Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph

Charity Lamb was thirty-three years old in 1854, married, and the mother of six children: a daughter and five sons. She had given birth to her fourth son in a wagon while on the Oregon Trail in 1852 and now, with her fifth son in her arms, lived in a rustic, dirt-floored cabin. The family’s donation land claim was twenty miles east of Portland, just a few miles south of the Multnomah County line, between the Clackamas County towns of Damascus and Barton.¹ She was described as a small woman, work-worn, emaciated, and poor, even by frontier standards. Her clothing was thin, scanty, torn, and dirty. No one who knew her would ever guess she was about to become historically significant or that readers would care about her 158 years later. She had one important character trait—a stubborn determination to protect her children. She had given birth to six children and in a heroic effort had managed to keep all six children alive and healthy. Faced with the threat of losing them and possibly her life, she fought back.

On Saturday, May 13, 1854, she walked up behind her husband, her abuser and the man threatening to take her children away from her, while he ate dinner. With her arms held high she brought the ax down on his head. Nathaniel Lamb had a hard head, and although the ax bounced once, it did the job well enough. He died seven days later. Charity was convicted of second-degree murder in September 1854.² Her lawyers argued that she was temporarily insane when she killed Nathaniel Lamb; however, the all-male jury rejected the idea mostly because that would have meant an acquittal and she would have gone free. Visions of abused wives wielding axes on unsuspecting husbands made them shudder. She was the eighth person incarcerated in Oregon’s prison system.³

Her children were fostered with various families. Her property and belongings were auctioned off to the highest bidders, and she remained at the mercy of the men around her. Witnesses described seeing her wash Warden Joseph Sloan’s family laundry at the prison in Portland. While convicted prisoners seemed to “elope” or escape at will from the facility, Charity remained. Where could she have gone if she had escaped?

On December 2, 1862, by order of Oregon Governor A.C. Gibbs, she was transferred to the Oregon State Insane and Idiotic Asylum, recently established in East Portland by Dr. James Hawthorne and Dr. A.M. Loryea. Was she insane? Even if the jury wouldn’t acknowledge it, by the standards of Oregon society she probably was. After all, a woman who tried to kill the father of her children, no matter what the provocation, must be crazy.

The Oregon legislature had signed a bill in September 1862 authorizing the governor to pay $20,000 to Dr. Hawthorne to care for Oregon’s insane patients. Governor Gibbs was a smart man and immediately recognized this as a way to remove Charity, Oregon’s only female prisoner, from public scrutiny. Now he could say with all honesty that Oregon no longer had any female prisoners.⁴ What Charity Lamb found in Oregon’s first and only insane asylum was different from anything she’d experienced before in her life.

As early as August 1860, Oregonians were discussing who was responsible for the state’s mentally ill. These were the community’s weakest members—those least able to care for themselves. Oregon’s prominent citizens recognized that the state needed to take responsibility for their care. “We are in a fever of movement. It is demanded of us by humanity, civilization, and Christianity…Who is safe from this terrible visitation?”⁵

Operated by Drs. Hawthorne and Loryea, the Oregon State Insane and Idiotic Asylum (also known as the Hawthorne Asylum) celebrated its inauguration on September 21, 1861, in a temporary facility on Taylor Street between First and Second Avenues in Portland.⁶ Within a year the patients were moved to a permanent location across the Willamette River in East Portland. (It wasn’t until July 1891 that the cities of East Portland and Albina were consolidated with Portland proper.)⁷ The asylum occupied seventy-five acres between what are now Ninth and Twelfth Avenues and Hawthorne Avenue and Belmont Street. The asylum property included a dairy, a produce garden, and a wood lot. The street was originally called Asylum Street but quickly acquired its permanent name, Hawthorne Avenue, which eventually spread to the Hawthorne Bridge and the Hawthorne District. The new frame two-story structure located just east of Southeast Twelfth Avenue and Hawthorne Avenue was located on twelve cleared acres, had an excellent water supply, and was surrounded by a high board fence. “Large halls run through the whole length of the building in both stories, and there are three large wards for the accommodation of the first class patients who are harmless; also a set of single rooms for the more unruly and vicious inclined.”⁸ There was a chapel, a reading room, and a billiard room. Prominent Portland citizens Ladd, Corbett, Stephens, and Stark (now immortalized in Portland’s streets and districts) donated money and necessary items to be used at the asylum.

