Asylum Doctor by Charles S. Bryan

Author:Charles S. Bryan [Bryan, Charles S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Medical (Incl. Patients), Medical, History, Social Science, Disease & Health Issues
ISBN: 9781611174915
Google: bgLQBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Published: 2014-05-27T04:04:43+00:00

Governor Coleman Livingston Blease (1868–1942) pressured Babcock to dismiss his talented and capable young assistant Dr. Eleanora Bennette Saunders, leading to Babcock’s resignation.

Courtesy: South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.

Blease became governor with “the full intention of removing Dr. Babcock from the State Hospital for the Insane.” He felt Babcock had been “a traitor to my friend, Col. James H. Tillman.” All that changed the day Babcock invited him to ride out to State Park. Heading out of Columbia in a buggy on a Sunday morning, Babcock disclosed circumstances that changed Blease’s perspective on Babcock’s role in James Tillman’s trial for the murder of newspaper editor N. G. Gonzales. Babcock offered his resignation but Blease refused to accept it.36 They established a working relationship, indeed a good working relationship. In November 1911, for example, Blease gave a welcoming address at one of Babcock’s pellagra clinics, told how Babcock had given him statistics, and offered to help.37 Babcock on several occasions consulted the governor about problems at the asylum. Each time Blease responded immediately. On one occasion Babcock learned the nurses were about to strike, went to the Executive Mansion, and found the governor at breakfast. Blease took one sip of coffee and headed to the asylum, reassured the nurses, and urged them to stay at their posts.38

Blease had reasons to keep the superintendent beyond their new personal relationship. Dismissing Babcock carried a political price. The superintendent was popular among the general public and with many legislators. Babcock supporters included Blease confidants, such as Colonel Elbert Aull from Newberry, Blease’s lifelong friend and former schoolteacher,39 and Dr. Robert Wilson Jr., who in 1913 saw the governor often during his successful campaign to transfer the endangered Medical College of the State of South Carolina to state ownership.40 Finally, Babcock’s performance by at least one Blease criterion—making do on a limited budget, thereby helping keep taxes low—was superb.

But Blease also had had reasons to rein in the superintendent. The governor like many public men prized power above nearly everything else. He sought power, used power, and retaliated against those who threatened his power. He wanted Babcock like others to feel the weight of his authority. Also, more than most governors in South Carolina history, Blease favored small government, minimal interference in people’s lives, and little aid for the disadvantaged. In a later era he would probably be called a libertarian. He took a dim view of the financial burden that State Park would impose on taxpayers mainly for the benefit of blacks.

Although Blease’s tours of State Park with Babcock were pleasant, the governor began to devise his own scheme—“plan” would perhaps be too generous—for the state’s mentally ill. He would sell most of the “little sandy bottom land” with its scrub oaks and loblolly pines, which in his opinion had been bought at exorbitant price “under the pretense of benefiting poor insane people.” He would keep the nearly finished first cottage at State Park, but would “take that place out there

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