Old—and insane (—and when eugenics was in the air)

Young Frieda Flueckinger, c. 1893

     Here's another post on the historical blog I'm doing for a friend. You might find it interesting. And scary!

     You'll recall that Emma, wife of Fred Jenni (Sr.), died tragically at age 33 in 1906. That left her husband, Fred, a hard-working farmer, to deal also with a house full of children, including an infant [at his isolated farm in Fergus County, Montana].
     According to newspaper accounts, Emma's sister, Frieda White (née Flueckinger), then 26 years old, came to the assistance of Fred and his family. I recall reporting previously that, by that time, she had married Charles White—a much older man—and that she had a child with him in 1899. As far as I knew, she was still married to White in 1906.
     I am intrigued by Frieda, in part because we have a good photo of her, and, well, there you go. My perusal of Ancestry.com made clear that Frieda married again in 1907 but also that Charles L. White, her husband, was still alive (until 1915).
     But I could find no record of a divorce decree.
     Frieda's marriage to White was common in the era. She was eighteen years old when she married; White was forty-seven. Pretty creepy, but that's a matter for another day.
     I examined Frieda's marriage license/certificate of 1907, when she married Hubby #2, Frederick Huppi, and it appears that she made no secret of her having been married previously, to White.
     So did she get a divorce? Wouldn't that have been unusual in 1906 Montana? Just what is the story here?
     I took another tack. I searched "Charles White" in local newspapers in the period between 1890 and 1920.
     Voila!
     It turns out that Charles White had mental health problems that involved violence, or at least threats of violence.
     I'll let the newspaper articles tell the story (though one wonders what they didn't tell).

2-2-98 Fergus Co. Argus

     Anything's possible, I suppose, but it's hard not to wonder if Frieda, at age 18, felt tremendous pressures to marry someone, even if he was more than twice her age. Pretty sad.

2-15-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     —A week after White's self-surrender:

2-22-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     He didn't stay there long, as we'll see. I suspect that Frieda and her son had at some point moved in with Fred Jenni to get away from Charles.
     Four months later:

6-21-05 Fergus Co. Argus 

     Three weeks later:

 7-14-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     Subsequently, the authorities check in on White, who claims to have taken poison....

7-14-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     White requests being sent to the asylum, where he'd been housed months earlier. But he was released.

8-8-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     Request granted:

8-29-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     I have found nothing else about White's institutionalization and death. The records at Ancestry.com, such as they are, indicate that White died in 1915. I can find no newspaper articles reporting his death.
     As I said, Frieda married in 1907, two years after winning a divorce from White. (See below.)
     Here's a collection of relevant documents:

1900 Census. Charles White family included. (Frida and son Clarence are part of the household).

Frieda and Charles' wedding papers, 1898

1907 wedding documents

     But where did Frieda and her new family go? When did she die?

     I'll have to get back to you.

Re Warm Springs State Hospital
From Archives West.

Prior to 1869, Montana Territory made no special provisions for mental patients, their care generally being left to regular hospitals. The Helena Weekly Herald in a September 19, 1867, article on the county hospital commented on the need for a territorial insane asylum, stating that the county hospital was not the proper place for a "lunatic." 

Two years later the 6th Territorial Legislative Assembly passed a law authorizing an official territorial insane asylum to be owned and managed on a contract basis by private parties. A board of commissioners was established with one representative from each judicial district to oversee the asylum, establish rules for its operation, and perform periodic inspections. 

Until 1877 St. John's Hospital in Helena served as the territorial asylum. By 1874 it was accepting sufficient numbers of patients committed by Governor Benjamin Potts to require the construction of a separate building behind the main hospital. In 1877 Drs. Armistead H. Mitchell (1831-1898) and Charles F. Mussigbrod (d.1893), owners of a hotel and spa at Warm Springs, Montana, were awarded the contract for the care of the territory's mental patients. By 1886 the partners had expanded their operation from 160 acres to 1640 acres and from two buildings to thirty-two buildings, including a larger hotel, a house for convalescents, a separate building for violent patients, a large plunge pool, a laundry, storehouses, icehouses, and many other outbuildings. From 1891 to 1907 the hospital was run by Dr. O.Y. Warren, who was in turn succeeded by Dr. J.M. Scanland, son-in-law of Dr. Mitchell. Under private operation, the asylum continued to operate the hotel and run a large farm, specializing in pedigreed cattle. 

In 1910 a constitutional amendment was passed allowing the state to acquire the asylum. Negotiations were begun and on December 1, 1912, the Warm Springs hospital became a state institution. Dr. Scanland continued as superintendent. In 1917 the governor appointed a special commission to investigate charges of gross mismanagement and corruption at the hospital. The hospital management was exonerated of all charges. Gradually under state operation the emphasis changed from a custodial asylum to a hospital, as more modern procedures were adopted, but efforts were hampered by low funding. Care costs in 1938 of $.60 per day per patient were the lowest in the nation. As concepts of treatment of mental patients changed, the average patient load dropped dramatically from a high of over 1900 in the early 1950s to 1112 in 1972. Numbers of admissions per year were higher, but average length of stay was much shorter. Over the years the hospital operated under a variety of names including Mitchell and Mussigbrod, Insane Asylum of the State of Montana, Montana State Hospital for the Insane, Montana State Insane Asylum, Montana State Hospital, and Warm Springs State Hospital.

The Right to Procreate: The Montana State Board of Eugenics and Body Politics
From Women's History Matters

In 1924, headlines across the state decried the “butchery of the helpless” at the Montana State Hospital for the Insane at Warm Springs, where eleven inmates were forcibly sterilized. Hospital staff responded that all sterilizations had received the required approval and that eugenics was “necessary to the future welfare of Montana.” Eugenics—the idea that “human perfection could be developed through selective breeding”—grew in popularity in the early twentieth century, including support for forced sterilization. The movement reached its zenith in Montana in the early 1930s, and, despite growing concerns, the practice of forced sterilizations continued into the 1970s. 

 

Montanans’ support for forced sterilization was part of a national trend. Eugenics proponent Albert E. Wiggam, a national lecturer and trained psychologist, helped spread the eugenics gospel in Montana through a column in the Missoulian. “Already we are taxing ourselves for asylums and hospitals and jails to take care of millions who ought never to have been born,” Wiggam wrote. Many Montanans agreed, including the Helena mother who wrote the state hospital in 1924 in support of sterilization polices. “I am a tax payer. That means I wish there was no insane, no feeble minded, and no criminals to support and to fear. . . . The very fact that these people are inmates of state institutions proves that they are morally or mentally unfit to propagate their kind.” 

Montana institutions began sterilizing selected inmates in the 1910s, but it was not until 1923 that the state legislature created the Board of Eugenics to regulate the practice….