Imbeciles

by Adam Cohen

  The Virginia law required that sterilization promote the “best interests” of the patient. When Strode asked how, in Dr. DeJarnette’s opinion, sterilization would promote Carrie’s interests, he gave the same answer Dr. Priddy routinely did: if a patient in a state hospital was sterilized, he or she could be released from the hospital—“liberated,” as Dr. DeJarnette put it—to take a job in the outside world, live independently, and marry “without bringing children into the world.”

  The law also required a showing that sterilization was in the interest of society. In response to a question from Strode, Dr. DeJarnette explained how, in his opinion, widespread eugenic sterilization would benefit the entire country. The overall “standard of general intelligence would be lifted,” he said, and “it would lower the number of our criminals.”

  Finally, Dr. DeJarnette gave his opinion about Carrie. Strode asked if he had heard the evidence that Carrie was feebleminded, that her mother was also, and that Carrie had an illegitimate child “who, though only eight months old, does not appear to be normal.” Strode then asked if he thought Carrie was the “probable potent[ial] parent of socially inadequate offspring.” Dr. DeJarnette said she was. In his final question to Dr. DeJarnette, Strode asked if he thought Carrie’s “welfare and the welfare of society would be promoted by her sterilization.” Dr. DeJarnette answered, “I do.”

  On cross-examination, Whitehead had many clear openings. An obvious place to start would have been the fact that Dr. DeJarnette had said he did not understand Mendelian theory, but proceeded to apply it to Carrie’s case—and give his opinion that she would give birth to defective children. Whitehead, however, did not press Dr. DeJarnette on his weak knowledge of the science he was testifying about. Instead, once again, Carrie’s attorney simply asked a series of questions that did little to weaken the colony’s case—and much to help it.

  In his most unusual line of questioning, Whitehead demonstrated that he had an even lower opinion of his own client than Dr. DeJarnette did. Whitehead challenged the idea that sterilization was good for inmates because, once it was done, they could be freed to live independently. He suggested that “the bulk of” prostitutes are “more or less feeble-minded,” an assertion Dr. DeJarnette agreed with. Whitehead also got Dr. DeJarnette to agree that many prostitutes had venereal disease. Well, Whitehead then asked, if Carrie was—hypothetically speaking—feebleminded, and if she had an “immoral tendency,” and she was sterilized with an operation that did not reduce her sexual desires, would it not be more likely that she would contract venereal disease if she was released from the colony? DeJarnette agreed it was.

  Using an archaic phrase, Whitehead asked if Carrie was not at risk of becoming a “fire-ship”—a woman infected with a venereal disease who has sex with unsuspecting men. The “man contracting syphilis” from such a woman “ultimately gets married to a normal, sound woman,” Whitehead said. Then, he would pass the “syphilitic taint” on to his descendants. “How can you say,” Whitehead asked, “that society would be benefited by turning this girl out?”

  It was an odd, and disturbing, way for Whitehead to talk about Carrie. He was not arguing that she was too mentally healthy and too good to be sterilized. He was, rather, suggesting she was too mentally defective, and too overcome with “immoral tendencies,” to ever safely be given her freedom. The colony’s sterilization program was, Whitehead was proposing, too good for his client.

  Strode’s next witness was Arthur Estabrook, Harry Laughlin’s associate at the Eugenics Record Office, who had done hasty fieldwork in the previous week investigating Carrie and her family. Strode began by asking him for his background. Estabrook put a scientific gloss on his position, omitting the name “Eugenics Record Office” and describing himself as “on the scientific staff of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York.” When asked to describe his position further, he said he worked in the “department of genetics” where he studied “heredity in humans, animals and plants.” He made no mention of eugenics.

  Under questioning from Strode, Estabrook described the work he had done in his fourteen years “with the Carnegie Institution.” He discussed the Nams, the Jukes, and the Tribe of Ishmael. He was interested, he said, in “inheritance of feeble-mindedness.” Estabrook said he had not been involved in sterilization legislation. His interest had been purely scientific, he said, “investigating the family histories in connection with the working out of information, and the education previous to the carrying out of such laws.”

