Snakebite and Bad Whiskey – Asylum Committal Reasons
The early 19th century treatment of patients in early lunatic asylums was sometimes brutal and focused on containment and restraints. How could a person end up in such an institution against their will? Reasons for committal were varied back in the early days at West Virginia’s most noted mental asylum, The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum or TALA. Older folks who had no one to take care of them could simply walk into the hospital, sign some papers and stay there until they died. Family members would often be embarrassed about their mentally challenged family member and have them become a resident as well. Boys and young men who were caught masturbating could be committed. Children who had ailments such as smallpox, heart disease such as mitral valve prolapse, exhaustion or tuberculosis could be committed. In 1912, 12-year-old John Green was admitted and then died from epilepsy. He is buried in one of the asylum cemeteries. Teenager William Lee Gumm died of tuberculosis in 1933. He is also buried in an unmarked grave. These are just a couple of sad examples of misdiagnosed and unjustified committals. Below is a list of some of the reasons for committal that actually occurred at TALA from 1864-1889:
Amenorrhea
Bad company
Bad habits and political excitement
Bad whiskey
Bite of rattlesnake
Bloody flux
Brain fever
Business nerves
Cold
Congestion of brain
Constitutional
Crime
Death of sons in war
Deranged masturbation
Desertion by husband
Diphtheria
Disappointed affection
Dog bite
Domestic trouble
Egotism
Epileptic fits
Excessive sexual abuse
Fall from a horse
Feebleness of intellect
Fell from horse and war
Female disease
Fever and loss of lawsuit
Fever and jealousy
Fits and desertion of husband
Gathering in the head
Greediness
Grief
Gunshot wound
Hysteria
Immoral life
Imprisonment
Indigestion
Jealousy and religion
Kick of horse
Kicked in the head by a horse
Laziness
Liver and social disease
Loss of arm
Marriage of son
Masturbation and syphilis
Menstrual deranged
Mental excitement
Milk fever
Moral sanity
Novel reading
Nymphomania
Opium habit
Over action of the mind
Overheat
Over study of religion
Overtaxing mental powers
Parents were cousins
Periodical fits, tobacco and masturbation
Politics
Puerperal
Religious excitement
Remorse
Rumor of husband murder
Seduction and disappointment
Self-abuse and Severe labor
Sexual abuse and stimulants
Smallpox
Snuff eating for two years
Softening of the brain
Sunstroke
Superstition
The War
Time of life
Trouble
Uterine derangement
Venereal excesses
Vicious vices in early life
Women trouble
Worms
In the early 1800s, wives and daughters were often committed for not being obedient enough to their husbands or fathers. Women were expected to be homemakers and not much thought was given to their education. If a woman spoke out and went against the ‘norm’, she could be committed.
I first became aware of this a couple of years ago. I was visiting a courthouse and noticed the term “lunacy” on many of the women’s admission forms. Shockingly enough, a woman could be quite often divorced for reasons of lunacy. Her husband would put her in the asylum and then conveniently file for divorce. New wife, new life.
Men were committed for various reasons as well. This one chanced to be the very first male admission to TALA in 1864. He was the 12th admission at the asylum and was admitted for melancholia and sunstroke. Sunstroke! He was just 53 years old. A 38-year-old merchant from Mason County was admitted later that year for “The War” and probably suffering from what we now know as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. In the same year you have another male being admitted for masturbation at age 28 in February of 1864. He was a cabinetmaker from Virginia and apparently had been spotted doing the “evil act of masturbation,” which caused his Acute Mania. Even the man who initiated the Boy Scouts had his view. Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement said that if masturbation (which he described as “beastliness”) became “a habit, it quickly destroys both health and spirits; he becomes feeble in body and mind and often ends in a lunatic asylum.”
When children were committed, often times the families, probably due to embarrassment, would tell others they had died. Some children were committed for being an unwanted pregnancy, for disobedience or illness such as Down Syndrome or autism. As late as 1958, we have a stillborn being birthed at the hospital, only to end up buried in one of the hospital cemeteries that sit back behind the main hospital building. “Little Crookshank baby” was born on Nov. 30, 1958 and went to be with the Lord, a much better place to be than the asylum.
Our history of psychiatry in this nation as in other countries, is a dark history. What a long way we have come.
Sherri Brake is a paranormal researcher, author and Haunted Heartland Tour owner. You may email her at SherriBrake@gmail.com or visit her website at www.HauntedHistory.net