Dear Readers,
I have greatly enjoyed my time in Sacramento; it is a historic city, with great farm-to-table food, and warm weather (sometimes way too warm!). I have also found my research experience meaningful and engaging. Yesterday, I went to a coffee shop after the archives closed and I struck up a conversation with the barista. She asked me about my trip to Sacramento and I explained to her my research project. She listened actively and intently and once I finished, she began to tell me about her family history of mental illness, specifically, her grandmother. She recounted a story about how her grandmother was committed to a mental hospital for “hysteria” where she was abused. Not only was she not mentally ill, but she also greatly mistreated in this institution. She thanked me for the research I was doing and for all those performing research to uncover the history of these institutions. Although it was sad to hear her grandmother’s terrible experience, it felt empowering to hear about the impact of my research.
As I mentioned in my last post, the state hospital records introduced me to the concept of rehabilitation of “feeble-minded” individuals. For example, I found a pamphlet from the superintendent of Stockton State Hospital that described the hospital’s mission to the relatives and friends of the patients. His sentence, “those of us who are responsible for the care and treatment of hospitalized patients see them as individuals like ourselves who can, through better understanding and treatment, be brought back in most instances to useful living,” struck me. After “defectives” were institutionalized, mental hygiene officials were interested in reintegrating some of them into the “normal” population in an organized and intentional way. Although some of the records that I mentioned in the last post helped me to better understand the process of rehabilitation, I was still confused as to what role forced sterilization played.
I began to look for evidence of sterilization and then rehabilitation. Based on my previous research on institutionalization and rehabilitation, I began to think again about the movement of populations. I suspected that given the reports of the overcrowding of hospitals, perhaps sterilization would be cited as a means of “quick” treatment. That is, instead of hospitals taking care of patients full time for their entire lives, they could sterilize these patients and then place them back into society. However, the records I looked at showed no such correlation.
Moreover, unlike the countless records that showed the process of institutionalizing and rehabilitating the “feeble-minded,” state hospital records about sterilization were sparse. For example, there is a ten-page document from the Superintendent that details how to keep track of the movement of patients in terms of admission, length of stay, and discharge, but there is no mention of how to track sterilization or other procedures. Before I began my research, I suspected that there might not be a method of tracking patients after they were sterilized, however, I was surprised to find that few records from state hospital officials about sterilization existed at all.
I also looked at public health records and found little evidence of sterilization as an established practice. For example, within public health records of the “Community Health and Resources Program” on how to care for the mentally ill, there was no mention of sterilization. Although the records show no evidence of policies in place to sterilize people, it is known that over 60,000 individuals across the country, most of who were Mexican-American and black women, were forcibly sterilized. Where did this discrepancy come from?
In the few instances where sterilization came up, it seemed as if those in administrative or policy roles did not want to involve themselves in this issue. For example, in a 1943 report of the “Minutes of the Superintendent” the topic of sterilization of minors without parental consent was addressed in one paragraph. The decision was passive, however, which was to stick to the existing policy. Anything else would “raise a question as to the constitutionality of the whole sterilization law.” This is one example of administrators' lack of engagement in this issue. In my opinion, this was a huge mistake and showed great cowardice.
My next thought was that the decision making and tracking of forced sterilization procedures was restricted to the doctors. However, when I looked into the surgical and medical reports from hospitals and that outlines the yearly surgeries carried out and there was no mention of sterilization procedures. Although gynecological procedures were tracked, the records did not specify if they were sterilizations. This final research left me with unease, because if hospital administrators and doctors did not keep track of sterilization, let alone discuss in depth the policies and regulations surrounding it, who did?
I left the archives with many of these lasting questions as well as ideas for future research. First of all, I hope to visit more archives that hold the secrets of institutionalization and sterilization practices during the 20th century. For example, I recently discovered from a professor that there is an archive at California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles that holds records of the Human Betterment Foundation, which was a private organization that was integral in promoting eugenics ideology and sterilization. Therefore, even if I did not find evidence of how sterilizations were tracked California State Archives, perhaps there is more to the story elsewhere.
Although I was disappointed to find little about the records of sterilization procedures, I have learned a great deal from my time at the California State Archives. Perhaps most importantly, I learned the extreme care, focus, and tenacity it takes to do archival research. I have an even greater appreciation for all of the scholars who have spent countless hours performing the meticulous archival research, and I hope to have the opportunity to perform this type of research again in the future!
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my blog posts. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you soon in History of Science tutorial!
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