Category: DeJarnette Sanitarium

All In The Family?

11/5/2020

My wife and I visited the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, VA, the other day – I posted pics and a Dickinson poem about the trip HERE – and while we were in Staunton, we drove by the former Western State Hospital and the DeJarnette Sanitarium, two places out of a shameful part of Virginia’s history. I posted pics, info and a poem about these places HERE.

Below: I took this picture of the abandoned DeJarnette Sanitarium a few years ago on a particularly gloomy day. I applied a filter on Instagram and ended up with this rather eerie looking photo:

A few days later we were walking around our own town, Charlottesville, and discovered that a historic structure now used as office space for a nearby Methodist church was originally a hospital known as the Magruder Sanitorium.

It turns out that the man who established that sanitorium, Edward May Magruder, was the uncle of Joseph DeJarnette, the doctor who advocated eugenics, forced sterilization on those he deemed “defective,” and practiced heinous acts on the mentally ill while he headed the Western State Hospital from 1905 to 1943.

Below: The former Magruder Sanitorium, founded by Edward May Magruder, the uncle of Joseph DeJarnette.

I wonder where DeJarnette's uncle, Edward Magruder – founder of the Magruder Sanitarium shown above – stood on the ideas and practices advocated by his nephew? Did DeJarnette’s philosophy and practices arise from the beliefs and ethics of only his family – or from his extended family as well?

The DeJarnette family descended from French Hugenot immigrants who settled in Virginia during the colonial period, and they had been prominent in Virginia planter society for generations. Joseph, the son of Elliott Hawes DeJarnette and Evelyn Magruder, was born on his family's plantation, Pine Forest, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia (in 1862, Union Brig. Gen. George A. Custer and his troops seized and occupied the plantation and freed those who had been enslaved there by the DeJarnette family).

Could the odious “family values” rooted in and passed down from generation to generation in the DeJarnette family have also been ingrained in the Magruder family as well?

At Cvillepedia.org, a wiki “dedicated to sharing and building community knowledge and history about the people, places, and events in Charlottesville and Albemarle County,” there is an entry (HERE) for DeJarnette’s uncle Edward Magruder – founder of the Magruder Sanitarium. I find it interesting, though, that the post doesn’t even mention the sanitarium. Is there some ugly history – a la DeJarnette’s practices and beliefs – that is being veiled?

Hmm. I’m just curious.

By Emily Dickinson:

There is no Silence in the Earth – so silent
As that endured
Which uttered, would discourage Nature
And haunt the World.

I wonder what was endured at the Western State Hospital, the DeJarnette Sanitarium, and/or the Magruder Sanitarium that would "haunt the world."

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Mental Suffering

11/3/2020

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My wife and I were in Staunton, VA, and we drove by former Western State Hospital -- some of which was converted to apartments and/or condominiums -- and the DeJarnette Sanitarium, named for Joseph DeJarnette, the director of Western State Hospital from 1905 to 1943 and a vocal proponent of racial segregation and eugenics, specifically, the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill.

I snapped some pics, and to be honest, it was all very creepy!

Western State Hospital (pictured above), called Western State Lunatic Asylum in its early years, was a hospital for the mentally ill. It admitted its first patient on July 24, 1828. You can read about that patient HERE, and you can learn more about Western State HERE.

Below: Miscellaneous shots of Western State. NOTE: Slide shows do not always work on androids, so the pictures are best viewed on a laptop, an iPhone, or an IPad.

By Emily Dickinson:

One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted –
One need not be a House –
The Brain has Corridors – surpassing
Material Place –

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting –
That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase –
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter –
In lonesome Place –

Ourself behind ourself, concealed –
Should startle most –
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.

The Body – borrows a Revolver –
He bolts the Door –
O'erlooking a superior spectre –
Or More –

In Emily Dickinson's poem at the left, she stated "One need not be a Chamber -- to be Haunted." Still, I suspect the chambers and the hallways of the Western State Hospital (above) and the DeJarnette Sanitarium (below) are haunted. If walls could talk.

The pictures in the slide show below are from Atlas Obscure, HERE:

Just down the road from the Western State Hospital is the DeJarnette Sanitarium. Founded in 1932 by Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, the sanitarium was a private unit for middle-income patients that operated separately from the government-supported state hospital.

From Atlas Obscura: "DeJarnette was a respected doctor among the white Virginia elite at the time, but his career would ultimately be defined by his strong support for eugenics, specifically the forced sterilization of the mentally ill and others he deemed 'defective.'" More info is HERE.

From MadInAmerica.com: "“Though Dr. DeJarnette’s sterilization practices were heinous, they weren’t the worst of his work. He used the inmates in his asylum as guinea pigs in various experiments. These included blood transfusions between patients on opposite ends of the psychiatric spectrum, such as taking blood from a hyperactive patient and injecting it into a depressed one. He also used extreme x-ray exposure as a method of sterilization, which almost certainly would have left its patients with adverse side effects."

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All In The Family?

Mental Suffering

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