Incompetent and insane: labor, ability, and citizenship in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States

ABSTRACT

This article uses two examples from US history – competency hearings and asylum labor from Wisconsin in the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century United States – to examine how ability, labor, and citizenship ideologies are enforced and created. Both are sites in which individuals are assumed to lack ability and labor is a tool of assessment and cure. I argue that central to both citizenship and ability were historically defined standards for the self-management of labor and its economic results. Criteria for the self-management of labor reflected and reinforced social hierarchies.

KEYWORDS:

• Insanity
• insane asylum
• competency hearing
• guardianship
• United States
• labor
• ability
• Wisconsin

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Case of Howard Pedersen, Dane County Probate Court Collection #121, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1024 (Box 4, Folder 2). My database includes the complete records of Calumet County, a rural county in north-central Wisconsin, which provided 150 cases from 1870 to 1968; and Dane County (in which the state capital city of Madison is located), which provided 165 cases from 1864 to 1891. All of the personal names have been changed in the cases I discuss to ensure confidentiality.

2. For analyses of competency proceedings, see Andrews 1999; Hughes 1987 and 1992. Being declared non compos mentis is not the same as being determined incompetent to stand trial; that is a different legal process with different legal implications.

3. Case of Doreen Landerly, Dane County Probate Court Collection #121 (hereafter called DCPCC), Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1004–1005 (Box 1, Folder 7).

4. Case of Alice Jaddock, DCPCC, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1024 (Box 1, folder 3).

5. Case of Andrew Barnitz, Calumet County Probate Court Collection (hereafter called CCPCC), Calumet County Guardianship Files.

6. Case of Lydia Donkel, DCPCC, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1004–1005 (Box 1, Folder 7).

7. Case of Emma Killian, CCPCC.

8. Case of Adok Nowacki, CCPCC.

9. Case of Blanche Hilliard, DCPCC, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1032 (Box 5, folder 4).

10. Case of William DeHart, Calumet County Probate Court Collection, Calumet County Guardianship Files; Case of Ella Hines, CCPCC.

11. Case of Andrew Wilson, DCPCC, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1037 (Box 7, folder 3).

12. Case of James Washington, DCPCC, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1029 (Box 4, folder 6).

13. Ancestry.com: https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/1127/31617_072127-00285/6960065?backurl=http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ancestry.com%2fcgi-bin%2fsse.dll%3fgst%3d-6&ssrc=&backlabel=ReturnSearchResults. Accessed 1 October 2017.

14. The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane is the precursor to the American Psychiatric Association.

15. Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane for the Year Ending 30 September 1876: 17. Madison: James Ross, state printer, 1876.

16. Ibid.

17. For more on Ott, see my forthcoming book The Doctress: Money, Marriage, and Madness in Nineteenth-Century America (in process). Because I have and am writing about Ott extensively, and because of her public nature, I have not changed her name.

18. Case of Anna B. Ott, DCPCC, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1015–1016 (box 2, folder 3).

19. Ibid.

20. Mental Hygiene – Mendota State Hospital, General Correspondence, Series 1367, Box 11, February 1875-July 31 May 1875, 1875 letter from Lucy Howard to Dr. McDill.

21. Case of Anders Hedman, DCPCC, Dane County Guardianship and Insanity Files, Box 1028 (box 4 folder 5).

22. Elsewhere I’ve argued that in the political framework of the United States, ‘capitalism and industrialism both literally and conceptually contributed to the creation of disability.’ Nielsen 2012, xviii.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kim E. Nielsen

Kim E. Nielsen is Professor of Disability Studies and History at the University of Toledo in the United States. Her major interests are in the history of disability, biography, and citizenship. The author of A Disability History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012), she is awaiting her forthcoming book The Wife, The Doctress: A Nineteenth-Century Life of Money, Marriage, and Madness.