St. Elizabeths West Campus Washington, DC
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St. Elizabeths West Campus
Washington, DC
Organization
The Government Hospital for the Insane was organized in
the Department of the Interior by an act of March 3, 1855
(10 Stat. 682; 24 USC 161-65), pursuant to the Civil and
Diplomatic Appropriation Act of August 31, 1852 (10 Stat.
92), to provide care for the insane of the District of
Columbia and the U.S. Army and Navy. It was the first such
institution created by Congress, which did not establish
another federal mental institution until 1903 when the
Canton Asylum for Indians in South Dakota was founded.1
The name of the facility was changed to Saint Elizabeths
Hospital by an act of July 1, 1916 (39 Stat. 309; 24 USC
165). It was originally operated within the Department of the
Interior but was transferred to the Federal Security Agency
by section 11(a) of Reorganization Plan IV, effective June 30,
1940 (54 Stat. 1236). The FSA was later elevated to cabinet
status with the formation of the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare (now known as the Department of Health and Human
Services).2 The land on which the facility is located was originally called “St. Elizabeths
tract”3 by its 17th century owner. The usage of apostrophes at the time was far from
uniform and more often than not they were dispensed with entirely as in this case.4
The original acreage for the hospital was purchased by the federal government in 1852
from Thomas Blagden and his wife, Emely Silliman, for $25,000 according to a deed
recorded December 18, 1852 in the land records of what was then known as the City
& County of Washington in the District of Columbia. Blagden operated a lumberyard
and owned several tracts of land throughout Washington; he was, in fact, the son of
George Blagden, superintendent of masons at the US Capitol. Both father and son are
buried in the Blagden family vault in Congressional Cemetery.5
1
See “Wards of the Nation: The Making of St. Elizabeths Hospital, 1852-1920”, unpublished doctoral thesis by
Frank Rives Millikan, The George Washington University, 1990, page 28.
2
In 1967, operations of the hospital were transferred from HEW to the National Institute of Mental Health where
they remained for another 20 years. See Millikan, op. cit. page 10.
3 St. Elizabeth of Hungary seems an appropriate name for the hospital as she is the patron saint of,
among other things, hospitals and nursing homes.
4 See “How the Past Affects the Future: The Story of the Apostrophe” by Christina Cavella and Robin A.
Kernodle, originally written for TESL 503 The Structure of English, Spring 2003, American University,
Washington, DC.
5 Thomas Blagden died February 2, 1870 “in the 65th year of his age” according to an obituary published
in The Evening Star of February 3, 1870. After a funeral service at the old New York Avenue Presbyterian
Church, he was buried in the family vault at Congressional Cemetery. Thomas was one of the most
prominent businessmen in DC during his lifetime; he is still remembered by the naming of Blagden Alley
west of the new Washington Convention Center and southeast of Logan Circle, not to mention Blagden
Avenue and Blagden Terrace near Carter Barron Amphitheater. Until 1931 there was a number of
rowhouses on the south side of the 300 block of Indiana Avenue, NW, (location now of the Municipal
Building opposite Judiciary Square) that were known as Blagden Row. According to James M. Goode in
Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington’s Destroyed Buildings, Smithsonian Institution Press,
Page 1 of 12
Noted social reformer Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was instrumental in
establishing St. Elizabeths during the administration of President Millard Fillmore. Dr.
Charles Henry Nichols was the hospital’s first superintendent and oversaw the
construction of the oldest buildings on the site. Thomas U. Walter, the architect of the
U.S. Capitol dome as well as House and Senate wings, designed the Center Building in
the Gothic Revival style, which was a slight modification of the Kirkbride Linear Plan
then in vogue for mental institutions. This building is truly native to the West Campus
as the clay for the bricks was dug from the grounds of St. Elizabeths and fired in
ovens on site.6 In the 1870s and 1880s red brick buildings, a gatehouse, a common
dining hall, and housing for African-American patients were added. Until its functions
as a mental hospital were transferred to the District of Columbia in 1987, St.
