Institutional

Memory
The Records of St. Elizabeths Hospital at the National Archives

By Frances M. McMillen and James S. Kane

I
n 1921, Bryan Hall’s doctor at St. Elizabeths Hospital wrote in his file, “This old man has been in this
institution 47 years and states that he is now anxious to leave.”
Hall, at 66 years old, had spent nearly every year of his adult life in the nation’s first federally
operated hospital for the treatment of people with mental illnesses. Bryan Hall’s file is part of
Record Group 418, the massive collection of material documenting the history of St. Elizabeths
Hospital in Washington, D.C. Hall’s case, along with the photographs, architectural drawings,
administrative records, and thousands of patient files, all tell part of the hospital’s story.
Well-known and unknown citizens, prominent architects and Civil War veterans are represented
in the collection and provide a wealth of information to researchers in a variety of fields, including
genealogy, architecture, and Washington history.
Hall was admitted on May 4, 1874, five days before his 19th birthday. When he arrived, the institution
was known as the Government Hospital for the Insane and consisted of three patient buildings overcrowded
with nearly 700 people. When he died at the hospital in 1923, never having left, there were several thousand
patients living on a sprawling campus of nearly a hundred buildings bisected by a public road. During the
49 years Hall was hospitalized, four superintendents led the institution and more than 20,000 people were
treated. Hall was patient number 3,627.

The Oaks A and B Buildings were two of the many

detached buildings constructed during Superintendent
Godding’s administration. Oaks was built to house
patients with epilepsy.
 St. Elizabeths was founded in 1852 to provide “the most humane care and
enlightened curative treatment” for members of the Army and Navy and residents
of the District of Columbia. The hospital is still in operation today. It treats a few
hundred in-patients and is managed by the District of Columbia. The hospital is
probably best known as the home of John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate
President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He has been at St. Elizabeths for nearly 30 years.
When the District of Columbia took control of the hospital in 1987, many of the
institution’s historic buildings remained the property of the federal government and
went unoccupied for several years. Plans are in the works to locate the headquarters
of the Department of Homeland Security on the west campus, the most historic
section of St. Elizabeths. The oldest building, where Hall and thousands of others
lived for well over a hundred years, will house the secretary’s office.

• • • •

Bryan Hall was the son of Reverend Charles H. Hall, the rector of Epiphany
Episcopal Church, located near the White House. From 1856 until 1869,
Reverend Hall led a parish whose members included Abraham Lincoln and,
prior to the Civil War, Jefferson Davis. Reverend Hall read from the Episcopal The transcript of where Bryan Hall lived is incomplete, but it
burial service at President Lincoln’s White House funeral. In 1869 he moved provides information on the stability and instability of his life at St.
his family to New York when he became the Rector of Holy Trinity Church in Elizabeths.

