Vermont Eugenics
Emily Proctor Eggleston Eugenics Survey of Vermont Sponsor
Trustee of Kurn Hattin Homes for Children
The original financier and sponsor of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont, Emily Proctor Eggleston died April 24, 1964. The Kurn Hattin Bulletin publication of the period recorded the following eulogy:
In Memoriam – Mrs. G.H. Eggleston Berkeley California, Kurn Hattin Incorporator and friend for many years.
A fundraising brochure for Kurn Hattin Homes for Children lists as a Kurn Hattin trustee, and board officer, Mrs. G.H. Eggleston, (wife of George Harry) otherwise known as Emily Proctor Eggleston. She was granddaughter of Vermont Gov. Redfield Proctor and daughter of Vermont Governor Fletcher Dutton Proctor.
Letter: H. F. Perkins to Dr. T. J. Allen, January 1926 Superintendent, State School for Feeble Minded Brandon, Vermont and member, VCCL Committee on the Handicapped with Kurn Hattin Homes for Children Director, William Mayo, chairman of the Committee.
"You will, be pleased to learn that Mrs. Emily P. Eggleston of Berkeley, California, who is the donor of the $5,000 for the years study, has offered to contribute another $2500 to be available June 1 for this same year's work. It may not be necessary or wise to use it all, but I submit the following recommendations upon which I should very much appreciate your opinion, i.e. that as much as is necessary of the additional $2500 be expended for a furthering of the purpose of the survey in the following two ways ..." [UVM Prof. Henry F. Perkins]
Mrs. Eggleston was a Vermont Children’s Aid Society backer who funded the original $5,000 through UVM President and financial middleman Guy Bailey, to Professor Henry Perkins which initially funded the startup of the Vermont Eugenics Survey that resulted in state sanctioned eugenical sterilization law courtesy of Emily Procter Eggleston and her progressive era noblesse oblige, assisted by the efforts of the VCCL Committee on the Handicapped chairman, Kurn Hattin director William Mayo.
Vermont Eugenics Survey Exhibition Financing
Kurn Hattin Director W.I. Mayo
A March 2, 1931 letter from Kurn Hattin Homes for Children director, and Chairman of Vermont Commission on Country Life, Committee on the Care of the Handicapped, William Mayo to University of Vermont Professor, and director of the Vermont Eugenics Survey, Professor Henry Perkins, regarding the 'White House Conference,' and monies donated by VCCL study author Sarah H. Spencer: Possible Objectives in Social Endeavor for Vermont, for an impending eugenics exhibition.
Kurn Hattin Director William Irving Mayo
Eugenics Survey of Vermont: Handicapped Committee Report Summary
Kurn Hattin Homes director and chairman of the Committee on the Handicapped, William I. Mayo sends a letter dated May 9, 1930 to UVM Prof. Henry F. Perkins, and Executive Secretary, Vermont Commission on Country Life, chaired by Vermont Governor and Kurn Hattin Vice-President, John Weeks, ultimately recommending "suitable" changes to Vermont social welfare legislation, including sterilization because:
We lack many of the excellent measures [eugenical sterilization] which other states have worked out for handling situations which are similar to ours. .... such legislation would be help in the solution of our many difficulties. .... We wish to express our appreciation of the splendid cooperation we had from the Executive Secretary Dr. Perkins, from the director of the Survey, Dr. Taylor and from all the Vermont public officials who have cooperated so magnificently to make this report possible. Signed, W. I. Mayo, Jr.
'At the first meeting of the Committee on the Human Factor of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, it would seem that there were several distinct problems to be studied. .... In order to get down to a practical working basis it was decided that the committee subdivide itself into several smaller committees and that each of the smaller committees take up one of the specific problems to be studied. One of the groups into which the committee divided itself was known as the Subcommittee on the Handicapped. This subcommittee added several members each of whom was well equipped to assist in this problem. The membership of the subcommittee as it met to consider this report was as follows: W.I. Mayo Jr., Director Kurn Hattin Homes; Miss L. Josephine Webster, Secretary Vermont Children's Aid Society; Dr. E.A. Stanley, Superintendent State Hospital for the Insane; H.W. Slocum, Superintendent Tuberculosis Association; Prof. K.R.B. Flint, Norwich University; Miss Anna McMahon, Department of Public Welfare; Dr. T.J. Allen, Superintendent Brandon School for the Feeble-Minded; Miss Mary McKeogh, Rutland Reformatory; Mrs. Henry B. Shaw, Director Vermont Children's Aid Society.'
The Human Factor Committee on the Handicapped Report Summary
Social Quarantine
By Kurn Hattin President - Burlington Mayor W.J. Van Patten
The Last Waif: The following is an extract from a letter written by the Hon. William J. Van Patten, President of the Kurn Hattin Homes Farm School at Westminster, Vermont, to the author, in answer to a question as to the results of the New England experiment. The Kurn Hattin institution cares for children from all over New England, but receives most of its charges from the congested districts of the city of Boston.
