Geoffrey Reaume - Remembrance of Patients Past: Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870-1940

Remembrance of Patients Past

Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 18701940

Geoffrey Reaume

Originally published by Oxford University Press Canada 2000

University of Toronto Press 2009

Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com

Printed in the U.S.A.

Reprinted 2010, 2012

ISBN 978-1-4426-1075-0

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Reaume, Geoffrey

Remembrance of patients past : patient life at the Toronto Hospital for

the Insane, 1870-1940 / Geoffrey Reaume.

(Canadian social history series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978144261075-0

1. Mentally ill Institutional Care Ontario Toronto History.

2. Toronto Hospital for the Insane History. I. Title. II. Series: Canadian

social history series

RC448.O53T67 2009 362.2109713541 C2009-903809-9

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

For my Mother and Father

Josephine Reaume and Nelson Reaume

with

love and gratitude

Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 999 Queen Street West, early twentieth century (RG 10-20-B-7-6, Archives of Ontario 4612, Queen Street Mental Health Centre).

Oh that I had wings I would fly like
a dove and be at rest I would fly out
of this asylum. There is nothing
impossible with our Heavenly Father
all powerful He could give me wings
as easy as He

Ralph M.
18411911
Husband, Father, Farmer

A patient at 999 Queen Street West from 1898 until his death in 1911

Since this book is about the lives of people who were psychiatric patients long ago, it is especially appropriate to begin by acknowledging the importance to this work of people who have lived in mental institutions in my own lifetime. The seeds for this book were originally planted when I was a psychiatric in-patient at Regional Childrens Centre in Windsor, Ontario, from 18 June to 1 October 1976 and at St Thomas Psychiatric Hospital in St Thomas, Ontario, from 30 January to 12 April 1979, as well as during seven years as an out-patient in my hometown of Windsor. Shortly after I dropped out of grade 9 I was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 14 and paranoid schizophrenia when I was 16. I have known many other people with this and other diagnoses, some of whom have become my best friends. Compared to most of the people described in this book, and many people I knew in these two facilities and have come to know in the years since then, my period of hospitalization was relatively brief. This was largely because I was extremely lucky to have a supportive family to return to, unlike many others in a similar situation. However brief this period may have been, the six months I spent as a psychiatric in-patient and the periods right after these hospitalizations were the most influential times of my life and have led directly to the existence of this book. Working as an out-patient at Goodwill Industries, Contract Division, from April 1980 to June 1981 in Windsor was also very influential, along with the brief period I worked at industrial therapy in St Thomas. These experiences helped to inform my views on patients labour and friendships between people with mental health problems. As I did more reading on the history of psychiatry, it was obvious very little was written by academic historians about the perspectives and experiences of psychiatric patients. Too much of what did exist seemed to be based on a stereotype of people in mental institutions as either incapable or violent, devoid of any sort of complexity in personal relationships with one another, a monolithic group of people without much of a life beyond a diagnostic label. Knowing that there is a lot more to this story about a very diverse group of people, I thought, why not try something different? After all, current and former psychiatric patients also have a history that we can write. So that is how this book came about. The entire idea for it came from people I met who happened also to be psychiatric patients, inside and outside of mental health facilities, the greatest teachers any historian of psychiatry could ever have. It is their stories, their lives, that have inspired this book.

This book originated as a Ph.D. thesis in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. I would like to thank the three original members of my thesis committee. Professor Michael Bliss, my thesis supervisor, has been very helpful with criticisms and advice over many years, for which I am grateful. Professor Pauline Mazumdar has given me numerous valuable scholarly suggestions as well as constant encouragement throughout the development of this work, which will always be greatly appreciated. I also wish to thank Professor Edward Shorter for his comments. In addition to Professor Bliss and Professor Mazumdar, I would like to thank the other members of my thesis examination committee for their supportive comments and criticism: Professor Wendy Mitchinson, who was the external examiner, Professor Ian Radforth, Professor Carolyn Strange, and Professor Sylvia Van Kirk. I would also like to thank Professor Mazumdar and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, and Associated Medical Services, Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine, for supporting me in my post-doctoral research into the history of psychiatric patients labour in Ontario.

I have benefited from the criticism, encouragement, and suggestions of people who have taken the time to read and comment on earlier versions of portions of this work. These have included Lykke de la Cour, Velma Demerson, Lilith Finkler, Shirani George, Danny Gold-stick, Elsbeth Heaman, Ken Innes, Youngran Jo, Susanne Klausen, David Leadbeater, Alison Li, James Moran, Peggy Pasternak, Josephine Reaume, Nelson Reaume, Ruth Ruth, Mel Starkman, Marianne Ueberschar, Don Weitz, and Joanne Woiak. I would also like to thank people at Oxford University Press Canada for their enthusiastic interest in seeing this book to press, including Laura Macleod and Phyllis Wilson, as well as an anonymous reader and copy editor Richard Tallman, who provided very helpful and supportive comments on how to improve the manuscript, and Valerie Ahwee for technical assistance. All errors and omissions in this study are mine.

Portions of this book were originally published in the following: Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 11, 2 (1994) and 14, 1 (1997); Lori Chambers and Edgar-Andr Montigny, eds, Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1998); and, with Lykke de la Cour, in Franca Iacovetta and Wendy Mitchinson, eds, On the Case: Explo rations in Social History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). I thank Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, editor of CBMH, and the publisher of both books for permission to republish material that appeared first in these publications.