Sterilization of Carrie Buck. David Smith

disorder allowed Priddy to intervene in the reproductive potentials of these women. He was able to do, in the name of disease, what he could not as yet legally do in the name of eugenics.

      Priddy had included similar statements concerning pelvic diseases and sterilization in previous reports. His didactic account in 1923, however, is even more remarkable in light of the fact that one of his earlier “therapeutic” sterilizations had resulted in Mallory v. Priddy.

      In November of 1917, A. S. Priddy received a letter concerning one of the residents of his institution. Although the mechanics and grammar of the writing lacked precision and polish, the message and intent was quite direct and forceful. The writer of the letter, George Mallory of Richmond, accused Albert Priddy of breaking up his family. In his rough and imperfect, but forceful, language, Mallory threatened to cause trouble for Priddy unless his daughter was returned to him unharmed. He argued that his daughter was not feeble-minded and had no need to be in Priddy’s institution. He also pointed out that he knew there was no legal basis for sterilization (“no law for such treatment”) in Virginia. Mallory was fearful that his daughter would be sexually sterilized if she remained under Priddy’s control much longer.

      Mallory’s anxiety had a very real foundation; Dr. Priddy had already sterilized George Mallory’s wife and another one of his daughters. His letter to Priddy crackled with anger and desperation.

      Priddy’s response was instant and vehement. Accusing Mallory of threatening him, he informed him that if he dared to write another letter of that kind, he would have him arrested and committed to the Lynchburg institution. Priddy claimed that he had performed surgery on Mallory’s wife and daughter at their request and because it was indicated as treatment for diseases they had. He closed his note by repeating that if he received further threats from Mallory he would have him “arrested in a few hours.”

      Mallory, however, may not have been a man of grammar, but he was not a man to be taken lightly. He sued. Priddy’s own letter was presented as evidence against him to the jury in the case of Mallory v. Priddy. The case helped to illustrate clearly the kinds of social policies and practices that contributed to the passage of Virginia’s involuntary sterilization law. It was also indicative of the kinds of “pelvic diseases” that Priddy encountered so frequently at the Colony, most of which seemed to have resulted in sterilization.

      Paul Lombardo’s scholarly examination of the case of Mallory v. Priddy includes the following facts which help to explain the exchange of letters between the two men and the subsequent court case.

      On a balmy September evening in 1916, George Mallory was away from his Richmond home working in a sawmill. While two family friends were visiting in the Mallory house, police officers entered and charged Mrs. Mallory with running a brothel. They arrested her, her nine children and the two male visitors.

      The younger children were placed with the Children’s Home Society. Mrs. Mallory and her guests were fined for the offense of disorderly conduct. She and her two oldest daughters, Nannie and Jessie, were also held at the City Detention Home. After three weeks there, Mrs. Mallory and her daughters were judged to be feebleminded and were sent to the Colony.

      After six months in the institution, Mrs. Mallory was sterilized by Dr. Priddy. He testified at the trial that the surgery was a medical necessity. Mrs. Mallory testified that there was no illness involved and the only purpose of the surgery was sterilization. Shortly after the operation, she was discharged from the institution. Her daughter Jessie was released soon after, also sterilized.

      In October of 1917 George Mallory brought suit against Albert Priddy. Mr. Mallory sought damages for the wages his wife lost during the time she was kept at the Colony, as well as compensation for the pain and suffering caused by her sterilization. He also sought the release of his daughter, Nannie, from the Colony.

      Dr. Priddy’s testimony that he had admitted Mrs. Mallory to the Colony legally and had sterilized her for medical reasons was apparently convincing enough for the jury. On March 1, 1918, a verdict of not guilty was returned in Mallory v. Priddy. A number of accounts circulated locally, according to Lombardo, indicate that the judge in the case suggested that Dr. Priddy consider not sterilizing any other patients at the Colony until there was such a law which allowed him to legally do so for eugenic purposes.

      The effect of this legal scolding was obviously short-lived. In his 1923 report, Priddy was again referring with pride to the sterilizations he had performed for “medical” reasons at the Colony and the positive effect they had on the overall well-being of women on whom he performed the surgery. Also, the embarrassment was soon to give way to a concentrated push on the part of Priddy, Strode and DeJarnette to secure the passage of an eugenic sterilization law which would survive a constitutional test.

       4

       Inside The Colony—Emma, Carrie and Doris

      The Murkland property, initially conceived as the site for the future hospital, had not ultimately become the location for the institution. After considering it, the State Hospital Board decided that it was not adequate for the purposes of the Epileptic Colony. The General Assembly authorized the Board to sell the Murkland tract and use the proceeds toward the purchase of suitable land in a more convenient area. The Board bought the Willis Farm, which consisted of 1,000 acres, also on the north bank of the James River opposite Lynchburg.

      It was, therefore, to this facility that a frightened seventeen-year-old Carrie Buck arrived on a dreary June 4, 1924.

      The day after she was admitted, Dr. J. H. Bell, who would later become Superintendent of the Colony and play a prominent role in Carrie’s future, examined her. He noted that she was dark and slight, with a low, narrow forehead and high cheekbones.

      Unlike her mother, who had been admitted in poor health, Carrie’s health was generally good. She was well nourished; her body was clean and free from eruptions. The glandular appearance of her abdomen caused Dr. Bell to report that “she’d had a child.”

      Indeed, it was the birth of this child, Vivian Elaine, and the events which had brought about her pregnancy that had caused Carrie to be committed in the first place.

      Carrie was to live in Ward FB9, one of several dormitory-like buildings clustered around the Colony. There were as many as 200 beds in each single-sex dormitory. Anywhere from 700 to 1,000 people were accomodated. Since the Colony was a working farm, raising its own pigs, cows and chickens, as well as fruits and vegetables, each inmate was given a work assignment.

      Carrie was assigned kitchen duty.

      Chores at the institution began at dawn and lasted well into the night. For Carrie, this meant preparing food, serving it, and cleaning up afterward for the two hundred people in her building. The primitive kitchens were grouped in the open areas of each dorm. Carrie and the other kitchen assistants cooked the simple meals in large, black, iron pots.

      The meals were served out on tin cups and plates which rattled noisily as they were placed on the rough hewn tables. Almost as soon as one meal was served, eaten and cleaned up, it was time to begin the preparations for the next.

      In the few free moments accorded her, Carrie began to find her way around the other buildings. She knew that her mother lived in one of them. Finally, she found her. Her mother had been assigned to the sewing room in Building V. It was the task of Emma and the others assigned there to sew the clothes needed for the inmates of the Colony. Emma was good at her work.

      A note on Emma’s chart read: “Patient in good physical health and has not changed mentally. Works well in sewing room and seems perfectly satisfied.”

      Mother and daughter were comforted by their meetings, but again it was Carrie’s assuming her familiar caretaker role which made these visits possible, bringing her mother small treats from the kitchen and news of the world outside. Surprisingly,