Elizabeths had 11 superintendents as follows:
Charles Henry Nichols 1852 - 1877
William Whitney Godding 1877 - 1899
Alonzo Blair Richardson 1899 - 1903
William Alanson White 1903 - 1937
Roscoe W. Hall (acting) 1937 - 1937
Winfred Overholser 1937 - 1962
Dale C. Cameron 1962 - 1967
David W. Harris (acting) 1967 - 1968
Louis Jacobs 1968 - 1969
Luther Robinson (acting) 1969 - 1972
Luther Robinson 1972 - 1975
Roger Peele (acting) 1975 - 1977
Charles Meredith 1977 - 1979
William H. Dobbs (acting) 1979 - 1981
William H. Dobbs 1981 - 1984
William G. Prescott 1984 – 1987
St. Elizabeths Hospital played a national role in developing standards of care for state
hospital systems in the US. Indeed, the hospital was in the forefront of treatment for
mental illness. It was among the first American hospitals to make specific provision for
treating African Americans, and among the first to employ a special pathologist. St.
Elizabeths constructed one of the earliest psychopathic hospitals in the US and
pioneered the use of hydrotherapy and psychodrama.7 It also was the first psychiatric
hospital in the US to use pets as a part of therapy.8
Washington, DC, 2nd Edition, 2003: “Blagden Row was originally one of the most elegant of the many pre-
Civil War row house groups in Washington.” Two prominent residents of the Row were Sen. Robert
Toombs of Georgia (first Secretary of State for the Confederate States of America) and Chief Justice Roger
Taney (the Dred Scott case). Blagden Row was built the same year that the St. Elizabeths site was sold by
Blagden to the United States.
6 See “Centennial of Saint Elizabeths Hospital” by Winfred Overholser, M.D., Sc.D., L.H.D. in The
American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 112, No. 3, September, 1955. To date, no evidence of these old kilns
has been found.
7 This paragraph adapted from a Draft Summary Report on Historic Resources dated 10/20/04 by Betty
Bird & Associates LLC.
8 The first suggested use of animals in a therapeutic setting in the United States was in 1919 at St.
Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D. C., when Superintendent Dr. W.A. White received a letter from
Page 2 of 12
The hospital’s founding was based on the principles of moral treatment which, as
Millikan notes, meant “kind, individualized treatment that emphasized the importance
of emotional or psychological factors in the recovery process. Its practitioners did not
abandon belief in the somatic basis of insanity or in the efficacy of medical remedies;
indeed they still considered physical health inseparable from mental health and were
hardly disposed to abandon a pharmacopia [sic] that seemed to draw upon technical
mastery.”9
Landmark Status
The Center Building, as well as the rest of the West Campus (not to mention the East
Campus that is owned by the District of Columbia), was designated a National Historic
Landmark (NHL) on December 14, 1990. This places the site on a par with nearly
2,500 other NHLs nationwide and 74 within the District of Columbia including the
White House, the U.S. Capitol, and Cedar Hill (the former home of Frederick
Douglass). When GSA assumed control of the property in December 2004, there were
70 buildings on the West Campus built between 1852 and 1965. Of these, 62 are
considered to be contributing to the site’s status as an NHL. Another feature of the
West Campus is a cemetery on the western slope overlooking Bolling Air Force Base.
In this cemetery are buried approximately 300 Civil War soldiers, some of whom
fought for the Confederacy and others for the Union, some of whom were white and
others African-American. Also buried here are approximately 160 civilian patients
from St. Elizabeths.
Since 1953 St. Elizabeths was controlled by the Department of Health and Human
Services (formerly the Department of Health, Education and Welfare) (HHS). The East
Campus and 5 buildings on the West Campus were transferred to the District of
Columbia (DC) by Quitclaim Deed dated September 30, 1987. At that time, HHS also
gave DC a license to operate and maintain several buildings on the West Campus. DC
terminated this agreement in 2004 and the West Campus was transferred to GSA on
December 9, 2004. It is now being prepared for redevelopment as a federally owned
site to help meet the space demands of the federal government in DC.10 For more
information on the redevelopment of the site, one may wish to visit the following web
site: http://www.stelizabethsdevelopment.com/
As a mental institution, St. Elizabeths was at its height in the 1940s and 1950s.
During these decades there were more than 7,000 patients (7,460 at the end of World
War II according to hospital records cited by Dr. Overholser11) housed on both the
West Campus and East Campus. After the mid-1960s, and especially in light of the
movement toward treatment in the community that began in the1950s, St. Elizabeths’
Secretary of the Interior F.K. Lane suggesting the use of dogs as companions for the psychiatric hospital's
resident patients. Source: http://consensus.nih.gov/1987/1987HealthBenefitsPetsta003html.htm
9
Millikan, op. cit., page 42.