Brooklyn. After Bryan finished school, he enrolled in the Navy for a short period
of service. It is unclear from his file what occurred to require hospitalization, but
Below: The Center Building, seen ca. 1900, was the design of the
following treatment in New York, Hall was sent to St. Elizabeths. Though the hospital’s first superintendent, Dr. Charles Nichols, and Thomas U.
hospital was founded to care for members of the military and the poor residents Walter, architect of the U.S. Capitol’s cast iron dome.
of Washington, St. Elizabeths accepted paying patients when room allowed.
Bryan Hall had served in the military, but his family paid for his care.
St. Elizabeths was a relatively young institution when Hall arrived. The hospital
admitted its first patient in 1855. Prior to its establishment, the capital’s mentally ill
were sent to the city jail; almshouses in Washington, Alexandria and Georgetown;
or hospitals primarily in Maryland. Historian Frank Millikan, in his study of St.
Elizabeths, wrote that doctors, public health officials, and city leaders saw the needs of
this segment of the population and sought to establish an asylum in Washington in the
mid-1830s. In 1838, Richard Lawrence, the would-be assassin of President Andrew
Jackson, was incarcerated in a Washington jail. Lawrence had been determined to
be a “lunatic.” In April of that year, the Committee on the District of Columbia
conducted a study to determine how quickly an asylum could be constructed for
those, like Lawrence, who were in prison and needed mental health care. Lawrence
would later be among the first patients admitted to St. Elizabeths in 1855.
Bear cubs were one of several animals in what Superintendent Godding called a “zoological garden.” For many years animals were considered part of the therapeutic
environment at the hospital. Some patients kept birds as pets, but a raccoon, monkeys, peacocks, parrots, dogs, horses, and a “wildcat” all lived at St. Elizabeths.
The committee proposed the construction of
a hospital for the 30 or 40 mentally ill District
residents as well as an estimated 120 people who
did not reside in the city but were ill, indigent, or
helpless. Many of the latter group were veterans
who descended upon the capital seeking “real
and imaginary claims upon the justice or
bounty of their country” and remained in the
city without any means of paying for medical
treatment. It was estimated that a hospital built
for these purposes would cost $75,000, but the
proposal ultimately went nowhere.
In the 1840s the issue resurfaced, and the
city considered converting the local jail into
an asylum, but the building was ultimately
seen as unsuitable for this purpose and it
was instead turned into a small infirmary.
Washington, until the founding of the
Government Hospital, would pay Maryland
to care for its mentally ill residents.
Momentum to establish a hospital grew again
in the 1850s, and Dr. Thomas Miller was one of
the key figures involved. Miller was president of
the board of health and founder of the infirmary
located in the former jail. He was concerned with
the current and future needs of the city’s mentally
ill residents. In 1852, their number in the District
of Columbia was low compared to the states,
but as Miller pointed out to the commissioner of
public buildings, who had written to the doctor
in January to express his own concerns about the
mentally ill in the city, it was likely to grow.
While Miller and others were in Washington
trying to establish a hospital, Dorothea Dix
48 Prologue
was delivering a memorial in Maryland on the
overcrowded conditions of its state hospital in
Baltimore. Dix had been advocating on behalf
of the mentally ill since the early 1840s after
witnessing the horrific conditions in which the
sick were housed—often ill-cared for in jails and
almshouses. She wrote impassioned memorials
to state governments for the removal of the
mentally ill from these institutions and argued
that asylums should be established for their
care. Her efforts led to the founding of public
hospitals in several states including New Jersey,
North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
Dix came to Washington in 1848 to work
toward the dedication of more than 12 million
acres of public land throughout the country on
which to establish a network of public asylums.
She spent several years in the city working for
this effort. Though it ultimately failed when
President Franklin Pierce vetoed a bill to
dedicate the land, Dix played a large part in the
establishment of the Government Hospital.
In her Maryland memorial Dix noted the
additional burden District residents placed
on the Baltimore institution because of the
capital’s lack of a hospital. Miller continued
his efforts to establish a hospital in the District
