite direct and forceful. The writer of the letter, George Mallory of Richmond, accused Albert Priddy of breaking up his family. In his rough and imperfect, but forceful, language, Mallory threatened to cause trouble for Priddy unless his daughter was returned to him unharmed. He argued that his daughter was not feeble-minded and had no need to be in Priddy’s institution. He also pointed out that he knew there was no legal basis for sterilization (“no law for such treatment”) in Virginia. Mallory was fearful that his daughter would be sexually sterilized if she remained under Priddy’s control much longer.
Mallory’s anxiety had a very real foundation; Dr. Priddy had already sterilized George Mallory’s wife and another one of his daughters. His letter to Priddy crackled with anger and desperation.
Priddy’s response was instant and vehement. Accusing Mallory of threatening him, he informed him that if he dared to write another letter of that kind, he would have him arrested and committed to the Lynchburg institution. Priddy claimed that he had performed surgery on Mallory’s wife and daughter at their request and because it was indicated as treatment for diseases they had. He closed his note by repeating that if he received further threats from Mallory he would have him “arrested in a few hours.”
Mallory, however, may not have been a man of grammar, but he was not a man to be taken lightly. He sued. Priddy’s own letter was presented as evidence against him to the jury in the case of Mallory v. Priddy. The case helped to illustrate clearly the kinds of social policies and practices that contributed to the passage of Virginia’s involuntary sterilization law. It was also indicative of the kinds of “pelvic diseases” that Priddy encountered so frequently at the Colony, most of which seemed to have resulted in sterilization.
Paul Lombardo’s scholarly examination of the case of Mallory v. Priddy includes the following facts which help to explain the exchange of letters between the two men and the subsequent court case.
On a balmy September evening in 1916, George Mallory was away from his Richmond home working in a sawmill. While two family friends were visiting in the Mallory house, police officers entered and charged Mrs. Mallory with running a brothel. They arrested her, her nine children and the two male visitors.
The younger children were placed with the Children’s Home Society. Mrs. Mallory and her guests were fined for the offense of disorderly conduct. She and her two oldest daughters, Nannie and Jessie, were also held at the City Detention Home. After three weeks there, Mrs. Mallory and her daughters were judged to be feebleminded and were sent to the Colony.
After six months in the institution, Mrs. Mallory was sterilized by Dr. Priddy. He testified at the trial that the surgery was a medical necessity. Mrs. Mallory testified that there was no illness involved and the only purpose of the surgery was sterilization. Shortly after the operation, she was discharged from the institution. Her daughter Jessie was released soon after, also sterilized.
In October of 1917 George Mallory brought suit against Albert Priddy. Mr. Mallory sought damages for the wages his wife lost during the time she was kept at the Colony, as well as compensation for the pain and suffering caused by her sterilization. He also sought the release of his daughter, Nannie, from the Colony.
Dr. Priddy’s testimony that he had admitted Mrs. Mallory to the Colony legally and had sterilized her for medical reasons was apparently convincing enough for the jury. On March 1, 1918, a verdict of not guilty was returned in Mallory v. Priddy. A number of accounts circulated locally, according to Lombardo, indicate that the judge in the case suggested that Dr. Priddy consider not sterilizing any other patients at the Colony until there was such a law which allowed him to legally do so for eugenic purposes.
The effect of this legal scolding was obviously short-lived. In his 1923 report, Priddy was again referring with pride to the sterilizations he had performed for “medical” reasons at the Colony and the positive effect they had on the overall well-being of women on whom he performed the surgery. Also, the embarrassment was soon to give way to a concentrated push on the part of Priddy, Strode and DeJarnette to secure the passage of an eugenic sterilization law which would survive a constitutional test.