10 PL 109-396 – The Federal and District of Columbia Government Real Property Act of 2006 enacted
December 15, 2006 authorizes DC to convey the five (5) properties on the West Campus of St Elizabeths
back to the federal government.
11 See Centennial Papers Saint Elizabeths Hospital 1855-1955, p.14. To care for this number of patients
were approximately 4,000 employees.
Page 3 of 12patient population dwindled to approximately 1,200 by 1978 and is now less than 400
under the auspices of DC’s Department of Mental Health.12
West Campus Cemetery
One of many historically interesting features of the site is a cemetery originally
established for, in the words of Dr. Nichols, “friendless patients”. It is also the final
resting place of several hundred soldiers who fought in the Civil War. The majority of
military burials are of enlisted men or
non-commissioned officers, as St.
Elizabeths was not primarily a mental
hospital for commissioned officers in the
military.13 The cemetery was established
in early 1856 on nearly an acre of
wooded ground overlooking what is now
Interstate 295 but then was the
Anacostia River; the site was chosen for
burial of deceased patients and was used
almost exclusively for this purpose until
June 1864,14 when the first military
interments began and continued until
1873.15 Though definitive identification of
all graves located in the cemetery has not
yet been made, there is indication that approximately 450 military burials may have
occurred there. Approximately 160 civilians were also buried in the cemetery,
according to hospital records, though there are no headstones to mark where they are
buried. Furthermore, only three civilians buried in the cemetery have been
appropriately identified; further research of hospital records is needed to identify the
remaining burials.16 According to military records, it has been determined that,
contrary to usual practice at the time, both African American and white soldiers were
buried in the cemetery. There are also indications that as many as seven Confederate
soldiers were also buried here, though their full names are unknown; only their
initials are entered into hospital records. Such an arrangement makes for a truly
integrated cemetery years ahead of when this became standard practice. Some of the
regiments represented in the cemetery include the 54th Massachusetts and the 20th
Maine. The former is an African American regiment famous for its failed but glorious
12
Some of the philosophy of this movement was enacted into federal law on October 31, 1963 by the Mental
Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act (PL 88-164) 77 Stat. 290.
13 There is a single commissioned officer buried in the West Campus cemetery, Chris C. Adreon, a first
lieutenant in the 8th Maryland Infantry, Quartermaster Regiment, who died March 4, 1872. Another
exception is General Joseph Hooker who was personally treated by Dr. Nichols after the general was
wounded in the foot at the Battle of Antietam.
14 This paragraph relies extensively on a 2005 report by Paul Sluby titled Evolution of the Cemeteries of
Saint Elizabeths Hospital as well as a 2007 report by Chicora Foundation titled Preservation Planning for
St. Elizabeths West Campus Cemetery.
15 According to Sluby’s study, one final military burial took place in 1874 after the establishment of the
new cemetery on the East Campus, plus one last civilian interment that took place in 1891. He does not
mention William Harris; see footnote below.
16
The first burial was of the remains of Mrs. Sarah Fontain who was transferred to St. Elizabeths from Baltimore
nine days after the hospital opened on March 3, 1855 and died January 26, 1856. Two other civilians buried in the
cemetery are Ann M. Mattingly who died November 29, 1856 and William Harris who died February 1, 1877.
Page 4 of 12assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina under the leadership of Robert Gould Shaw
who, along with many of his men, was killed leading the assault. The latter is famous
for its defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg under Joshua
Chamberlain. Three men from the 54th Massachusetts are buried in the cemetery and
at least one from the 20th Maine.
Soldiers of the United States Colored Infantry are also buried in the cemetery and can
be identified by the initials U.S.C. Inf. such as found on the marker of Joseph Lacy
that reads as follows: “Co. A, 4th U.S.C. Inf.” In fact, as many as 11 colored regiments
are represented in the cemetery. The three members of the 54th Massachusetts are
Private Evans Covington, Company E, died 09/25/1864; Private Thomas Jackson,
Company A, died 03/31/1865; and Private Charles M. Hill, Company H, died
10/12/1864. All presumably died of war wounds though it is currently unknown how
many soldiers in the cemetery were at the hospital for medical reasons or mental
health reasons. Many other Civil War era soldiers are also buried in the East Campus
cemeteries, not necessarily of war wounds.