  Strode asked Estabrook to “very briefly explain to the Court” how the science of human heredity worked. Estabrook’s answers were not brief, and they were no more explanatory than Dr. DeJarnette’s had been. Estabrook talked in a roundabout way about how a person with six fingers might or might not pass that trait on to future generations—being six-fingered was, he said, a “dominant” hereditary condition. It was a confusing account, and it was unlikely Strode or anyone else in the courtroom followed it. “Doctor, we are not interested in fingers,” Strode said finally. “I should have narrowed my question to what have you discovered as regards to feeblemindedness.”

  After a forty-five-minute lunch break, Strode turned from trying to explain the laws of heredity to the specific case of Carrie Buck. Estabrook told the court he had visited the colony and observed Carrie and her mother firsthand, making a “brief study” of the two women, and read their case histories. He then proceeded to Albemarle County, where he visited the Dobbses and as many of Carrie’s relatives as he could. He administered an intelligence test to Doris, and gathered information about Roy and five or six other relatives, most on Carrie’s mother’s side.

  Estabrook began his analysis with Emma. “The evidence,” he told the court, “points to the fact that Emma Buck is a feebleminded woman.” He then offered up the results of his eugenic fieldwork on the family. Emma had “three feebleminded children by unknown fathers,” he said. Estabrook further reported that his investigations in Albemarle County had turned up, on Emma’s side of the family, “a sufficient number of cases of defective make-up mentally” to lead him to conclude that the “Dudley germ plasm,” which passed through Emma’s mother’s family, carried “a defective strain in it.”

  Estabrook was less clear about Emma’s paternal line. He suspected Emma’s father, Richard Harlowe “was of a defective make-up,” but he was not prepared to label him feebleminded. There were other cases in the Harlowe line, he testified, that made it “reasonable” to assume the Harlowe family strain also carried “feeblemindedness—that is, the germ plasm.” Estabrook concluded that Emma’s mother was mentally normal, but her father “was at least a border-line case within the classification of a feeble-minded stock.” Given Emma’s parents, Estabrook said, it made sense that all three of her children would be feebleminded.

  Estabrook then gave his expert opinion that Carrie was feebleminded, but he was less than clear about his basis for it. When Strode asked, “Did you give Carrie Buck any mental tests to determine her mental capacity?” Estabrook responded:

  Yes, sir. I talked to Carrie sufficiently so that with the record of the mental examination—yes, I did. I gave a sufficient examination so that I consider her feebleminded.

  It was a cryptic answer. Estabrook responded “yes” to having given Carrie “mental tests,” but it appeared that what he meant was that he talked with her and looked at the record of her previous intelligence test. If that was all Estabrook did, the accurate answer to the question of whether he gave “Carrie Buck any mental tests to determine her mental capacity” was “no.”

  Estabrook expressed similar certainty, on an equally thin record, about Carrie’s daughter. Strode asked Estabrook if he had seen Vivian, and whether he had been able to form any judgment about her. Estabrook responded in the affirmative to both questions. “I gave the child the regular mental test for a child of the age of six months, and judging
from her reactions to the tests I gave her, I decided she was below the average for a child of eight months of age,” he said. Estabrook did not explain what the “regular mental test” was for a six-month-old. Strode did not ask any follow-up questions about how Estabrook tested Vivian, which was likely an indication of just how unimpressive his testing methods were.

  On cross-examination, Whitehead once again did little to advance his client’s case. He did not ask Estabrook to admit that he had labeled Carrie feebleminded without administering an intelligence test, and did not press him on why he did not test her. It is hard to conceive why Carrie’s lawyer would not aggressively challenge a witness who offered an expert opinion his client was feebleminded, given that feeblemindedness was the basis for sterilizing her. Whitehead, however, did not make Estabrook defend his assessment.

