Originally published as part of the "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" writing Challenge on the prompt "I'd Like to Meet," this piece earned Third Place in the Article category of the 2020 International Society of Family History Writers and Editors' Excellence in Family History Writing Competition.
"Where's my baby?"
That's the question I imagine my great, great grandmother Catherine Ryan Gilbride might ask me if I could meet her.
If I could travel back in time to meet Catherine, I would visit her in the Danville State Hospital for the Insane, opened in 1872. She was an inmate there, sent after her second baby was stillborn in March 1877.
1 By April 1877, she was ill enough to be taken some seventy-five miles away from Providence in Luzerne County to the Danville asylum in Montour County.
What her illness looked like, I can only imagine. Perhaps she was buried in grief and unable to care for her husband Michael, and their only other child, John Joseph, my great grandfather. Perhaps she withdrew. Lashed out. Threw things. Was inconsolable.
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| Vintage photo of Danville State Hospital for the Insane, Montour County, Pennsylvania, prior to an March 1881 fire which destroyed portions of the building. This is the view Catherine would have seen. |
If I could travel back, upon arriving at Danville in 1881, I would walk across the vast lush lawn in front of the institution's immense thousand-foot long facade.
On my approach, I might hear the screams coming through the open windows of the "excited ward," as did a reporter who visited Danville in 1879, and perhaps feel that same "...shrinking feeling of pandemonium being near at hand to Paradise."
2
I would pass beneath one of the seven arches that framed the entrance of the building, opened a scant five years before. I would climb the stairs, sign a guest ledger, and walk down carpeted halls arranged like so many bat wings, to the female ward and to a tucked-away room.
I would knock, and enter a small but airy room, with a tall window opposite, overlooking the rolling lawn and a faraway wood. I may note a simple bed, a single chair, a bedside table and lamp, and a washstand which furnish the room, with hooks on one wall to hold a skirt and apron. A watercolor painting might hang on the wall over the bed or a small embroidery hoop may rest on the table. It might be sparse, but clean and comfortable.
Catherine might be sitting, next to the window, her auburn hair
3 plaited in a braid, framing the left side of her face. She may turn to face me, her pale eyes registering surprise at having a visitor, and also, a hint of pleading.
"Where's my baby?"
I would have to answer with silence. She slowly would turn back to face the window.
I might enter her room, sit on the edge of her bed.
I might ask her, quietly, as we do whenever we visit someone in the hospital, "How are you feeling?"
With her rare diagnosis--
puerperal mania--a manic condition brought on by the stillbirth of her second child,
4 her emotions may be mercurial.
Today might to be a good day, when she is able to be out of her room, perhaps shyly and quietly tidying up the ward and sweeping floors. In my mind's eye, I may see her reddish hair glinting in the sun which streamed through the windows as she swept the hallway.
But yesterday might be one of her bad days, when she was "very excitable, violent," and restrained in a "jacket," after she "threw a medicine cup at the supervisoress, inflicting a scalp wound." I might wonder to myself how this wisp of a woman, who was "less than medium size," could hurt anyone.
5 What power there must have been to her grief.
Another day might be one of the worst days, when all she may do is "sit on the floor moping," with her arms tightly jacketed around her, and rock, tears streaming down her florid cheeks.
6 Maybe she would sing that long-ago lullaby she sang for John Joseph, the little boy she left behind when she came here. Maybe a ward nurse would pause by her door—for just a moment—to listen to the very song her own mother sang her...and then briskly walk away.
Did Catherine ever wonder how she came to be in this sprawling building, isolated from her family back in Providence, now part of today's Scranton?
I would ask, "Who put you here? How did this happen?"
Would she tell me anything about these Directors of the Poor of Providence, these men who had the right to send her away from her family? Men who also paid for her room and board, her dresses, skirts and chemises, her shoes and sheets, while she was here?
7
I might ask, "Has anyone else been by?"
I may glimpse the ledger kept outside her door, with its scattered physician's notes. Twenty-five in all, beginning in April 1877, ending in January 1881. Twenty-five entries when someone took time to write a note about Catherine, in nearly four years.