In January 2007 two iron crosses that were evidently used to mark graves of
Confederate soldiers were found buried a few inches beneath the ground immediately
outside the cemetery’s fence line. GSA is holding these artifacts in safekeeping until
they can be restored.
A widely used method to save the lives of wounded soldiers during the Civil War was
amputation of limbs. This practice was in evidence at St. Elizabeths based on
congressional testimony of doctors who served at the hospital during the war. For
example, Dr. F.M. Gunnell noted that Mr. Jewett of New York, who held the patent on
the manufacture of artificial legs and arms, was appointed by the federal government
to St. Elizabeths and took over the basement of the Center Building for his
headquarters. Those invalid soldiers who had lost limbs due to war wounds were sent
to Mr. Jewett’s shop to be fitted for artificial limbs.17
17
See the Report of the Special [House of Representatives] Committee on Investigation of the Government Hospital
for the Insane with Hearings May 4 – December 13, 1906 and Digest of the Testimony published by the
Government Printing Office in 1907. 59th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 7644, Part 2.
Page 5 of 12Landscape
Alvah Godding, son of the second superintendent, William Godding, was born in 1872
and grew up on the grounds of St. Elizabeths. He was an amateur horticulturalist with
a talent for choosing rare and unusual plants and trees with which to decorate the
grounds of the West Campus. During the final quarter of the 19th century, he collected
approximately 170 varieties of flora from all over the United States and the rest of the
world including Greece, Bulgaria, China, Japan, India, and Persia. Many of these can
still be found on campus, but many have also died over the years from either weather-
related events or neglect. By 1900 he had assumed the position of Superintendent of
Grounds, which he evidently held for the remainder of his life.18
The Famous, the Infamous & the Forgotten
One group of infamous persons associated with St.
Elizabeths consists of those who attempted – successfully
or not – to assassinate a US president. The first of these
was actually the 7th patient admitted to St. Elizabeths on
January 27, 1855 – Richard Lawrence. In 1835 Lawrence
attempted to assassinate Andrew Jackson on the steps of
the US Capitol but the President, according to bystanders,
defended himself with his cane and overcame Lawrence.
The would-be assassin died June 13, 1861 at St.
Elizabeths.
In July 1881 Charles Guiteau was successful in his attempt to
assassinate James Garfield whom he shot in the Baltimore and
Potomac railroad station then located on the National Mall on
the northeast corner of 7th Street and Constitution Avenue,
NW.19 He was incarcerated in the DC Jail pending trial.20 Dr.
Godding, as well as Dr. Nichols, testified at the trial as one of
Guiteau’s psychiatric experts. Godding was convinced that the
defendant was insane and for that reason perhaps not
competent to stand trial. The court believed otherwise and
found Guiteau guilty. He was hung on June 30, 1882 after
18
Frances Margaret McMillen, “Ministering to a Mind Diseased: Landscape, Architecture, and Moral Treatment at
St. Elizabeths Hospital, 1852 – 1905”, unpublished thesis dated May 2008, University of Virginia, page 56.
19 Garfield died nearly three months later and debate continues about whether Charlie or his physicians
ultimately killed him. Charlie Guiteau, however, was made famous in recent times by a Ramblin’ Jack
Elliott song titled “Mr. Garfield” that was performed by Johnny Cash. Bascom Lamar Lunsford also
recorded a song titled “Charles Giteaux” [sic] in 1949 whilst accompanying himself on banjo. For further
information on the assassination and trial, see “The Last Chapter in the Life of Guiteau” by William W.
Godding in Alienist and Neurologist, 1882, iii: pp. 550-557.
20
Some sources believe he was incarcerated at St. Elizabeths. See Scott McCabe’s article in The Examiner of July
2, 2008 concerning the rediscovery of handcuffs used to restrain Guiteau, probably when he was moved back and
forth between his place of incarceration and the courtroom. Georgetown University, however, the repository of
many of Guiteau’s papers, states that he was held in the DC Jail. See the following web site:
http://library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/cl133.htm
Page 6 of 12uttering these final words from a poem he had written especially for the occasion:
“Glory, Hallelujah! I’m going to the Lordy! I come, ready, go.”21
Almost one hundred years after Guiteau’s assassination of Garfield, John Hinckley
approached Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981
and fired several shots from a small caliber pistol. One of them hit the President but
he recovered. The verdict at Hinckley’s trial was “not guilty by reason of insanity” and
he was returned to St. Elizabeths’ Howard Pavilion in which the criminally insane
were, and still are, incarcerated on the East Campus.