President Van Patten writes: "It has been a surprise to me ever since we started this work to find that the boys who were taken from the worst homes, and who had, until they were rescued, been under deplorable conditions, were readily changed to thoroughly good lads, with no trace of the evils that came from their former environment. This certainly carries out your thought in respect to social quarantine, and shows that, properly done, it can be made very effective."
His activities include both the church and the political fields. He has twice been mayor of Burlington, was the first president of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, (founded by KHH founder Charles Dickinson) and is still a director; is president of the Congregational Club of Western Vermont, as well as of the Kurn Hattin Farm School. But Mr. Van Patten's evidence is that of all who have entered personally into the sympathies of unfortunates, especially by the way of giving their children the means of proper training, and they are as one in the belief that thorough measures, which would effect a Perfect Social Quarantine, would rid society entirely of the "hopelessly submerged" class, and sift out of its present mass the diseased and incompetent, who should have the care of an asylum instead of the curse of a prison.
Kurn Hattin Asylum for Inebriates
Bi-Chloride of Gold Cure for Drunkenness
Vermont Phoenix, March 1893 - The Thompson Cure for Drunkenness. The plans which Mr. Dickinson is carrying out in connection with his Berkeley Temple work here in Westminster promise to assume a very definite shape this season. Another of the groups of Berkeley Temple homes is soon to be opened for the cure of drunkenness and narcotism according to the system of Dr. Mark M. Thompson of Chicago. Mr. Dickinson has spent much time in investigating the modern cures for drunkenness, and he is satisfied that the Thompson Gold Cure is far superior to any other. It combines the most approved scientific methods of treatment with pronounced moral and social influences; and the efficiency and permanency of the cures are unquestioned.
The Westminster home is to be in a special sense, a Vermont institution. At present the work is carried on temporarily in the Harriet Goodridge home. There are already several patients. The permanent institution is to be in the George Pierce house, which is magnificently located for the purpose, and which is to be greatly enlarged and elegantly furnished. The president of the sanatorium is to be Mayor W. J. Van Patten of Burlington, one of Vermont's most influential business men. The treasurer is to be Stephen M. Nutting of Westminster. Among the directors are to be such men as George E. Crowell of Brattleboro, Rev. A. B. Dascomb of Westminster and C. E. Osgood of Bellows Falls, Among the contributors and supporters are C. W. Brownell, Secretary of the State of Vermont, and C. P. Smith, president of the Burlington Savings Bank, and many other men, well-known throughout the state.
"We do not treat saloonkeepers who intend to go back to the work of the making of drunkards. ....The only place provided for such men is the region presided over by his Satanic Majesty." [Mark M. Thompson MD]
The home is to be under the direction of Dr. J. Oscar Garmon of Chicago, who was for a long time associated with Dr. Thompson in the National Bichloride of Gold Institute as medical director. The doctor was a Union soldier, and carries the marks of honor received on the battlefield. He is a graduate of the medical department of Michigan university; has had nearly 20 years experience in general practice, and comes highly recommended as a successful Christian physician, He will give a portion of his time to outside practice in and about Westminster, The institution, with such an influential backing, and with such a praiseworthy object, cannot fail to be an honor and a blessing to the town and state.
Medical Quackery: Divine Providence and Strychnine
St. Joseph's Orphanage
The Eugenics Survey of Vermont
After a violation of protocol by eugenics survey, Handicapped Committee field worker, Mary V. Bolton, Dr. Henry Taylor, director of the Vermont Commission on Country Life written by New England Kurn Hattin Homes director William Mayo regarding the Reverend Bishop Joseph J. Rice, Burlington Diocese, who was incensed by his belief that Mayo's Eugenic Survey of Vermont Sub-Committee on the Handicapped for the VCCL Committee on the Human Factor was intent upon a "critical study of institutions" including St. Joseph's Orphanage. Mayo states:
As I am the head of one of the institutions [Kurn Hattin] in the State, I am sure that I would never have consented to any such study being made. ....I believe that this paragraph should be changed as it would cause entirely the wrong impression to reach the Bishop and might make considerable trouble. ....They are concerned with it only in so far as they have admitted children from the communities which we have studied. In so far as they have done this I do not see why they should not be perfectly willing to have these children studied. They have really assumed public responsibility and for this reason should offer no objection in any way to a study of this kind. Very truly yours, W.I. Mayo, Jr., Director
One wonders, if a so-called critical study of Vermont's many public and private institutions for children had been conducted at the time, how might history have been made different in regard to Vermont's vulnerable and marginalized children and its institutions like Kurn Hattin Homes for Children and St. Joseph's Orphanage?
But as Mayo so conveniently states that as the head of one of the child welfare institutions in the state, he is sure that he would have 'never consented' to any such study being made. The self-serving agenda for his revealing admission is quite clear.
Now, almost 100 years later, Mayo's confession has proven prophetic.
St. Joseph's Orphanage: Kurn Hattin Director - Critical Study of Institutions