A bell tower topped the Greek revival building, and the bell tolled the daylight hours. As of 2008, “the bell, all that remains of the asylum, is housed at Oregon Health & Science University.”⁹

On January 7, 1863, the Oregon Sentinel of Jacksonville, Oregon, was the first newspaper in Oregon to publish the name of a person committed to the asylum. Besides noting that “he is raving constantly and is a dangerous person,” the writer complained strongly about the cost ($300) of transporting the man all the way to Portland.

By 1863 an additional wing had to be added to the new asylum. Charity was one of the five women and twenty-nine men living at the asylum with diagnoses of melancholia, mania, monomania, dementia, and idiocy. From month to month the number of patients varied. A report from the asylum dated April 6, 1863, noted that there were twenty-eight state patients (one was Charity) and one private patient and that “perfect silence and well arranged discipline seems to reign throughout.”¹⁰

On July 25, 1863, C.H. Hall wrote about his visit to the asylum and noted Dr. Loryea lived in the asylum with his family and “studies the happiness of its inmates, and extends to them every kindness within his power. He walks and plays with them, amuses them with various games, and endeavors to keep them from brooding over their cares.”¹¹

This was a new life for Charity. No longer the only woman locked in a facility designed for men, she now had the freedom to talk to other women, participate in outdoor activities, and evade the heavy labor imposed at the penitentiary. This also made it possible for her children to visit her. Visitor records no longer exist, if such records were ever made; however, the children supported her and testified at the trial about how badly their father had abused Charity, so hopefully they remained sympathetic to her condition.

By 1864 the inspecting physicians counted forty-five patients on site. One patient had been discharged as cured, one had escaped, and three more had been admitted.¹² In 1865 a county hospital was built behind the asylum and a forty- by one-hundred-foot north wing was added to the main building.¹³ There were two additional wings and a third floor with eleven wards, including one hundred for thirty-three men and thirty-six women built in 1866. The staff included forty-nine attendants. The patients used two fenced garden promenades, one of three acres and the other of six acres. Dr. Hawthorne was listed as the resident physician, and John Kenworthy was superintendent and manager.¹⁴

Dr. James C. Hawthorne (1819–1881) established the Oregon State Insane and Idiotic Asylum in Portland. Oregon State Hospital.

Dr. Hawthorne spent a year visiting asylums in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and other states. He studied the best psychiatry had to offer at that time, and when he returned to Oregon he based his treatments on the concept of “moral management,” often referred to as “moral therapy.” It was founded on the philosophy that it was necessary to treat the patients with kindness, consistent expectations, and exposure to a natural rural setting. Moral management believed it was important to entertain the mind with books, music, and conversation as well as exercise the body with productive work and healthful pursuits.¹⁵ Patients were encouraged to enjoy swings, ball playing, and other games. The asylum’s wards were clean, well ventilated, and kept in excellent repair. Healthy food, air, and water helped patients physically while pleasant activities and kind treatment helped them mentally. Physical activities included walking, gardening, sewing, and outdoor games. Reading, writing, and conversation were prescribed mental activities. All was done in a regular and consistent manner so patients knew exactly what was expected of them. Laxatives in the form of Epsom salts, calomel, and cochineal seemed to relax manic patients.¹⁶ Physical restraints were used only as a last resort.

At some time in Charity’s past she had attended school and could read and write. This was unusual for a woman of her economic and social standing. Moral therapy provided her with the opportunity to use her education, read books, and enjoy a part of life denied to her as a poor homesteader.

The men wore thick woolen jackets and pants, flannel shirts and drawers, black wool hats, heavy shoes, and woolen stockings. Cotton was substituted in the summer. Women wore calico dresses, flannel and cotton underclothing, comfortable shoes, and stockings. The patients produced all their own clothing and bed linens.¹⁷ The patients were fed a nutritious but simple diet.