by writing to members of Congress following
his communications with the commissioner
of public buildings. In August, two members
of Congress, one member citing Miller’s
correspondence and letters to local papers from
city residents concerning Washington’s mentally
ill, introduced bills for the establishment of the
hospital. One bill called for an appropriation of
$100,000 for the construction of a hospital in
the capital for the care of both Washington and
the military’s mentally ill. It passed on August
31, 1852, and the Government Hospital for the
Insane was established.
Dr. Miller hoped to have a major role in
the operations of the institution but was
instead appointed to the hospital’s Board
of Visitors, where he served until 1860. Dix
helped select the site for the institution, and
when in Washington, she often stayed in a
room set aside for her in the superintendent’s
quarters. She remained involved with the
hospital until her death in 1887.
At the time of the hospital’s founding, an
era of reform was under way in the treatment
of those suffering from mental illnesses. The
introduction of moral treatment, or moral
therapy, was a great part of the movement.
For many newly founded asylums, including
the Government Hospital for the Insane, it
was a major component in patient care.
Moral treatment had its origins in England
and France and involved providing patients
with comfortable surroundings in which to
live, good food to eat, and caring for them with
kindness and respect. Patients were removed
from restraints and given freedom to enjoy
the outdoors. They worked on hospital farms
and gardens and were encouraged to exercise.
Patients were provided with entertainment in
the form of lantern slide shows and musical
performances. It was believed that if the ill were
Summer 2010
treated with dignity and removed from the
harsh conditions in which many of them lived,
they would have a better chance of recovery. The
asylum environment, including the buildings
patients lived in, and the views, walks, and
gardens that were often a part of the institution’s
landscape, were all part of the therapy.
The Government Hospital was designed
with moral treatment in mind. When the main
structure, known as the Center Building, was
finished in 1860, it housed patients primarily
in single rooms with sitting and dining rooms
on most wards. The hospital was not the first
institution to care for African Americans
suffering from mental illnesses, but it was the
first to build facilities for their care. The West
Lodge for African American men and the East
Lodge for African American women were
modest structures designed to house fewer
than 50 patients each. Until construction of
the lodges was completed—the West Lodge in
1856 and the East Lodge in 1861—black and
white patients lived in the Center Building.
The campus had a small zoo, pleasure walks,
a farm on which to work, and striking views
of downtown Washington, Alexandria, and the
Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
The founders of the Government Hospital
aspired to create an institution that would be
a leader in patient care and an example the
states could follow in the
operation of their public hospitals. Dr. Charles
H. Nichols, a 32-year-old assistant physician
at the Bloomingdale Asylum in New York,
was selected as the first superintendent at the
suggestion of Dix. Nichols was informed in
his letter of appointment from the secretary of
the interior, whose agency was in charge of the
hospital: “It is the desire of the President that the
proposed hospital shall be a model institution,
embracing all the improvements which science,
skill and experience have introduced into
modern establishments.” Nichols shared this
desire, as well as the hope the institution would
be a Washington landmark. In 1852 he reported
on the progress of construction and stated,
“The institution itself will be one of the most
conspicuous ornaments of the District, and will
be visible to more people, and from more points,
than any other structure, excepting, perhaps,
the Capitol, and the Washington Monument
when completed.”
Doctor Nichols and Dorothea Dix selected
the site for the hospital partially because of its
impressive view from and towards the nation’s
capital. In his 1853 State of the Union address,
President Pierce expressed his high hopes for
St. Elizabeths was one of the first hospitals to treat
African Americans suffering from mental
illness. The West Lodge was built to
house men.
the hospital. Once completed the institution,
Pierce said, “will prove an asylum indeed
to this most helpless and afflicted class of
sufferers, and stand as a noble monument of
wisdom and mercy.”
For many years the hospital achieved its goal
