Back in 1879 there was a minor scandal at the Longue Pointe Insane Asylum. Many people were in there that were not really insane. So there was an initiative to let some of them go. The chief doctor pointed out that if everybody who had a vision was classified insane, then every Catholic saint would have been in an insane asylum. The Montreal Herald argued that these people should not be released and that doing so was a cynical budgetary decision. On June 24 the paper ran a list of the names of the patients with a description of their states of being. They include:
Eliza Ackhurst: Montreal jail: admitted February 26, 1879; still crazy; apathetic, without energy, cannot attend to personal wants.
Victoire Descoteaux, Danville, admitted March 1, 1876. A young girl of 14 years, wanting in energy and sense and unable to earn her living. Parents poor and gone to the states since her admission. Shall we put her in the streets?
Antoine Tournabobe, Montreal, admitted September 21, 1876, a real idiot; epileptic, language almost unintelligible, incapable of work, before admission wandered about the streets marked by ill natured spectators.
Michael Row, Montreal jail; admitted December 6 1877. Wicked and quarrelsome madman.
William McKenness, St. Hyacinthe jail, admitted March 14, 1879, still a maniac, transacts business in which the figures are millions and sends telegraphic dispatches as of engaged in large criminal transactions. His return would be prejudicial to his family.
Eliza Ackhurst: Montreal jail: admitted February 26, 1879; still crazy; apathetic, without energy, cannot attend to personal wants.
Victoire Descoteaux, Danville, admitted March 1, 1876. A young girl of 14 years, wanting in energy and sense and unable to earn her living. Parents poor and gone to the states since her admission. Shall we put her in the streets?
Antoine Tournabobe, Montreal, admitted September 21, 1876, a real idiot; epileptic, language almost unintelligible, incapable of work, before admission wandered about the streets marked by ill natured spectators.
Michael Row, Montreal jail; admitted December 6 1877. Wicked and quarrelsome madman.
William McKenness, St. Hyacinthe jail, admitted March 14, 1879, still a maniac, transacts business in which the figures are millions and sends telegraphic dispatches as of engaged in large criminal transactions. His return would be prejudicial to his family.
Many injustices have been committed in almost every institution of this type and much can be found on the Internet regarding this subject.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, when they were digging the approaches for the Louis Hyppolyte tunnel under the St Lawrence they were using a floating steam dipper-shovel dredge in the river to prepare the area for the tunnel.
A similar Steam Dipper Dredge.
http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?110139
We spent time on the shore watching this antediluvian machine move spoil from the river bottom, it's mechanical 'jaw' dripping with mud and water as it swung around to dump the muck into an adjacent barge.
Almost prehistoric to watch, and fascinating.
We then drove North and decided to circumnavigate the Hospital and see the work being done towards the future roads to connect with the tunnel.
We had to travel East along Sherbrooke??, the grounds of the Horpital on the South side of the road.
Along the South side there was a high metal fence of the type enclosing school yards and inside the fence patients were walking around and playing games on the grass.
People had stopped their autos and had gathered outside the fence on Sherbrooke and were teasing and gesticulating to those inside.
One could not be sure as to who was miming whom.
Some of the people outside were on the wrong side of the fence, and the same could be said for some of those inside.
A disgusting state of affairs that made a deep impression to my young mind almost 50 years ago.
Around 1900, the whole Asylum grounds extended a long way North from the river being crossed East/West by what later became the CNR, and, also, the Montreal Terminal Railway East to Point aux Trembles.
The latter was Electric until 1927 when taken over by CNR.
A great portion of the Asylum lands were under cultivation and the patients helped in the crops husbandry.
Before automobiles and trucks became common, railways were used for almost every task, the Hospital having their own internal Railway, used to move coal, supplies, crops and water, the latter being transported up from the St. Lawrence in barrels on a flat car moved by an electric express motor as shown here.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wyatt/alltime/pics/montreal-StJdD-PA165216.jpg
The team of horses at right were used to lower the empty, then lift the full barrels off/onto the flat car with the jib crane.
The railway was also known as the Longue Point Asylum Railway, and it connected with and probably received it's electric power from the aforementioned Montreal Terminal Railway.
Inside the main building once was a narrow gauge railway which was used to transport patients.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wyatt/alltime/pics/TramwaySaint-Jean-de-Dieu.jpg
Louis Riel, a key figure in Canadian history, spent some time at the Longue Pointe Asylum.
Thank You.
Up until sometime in the 1960s the St. Jean de Dieu Hospital insane asylum was a separate municipality. It had no official residents. I have asked but never found any records of its administration. The advantage was that they could have their own police force and fire station. So whatever happened there stayed there. There are a lot of unexplained graves there including one called the Pigsty Cemetery. Up until a couple of scandals including one where a doctor (Denis Lazure, I think) saw a child of 5 years old handcuffed to a radiator. Patients would be shot up with largatyl, known as the liquid straitjacket. The inventor of that sauce is considered a legend of Canadian medical science.
ReplyDeleteDear K.,
ReplyDeleteBy happenstance, not long ago I was reading this article
http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol37I1/page06.htm
Horrid story, horrid place.
If the grounds could talk.
Some of these institutions hid behind the Cross of the Church.
Supposedly to heal and protect the unwanted and unfit, but, really, something else.
When I was young in the Forties, we travelled to an orphanage ( Not St Jean de Dieu ) to donate clothing packed in cardboard boxes from Steinberg's, and we parked out front.
I had discerned that this was a place where children lived all the time, being dumped there, in my small child's mind, because they were 'bad' or their parents did not want them anymore.
I was TERRIFIED, and peeked over the windowsill of the car.
Those outside gathered and looked back, as cars were not all that common just after the War, and, most of the children had possibly never ridden in one.
They also knew I got to leave and GO HOME! where I had parents and my own room.
I was quiet all the way back.
After that my parents knew I was scared of orphanages, and would use it as a form of chastisement, to be sent to one, if I was behaving bad.
If we only KNEW what really went on in places such as that, I would never be bad again.
In 2002 we made a road trip to the East end, following the old CNR East from Moreau Street Station at Hochelaga, and, once again circumnavigated the Asylum.
Creepy place, old buildings mixed with new.
I could not leave fast enough!
We then went and scoped out the Refineries, the smelter and the Quarries on Sherbrooke East, concluding with a visit to the Hawthorn Dale Cemetery once served by the Electric railway from downtown with it's own electric Funeral Car used to transport the coffins on their last trip.
Lovely trip full of goulish memories.
Awful thoughts while at St Jean de Dieu, as I have learned much, much more since the Forties.
Thank You.
That article was written by Christine Hahn. Her major source was Rod Vinneau of Joliette who is a friend of mine. His wife Clara Duguay was a Duplessis Orphan. Vienneau has done a ton of research on this issue. His aim was and is to get a better settlement for the victims. I think he's realiable and I think the orphans did not get fair compensation. I met a guy who went through these places and he had all sorts of scars on his skull, which suggests that he was used as a guinea pig for some sort of brain surgery. I wrote about another guy who was kept indoors for the first several years of his life and didn't even know what a snowflake was because he only saw them through windows. He never learned to read. I've never really heard any bad stories of sexual abuse.
ReplyDeleteMakes me think of Thomas Szasz and the myth of mental illness.
ReplyDelete