Another patient at St. Elizabeths – who was initially
housed in Howard Hall (the criminally insane ward now
located on the East Campus) then moved to the
Chestnut Ward of the Center Building – was Ezra
Pound, known to many as the father of Modernism in
the 20th century or il miglior fabbro to T.S. Eliot in his
dedication of “The Wasteland” to Pound. Thanks to
several injudicious radio broadcasts from Italy during
World War II in which Pound praised the Fascists, called
for the assassination of President Roosevelt, and
espoused rabidly anti-Semitic views,22 the poet found
himself charged with treason by the US Government.
During his trial, Pound was adjudged incompetent to
stand trial and sent to St. Elizabeths in December 1945
where he completed the Pisan Cantos and received many
visitors of an artistic and literary bent.23 Through the
efforts of Thurman Arnold of the local DC law firm Arnold & Porter, Pound was
released in April 1958 and returned to Italy to live out the remaining 14 years of his
long life. Following his release, Pound was asked his opinions about his home country
to which he responded: "America is a lunatic asylum." As for his anti-Semitism, he
reportedly said to Allen Ginsberg during his final years: “The worst mistake I made
was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.”24
21 Supposedly, the federal government refused to return Guiteau's body to his family. Instead, the corpse
was stripped to the bones (articulated in the language of autopsy) with the intention of displaying the
skeleton publicly. Admission was to be free, but in the end the skeleton was never shown. Historians
believe that the bones can be found today in several trays in the storage vaults of the Army Medical
Museum currently located at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital.
22 An example follows from a broadcast made April 27, 1943: “A chair has been founded in the Sorbonne
to study modern Jewish history, i.e., the role of the kike in modern history. It would be well to have
similar chairs in ALL American universities, though Harvard and the College of the City of N. York might
find it hard to get the necessary endowments. I don't think there is any American law that permits you to
shoot Nic. Butler. It is a pity but so is it. No ex post facto laws are to be dreamt of. Not that Frankfurter or
any other damn Jews care a hoot for law or for the American Constitution. But we are not here to uphold
Frankfurter or the Jewish vendetta. In the midst of which YOU jolly well are. And every American boy that
gets drowned owes it to Roosevelt and Baruch, and to Roosevelt's VIOLATION of the duties of office.”
23 His room was in the East Wing (2E-3) – Chestnut Ward - on the second floor with a view out to the
Point.
24 It can be difficult to determine what Pound meant by the term “anti-Semite”. See Ellen
Cardona’s “Pound’s Anti-Semitism at St. Elizabeths: 1945-1958” at
http://www.flashpointmag.com/card.htm.
Page 7 of 12Shortly after the Civil War, Dr. William Chester
Minor was treated at St. Elizabeths. The war, in
particular the Battle of the Wilderness and its
aftermath, completely unhinged this brilliant young
surgeon educated at Yale University’s medical
school. After 18 months of treatment that showed
no improvement in his condition, Dr. Minor was
released. He found his way to the seedy streets of
Lambeth in London where he murdered an
innocent man whom he mistook for one of his
demons. While at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic
Asylum, he learned of James Murray’s project to create a comprehensive dictionary of
the English language. Minor contributed more than 12,000 entries to the Oxford
English Dictionary including such words as buffoon, atom, azure, buckwheat, gust,
and foresight. When his sentence had been served at Broadmoor, he returned to the
US and was readmitted to St. Elizabeths.25
In December 1973, a former star of the silent screen
died at St. Elizabeths Hospital. Mary Claire Fuller was
a native Washingtonian who grew up in the Town of
Somerset at 4723 Dorset Avenue, a Queen Anne style
Victorian house built in 1893 but demolished by a
developer in 1965. She was born in 1888 to a well-to-
do family whose wealth was derived from real estate
development but she died a pauper and is buried with
two others in a paupers’ grave at Congressional
Cemetery. What happened to Mary follows.26
As a teenager, Mary Claire began her career as a movie
actor and within five years had become one of the most
popular stars of the silver screen starring in, among
other silent movies, the 1912 Edison series What
Happened to Mary? and its follow up Who Will Marry
Mary? These films are considered forerunners of the adventure serial. Each chapter
was a self-contained story and was geared more toward poignant drama than the
heart-palpitating excitement of the later serial format. Thanks to the popularity of
these silent films, she became known as the woman who turned the Edison Company
into a major studio. "Miss Fuller is known as 'temperamental,' intense, emotional, and
even poetical," wrote an anonymous fan magazine interviewer at the time. Maine
newspaper writer, Helen Batchelder Shute, added: "She has a magnetic and charming
personality, and a fun-loving disposition, although a bit melancholy at times."