of being the leader in mental health care. The
first five of the institution’s superintendents were
elected president of the American Psychiatric
Association. Four superintendents dedicated
more than two decades of their lives to the
hospital. Dr. William Alanson White led the
hospital beginning in 1903. White moved
the institution out the era of moral treatment
with the introduction of psychotherapy
and psychology and promoted research and
scholarship among his medical staff. New
programs and departments including internal
medicine, occupational therapy, and social
work began. He established patient newspapers,
set up beauty parlors, and relieved overcrowding
with the construction of several buildings.
During White’s tenure the Government
Hospital for the Insane became officially known
as St. Elizabeths—the name for the land patent
upon which the institution was built. Beginning
as early as the Civil War, patients had been
referring to the hospital by that name. Doctors
Nichols and Godding had both expressed
displeasure at the wordy formal name and the
inclusion of the word insane. In his annual
reports to Congress, White repeatedly
requested a change. In the
1905 he wrote that patients’
families were including
self-addressed envelopes for
return correspondence so
that their association with the
hospital could be kept private.
“The official stationery of
the hospital goes all over the United States and
into thousands of homes, and contains printed
thereon reference to the one disease in the whole
category of human ailments about which people
are most sensitive. It is unnecessary that this
should be so, and it could easily be remedied.”
In 1916, St. Elizabeths Hospital became the
institution’s official name.
Following White’s death in 1937, Dr.
Winfred Overholser became superintendent
and remained at St. Elizabeths until his
retirement in 1962. During his tenure another
long list of invasive and noninvasive treatments
was implemented, including psychodrama,
art, dance, and group therapy and electroshock
and insulin shock therapy. During
Overholser’s tenure, tranquilizing drugs were
introduced. These medicines, along with a
1946 act transferring the care of members
of the military to Veterans Administration
facilities and the deinstitutionalization and
community health care movements, ultimately
led to a drastic reduction of the number of
people hospitalized at St. Elizabeths. More
Bryan Hall spent nearly his whole adult life at St.
Elizabeths. He saw the institution grow from a small
facililty to a large hospital with several thousand pa-
tients. This photo is from his patient file.
50 Prologue
than 7,000 people received inpatient care
during the 1940s. In the 1980s, around 1,200
patients were hospitalized. Currently there are
only a few hundred.
Along with the accomplishments and
milestones in the development and history
of the hospital and the treatment of mental
illness, there also were failings. As any student
of the history of mental health care knows,
or any person or family member of someone
undergoing treatment understands, invasive
therapies intended to ameliorate symptoms
and treat disease sometimes wound up
doing more harm than good. Though the
founders of hospitals like St. Elizabeths
had noble intentions and designed their
institutions with a patient’s benefit in mind,
hospital life often did not live up to their
ideals. By the time Bryan Hall died in 1923,
St. Elizabeths had been investigated three
times for mismanagement and charges of
patient abuse. Three years after his death, it
was investigated again.
Above: As early as the 1880s, hydrotherapy in the form of
Originally planned with a belief in a high continuous baths, showers, and wraps was used to treat
rate of curability, St. Elizabeths for many, as patients at St. Elizabeths.
illustrated by Hall, became a long-term care
facility. Many admitted in 1855 remained
hospitalized until their deaths in the early
years of the 20th century. On February
21, 1855, Mary E. Walker became the first
female patient at the hospital. Walker was 23
and suffering from dementia assumed to be
caused by epilepsy. She died at the hospital
on January 6, 1893. Patient number 53 was
Nickolas Sewell, one of the first African
American patients admitted. Sewell was a
resident of Washington who lived in the
West Lodge until his death in 1906. A 1905
note in his file stated, “There has been no
change in this man’s condition in years . . .
has some harmless delusions. He was one of
the first patients admitted to this Hospital
March 12th 1855.”
Long-term patients like Sewell and Hall, along
with changing admission categories that allowed
more patients, contributed to overcrowding.
This was a problem that plagued the hospital
well into the 20th century. Dayrooms and
Summer 2010

