Vermont Eugenics
Eugenics Survey of Vermont: Vermont Commission on Country Life
The Committee on the 'Handicapped' and Kurn Hattin
There are many historical documents in multiple Vermont archives that relate specifically to Kurn Hattin Homes for Children in Westminster, Vermont. Those documents reveal how Kurn Hattin Homes not only participated in the Eugenics Survey of Vermont but were also instrumental in the development and continuation of the ESV, through intentional obfuscating efforts by Prof. Henry Perkins of UVM, Guy Bailey, UVM President and also Kurn Hattin Homes President, and the executive director of Kurn Hattin Homes, William I. Mayo, Jr. who was also Chairman of the Committee on the Handicapped for the sub-committee of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, chaired by Vermont Governor John Weeks, and also a Kurn Hattin president, and its sub-committee, The Committee on the Human Factor, which was chaired by Middlebury College president, Paul Moody.
"In 1927, Professor Perkins obtained funds to organize a comprehensive rural survey, which became the Vermont Commission on Country Life. Between 1928 to 1931, the Eugenics Survey conducted research for the Commission's "Committee on the Human Factor" and promoted eugenics objectives in the VCCL final report, Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future (1931). During this period, Professor Perkins suspended the campaign for sterilization to avoid controversy or arouse suspicion of the Country Life Commission's state-wide survey of rural conditions and needs. Vermont's "dependent, delinquent, and deficient" families, whose problems Perkins had attributed to "bad heredity," were recast by the VCCL as "The Handicapped" and studied by a special sub-committee of the Committee on the Human Factor." Eugenics Survey of Vermont: An Overview
Committee on the "Handicapped" Kurn Hattin Director William Mayo, Chairman
Kurn Hattin's direct and zealous involvement with the Eugenics Survey of Vermont led to the seminal Vermont Commission on Country Life, (VCCL) document: Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future (1931) that in part resulted in the passing of Vermont's sterilization law in 1931, two years before a human sterilization law was signed into law in Nazi Germany, then "enlightened" by U.S. state sanctioned sterilization laws, when Adolph Hitler assumed absolute power over the Reich Chancellery.
Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future
Underpinned by the work of American eugenicists, a once disgruntled corporal in the German army, Adolph Hitler proudly told his comrades how closely he followed American eugenic legislation.
"Now that we know the laws of heredity, it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
If the goal of the Vermont Eugenics Truth and Reconciliation Commission is truly: “Establishing a public record of institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination in Vermont that has been caused or permitted by State laws and policies.” then is it not incumbent upon the State of Vermont to ensure that the factual and historic record of New England Kurn Hattin Homes for Children is written into that record?
'The Governor Was There'
'I believe it would be to the Governor's advantage to do this'
A letter from Kurn Hattin Homes for Children (where UVM President and financial middleman for the Eugenics Survey of Vermont, Guy Bailey is President of the institution) director W. Irvine Mayo to UVM Professor Henry F. Perkins, Executive Secretary of the Vermont Commission on Country Life, Director of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont and President of the American Eugenics Society. Mayo writes to Perkins to discuss the active roles of the Vermont Department of Education, the State Board of Health, the Public Welfare Department, and also the roles of Governor John Weeks and Governor Stanley Wilson in enacting Vermont state sanctioned eugenics practices and the passing of a human sterilization law.
'The Governor was there [Stanley C. Wilson] all the time practically and I think he was the one who actually put it over, although of course he had assistance from the State Department of Education and from the State Board of Health as well as from the Public Welfare Department. If we are going to do anything in this State the Governor will have to back it as the other one [John E. Weeks, Vice-President Kurn Hattin Homes for Children] did. I believe it would be to the Governor's advantage to do this and believe he will if you approach him in the right way.'
