Drunks

by Christopher Finan

  Soon people in other parts of the country began to create institutions where drunks could get sober. Just two years after the founding of the Washingtonian Home, a group of volunteer firemen calling themselves the Dashaways opened the San Francisco Home for the Care of Inebriates. Like the Bostonians, the Dashaways also drew their inspiration from the Washingtonian movement and grew to nearly five thousand members who were dedicated to rescuing drunks. They built a large headquarters that included a reading room and an auditorium where Washingtonian-style experience meetings were held. On an upper floor, they created a dormitory that housed up to fifty-six men, many of whom had been picked up on the streets. During four weeks of treatment, the rescued men rested, ate nourishing meals, and received the attention of doctors who had volunteered their services. They also attended meetings where they heard recovering alcoholics tell their stories and could tell their own if they were so inclined. On their release, they could join the Dashaways, who promised to help them start their new lives.

  In 1863, a third refuge was established in Chicago. Robert A. Law, a member of the Independent Order of Good Templars of Cook County, persuaded his fellow Templars to sponsor a Washingtonian Home for the Cure of Inebriates. Templars in Quincy, Massachusetts, followed their example, opening the Good Templars’ Asylum the next year. Two homes opened in 1867—in Brooklyn, New York, and Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.

  None of these fledgling institutions captured the public’s attention like Turner’s New York State Inebriate Asylum, which had finally opened in 1864. The accommodations in the asylum lived up to Turner’s high standards. Writing anonymously, John W. Palmer, a doctor who was a resident, described his room to readers of the Atlantic Monthly in 1869:

  Walls lofty and sky-colored; door and double window tall and dignified—the latter provided with liberal panes and inside latticed shutters; wood-work of oak and dark cherry, handsomely molded and paneled; a portly oaken wardrobe with double doors and drawers . . . a hospitable carpet in warm colors; “all the modern improvements” for ablution, represented by a marble tank and silver-plated turn-cock; a double register for hot air and ventilation; pendent gas-fixtures, in good style, with globes and side-light . . .

  There were two tables for periodicals, papers, and writing material; a wide iron bed on rollers; a rocking chair, two black walnut desk chairs (one with arms and one without); a mirror, “not palatial,” but large enough and “neatly framed”; and a shelf with three “blue and gold” volumes of verse and a picture of a lovely child. On the walls hung reproductions of well-known photographs and watercolors.31

  Considering the great care and expense that Turner lavished on the asylum, it is natural to assume that he had a high regard for his patients. But Turner appears to have shared little of Day’s love for his fellow man. Day was a businessman who became a doctor in order to be a better caregiver. Turner was a doctor who abandoned his practice after only a few years to pursue his dream of curing alcoholism with a passion that bordered on fanaticism. If the New York State Inebriate Asylum was located in a beautiful place and offered every comfort, it was because Turner believed that this was essential to the successful treatment of alcoholics. In Europe, he had learned that insane asylums were located in the countryside to isolate patients from the influences that contributed to their illness. Some things they were happy to leave behind, but others were more difficult. Turner did not allow residents to receive visitors, believing that family and friends may have contributed to their alcoholism. Their incoming mail was censored, and they were not allowed to send replies.

  Turner and Day had very different approaches to alcoholism. They both called it a disease, but they did not agree on the cure. Although Day believed that recovery depended on a patient’s willingness to stop drinking, Turner had no faith in willpower. He was unimpressed by what he saw when he visited the Washingtonian Home in 1859. Turner believed that alcoholism was strictly a medical problem and that it could be cured only by following a doctor’s orders. Dr. T. D. Crothers, another pioneer in the medical treatment of alcoholism, described Turner’s treatment philosophy many years later:

  His ideal asylum . . . was practically a workhouse hospital on a military basis, restraint and control being the corner-stone. Each case was regarded as a suicidal mania needing positive restraint and constant care and watching. . . . Elaborate rules were laid down regulating all the conduct and care of the patient, and a most thorough system of medical and military treatment enforced.

  Asylum residents were held to a tight schedule: they rose at the same hour every day, ate breakfast, attended mandatory religious services, and then began their day, which included four hours of outdoor exercise. Dinner was followed by evening services and lights out at 10 p.m. Turner believed that what alcoholics needed above all was “discipline.” He thought they could be forced to get sober.32

  From the start, there was evidence that this wouldn’t work. Unlike the Washingtonian Home, which required drunks to apply for admission, many of the residents of the asylum were there against their will. Some had reluctantly agreed under pressure from their families, and even voluntary patients often became dissatisfied under the restraint that Turner insisted was necessary. An antagonistic relationship developed between the patients and staff. The alcoholics used bribes to buy liquor and then hid their bottles around the grounds. Some escaped, while others pleaded with family until they were finally removed. Turner’s response to rebellion was to seek greater control. At his urging, the New York State legislature passed a law giving judges the power to involuntarily commit drunks to the asylum for three months. A year later, Turner was back in Albany, and the term of commitment was extended to one year.