Below: This ca. 1905 picture illustrates a single room
occupied by a paying patient in the Center Building.
During his nearly 50 years at St. Elizabeths, Bryan Hall
lived on several different wards in the Center Building and,
according to his file, amassed a collection of books and
newspapers.
corridors served as bedrooms, and rooms
intended for one patient were often occupied
by three. In 1877 there were 770 patients, but
the hospital could comfortably house only 563.
In his annual report that year, Dr. Nichols
pleaded with the government that it owed
proper accommodations to the many veterans
living at the hospital. “Duty to the defenders of
the country suffering from the most grievous
affliction to which flesh is heir, and to the poor
insane of the seat of the National Government
suffering from a like affliction, to whose care
the country is pledged by several statutes and
the practice of more than a quarter of a century,
proper pride in the standing and influence, and
justice to the persons intrusted [sic] with the
arduous responsibilities of its administration,
require that the improvement contemplated by
this estimate should be undertaken with the least
practicable delay.” His appeal was unsuccessful.
In the early 1870s, two additions to the male
side of the Center Building had been built
but quickly became inadequate to meet the
hospital’s needs. In 1875, Nichols proposed
building a separate facility with its own
grounds for female patients. At the time, the
movements of both sexes outside the Center
Building were restricted as efforts were made
to keep them separate. Because of the greater
number of male patients, the outdoor areas
females were allowed to exercise in and enjoy
were greatly reduced. The perfect setting for a
women’s hospital, Nichols believed, was across
the public road that passed the hospital. Plans
for the new building had already been drawn
up by Architect of the Capitol Edward Clark.
The three-story structure would have housed
women in dormitories and single rooms.
It was never built. Two years following his
request, Nichols left the hospital after 25
years and returned to New York to run the
Bloomingdale Asylum.
Following Nichols’ departure for New
York, Dr. William Whitney Godding
became superintendent. Godding had more
success than his predecessor with building
new patient residences. Nearly every year of
the 22 years Godding led the institution, a
new building was under construction. Where
Nichols had added on to the Center Building
the few times he had been successful in
appropriating funds, Godding built “detached
buildings,” as he called them. Following
his death in 1899, an enormous building
campaign was initiated by his successor, Dr.
Alonzo Richardson. Eleven patient buildings
were built, and the hospital expanded to the
east side of the public road. The new section
of the hospital became known as the East
Campus and the older, the West Campus.
According to available records, Bryan Hall
primarily lived in the Center Building in
wards that included other paying patients. He
also resided in the Relief Building, one of the
first of Godding’s detached buildings erected
with the small congressional appropriation
for their construction. Toward the end of
his life, Hall was treated in R Building, one
of the new buildings on the East Campus.
Hall’s file only includes notations of where he
resided beginning in the mid-1880s.
Patient records, if they exist, offer a
glimpse of a person’s life, even if the file
consists only of a single letter asking about
an old friend, a discharge notice from the
military, or a grandchild checking to see if the
grandfather they never met really had been
a patient at the hospital. Letters were often
addressed to the superintendent, and he was
often the one who responded. Beginning in
the early 20th century, when White became
superintendent, more detailed records,
including individual medical histories, were
collected. Some 19th-century patient files
are more detailed than others and contain a
good bit of correspondence and information
on an individual’s life at the hospital. Bryan
Hall’s file, prior to White’s arrival, provides
details of his stay in letters. For other
patients, however, the first notations on
their condition begin years or decades after
their admittance. Patient Susan Spalding is
one example. A note in her file states, “This
patient was admitted August 12, 1861.
Physician’s notes began in 1903.”
According to Bryan Hall’s record, he read
Prologue 51
a great deal and amassed a large number of
newspapers in his room. He wore a collar
and tie every day, which an attendant helped
him to put on. Hall ate breakfast in his room
instead of with other patients, and he delivered
newspapers at the hospital for a time. It was
remarked that his sense of humor could be
embarrassing for others. On one occasion,
while outside on the grounds, he saw an
attendant and remarked loudly, “There goes
one of the ugliest men in Washington.” Hall’s
file is three folders thick. It includes letters,
charts, and notes by physicians.
To protect privacy, only patient files that are 75
years or older are available to the public, and not
all patient files were retained. The files examined
for this article were more observational in terms
of the patient’s health than deeply personal,
though one may consider reading someone
else’s letters or a nurse’s description of a patient’s
habits, hygiene, or day to day life as an intrusion
into another’s private information.
The first patient record available belongs to
the third person admitted to the institution,
Robert A. Hawke. The ward notes reveal that
he had parole, often meaning freedom to enjoy
the hospital’s grounds. Patients were frequently
accompanied by attendants while outside, but
some patients were allowed to leave the grounds
unattended. Hawke primarily lived in the
Center Building but was transferred to the Toner
Building, an infirmary built in 1889, where he
“died very easy at 3:40PM 6-14-07.” Following
his death, a cousin wrote expressing sadness and
guilt over both the death and not being able to
afford to collect the body personally.
Hall, like Hawke, had parole and seems to
have enjoyed a great amount of freedom. For 12
years he worked on the hospital trade wagon,
which often required daily trips to the city to
pick up groceries and other items. On Sundays
he worshipped at St. Mark’s Church on Capitol
Hill. Hall often ventured without an attendant
into Washington, where he sometimes went to
the theater. In 1921 he was hit by a streetcar
while returning from a trip to the city and
fractured his leg. Hall enjoyed baseball games
and visited friends in Richmond, Virginia, and
52 Prologue
family in New York. In 1876 his father wrote
to Dr. Nichols to see if it was possible for Bryan
to travel to the Centennial, presumably the
celebration held in Philadelphia, and in 1893
he asked if Bryan could attend the World’s
Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Whether
Bryan attended either is unclear, but on October