Kurn Hattin Homes for Children Director William Mayo - Vermont Eugenics Legislation
Report on Mental Deficiency
Committee on the Care of the Handicapped - Rural Survey of Vermont
Written by Dr. T. J. Allen, member of the Committee on the Handicapped, which was chaired by New England Kurn Hattin Homes for Children Director, William Mayo. A proposal and justification for human sterilization in Vermont. As a result of their report and the efforts, a eugenical sterilization bill: "An Act for Human Betterment by Voluntary Sterilization - Act 174" was signed into law in 1931 by Stanley Wilson who served as lieutenant governor and succeeded Kurn Hattin Vice-President and former Vermont Governor, John E. Weeks.
"I call your attention to the fact that the numbers of our insane and feeble-minded is constantly increasing with a corresponding increase in burden cast upon the communities and the State. We are doing our duty about the care of these unfortunates, but practically nothing to prevent a further increase in their number. Medical science points out one definite course which has been successfully followed in other states... recommend the enactment of a properly safeguarded sterilization law. You will do well to give this matter serious consideration.” Inaugural Address, Gov. Wilson, 1931
Sterilization
Recent years have witnessed a lessening emphasis upon solely eugenic methods whereby it was hoped that mental deficiency could be stamped out by one fell stroke such as lifelong segregation or sterilization. In the early part of the present century there may have been some reason for such an objective in view of the understanding of the problem quite generally accepted at that period.
Again I would urge the legislature to carefully and impartially consider the subject of sterilization as a part of a Statewide program. In doing so, this measure is not recommended as a panacea, or as any substitute for other methods generally accepted and heretofore mentioned. We should not delude ourselves regarding this point, it has limited rather than general or wholesale application, and of course must be properly safeuarded. We can never supplant the service that must be rendered through the institutions, public schools and community supervision, but it can supplement and augment in a very definite way the work of all of these, especially when they fail to function eugenically and socially. The results achieved in states where sterilization laws are administered bear witness to this conclusion. Therefore, it is recommended especially for the following reasons:
1. As supplementary to the work of an institution, enabling the safe discharge of many inoffensive adults, as well as many individuals socially adequate except from the eugenic standpoint, as they would be inadequate parents for which latter reason alone they are being held at public expense and to their own detriment. There comes a time when the institution ceases to be of service to such individuals and they occupy the beds that should be used for younger and more trainable subjects. Such legislation should aid greatly in administering the institution as a training school according to the original creating act and prevent it from becoming an "asylum" or "home" for custodial subjects. It [sterilization] is another "tool" to be utilized.
2. It would justify the marriage of many individuals suitable for it, if they could be prevented from having children. Marriage in many such cases serves as a stabilizing agent and brings about a satisfactory adjustment, but if capable of bearing children it has to be discouraged or denied and unnatural standards must thereby be imposed - standards which they cannot, in the natural order of things respect.
3. Many mentally defective individuals are unsuited for parenthood for other reasons than for those strictly eugenic. They do not make adequate parents, and their own subnormality creates a social stigma for a child.
4. Such legislation would be applicable to conspicuously subnormal married women who are giving birth to defective children. Such children in certain instances are committed to an institution, but the mother is left in the home to rear others. Many times this is her only social misdemeanor and could she be deprived of ability for parenthood she might well continue as a wife and home keeper.
The first U.S. sterilization law was passed by Indiana in 1907 [Vermont first passed a forced sterilization law in 1912, which was vetoed]. From then until 1926, 23 States had passed such laws. The constitutionality of such legislation was established by the United States Supreme Court in 1927 by an opinion on the Virginia statute given by Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in part as follows:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. ….Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
A Statewide program of this nature is a goal toward which we can direct our combined efforts. The degree of its realization will depend upon public sentiment, interest and understanding, conditioned by the ability of responsible officials. It may not be the ultimate plan, but it is the best we can at present formulate. Any program must be modified from time to time as new knowledge is acquired. Public disinterestedness must be replaced by interest in the efforts recommended and attempted. It will require team work on the part of all. It therefore becomes a cooperative enterprise, in which all available resources must be used. This program is offered in the belief that Vermont has a vital need for a definite policy on a large scale and it is presented with the hope that it may unite us in developing such a Statewide endeavor.
