The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville, Part I

by Nancy Gilbride Casey


I wonder if any one ever approaches an insane retreat without a feeling of oppression, almost of dread, a sense of unutterable sadness, a question as to what one shall see and find to shock and terrify them.

—Miss Susan E. Dickinson
The Clearfield Republican
17 Sept. 1879¹

Oppression, dread, sadness—these feelings emerge inside us when we discover that an ancestor suffered mental illness. In an instant, the rosy haze is stripped away from the past, and the curtain is torn back. We see the unexpected, and it confuses and confounds us.

My aunt Margaret spent many a year attempting to discover what became of our ancestor Catherine Ryan Gilbride, my 2nd great-grandmother. The known was that she had married Michael Gilbride in 1875 at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in (then) Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.² The couple had one son, John Joseph, born in 1876.³ But by 1880, Michael and John were living with his parents, and Michael was described as single.⁴ The unknown: where was Catherine?

Over time, her story slowly unfolded. Catherine bore a second child in March 1877, but it was stillborn. Three weeks later, she was sent to Danville Asylum, in neighboring Montour County, Pennsylvania. There, she was diagnosed with puerperal mania—a mental condition which appeared in the weeks after pregnancy, which was first named in the early 19th century.⁵ She spent the rest of her life at Danville, dying of pneumonia in 1881 at the age of 26.⁶ She never recovered her mental health, and it is unknown if she ever saw her family again. She was supported at Danville by the Directors of the Poor of Providence—later Scranton’s Poor Board—one of the numerous bodies formed to support the state’s indigent.⁷

How did this come to be? What was happening in Catherine’s place and time to account for her situation?

Insanity in the 19th Century

In the mid-1800s, some physicians tended to think that insanity could be inherited or “run in families.” If so, a woman's pregnancy could function as the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” and cause a mental break.⁸

Other physicians believed that insanity was a “logical by-product of women’s reproductive functions,” or that most women suffered some mild form of mental illness throughout pregnancy or during phases in their reproductive lives.⁹

These beliefs informed Pennsylvania’s laws regarding the mentally ill. For example, upon admission, patients were routinely asked whether others in their families suffered from insanity. In 1877 when Catherine went to Danville, nearly 4% of patients there suggested insanity was present in both or either parent, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, or a combination of these.¹⁰





Insanity was also thought to be caused by any number of specific incidents or conditions—physical vs. “moral” causes—and here moral meant situational. For example, while men might suffer a break due to financial losses or business disappointments, women might become insane because their husband left them, were pregnant and single, they had too many children, or were overcome by fear, grief or other emotions.¹¹

The causes of Danville residents’ insanity were categorized into physical vs. moral causes as well. In 1877, for example, many women’s insanity was presumed to be brought on by reproductive reasons such as, “change of life,” “disordered menstruation,” “excessive childbearing,” “excessive lactation,” and “pregnancy,” which was probably cited in Catherine’s case.¹²

Pennsylvania institutions reported the following physical and moral causes of insanity in 1877:¹³

 

These causes of a person’s insanity were assigned by their friends or relatives, not by a physician, as expected. It appears a doctor did not examine Catherine before she was sent to Danville, though this was the standard procedure later in the century, and such examinations did take place for other residents of Providence.

For example, Mrs. Crane pleaded the case of her husband P. Crane, who she considered insane, before the Providence Directors of the Poor in April 1874. This case was “referred to Dr. Davis with power to select any other physician he might think proper to make an examination.”¹⁴ While it is possible that Catherine was examined by a physician, her case was not recorded in Directors’ meeting minutes which were regularly published in the local newspapers, and there was no physician’s certificate in her patient record.¹⁵

So how did Catherine come to be sent to Danville?

I'll examine the circumstances in my next post.

NOTES

"The Lady in the Asylum: Catherine Gilbride at Danville," was written as part of The Ancestor Project, sponsored by the Denton County Genealogical Society, 8 September 2022. 