2, 1893, he was away from the hospital and
wrote to his doctor, “Dr. Witmer, I have $30
over and may stop over Chicago day on Oct
9th and again I may be back next Saturday.
Yours truly, BH Hall.” If Hall had been at the
exposition on the ninth, he would have been
one of over 700,000 people who attended and
marked the anniversary of the city’s 1871 fire
on Chicago Day.
Family and friends wrote to Bryan and often
to the superintendent to inquire about his health.
They wanted to express their appreciation for the
good care he received and to know if there was
any improvement. His sister wrote in 1921, “I
know from my own hospital years that patients’
families are sometimes more troublesome
than patients. Be assured this member of one
appreciates your care of our handicapped
relative.” Relatives visited and sent him a bike
for Christmas, magazine subscriptions, and
clothes. His stepmother wrote to ask if she
could send a reading lamp, but did not want
to interfere with hospital policies by doing so.
Reverend Hall wrote to check on an attendant
Bryan said was mistreating him. One family
friend inquired about which sports would
be appropriate for Bryan. “We asked many
questions last spring about lawn tennis. That
seems to me a complicated game and to require
many companions. . . . Archery might be just
the thing, if you pronounce it safe.” Following
Hall’s death in 1923, his sister wrote to his
doctors concerning his belongings, the funeral
held at St. Mark’s, and to share, “Bryan’s body
lies at the foot of my father’s grave, a place I
have always kept for him.”
Hall’s file and St. Elizabeths’ records
were acquired by the National Archives
in the 1970s. Archives staff first examined
the institution’s historic materials in the
1930s. The collection provides a wealth of
information on the hospital but tells only
part of the institution’s history. Some of
the first indications of the vast amount of
material saved by the hospital come from
reports written by Oliver W. Holmes and
Herman Kahn, who went to St. Elizabeths
in 1938 to assess its historic material.
Holmes and Kahn found over 2,332
linear feet of records covering all aspects of
St. Elizabeths’ history from its inception up
to 1938, when they visited the hospital. The
records were kept in at least five different
locations. Some were stored in a systematic
manner, while others were kept “in generally
unsuitable quarters and subject to dust and
fire” or in “five large barrels crammed full
of records which have been flung into it
in a helter-skelter manner.” Kahn did not
recommend that any of the files he studied
during this preliminary assessment be
transferred to the National Archives, while
Holmes suggested acquiring only 60 linear
feet of records. This represents a little less than
4 percent of the records Holmes examined,
but it appears to be the core of the holdings
on the administration of the hospital. Holmes
noted in his 1938 report that the hospital “is
rather proud of its older records and I believe
the matter of transfer might well rest until it
is suggested by them. Meantime, the records
will be open to legitimate inquirers.”
The National Archives officially acquired the
records in 1973. In early 1968, Dr. David Musto,
a special assistant to the director of the National
Institute of Mental Health, began working with
the hospital staff to provide a safe and central
location for the records that remained there. He
stated in a letter to the acting superintendent, Dr.
David Harris, that he believed “St. Elizabeths
may become the first mental hospital to fully
organize its records for the benefit of social
historians.” Correspondence from this period
indicates that the hospital collected and took
inventory of the majority of the records that
remained on campus. St. Elizabeths established
a Committee on Historical Material, which
worked with NIMH and the National Archives
to turn over the records.
Summer 2010
 Throughout its history, St. Elizabeths has been associated with a long list
of well-known and accomplished people. In the hospital’s early years, the
Board of Visitors was filled with prominent Washingtonians and nationally
significant individuals. William Wilson Corcoran, the millionaire financier,
philanthropist, and arts patron served on the hospital’s earliest board.
Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian, and Howard University
founder Gen. Oliver O. Howard, were on the board together in the 1870s.
The hospitalization of some high-profile patients is well known. Newspapers
and several books have covered poet Ezra Pound’s nearly 13-year stay after he
was charged with treason for radio broadcasts he made in Italy during World
War II. During his years at St. Elizabeths he continued to write and was visited
by many well-known writers, including Elizabeth Bishop, whose poem “Visits
to St. Elizabeths” reflected on her trips to the hospital. Simon Winchester’s
1998 book, The Professor and the Madman, tells the story of Dr. William Chester
Minor, who contributed thousands of entries to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Minor was first treated at St. Elizabeths in 1868 and again in 1910. Minor spent
much of the intervening years in a mental hospital in England, where he was
confined after murdering a man in London in 1872.
Other stories of patients have made the news and then faded from public
view. Among these is sculptor Ernest Durig, who was hospitalized at St.
Elizabeths beginning in 1958. The Swiss-born artist studied with August
Rodin as a young man and later become a well-known sculptor. In 1932,
he presented President Herbert Hoover with a seven-foot-high plaster
bust of George Washington. He created busts of President Harry Truman,
Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selasse, Will Rogers, and Benito Mussolini.
Durig had been living in Washington for several years when he became ill. In
1958 he was discovered unconscious and suffering from malnutrition. Shortly
afterwards he was admitted to St. Elizabeths and remained hospitalized there
until his death in 1962. Following his death, hundreds of drawings thought to
be the work of Rodin and other artists were found in his belongings stored at
the hospital. Major newspapers covered the find. Initially thought to be fakes,
the Rodins were authenticated by Sotheby’s, and an auction was planned with
the proceeds to pay for Durig’s care at St. Elizabeths. Two months before the
auction, Sotheby’s cancelled the sale because the works were “of doubtful
authenticity.” Durig and the art again made the papers. In June 1965, Life
magazine covered the story and reported that Durig had been forging Rodin’s
work for years. According to the magazine, Durig became “the most prolific
faker of Rodin drawings anywhere in the world,” and his work filled galleries
and collections around the globe.
Durig sought the limelight throughout his career and boasted of his
relationship with Rodin. Sadly, in the end he was better known for his
rendition of Rodin’s work instead of his own.