  Turner might have had his way with the legislature, but he soon found himself in conflict with the new president of the asylum’s board of trustees, Dr. Willard Parker. Parker was one of the most eminent surgeons in the country. Although he had been an early supporter of the asylum, he had not served on the board before he was elected president and did not have any experience with drunks. What he discovered when he visited the asylum a few months after his election made him question whether Turner should continue as superintendent. In conversation with some of the patients, he found many were very unhappy.

  At the time of Parker’s visit, most of the residents of the asylum were middle-aged men who came from good families, including “professional men, well educated, of refined taste and decided ability.” It is not surprising that they bridled at Turner’s restrictions. Parker believed that Turner was also jeopardizing the institution. Although the asylum was chartered by the state, it was a private institution and depended on its patients to pay the bills. Despite Turner’s ambition to treat hundreds of men at a time, the asylum had managed to attract only forty patients during the first year.33

  Parker told Turner that he was being too strict with his patients. He suggested “their having a larger liberty and their being placed upon their honor, as they were all gentlemen belonging to Christian households,” Turner wrote. The superintendent thought Parker was being naive and proceeded to instruct him in the nature of alcoholism. While the drunks seemed normal when they were sober, “he should remember that among the patients under treatment in the Asylum were homicidal and suicidal dipsomaniacs, thieves and liars, the destroyers of home and violators of the marriage vows.” They were victims of “morbid conditions of the stomach and the brain” that produced an unquenchable thirst for alcohol that they would do anything to satisfy. Clearly, drunks could not be trusted.34

  Turner could barely conceal his contempt for Parker. “It is not strange . . . that the inebriate, under such an ungovernable thirst, will pour into your ear, and also into the ear of his friends, his invented wrongs and misrepresentations for the purpose of regaining his liberty and satisfying his morbid appetite,” he told Parker, who was also getting angry. “As the discussion was prolonged, it became more and more intensified,” Turner remembered. But this was not a
mere clash of egos. The bigger problem was that Parker was the president of the asylum, charged with the responsibility for ensuring its financial success, and Turner’s treatment philosophy seemed guaranteed to drive patients away. Soon after visiting Binghamton, Parker began working to oust Turner. For two years, the founder of “the first inebriate asylum in the world” fought to keep his job but finally resigned in 1867.35

  Parker turned to Day to save the asylum. Day arrived with five patients from the Washingtonian Home in the spring of 1867. Amid the beauty of the budding countryside, the asylum must have seemed like paradise to the drunks from Boston. The mood of the institution changed dramatically as the suspicion and strictness of the Turner regime was replaced by Day’s benevolent despotism. John Palmer described an almost idyllic life:

  I awake to the music of the rising bell, on which an Ethiopian minstrel, naturally corked, is ringing cheerful changes in the halls; and my first conscious sensation is a pleasant one as, turning over for a fresh thrill, and applauding my pillow with a sensuous pat, I cast a complacent glance and thought about my room.

  As they washed and dressed in their rooms, some inmates greeted the day with music, “No. 7 . . . whistles ‘Champagne Charlie,’ with expression, while ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ with variations is pensively executed on a comb by Number 21,” Palmer wrote. Others joined the chorus with animal noises, imitating cuckoos, parrots, and cows.36

  While the asylum was perhaps not the paradise that Palmer describes, it was undoubtedly more pleasant. As the number of patients grew to a hundred, Day continued to counsel them individually and to lecture on some aspect of alcoholism on Wednesday evenings. But because he had less time for each man, the patients began to play a larger role in the treatment process. There had been a dramatic change since the days when smuggling liquor into the asylum was applauded. “An inmate who should now attempt such a crime would be shunned by the best two thirds of the whole institution,” one writer observed. The new attitude was symbolized by the formation of a new patient organization, the Ollapod Club. Membership in the club was by invitation only, but Palmer insisted that it was never intended to be exclusive. “Whosoever is companionable, genial, sympathetic, co-operative, of us and with us and for us, he is the man for the votes of our understandings and our hearts,” he said. The excluded appear to be men who were not making the effort to get sober. Two-thirds of the residents were members of the club.37

  One of the important functions of the Ollapods was to provide recreation for men who were often bored. (The delivery of the mail, now untouched by censorship, was the highlight of their day.) Meetings were held on Tuesdays and Saturdays and usually consisted of the reading of papers on literary and other subjects. The essays were written by the residents, and one visitor noted that this gave the asylum a “college-like” atmosphere, “especially when you get about among the rooms of the inmates, and see them cramming for next Monday’s debate, or writing a lecture.” The topics were meaty—“Meteoric Phenomena, and Theories concerning them,” “Curiosities of Music,” and “Wit and Humor, English and American.” But Palmer said that the bill of fare was never too heavy. “[T]here is a preference for the satirical handling of social absurdities,” he said. Once a month, Binghamton residents were invited to hear them. The members spent the rest of their evenings gathered around small tables in the Club Room, “reading, chatting or engaged in games of chess, whist, euchre and cribbage.”38

