Norwich State Hospital looms large in my family’s history. Four of my ancestors — all women — were patients there, including my grandmother. While writing about my family’s experiences in Secrets of the Asylum, I studied the history of this institution from its beginning in 1904 through all the years that my ancestors were there, up to 1958.
I wanted to learn whatever I could about how mental patients were treated at state hospitals such as Norwich. It wasn’t long before I realized that this was a dark story, made even darker for me as I considered what might have happened to my own family members.
From its start, Norwich State Hospital for the Insane was plagued by overcrowding, understaffing, and underfunding. There was also no unanimous theory in the psychiatric community on what caused mental illness or what might cure it. As a result, many dubious and ineffective methods were tried out on unsuspecting mental patients. I saw this played out in the patient record of my great-grandmother Graziella.
Norwich State Hospital and My Great-Grandmother
Graziella Metthe was diagnosed with “manic-depressive psychosis” in 1908, when she was committed to Norwich State Hospital. At that time, a theory circulated among the state hospitals that insanity was caused by hidden infections in the body. The most likely place for these infections was the teeth. Without unbiased data that this was even true, thousands of patients had their teeth yanked out in the hope for a cure. If that didn’t work, some of them underwent surgery to remove other possible infection sites such as tonsils, adenoids, spleen, and even the colon.
The sad fact for my great-grandmother was that she had been slowly improving when, as my mother used to put it, “some doctor thought it was a good idea to remove all of her teeth.” Soon after this procedure, Graziella’s mental condition took a nosedive, from which she never recovered. She died there in 1910.
Norwich State Hospital and My Grandmother
My grandmother, Beatrice Tillotson, was also a patient at the hospital, admitted in 1935. Although fully delusional, and subject to the hallucinations that came with her paranoid schizophrenia, she was a generally cooperative patient. She did try to escape a couple of times, but she was not considered violent. Over the years, her industrious nature worked in her favor. When World War II came along, the shortage of staff at the hospital became so dire that they began to hire their most functional patients to work as attendants. My grandmother was among the first to take that job.
Eventually, Grandma proved to the hospital psychiatrists that she could safely rejoin the community. Unfortunately, for reasons that I explain in Secrets of the Asylum, she had nowhere to go. This was why, after her discharge from the hospital in 1944, she moved from a patient ward to employee housing. Grandma lived and worked at Norwich State Hospital until her retirement in 1958.
My Thoughts
I have concluded, after learning about my ancestors’ experiences, that Norwich State Hospital was neither a bad place nor a good place. It seems to me that what the hospital was to each individual depended on multiple factors: the patients themselves, which staff worked directly with them, and whatever the prevailing theories of treatment were during the time they were committed.
Secrets of the Asylum is full of historical information regarding mental health care in the early twentieth century of the U.S. in general, and Norwich State Hospital in particular. What I learned shed light on a very personal matter in my family history, the affects of which trickled down to my generation.
Sources Consulted:
Connecticut. Norwich Hospital for the Insane. Report of the Norwich Hospital for the Insane to the Governor for the two years ended … [Norwich, Conn.] : The Hospital, 1907-1942. State of Connecticut Public Document no. 51.
Grob, Gerald N. The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill. New York: Free Press, 1994.
Grob, Gerald N. Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Hurd, Henry Mills. The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1916-17. 4 volumes.
External Links:
Wikipedia article on Norwich State Hospital: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_State_Hospital
Wow, Julie!!! This is incredible!!! What an amazing amount of work you’ve done!
I look forward to the book! A fascinating glimpse into your ancestors’ history, as well as the history of the entire mental health profession. I could easily make jokes about all of our collective mental states, but truly it is serious business. Thanks for sharing!
So that’s what you have been doing all this time in retirement. I knew you were working hard on genealogy, but what a family history. Looking forward to the book.
Very interesting! I read about your story in the New London Day. I have similar ties. My grandmother also spent time in that home/orphanage and was later informally adopted by one of the head psychologists (J.A. Anderson) at Norwich State Hospital. My grandmother later returned and worked there as an RN in the late 1970’s, and then my father, her son, worked as an RN there from 1980 until it closed. I hope you find a publisher. I look forward to reading your book.
Rebecca (another librarian!)
Few people seem to know about the “county home,” as Mom called it. She was there from 1935 until the early 1940s. Maybe she knew your grandmother. Thanks for your words of support. I hope I find a publisher, too!
Thank you very much for your work and I would like to read the book. My mother, Mary B. Smith, was a patient there from the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s. I was born in 1956 and I have memories of when my father and I would visit her out on the front lawn on a blanket. I always wondered as an adult how she had been treated.