Charles Dewing, a records appraisal specialist, The records of St. Elizabeths Hospital thousands of pages of documents, there
met with then Superintendent Dr. Luther provide a glimpse into the operation of a are countless lives to discover and stories
Robinson and staff members at length to go over historic hospital and the lives of people to be told.
which records would be of interest to the Archives. who passed through its doors. In the © 2010 by Frances M. McMillen and James S. Kane

It was decided in an agreement with the National

Archives that only a sampling of patient case files
from 1900 forward would be kept as permanent
records. Starting with the year 1900, the samples
would consist of case files of patients admitted
to the hospital in years divisible by five (1900,
1905, 1910, etc.). Dewing assembled 120 cubic
feet of material for transfer. Many historic items
that remained at the hospital were put on display
in St. Elizabeths’ museum, which operated for
nearly 20 years, but closed in the mid-1990s. The
hospital recently opened a new museum in which
historic photographs, furniture, and artifacts
highlight St. Elizabeths’ 155 years in operation.
To learn more about:
• Famous patients at St. Eliz-
abeths Hospital, go to www.
archives.gov/publications/prologue/
2007/summer/.
• St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, go to www.archives.gov/
arc, then type in “St. Elizabeth’s Hospital” (with
the quotations marks), then click Search.
• The Department of Homeland Security, go to
www.dhs.gov.
Note on Sources
Record Group 418, Records of St. Elizabeths Hospital, provided a great deal of the source material for this article.
Several other collections at the National Archives have information on St. Elizabeths, including Record Group 48,
Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior; Record Group 90, Records of the Public Health Service; and
Record Group 66, Records of the Commission of Fine Arts. Archivist Bill Creech, who oversees Record Group 418,
provided background on the organization and acquisition of the collection, as well as spent much appreciated time
talking about the records during the writing of this article.
The bulk of the information on the development and early history of the hospital was compiled during the
writing of Frances McMillen’s master’s thesis, “Ministering to a Mind Diseased: Landscape, Architecture and Moral
Treatment at St. Elizabeths Hospital, 1852–1905” (University of Virginia, 2008). Drs. Suryabala Kanhouwa and
Jogues Prandoni, and Velora Jernigan-Pedrick, and the hospital library keep St. Elizabeths’ history alive and were
wonderful resources.
Secondary sources that provided invaluable information on the hospital, architectural history of American
mental institutions, and the history of mental health
care include Frank Millikan’s “Wards of the Nation:
The Making of St. Elizabeths Hospital, 1852– Authors
1920” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, Frances M. McMillen
1989 ); Carla Yanni’s The Architecture of Madness: earned her master’s degree in
Insane Asylums in the United States (Minneapolis:
architectural history from the
University of Minnesota Press, 2007); and Gerald
University of Virginia in 2008.
Grob’s Mental Institutions in America: Social
She is currently working as a
Policy in America to 1875 (New York: Free Press,
1973); The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care historian in Washington, D.C.
of America’s Mentally Ill (New York: Free Press,
1994); and Mental Illness and American Society, James S. Kane serves on the
1875–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Historic Preservation Review
Press, 1983). In addition to the collections at the Board for the District of Columbia
National Archives, St. Elizabeths’ annual reports, and works for a construction
historic newspapers, and congressional documents firm whose expertise includes historic preservation
were valuable sources of material. projects.

Institutional Memory Prologue 53