  Whitehead also failed to challenge Estabrook’s evaluation of Vivian. He did not try to find out what “the regular mental test for a child of the age of six months” was, or how Vivian had performed. He also did not press Estabrook on what he could conclude from the fact that, as he said, Vivian was “below the average for a child of eight months of age.” Many people score below average on intelligence tests—half of all test takers are in the bottom half—but not all of them are feebleminded. Whitehead also did not ask Estabrook if there was some natural variation in babies’ development that might cause some eight-month-olds who would grow up to be perfectly normal to appear “below average” at a particular point in time. Whitehead’s failure to question Estabrook’s evaluation of Vivian was particularly egregious because his testimony provided the crucial “third generation” of mental defect in Carrie’s family. Estabrook was the only person ever to claim to have given Vivian an intelligence test.

  Whitehead also failed to question Estabrook about his fieldwork methods, even though his techniques were highly questionable. Estabrook had designated Carrie’s half brother, Roy, to be feebleminded despite never having met him—Estabrook had simply “gathered information.” Estabrook diagnosed other relatives who were not even alive. It was the sort of scientific methodology that had led Abraham Myerson to criticize Mongrel Virginians as “absurd and useless.”

  Strode’s final witness was Dr. Priddy, his client and old friend. Dr. Priddy began by reciting his credentials: more than fourteen years as superintendent of the colony, roughly two decades working for Virginia state hospitals, and observation of four to five thousand state hospital inmates.

  Without further delay, Strode got to the critical question of the trial: “I wish you would state to the Court why you moved to have this girl sterilized under this act?” Dr. Priddy responded that he came to the conclusion Carrie “was a highly proper case for the benefit of the Sterilization Act” by studying her family history, personally examining Carrie, and then observing Carrie during her months of living at the colony.

  Strode asked for more specifics. After requesting permission to consult his notes, Dr. Priddy testified that Carrie had turned eighteen in July, which meant she would have to be kept in custody for three decades to ensure she was isolated during her reproductive years. That would cost the state of Virginia about $200 a year for thirty years, and it would mean denying Carrie “all of the blessings of outdoor life and liberty.” If she was sterilized, she could move into her own home under supervision, get a good-paying job, and “probably marry some man of her own level,” he said. Dr. Priddy argued that Carrie would be able to “do as many whom I have sterilized for diseases have done—be good wives—be producers, and lead happy and useful lives in their spheres.”

  Strode asked what it was in Carrie’s “personal history” that led Dr. Priddy to decide she was feebleminded and “the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring.” Dr. Priddy testified that Emma Buck was feebleminded, with a mental age of about seven years and eleven months, based on the colony’s testing. He said Carrie had also tested as feebleminded—with a mental age of nine, making her a “middle-grade moron.” That meant, he said, “two direct generations of feebleminded.” He added that there were “about eight Bucks and Harlowes, all coming from the Albemarle stock” at the colony, though he said he could not “vouch for their relationship—I don’t suppose they know.” Dr. Priddy said he believed Carrie would be the parent of defective offspring based on “the generally accepted theory of the laws of heredity.”

  Moving through the sterilization law’s provisions, Strode asked whether Dr. Priddy believed Carrie’s welfare would be promoted if she was sterilized. He was convinced that it would. “Every human being craves liberty,” Dr. Priddy said, and “she would get that, under supervision.” As for whether society would benefit, he responded, “unquestionably.” Carrie would no longer be society’s responsibility, because she could be released from the colony, he said. Beyond that, sterilizing Carrie would remove a potential source of an “incalculable number of descendants who would be feeble-minded.” It would, Dr. Priddy said, be “a blessing.”

  Strode asked whether people who were to be sterilized generally objected. On the contrary, Dr. Priddy insisted, they “clamor for it.” That was only natural, he explained. They “know that it means the enjoyment of life and the peaceful pursuance of happiness . . . on the outside of institution walls.” And they understood that as a result of sterilization “they have the opportunity of marrying men of their mental levels and making good wives in many cases.”

