The Indiana Lunatic Asylum Became the Central Indiana State Hospital for the Insane
Below is a true story about a girl committed to the Central Indiana State Hospital for the Insane, a hospital that was initially called the Indiana Lunatic Asylum. She was a young teenager when she was admitted to the hospital. It’s a story about people and life a century ago. In today’s world it sounds tragic. And though it happened long ago, in another way it was not that long ago. It’s also a bit of a history lesson on how things used to be.
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Our Story Starts with a Summer Job in Indianapolis in 1963
Our protagonist was halfway through high school, sixteen years old, and out of school for the summer. He needed a job. No job, no money. No money, no fun. A relative told our storyteller about an open summer job, a summer clerkship in the Center Township of Marion County Assessor’s Office in Indianapolis. Luck was with our otherwise hapless high school student. He applied and got the job.
John
These summer clerkship jobs for high school students were pretty easy jobs, designed such that any unskilled teenager could do well. Tasks such as filing in alphabetical order, taking telephone messages, and other junior administrative assistant work. Our main character became interested in the work done by the Center Township Assessor’s Office, what they did and how it all worked. And most of the Office’s employees liked this summer clerk. Now and then he or one of the other employees would bring in a box of doughnuts from the Roselyn Bakery down the street, and they’d sit around at break time with doughnuts and coffee. And so it was that he got to know John. From the viewpoint of a sixteen-year-old, John was a really old guy. He was 64 and near retirement, having worked most of his life in local government, and he enjoyed talking as much as (or even more than) working.
Who Had Spare Time At Work? Near Retirement and New Temporary Worker
As a high school kid living far out of town in the countryside, our young clerk was unable to get to know or socialize with any of his workmates outside of work time, and at age 16 couldn’t join anyone for a drink. There was plenty of coffee in the breakroom, and a Coke machine, and an endless supply of snacks. But on the job was on the job, and most of his co-workers were always busy with work to do. As anyone needed a small office task done that he could do they would ask him, and he always jumped at the chance to be useful. He was frustrated that there was so much he couldn’t do. He wasn’t good at idly sitting at a desk. Near-retirement John seemed to be the man with spare time and so John and our clerk spent time talking.
John’s Dad’s Wood Axe
One afternoon, when John was in a talkative mood, he the summer intern a bit of his own family’s history. John was born in 1899 to a farming family in central Indiana. He was one of six children and had a sister two years younger. The farm was a typical family farm, raising cattle and hogs, growing corn and soybeans. Typical chores were feeding the livestock, cutting firewood, and building sheds and outbuildings to house animals and machinery. In 1916, when he was 17, his father was storming around the farm, upset and frustrated. He had some short logs to split into firewood and couldn’t find the axe. He’d looked everywhere, even hiked all the way to the woods at the back of the farm to see if he (or one of the kids) left it there. No luck. He drove into town and bought a new axe and got on with his day.
John’s Mother’s Kitchen Cleaver
Every woman has in her kitchen a set of kitchen utensils, each has a specific job. John’s mother’s meat cleaver was a necessary kitchen tool for most meat storage and preparation for cooking. It was always in the drawer with the other kitchen knives but one day it just wasn’t there. She looked everywhere and asked John’s dad and all the kids but no one knew anything about its whereabouts. It was late in the day so she made do with a chef’s knife. The next day she drove into town and bought herself a new meat cleaver. She was able to get one that matched the other knives in her set.
The Missing Becomes a Mystery
At this point no one in the family took any special notice of the missing axe and cleaver because things can get misplaced or lost. But it kept happening and family members started to notice. About a week later his mother’s sewing scissors disappeared from her sewing room. A couple weeks after that his Dad’s scythe vanished from the barn. Then his Dad’s barber scissors, that he used to trim his beard, were gone from the bathroom. John’s mother and father realized that something was going on but all the children denied any knowledge of what was happening.
John’s Sister Surprises Her Father
A couple uneventful weeks went by. Johns’ dad was working in one of the equipment sheds and saw his daughter, John’s younger sister, throw the brand new axe he’d just bought a month earlier in the well. He ran out to her but too late to rescue the situation. The axe had disappeared into the deep water in the well, gone for good. Upset, he confronted his daughter, what was she doing, what was wrong with her? She burst into tears, said that she didn’t have a choice, and ran for the house. Puzzled and too angry at that moment to go after her, he decided he had to finish his work. He’d calmly sit down and talk with her later.
John’s Sister: Saved from Herself or the Victim of this Story?
When he finished John’s dad went into the house and pulled his wife aside. He told her what he’d seen and the two agreed to talk with her quietly after supper. After they ate and the other five children went off to do whatever they needed to do, John’s parents sat with his sister. She was scared and in tears. Between sobs she explained to them that she had no choice. She had to get rid of all the sharp things, get rid of them so that she couldn’t get to them, or she would use them to hurt someone. She couldn’t help herself. If she had them, she would badly hurt someone, and that scared her.
Not a Situation a Rural Farm Family Can Cope With in 1916
Now frightened themselves, the couple took turns, one watching their sleeping daughter while the other slept. The next day the couple took their daughter to their rural family doctor and told the story. The physician didn’t know what to do. It’s hard to put ourselves back to that time. No one had any understanding of what caused mental illness or how to treat it. The mentally ill were feared and believed to be incurable. Mental illness was thought to be individual weakness of character or a spiritual disease. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene was just formed in 1909 and the National Mental Health Association to help children affected by mental illness in 1910. Asylum admissions were involuntary and most of the time came from family concerns. The overriding priority was to remove “lunatics” from the community.
The Only Solution Available to the Doctor and Parents
Their doctor said to take her for an evaluation to the Central Indiana State Hospital for the Insane. Based in the parents recounting of events and the evaluation, the hospital admitted her. She was placed in the Seven Steeples building, a massive building that housed the Women’s Department. It was new then, just built in 1905, eleven years earlier. (An oddity about the community’s pet name for the place, Seven Steeples, is that it actually had eight steeples.) She was never released. His sister had died in her 50s in the mental hospital.
Their “Extended” Break Time Ended
The time for the two of them sitting and talking in the break room at work came to an end. John had finished the story of his sister and her troubles. John never returned to the topic to relate any more about his sister. He’d told his story and, during the rest of that summer found other stories to tell the young summer clerk. And our naïve teenage clerk did not want to pry into what felt like a dark topic. He never saw John again once the summer job ended.
It Illustrates the Old, Odd Way of Attending to the “Mentally Ill”
We no longer use the terms lunacy or insane. We no longer have every “mentally ill” person in a public state hospital. We have community treatment programs made possible by today’s medications. We’ve learned a lot in a century. Before the 1930s most of the mental illness in the Central Indiana State Hospital for the Insane was caused by syphilis, a bacterial infection, easily treated once we had penicillin. Brain and behavior disorders back then that were caused by other infections, other medical illnesses, incestual pregnancies, and head trauma with brain damage were indistinguishable from the brain disorders that today we identify as “mental illness”. Maybe someday tomorrow’s “penicillin” will cure them all, but the story of John’s sister and tens of thousands like her is a sad, sad history that can never be changed.
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