Beverly Lionberger Hodgins - Mercy and Madness: Dr. Mary Archard Lathams Tragic Fall From Female Physician to Felon

Beverly Lionberger Hodgins is the author of award-winning poems, short storiesincluding the 2016 LAURA Short Fiction Award winner, A Girl Named Eggand several screenplays. Her screenplay, Wayward Warrior, based on her husbands Vietnam War service years, was a semi-finalist in a FilmMakers International Screenwriting Awards competition.

An active member of Women Writing the West (WWW), she served from 2018 through 2020 as editor of the WWW Catalog of Authors Books. She previously served as a human-interest story writer for the State of Washingtons employee intranet service.

As the great-granddaughter of Oregon pioneers, she treasures stories from the past and was delighted to discover ancestral roots in Washington State as well. She enjoys reading, traveling, creating quilts for her family, and exploring the natural world.

Her husband is a retired US Navy Deep Sea Diver, and she lives with him and their Rhodesian Ridgeback Labrador daughter, Lily, in Spokane, Washington.

Recognition is due to a small army of people who walked with me through unfamiliar territory, until I emerged to find I had written a bookmy first.

Thanks to Colorado cousin, Bill Archerd, without whose book, Archerd: Family History, I might never have discovered Cousin Mary.

Vicki Latham Watkins and her father, Glenn Marvin Latham, Marys great-grandson, kindly provided copies of family items, photos, and documents, for which I am very grateful. I hope one day well meet.

Thanks for permission to use photographs and other images: Bill Archerd, Erik Highberg, Gary Lewis, and Duane Broyles.

Items mentioned above may not have been included for lack of space, but still, your generosity is greatly appreciated.

Special thanks to Alex Fergus, assistant reference archivist at Joel E. Ferris Research Archives, Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane. Working with Alex in the time of coronavirus was a mask-clad pleasure. And to Lee Pierce, archivist at the Eastern Region Branch of the Washington State Archives, thank you for your patience. I should have braved the snowy roads that December day in 2019, but who knew what was about to descend? One day Ill come for that promised tour.

Thanks to the staffs of Washington State ArchivesEastern Region, Olympia Archives, and Office of the Secretary of State, especially Lupita Lopez; University of Washington LibrariesSpecial Collections; the Ned M. Barnes Northwest Room, Spokane Public Libraryparticularly librarian Riva Dean for your patience as I piled up books to be reshelved, and for continuing to help after the library closed due to COVID-19; Spokane County Clerk Archivesespecially Breanne Breezy Hansen; Washington State Department of Corrections, Public Records Unit; City of Spokane Parks and Recreation; Spokane County Auditors Office; Spokane County Assessors Office; Spokane City Building Permits Office; and Spokane County Medical Society. Thank you very much, Libby Kamrowski, photographer and newsroom archivist for the Spokesman-Review; Susan Walker at Spokane Regional Law Enforcement Museum, also Rae Anna Victor; and Jayne Singleton, director of Spokane Valley Heritage Museum, along with volunteer Nancy Pulham. To a person you were encouraging and pleasant.

Thank you, Brian Kobs and Tyson and Julia Voelckers, for helping me understand the world of plat maps and early land records, and for sharing a complete strangers excitement. Thanks, Kimberly Dailey, for introducing us, and for being a friend.

Heartfelt thanks go across the country to the administrator of the Village of New Richmond, Ohio, Greg Roberts, especially for the personal tour of New Richmond; and to William Bill Landon, PhD, Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University, along with Dr. Brian Hackett. Over a period of two years, these three gentlemen generously provided information about the historically relevant Clermont/Parker Academy. Thanks to the Clermont County, Hamilton County, and Ohio Historical Societies. A big thank-you to archivist/curator Gino J. Pasi of the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, University of Cincinnati Libraries, for sending me what you imagined was nothing but was really something.

Thank you, Erin Turner, for giving me this opportunity with Globe Pequot/TwoDot. Ill never forget the daya Friday the 13thwhen you wrote, We want to publish. Thank you for opening the door. Special thanks to Sarah Parke, for taking up where Erin left off, and to Kristen Mellitt for guiding me through the final process to production. Thanks also to Melissa Hayes, one outstanding copyeditor. I feel lucky to have worked with this team of women.

Women Writing the West (WWW) are a support system of inestimable worth. Thank you, Jane Kirkpatrick, for telling me about WWW so long ago in Oregon. The camaraderie and encouragement found at annual conferencesand during recent Zoom meetingsare what give me the courage to continue writing. Good friend and particeps criminis, Debra Carey, thanks for always being there.

Love and endless gratitude to my husband, Tom, and to my children, Laura and Brian, for serving as my rally squad and believing in me all these yearsthat I am a writer, that I could publish a book.

Sources used only in passing are not included in this bibliography.

1900 United States Federal CensusAncestry.comJames A. Latham. search.ancestry.com/collections/7602/records/73251940.

Abandoned Baby Dies: Dr. Mary Latham Tells of Girls Betrayal. Semi-Weekly Spokesman-Review. July 24, 1910. newspapers.com/image/566207586.

After 16 Months, Mrs. Nancy Lemmerhart [Lammerhart] Released from the Medical Lake Asylum. Semi-Weekly Spokesman-Review. May 25, 1895. newspapers.com/image/566361741.

Aged Woman Is Paroled: Mary A. L[a]tham is Given Her Liberty from Penitentiary. Evening Statesman (Walla Walla, WA). February 28, 1907. newspapers.com/image/194805088.

American Humane: First to Serve. americanhumane.org/about-us/history.

American Medical Directory: A Register of Legally Qualified Physicians of the United States, 3rd ed. Chicago: American Medical Association, 1912. books.google.com/books.

Appointed Physician at Colville. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. December 16, 1890. newspapers.com/image/332705835.

Appointment. Chicago Tribune. January 20, 1875. newspapers.com/image/349263922.

Archerd, William F. Archerd: Family History, 2nd ed. lulu.com, 2015.

Are Ready to Quit the County Farm. Spokane Chronicle. March 13, 1908. newspapers.com/image/561734486.

Armitage, Sue. Shaping the Public Good: Women Making History in the Pacific Northwest. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2015.

Arrest Made in Arson Case: Melville Logan Held for Complicity in Latham Fire at Mead. Semi-Weekly Spokesman-Review. May 12, 1905. newspapers.com/image/566290921.

ArtsPhotographs. Lebanon Express. March 24, 1981. newspapers.com/image/414980150.

Ask Her Release: It Is Claimed that an Inmate at Medical Lake Is Not Insane. Semi-Weekly Spokesman-Review. April 28, 1895. newspapers.com/image/566357421.

Atchison Daily Globe (Atchison, KS). April 22, 1893. 4.

Baby Show: It Will Be Made an Attractive Feature of the Fruit Fair. Spokane Chronicle. September 11, 1897. newspapers.com/image/562117649.

Baby Show for the Fair: Prizes for the Prettiest Infants in the Town. Spokane Chronicle. October 6, 1899. newspapers.com/image/561487842.

Baby Will Probably Die: An Accident which Occurred on Monroe Street This Morning. Spokane Chronicle. (1891c, March 21). newspapers.com/image/562159777.

Back from Dawson: Spokane Woman Who Braved the Terrors of Chilkoot. Semi-Weekly Spokesman-Review