25 Simon Winchester wrote The Madman and the Professor, published in 1998, and tells Minor’s story in a
lively and informative manner. Minor was admitted in 1868, the same year that President Andrew
Johnson’s son, Robert, was admitted to seek treatment for alcoholism. (See the unpublished diary of
Robert Johnson available at the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greeneville, Tennessee.)
26
Most of the following is derived from Robert S. Birchard’s, What Happened To Mary? that can be found at the
following web site: www.hollywoodheritage.org/newsarchive/Fall99/Mary.html
Page 8 of 12When Edison failed to promote Mary's latest series The Active Life of Dolly of the
Dailies, she jumped ship and signed a lucrative contract with Universal Studios, which
promoted her as that company's answer to Mary Pickford. Mary starred in such
melodramas as The Witch Girl with Charles Ogle, A Daughter of the Nile opposite
Pickford's brother-in-law Matt Moore, and Under Southern Skies, her first feature-
length production. She became known as the “brunette Mary Pickford”; in 1914 she
was reportedly being paid $2,500 per week by Universal. Mary also authored a
number of screenplays, eight of which were made into films between 1913 and 1915.
After 1917's The Long Trail, the leading lady of the pioneering Edison Company and
Universal Studios disappeared from film to pursue other interests in music and
painting but primarily to avoid the limelight after suffering her first breakdown,
probably as the result of an ill-fated affair with a married opera singer. She made a
minor comeback several years later but, after 1930 or so, nothing was ever heard of
her again.
Mary Fuller never wed and, following the death of her mother in 1940, she suffered
another breakdown. Her sister, Mabel Fuller McSween, cared for her until July 1,
1947 when Mary was admitted to St. Elizabeths Hospital where she remained for the
rest of her life.
Another former actor (who appeared in a film adaptation of The Jungle in 1914)
admitted to St. Elizabeths was Maxine Rickard (nee Hodges), born in 1903 in Brooklyn
and died in 1976 in Stoughton, Massachusetts. She was probably better known as the
ex-wife of George Lewis (Tex) Rickard who managed the boxer, Jack Dempsey, and
died in 1929. Maxine subsequently remarried Frank Dailey and, after his death,
Thomas Gill. It is presumed that at some time after her divorce from Gill in 1937 and
her death in 1976, she was committed to St. Elizabeths.
Dr. Walter Freeman was, at one time, head of the Blackburn
Laboratory at St. Elizabeths but is better known for being the
foremost proponent in the United States of the psychosurgical
procedure known as lobotomy. He originally came to St.
Elizabeths in 1926 as a pathologist, but moved to George
Washington University in 1935. In 1936 he performed his first
lobotomy and, 31 years later, performed his last. In the interim,
he was lionized and demonized for his enthusiastic endorsement
of what many considered a form of gruesome mutilation.
Freeman performed 2,500 lobotomies in 23 states, mostly based
on scanty and flimsy evidence for its scientific basis, but more
significantly he popularized the lobotomy as a legitimate form of
psychosurgery. A neurologist and psychiatrist without surgical training, he initially
worked with several surgeons, including James W. Watts. In 1936, he and Watts
became the first American doctors to perform prefrontal lobotomy (by craniotomy in an
operating room).
Frustrated by his lack of surgical training and seeking a faster and less invasive way
to perform the procedure, Freeman invented the "ice pick" or trans-orbital lobotomy,
which, at first, literally used an ice pick hammered through the back of the eye socket
into the brain. Freeman was able to perform these very quickly, outside of an
operating room, and without a surgeon. For his first trans-orbital lobotomies, Freeman
Page 9 of 12used an actual ice pick from his kitchen. Later, he utilized an instrument created
specifically for the operation called a leucotome. In 1948 Freeman developed a new
technique which involved wrenching the leucotome in an upstroke after the initial
insertion. This procedure placed great strain on the instrument and often resulted in
the leucotome breaking off in the patient's skull. As a result, Freeman designed a new,
stronger instrument, the orbitoclast.