VCCL Committee on the Handicapped - Report on Mental Deficiency, Dr. T.J. Allen
Social Experiments in Vermont Eugenics
Kurn Hattin Home for Boys - Vermont Industrial School
In 1907, Joseph M. Barss became the sixth Superintendent of the Vermont Industrial School in Vergennes. Prior to becoming director at the Industrial School, Barss was the assistant superintendent of the Kurn Hattin Home in Westminster, and Saxtons River, Vermont.
During his years as superintendent, 1907-1917, the institution underwent significant alteration, from an institution based on an environmentalist theory of delinquency to one that embraced hereditary explanations for delinquency and helped foster the early eugenics movement, which was physically symbolized by the constructed segregation of the cottage plan. Instead of a congregate system which housed all inmates in a single building, the new Industrial School was built on what was known during the eugenics period as the cottage plan.
Was Joseph Barss’ progressive era philosophy and training on child rearing (including corporal punishment, whippings, handcuffs, and solitary confinement) developed during his period of employment at Kurn Hattin Homes for Children? Did he fashioned a template at that Westminster Vermont residential school for boys, which he would later utilize to realize his progressive period social vision by putting it to practice at the Vermont Industrial School? Kurn Hattin purported to raise responsible children by putting them to daily labor on a rural commercial working dairy farm (as did the Industrial School) while utilizing the “Cottage” or “Semi-Cottage” plan of institutionalization while subject to a rigorous religious upbringing, including the Christian Endeavor Society, co-founded by Kurn Hattin founder and pastor Charles Albert Dickinson.
The president of the Christian Endeavor Society was William J. Van Patten, Burlington, Vermont mayor, Vermont senate president, and president of Kurn Hattin Homes from its founding in 1894 until his death in 1920. The president’s role was assumed then by Guy W. Bailey, Vermont Secretary of State, president of UVM and patriarch of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont under the operation of Professor of Zoology, Henry Perkins, of the University of Vermont who led and organized the Vermont Eugenics Survey through the work of the Survey’s “Field Workers,”and the Vermont Children’s Aid Society, all closely associated with Kurn Hattin Homes, and who also participated in the Vermont Commission on Country Life, Committee on the Handicapped.
UVM President, Guy Bailey, whose name was recently stricken from the former Bailey Howe Library because of his unconscionable role in manifesting Vermont’s Eugenic Survey, was succeeded as Kurn Hattin Homes president by Vermont Governor, John Weeks who also chaired the Eugenics Survey’s Vermont Commission on Country Life and who was also a trustee of the Vermont Industrial School, which was later renamed in his dubious honor: The Weeks School – a more gentle euphemism for the Vermont Reform School. Kurn Hattin staff and residents recall Weeks School incarceration being utilized as a threat to control isolated marginaized children at Kurn Hattin: "We'll send you to Vergennes!" The terror that was instilled in those five words was, as intended, quite effective.
Barss faith, which was stretched over the years and then constricted to only those individuals that he believed were worthy of redemption. Despite his early optimism, Barss became instrumental in helping to pave the way for a later, aggressive eugenics movement in Vermont. Over the course of Barss’ tenure at the Vermont Industrial School, the number of inmates who were labeled mentally deficient increased about tenfold even though entire population of the school only doubled. This can be attributed to the popularity of eugenics and Dr. Sears’ mental testing. Eugenics era Psychometric testing was also universally utilized at the Kurn Hattin school to test its institutionalized children.