Image: Peasant Mother and Child (1895) by Mary Cassatt. In the public domain; image available at rawpixel.com.

 

¹ Susan E. Dickenson, “The Danville Asylum,” Clearfield (Pennsylvania) Republican; 17 September 1879, 1, col. 3-4; digital images, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/79758864/ : accessed 20 May 2022).

² Holy Rosary Church, (Scranton, Luzerne, Pennsylvania), Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Marriages 1860-87, 212, marriage of Michael Gilbride & Catherine Ryan (2 Feb. 1875); digital image, “Teresa M. McAndrew Memorial Catholic Record Collection,” Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, supplied to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Tioga, TX.

³ Holy Rosary Church (Scranton, Luzerne, Pennsylvania), Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church, Baptisms and Marriages, Combined Register, 1860-1887, 146, baptism of John Gilbride, (20 Jan. 1876); digital image, “Teresa M. McAndrew Memorial Catholic Record Collection,” Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, supplied to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Tioga, TX.

⁴ 1880 United States Federal Census, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, supervisor district 5, enumeration district (ED) 55, 61B (penned), dwelling 41, family 43, line 3, Michael Gillbride in the household of James Gillbride; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6742/images/4244365-00716 : accessed 9 March 2021);citing NARA microfilm publication T9, Roll 1138, Washington, D.C.

⁵ Catharine Gilbride patient record, 1887-1881, Record Group 23, Records of the Department of Public Welfare, Danville State Hospital, Female Case Books, Book A, 81, stillbirth & diagnosis; photocopies supplied by Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg, PA to Nancy Gilbride Casey, Tioga, Texas.

⁶ Pennsylvania. Lackawanna County, City of Scranton, City of Scranton Department of Public Health, death certificate for Catharine Gilbride, 27 Jan 1881; “Record of deaths, 1878-1905, in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania,” digital image, FamilySearch, (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9YG-R95K-X? : accessed 27 Jan 2019); FHL film 007700813, image 1411.

⁷ Danville State Hospital, Records of the Department of Public Welfare, Record Group 23, County Registers 1872-1919, 67, line 25, Catherine Gillbride; digital image, “Danville State Hospital (PA) County Registers, 1872-1923,” PowerLibrary (https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/psa/islandora/object/psa%3Adshcr_187 : accessed 19 March 2021), image 45/187; citingPennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg.

⁸ The term “insanity” is an outmoded, catch-all term used to describe a “severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Today, we use the term “mental illnesses” to describe a broad range of conditions. Also: Nancy M. Theriot, “Diagnosing Unnatural Motherhood: Nineteenth-Century Physicians and ‘Puerperal Insanity.” American

Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 1989, 77; image copy, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40642344 : accessed 11 July 2022).

⁹ Ibid, 75-76.

¹⁰ Pennsylvania, Board of Public Charities, Eighth Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of Public Charities of the State of Pennsylvania, to Which is Appended the Report of the General Agent and Secretary, Also, The Statistical Report (Harrisburg : Lane S. Hart, 1878), p. 272; digital image, ForgottenBooks.com (https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/books/EightAnnualReportoftheBoardofCommissionersofPublicCharitiesoftheStateofPennsyl

va_10265446 : accessed 14 July 2022).

¹¹ Nancy M. Theriot, “Diagnosing Unnatural Motherhood: Nineteenth-Century Physicians and ‘Puerperal Insanity,’” 77.

¹² Pennsylvania, Board of Public Charities, Eighth Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of Public Charities of the State of Pennsylvania, 247.

¹³ Ibid.  

¹⁴ “Important Meeting of Poor Directors,” The Tribune (Scranton, Pennsylvania), 1 April 1874, p. 3, col. 2; digital image, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/532483926/ : accessed 8 August 2022). 

¹⁵ The Scranton Republican and The Scranton Tribune, April 1877, negative search for mention of Catherine Gilbride in Directors of Poor of Providence meeting minutes; images, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 22 August 2022).