Diane Goeres-Gardner - Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph

Ms. Goeres-Gardner balances the unique and complex history of the Oregon State Hospital with the art of the storyteller. This well-researched history extending from the earliest days of the Oregon State Insane Asylum to the present, although not always a pretty story, is exactly what we need to hear. I applaud this book, which will elevate public awareness of the issues, particularly at this time when a dialogue is desperately needed as we approach the crossroads of mental health.

Howard W. Baumann,

MD Board Member, Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health

Those who would want a better understanding of the way Oregon has responded to the needs of people with mental health challenges would be well advised to read and ponder the history described in such great detail in this book. Ms. Goeres-Gardner presents a compelling story with historic references that no other book has provided to date. The books first chapter, The Case of Charity Lamb, sets the stage for considering both the tragedy of societys response and the compelling efforts at humane treatment. These themes come up time and again and serve as comparisons and contrasts to what we have done since then.

Diane Goeres-Gardner has searched the state archives for reports to the legislature. She has reviewed newspaper articles and many other documents. She has interviewed many key participants in the history of Oregons state hospital. Her exhaustive research tells the full story of the institution, its troubled and humanitarian past, without passing judgment. That is left to the reader. The book will be a critical resource for historians and storytellers for many years to come.

Robert E. Nikkel

Director, Oregon Addictions and Mental Health Division (20032008)

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2013 by Diane L. Goeres-Gardner

All rights reserved

Front cover: Oregon State Hospital, 2009. Photograph by Laurie Burke.

First published 2013

e-book edition 2013

Manufactured in the United States

ISBN 978.1.62584.496.5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goeres-Gardner, Diane L., author.

Inside Oregon State Hospital : a history of tragedy and triumph / Diane L. Goeres-Gardner.

p. ; cm.

Includes index.

Summary: A history of the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon, spanning from 1883 to 2012--Provided by publisher.

print edition ISBN 978-1-62619-040-5 (paperback)

I. Title.

[DNLM: 1. Oregon State Hospital. 2. Hospitals, Psychiatric--history--Oregon. 3. Hospitals, State--history--Oregon. 4. History, 19th Century--Oregon. 5. History, 20th Century--Oregon. 6. History, 21st Century--Oregon. WM 28 AO7]

RC443 362.2109795--dc23 2013017635

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Dedicated to the thousands of Oregons men and women who devoted their hands and hearts to working with persons with mental illness since 1843 when Oregons provisional government was established.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Throughout its history Oregon State Hospital has frequently ranked as the most misunderstood, maligned, malnourished, even mysterious of all the institutions under the aegis of state government.

The nature of the hospital itself is partly to blame. Of all human maladies that have been cured or at least brought under control in the last century, mental illness remains one of the most elusive to medical science. Breakthroughs in medication have helped some, but the need for someplace to isolate the crazies among us persists and probably always will.

I use the term crazies advisedly.

Several of my young years were spent in Salem during the 1940s. My friends and I were well aware of the gothic hulk out on Center Street. Thats where they keep the crazies, we told one another. We accepted as gospel rumors of the unbalanced behavior behind those forbidding walls and the physical indignities suffered in the name of restoring sanity. Likely as not, one or the other of us had some family member, or knew of some family member or friend, who had spent time there.

Salem was still a small town. Word got around. And, as it turns out, many of the treatments employed at the hospital, viewed in todays bright light, can only be classified as draconian if not out-and-out torture.

Not that, for the most part, the hospital staff were not deeply dedicated to the task at hand. They were diligent both in tending to patients comfort and in the effort to restore them to a meaningful role on the outside.

Years later, in 1964, as a neophyte reporter for the old Salem Capital Journal, I received a lasting lesson in hospital philosophy from its superintendent (19551981), Dr. Dean Brooks, whom I described as the smiling, mild-mannered psychiatrist, superintendent, shepherd, administrator, father confessor and arbitrator responsible for the sprawling institution.

It was springtime. The legislature was in session. Money was short. The hospital was running $100 per day over its drug budget. Disapproving glances emanated from the legislative budget barons.

Dr. Brooks hastens to assure[that] although problems do exist, the hospitals total program is not threatened, I reported at the time. He makes it clear that his concern, and consequently the hospitals, is to heal the patients minds to a point where they can once again function in society. If a drug will help, fine. If not, better to use another approach.

Thus was it ever at the hospital, virtually from the day in 1883 when the state transferred patients from the privately run Hawthorne Asylum in East Portland to the spanking new Oregon State Insane Asylum in Salem, itself conceived to save the state a bundle of money.

As dynamic and often disturbing as the hospital has been over its 120 years, no one until now undertook to track its history. There have been multitudinous newspaper articles and scholarly studies and papers but nothing comprehensive to lift the veil for the public to see and assess what the hospital has been and is all about.

Diane Goeres-Gardner, whose previous two books dealt with unseemly but intriguing aspects of Oregon history, has accepted that challenge. It was partly by accident, partly by logical progression that she was led to chronicle the hospital.

In the early 2000s she was researching family pioneers who came across the Oregon Trail in 1852 and settled in Tillamook. As she tracked ancestors via microfilms of old newspapers at the University of Oregon Knight Library in Eugene, she kept coming across accounts of public hangings.

Before 1903 when the state took over the task, local sheriffs dutifully dispatched criminals sentenced to death. Those ceremonies tended to attract curious throngs, often taking on a carnival atmosphere with the execution as the climactic feature. Goeres-Gardner stockpiled those stories, which became Necktie Parties: Legal Executions in Oregon, 18511905, published in 2005.

In the course of that endeavor, Goeres-Gardner also came across stories about women who had run afoul of the states justice system. In 2009 came Murder, Morality and Madness: Women Criminals in Early Oregon