8
A tear might well in her eye, as she stares at her hands, and I would guess that she felt she had been forgotten, and that she wouldn't understand why. Why would no one bring her John to her? Why would her husband not come to take her home? Where were the parents or the friends who came from County Mayo, Ireland with her? How could someone, only 26 years old, be so very alone?
I know what became of Catherine. She never came home from Danville.
The patient ledger notes on 5 Jan 1881: "Failure in health."
9
The last, on 17 Jan 1881: "Death this date. Pneumonia."
10
The accounts ledger on 20 Jan 1881 notes an entry for "coffin & burial," at a cost of $15.00.
11
Her death certificate notes her burial at Hyde Park Cemetery, now Cathedral Cemetery in Scranton.
12
Knowing what I know, if I could travel back to meet Catherine, I would want to reach out and embrace her. Mine would not be the child's embrace that she hoped for every day and every night. But maybe it would be good enough to comfort her, to still her demons for a little while, and let her know that my mother's heart and hers speak a shared language that still resonates more than 140 years later.
She is not forgotten.
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| Copy of original Danville patient record for Catherine Gilbride, patient No. 676, which begins on her admission on 14 April 1877. The 14-month old mentioned is my great grandfather John Joseph Gilbride. Reproduction of original record, PA State Archives, Harrisburg, PA. |
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| The beginning of Kate Gilbride's account in Danville ledger, noting her support by the Directors of the Poor Providence. Providence was one borough which was incorporated into Scranton in 1856. Reproduction of original record, PA State Archives, Harrisburg, PA. |
SOURCES
Danville State Hospital. Danville, Montour County, Pennsylvania. Female Case Books, Catherine Gilbride, 1877-1881.
Danville State Hospital. Danville, Montour County, Pennsylvania. Patient Ledger, Kate Gilbride, 1877-1881.
Danville State Hospital. Danville, Montour County, Pennsylvania. Patient Register and Record of Burial Plots, 1872-1937, Catharine Gilbride.
Dickenson, Miss Susan. "The Danville Asylum. Visit to this Institution by Miss Dickinson and a Look Within, the Building, Appointments, &c." Clearfield Republican Vol. 20 (17 Sept 1879) : 1.
Pennsylvania. Lackawanna County. City of Scranton. "Record of deaths, 1878-1905, in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania," database with images. City of Scranton Department of Public Health. (www.familysearch.com : accessed 27 Jan 2019), entry for death certificate for "Catharine Gilbride," 27 Jan 1881.
REFERENCES
1 Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1887-1881, Record Group 23, Records of the Department of Public Welfare, Danville State Hospital, Female Case Books, Book A, pages 81-82; photocopies supplied by Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg, PA to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Corinth, Texas.
2 "The Danville Asylum," Clearfield Republican, 17 Sept 1879, (www.newspapers.com : accessed 21 Jan 2019); citing print edition, page 1, column 3.
3 Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1877, Danville State Hospital.
4 "Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1877, Danville State Hospital.
5 "Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1877, Danville State Hospital.
6 "Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1877, Danville State Hospital.
7 "Kate Gilbride patient ledger, Record Group 23: Records of the Department of Public Welfare, Danville State Hospital, Volume B, 1876-1880, page 383; photocopy supplied by Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg, PA to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Corinth, TX
8 "Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1877, Danville State Hospital.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 "Kate Gilbride patient ledger," Record Group 23: Records of the Department of Public Welfare, Danville State Hospital, Volume B, 1879-1882, page 614; photocopy supplied by Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg, PA to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Corinth, TX.
12 "City of Scranton, death certificate for "Catharine Gilbride"17 Jan 1881; image "Record of deaths, 1878-1905, in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania," (www.familysearch.com : accessed 27 Jan 2019).
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Such a sad and tragic story and unfortunately all too common in the late 1800. You told it with heart.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that in Catherine's time little was known about post-partum depression, or the even worse symptoms she may have exhibited and, therefore, went without help, untreated -- help she could probably have received today. It is a sorrow to imagine what Catherine's life must have been like and I think you've done well to give us an idea. My paternal grandmother had twins. One died within a few days of birth. My grandmother died one month later. The story I was told was that my grandmother was inconsolable, went out too early after the births, caught some infection, and died. It's sad that my grandmother's death left a motherless son behind.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind thoughts on the story. You too have a tragic story...it seems we all do, don't we?
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