  The Ollapods were participating in their own recovery by organizing meetings and obeying rules that they had established for themselves. Their brief bylaws forbid a member to bring the club into disrepute “by presenting himself at any time or place under the influence of liquor.” An offender was required to offer the club “a becoming apology” in writing that would be read by the secretary at the next meeting. The bylaws did not provide for expulsion. If the errant drunk was truly sorry, there could be no question of cutting him off. “[O]n the contrary, we do hold ourselves bound, collectively and individually, to extend to him all necessary protection and aid, with prompt and cheerful goodwill,” the bylaws read.39

  The Ollapods did not expel members because they recognized them as brothers. “It is a favorite phrase of the house, that we are all ‘tarred with the same stick,’ and by that same token we stick together,” Palmer said. It was a tremendous relief for a man to learn that he was not alone in his inability to stop drinking; that he drank not because he was weak or evil but because he suffered from an illness that was shared by other men. It lifted a terrible burden of guilt and shame. It also made it possible for him to examine his life with a new honesty, acknowledging the harm that his drinking had done to himself and others.40

  Not everyone experienced a change of heart. Palmer reported that as many as ten of his fellow inmates “habitually practice deception or otherwise break faith with us.” There was also a gap between newcomers and the men who had been sober for a while. But the old hands took it on themselves to school the recent arrivals. The new man was “introduced to himself by those who quickly get to know him better than himself,” Palmer said.

  Humbly he comes down from the stilts of his presumption, modestly he modifies the strut of his obtrusiveness—a man good-humoredly snubbed. His unappreciated qualities are developed; the mystery of hidden good in him is solved; he learns to rate himself lower than his own price, higher than the appraisal of his friends. The test of shrewd insight we apply to his temper precipitates the true from the bogus.

  These conversations were probably unpleasant at times. The sober drunk must have felt frustration in educating an obstinate new arrival, while the newcomer bridled at what he saw as the condescension of someone who had been sober for only a few weeks or months. But the relationships between the residents were central to the recovery process. “If I were asked wherein lies the peculiar healing of this place, I should answer in the profound impressions of its sympathetic intercourse,” Palmer said.41

  The stories of the drunks who had been rehabilitated in the Binghamton asylum and the inebriate homes in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco helped rekindle optimism about curing alcoholism. This time, doctors would play the leading role in convincing Americans that there was hope for drunks. In the decade after the opening of the New York State Inebriate Asylum in 1864, six institutions for alcoholics were launched, and the majority were headed by doctors who believed that drunkenness should be treated as a medical problem. In 1867, the Kings County Home opened in Brooklyn, New York, and the Pennsylvania Sanitarium for Inebriates began treating patients in suburban Philadelphia. For the first time, women were also getting help. Four hundred applied for admission to Turner’s asylum before it decided it would only treat men. Neither of the Washingtonian Homes admitted women. Alcoholic women in Chicago were cared for in the home of Charles Hull. (It would later become Hull House, the settlement house headed by Jane Addams.) Finally, in 1869, the Martha Washington Home opened in Chicago, the first facility dedicated to helping women. Later, women were also admitted to the Kings County Home.

  Dr. Joseph Parrish, the founder of the Pennsylvania Sanitarium, wanted to do more than treat patients. He was a reformer. As a young doctor, he had traveled to Europe to continue his education and had been appalled by the treatment of the insane in Rome. He also did something about it by getting the pope to support improvements. He returned to the United States with a new interest in psychology and developed a reputation as an “alienist,” the precursor to the modern psychiatrist. Parrish also had a long-standing concern for drunks, who he got to know intimately during his work in Philadelphia’s Jeffersonian Home. The Jeffersonian Home had opened during the Washingtonian era to provide a place for drunks to dry out. What Parrish learned there made him a temperance advocate and strong supporter of prohibition. But he did not believe that either pledges to stay sober or laws banning alcohol could help the alcoholic. He wanted to change how people thought about intemperance and how society treated drunks.

  Just a fe
w years after opening his own asylum, he wrote to Willard Parker, the president of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, to propose the formation of the American Association for the Cure of Inebriety (AACI), “an association with the single object of advocating the disease theory as applied to certain forms of alcoholic inebriety.” Parker supported the idea, and Parrish issued an invitation to the superintendents, physicians, and board members of institutions that were treating drunks. A meeting was called for November 29, 1870, at the headquarters of the Young Men’s Christian Association in New York City. Parrish and Parker were surprised by the strong turnout. Sixteen men attended.42

  Parker encouraged Parrish to prepare a keynote address and “present the subject as it now appears to you.” In his speech, Parrish laid out the evidence for believing that drunks were suffering from an illness. Some men inherited a “constitutional susceptibility” to alcohol in the same way others were afflicted with other physical defects, like deafness or blindness. “Such predisposition is often exhibited by a sense of unrest and nervous depression,” Parrish said. “He is suffering from the effects of an organization that he did not create, and from infirmities which he did not knowingly promote.” But, according to Parrish, not all alcoholism was inherited. Anything that depleted the nervous system could create a vulnerability—a “forcing system of education . . . the struggle for wealth, power or position, the unhealthy rivalry for display, and all the excitements which produce the ‘wear and tear in our life.’” Whether inherited or acquired, the constitutional susceptibility produced “a desire for speedy relief, and a strong tendency to seek artificial support in the most convenient form, which is alcohol.”43