The Vermont Industrial School diaries describe Barss telephoning the police to remove a boy from his family and put him in lockup for failure to return to the Industrial School. Inmates were also restrained and given corporal punishments for some infractions. For example, one boy who was rude to an officer “got a terrible whipping by Mr. Barss, after which he was handcuffed and put in solitary confinement. Another laughed at something Barss said and was severely punished. Other inmates who misbehaved were put into close confinement. There is another diary entry from 1913 in which Barss is recorded as “strapping” four boys for running away.
Barss "furloughed” inmates to people who needed help, thus saving the School the cost of the inmate. This system worked well for Barss and for the person who needed a laborer. From the Industrial School Diaries one can surmise that the arrangement was known to local farmers, businessmen, and others who came to pick someone out. For example, “Thomas Mack called this afternoon to see Mr. and Mrs. Barss about getting a girl.” There is no indication that Barss did a thorough background check on the employers.
The Vermont Industrial School under the Barss administration amounted to the so-called modernization of the school under the cottage plan. However, that modernization carried the dark legacy of eugenic thought with it. The new buildings would be utilized for the improvement of the” “normal” inmate. The new dormitories were intended to separate the inmates into different classes, making rehabilitation of petty offenders much easier than when they were all housed in the same population. The separation of inmates also stigmatized the inmates who were not considered normal or worth rehabilitating. He separated the inmates he deemed mentally deficient by shipping them out to the Brandon School or isolating them at the Industrial School.
Barss lobbied for a separate institution that would house inmates he considered mentally deficient for life. When the Brandon State School for the Feeble-Minded was finally established in 1915, Barss sent several of his own inmates to that institution. In effect, he practiced spatial eugenic segregation in an institution that was supposed to be dedicated to improving the lives of all of the inmates. Barss not only wanted to remove the mentally deficient from the normal population, he advocated that they be sterilized. The legislature of Vermont did in fact pass a short-lived sterilization law in 1912. It does not matter that he fought hard to try to improve the Vermont Industrial School or that he was dedicated to these children. He institutionalized eugenics, a legacy which became formalized and entrenched in the coming decade in Vermont.
Understanding the Vermont Eugenics Survey and its Impacts Today
Vermont Residential School – Kurn Hattin Homes for Children
‘Through my research, I made the acquaintance of many members of the Phillips family and was able to bring together two estranged sisters from one line of this family. For much of their early childhood, they had lived in a tent on Broad Brook in Guilford, Vermont. After their mother died of polio when they were still young girls, their father was overcome with grief, unable to care for them, and was institutionalized in Brattleboro Retreat, one of more thantwenty facilities throughout the state of Vermont where eugenicists regularly institutionalized both children and adults.* Together, along with their third sister, Ginger, the children were sent to Kurn Hattin and became wards of the state. Eventually, the older ones were farmed out as mothers’ helpers, and they did not see one another again until they were grown.
‘When I brought two of the elderly sisters together, I thought I was doing them a great favor, but when they started sharing their life stories, I was mortified. From the age of four years old, Beatrice, the younger sister, had been passed from household to household as a ward of the state and was sexually abused by the men in these households. Diane, the elder sister, (Doris Seale - In Memorium) had suffered from depression throughout her life, remembering her mother’s last words; “Take care of your sisters," Institutionalized and separated from her younger sisters at the age of nine, Diane could not possibly have fulfilled her mother’s wishes, but she suffered from a crushing guilt nonetheless.
‘Knowing the real story of Beatrice’s life only deepened Diane’s depression, and when Beatrice later died in pain, depression, and poverty, Diane was deeply affected, ‘This story of abuse and institutionalization is not an uncommon story, but one that is seldom told because the breakup of families was usually permanent. Diane currently lives in a nursing facility. Many of her memories are now fading, but some live on. At meal times, she often recalls being nine years-old and sitting at Kurn Hattin. Watching her food get cold, she remembers not being allowed to eat until everyone had been served, Even now, she waits patiently for everyone to be served so that she can eat. During my visits, I have often heard her say, “It’s not supposed to be this way.” ‘
Global Indigenous Health: Kurn Hattin - Judy Dow