  Dr. Priddy said he had seen things work out well for women who were sterilized. Between 1916 and the winter of 1917, he said, the colony sterilized about eighty women for medical reasons. About sixty were given good homes, and others returned to their families. They were able to earn a living, and in some cases to marry, and none had to return to the colony. Strode asked who was better off: the women who remained at the colony or those who were sterilized and released. Dr. Priddy insisted that the sterilized women were “of course, much better off.”

  Dr. Priddy said he had kept in touch with some of the inmates he had sterilized and released. He told the story of one boy “of the imbecile class” who was sterilized and then ran off with a woman from the colony who had also been sterilized. They did well as a couple, he said. Dr. Priddy then looked to an unusual place for support for his account of the happily sterilized couple—opposing counsel. “Mr. Whitehead knows them both,” Dr. Priddy told Strode. Without being sworn in, Whitehead testified against his own client: “Yes, put in there that I know them,” he said, explaining that he had encountered them through his service on the colony board. Whitehead’s willingness to support Dr. Priddy’s story about inmates who thrived after sterilization was a stark example of how allied he was with the opposing side.

  Whitehead’s cross-examination of Dr. Priddy—perhaps the most important witness against his client—was a short, aimless interrogation that once again bolstered the colony’s case. Whitehead helped Dr. Priddy to underscore the relatively minor nature of the operation, allowing him to note that it involved nothing more than cutting the fallopian tubes without removing the ovaries. In his questioning, Whitehead referred to Carrie, his client, as “this girl here.”

  In brief redirect questioning, Strode asked Dr. Priddy if it was true that if Carrie was sterilized she could return to live with the Dobbses. Dr. Priddy said it was. “I understand,” he said, “they want her back.” If true, that meant that if Carrie was sterilized, she would be allowed to live in the same home as her only child, Vivian, and help to raise her. If Carrie remained at the colony for the rest of her life, her daughter would grow up without her. Even for a woman who did not want to be sterilized, this offer would likely exert a powerful pull. Unfortunately, it was not true.

  When Dr. Priddy stepped down from the witness stand, the live testimony was over. All that remained was to introduce Laughlin’s interrogatory answers, which Strode read aloud to the court. When he was done, Strode asked that the judgment of the colony’s Special Board of Directors be affi
rmed. On the same day it started, the trial was over.

  There was a great deal about the trial that was odd or wrong, but one thing stood out above all: only one of the two sides put on a case. Whitehead, who was challenging the colony’s sterilization order on Carrie’s behalf, did not call a single fact or expert witness, or introduce a single piece of evidence. In the face of all of Strode’s witnesses about Carrie and her family, and his experts testifying that she was feebleminded and likely to produce feebleminded offspring, he offered nothing. If there was one fact that revealed how Whitehead, Strode, and Dr. Priddy were allied against Carrie, it was that the court was never presented with a case for why she should not be sterilized.

  Whitehead could have put on a strong factual case. On the question of whether Carrie was feebleminded, he could have presented evidence that she had reached the sixth grade, something children generally do at the age of eleven or twelve, and had performed well academically. This achievement could have cast considerable doubt on the colony’s claim that she had a mental age of nine. He could have introduced her school assignments, which were good enough to get her promoted each year, into evidence. And he could have called her teachers as witnesses—something Strode notably did not do.

  Whitehead could also have called Carrie’s friends, neighbors, and employers to testify about her mental abilities. Later in life, people who lived and worked with her would tell interviewers that she was an intelligent woman and clearly not feebleminded. It is likely that people who knew Carrie at the time of the trial would have had similar things to say.

  Most of all, Whitehead could have had Carrie testify on her own behalf. She was in the courtroom for the trial. If she had been allowed to speak in her own voice, she could have demonstrated her intelligence directly, rather than being reduced to a Binet-Simon test score and a barrage of expert opinions. By keeping Carrie silent, Whitehead allowed Dr. Priddy, Laughlin, and Strode to define her for the court as an example of that dreaded menace: the feebleminded young woman intent on reproducing.