He died in 1972 still convinced that the lobotomy was a legitimate medical procedure
that could cure mental illness.27
During the period of time Ezra Pound was residing at St. Elizabeths, a young man of
15 checked himself into the hospital of his own accord as a voluntary patient.28
Augustus Stanley Owsley, III became known in the 1960s for manufacturing the
purest form of LSD – first legally, then illegally after the hallucinogen was outlawed by
Congress in 1966 – to be found on the West Coast, replacing the hard to come by
Sandoz brand. Owsley, as he was known on the street, supplied Ken Kesey and his
Merry Pranksters with Blue Cheer for their so-called acid tests that were chronicled in
Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Owsley also worked with the Grateful
Dead and developed the band’s live wall of sound system before spending 2 years in
federal prison during the early 1970s for manufacturing illegal drugs. By the 1990s,
Owsley, also known as Bear, and his wife had left the US for Australia; he became a
naturalized citizen of that country and rarely if ever visits America any more but sells
a line of handmade jewelry via the Internet.29
27 Jack El-Hai published a biography of Freeman in 2005 entitled “The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical
Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness”.
28
Robert Greenfield, “The King of LSD” in Rolling Stone magazine, July 12-26, 2007.
29
Curious readers can visit his web site here and buy his wearable art if they so desire: http://www.thebear.org/
Page 10 of 12John J. Farrar died on June 21, 1972
at the age of 44. During the previous
15 years he had been in and out of St.
Elizabeths, diagnosed with a case of
chronic schizophrenia. By the time of
Farrar’s death, his name was known to
only a few in the local Washington art
scene though at one time a painting of
his was chosen for an award over one
by Romare Bearden. In the summer of
1942, a local sculptor and socialite
discovered the teenager’s work; that
year his portrait of General Douglas
MacArthur won first prize in the
Times-Herald newspaper’s Annual
Outdoor Art Fair.30 With the award
money, Farrar was able to enroll in his
first formal art class with the Polish
portrait artist, Eliasz Kanarek, who
operated a gallery on H Street and had earlier been commissioned to paint the murals
for the Polish Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair. One of Farrar’s paintings that was
completed while under Kanarek’s tutelage was purchased by the syndicated
columnist, Drew Pearson, and is now owned by two local collectors in the Washington
area.
In 1944 Farrar became nationally known as a result of exhibiting in the Atlanta
University annual juried show in which his oil on canvas portrait of a small brown dog
named Queenie won first prize and was the artwork chosen over that of the much
better known Bearden entered in the same category. After serving a year in the Army
following World War II, Farrar began to find it difficult to make a living on his art
alone. As Langley points out in his article, “Not only was there little interest in African
American art at the time, abstract expressionism was on the rise.” It was during the
1950s that Farrar also began drinking heavily, perhaps self-medicating to ease the
pain of the schizophrenia that landed him in St. Elizabeths for the first time in 1957.
His later artwork that was painted in the early 1960s was different in character from
his earlier work that focused on portraits and neighborhood scenes. In April 1962 he
exhibited at the Contemporary Christian Art Festival in Buckhannon, West Virginia, in
particular a rendering of the Last Supper. He gave his address as Ward 9, John
Howard Pavilion, St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, DC. Of the roughly 76 works
known to exist, none has been discovered to date after 1962. In 1967, a few of his
works were shown in an exhibit titled The Evolution of the Afro-Americans Artists: 1800
– 1950 in New York City; the exhibit was sponsored by the City University of New York
and the New York Urban League. Since then, little has been done to bring Farrar’s art
to a wider audience. One of his later paintings is of the backstage area of Hitchcock
Hall as shown on the next page. John Farrar is buried in an unmarked grave in
Landover, Maryland.
30
The basis for this portrait of the artist is taken from an article titled “A Prodigy Dashed by Misfortune: John J.
Farrar’s Life in Art” by Jerry Langley in The International Review of African American Art, Volume 19, Number 2,
2003.
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