This was in direct opposition to earlier concepts of cruelty, punishment, and imprisonment practiced by European facilities. By October 1866, a legislative team (J.C. Cartwright, R.H. Crawford, James Sterns, John Whiteaker, James G. Ngles, and F.G. Lockhart) assigned to inspect the asylum reported 160 patients and attendants living there.¹⁸

In September 1867, the visiting physician, Dr. J.S. Giltner, reported there were seventy-nine male and thirty-three female patients at the asylum—nine fewer than a year earlier. Eleven had been discharged as cured, five had died, and three had escaped. One patient died from exhaustion of acute mania, three from softening of the brain, and one from epilepsy. Charity remained as part of the incurable class. Noting that the majority of the patients were from the working class, Dr. Giltner drew the conclusion that “continuous physical labor, without an adequate amount of mental labor or recreation, is one of the most frequent causes having a tendency to bring on insanity.”¹⁹ He suggested that people do less work and more recreation to prevent insanity. He described the asylum’s moral treatment as hygienic and accompanied by kindness and moderate restraint similar to other institutions. He did not offer suggestions on how poor homesteaders living in isolated parts of Oregon were supposed to manage his prescription.

A year later, Dr. Giltner noted in his next report that as of August 31, 1868, there were ninety-one patients: forty-nine incurable, thirty-one curable, and eleven doubtful. Causes of insanity were listed as self-abuse, intemperance, domestic trouble, financial problems, and religious excitement. Heredity was also listed as an underlying cause. No mention is made of how Charity was classified. As a convicted felon, Dr. Hawthorne and Dr. Loryea made no mention that she was treated any differently than other patients.

In the summer of 1866, several acres of ground shaded by a beautiful fir grove, were enclosed with a high board fence, and well provided with swings and various other fixtures for gymnastic exercise, for the benefit and amusement of the inmates; also, games of ball, draughts, and quoits were introduced, all of which is calculated to divert their attention and produce a soothing effect on the mind.

The following named articles constitute the diet: Meats: Beef, pork, mutton, and salmon, both fresh and salted. Vegetables—Potatoes, cabbage, turnips, onions, tomatoes, parsnips, lettuce, beets, beans, peas, etc. Drink—Coffee and tea. Fruit—of various kinds in season; and dried when out of season. Bread of the best quality is supplied in abundance. Sugar and molasses are furnished at all the meals.

The dining rooms, kitchen and bake house are well supplied with all the necessary fixtures, and the most improved utensils are provided, all of which are kept neatly and in proper order.

The dispensary connected with the place is always supplied with a good stock of standard drugs and is always kept in excellent condition.

Sewing and knitting and ironing are the employment of the females. They manufacture the greater part of the clothing worn by the males, and all that is worn by themselves; affording them light employment, and relieving the monotony of their confinement. A limited number of the convalescent males are employed at different kinds of out-door work on the farm and in the gardens. It would be a great advantage if more were so employed, as it would hasten their restoration; but the limited number of attendants will not admit of it. The clothing worn by the males is of Oregon manufacture, of good quality; and that of the females is calicoes and all are constantly kept neat and clean.

The supply of water comes from an excellent spring, which is thrown into a large reservoir. The reservoir is on a high tower, built expressly for this purpose, with hose attached of sufficient length to discharge water on any part of the building.²⁰

On October 16, 1868, the Oregonian reported the first rumbling of discontent with the asylum. An anonymous writer, “Justice,” maintained that patients slept on “straw beds, under gray blankets and have not sheets, neither are they furnished butter or delicacies.”²¹ He accused Dr. Loryea of setting up a whiskey shop and cigar stand in Salem to persuade legislators to vote seven dollars a week per patient for a new contract until Hawthorne arrived in Salem and sent him away. Soothing ruffled feathers, Dr. Hawthorne negotiated successfully for a new two-year contract.

The only punishment allowed in the asylum was isolation in solitary confinement and the use of straitjackets to prevent patients from injuring themselves.²² Charity was never violent (other than using the ax on her husband in her own defense), and it’s doubtful she ever experienced restraints. In 1868 a patient killed two other patients, triggering an investigation. However, the asylum was subsequently absolved of all responsibility.

Various visitors wrote positive reports about their observations at the asylum, and officials appointed by the legislature praised the treatment and care of the patients.²³ As of September 1870, there were 111 patients at the asylum.²⁴ In the previous two years, 14 men and 3 women had died—6 from pulmonary consumption, 3 from brain disease, 1 from epilepsy, 3 from puerile debility, 1 from acute mania, 2 from chronic mania, and 2 from strokes. The report also noted that Dorothea Dix (1802–1887), a famous advocate for humanely operated insane asylums, had visited the asylum twice and recommended Dr. Hawthorne continue to care for the insane, as she believed the state wasn’t prepared to care for them as well as the Hawthorne Asylum could.²⁵ Dix supported the belief of moral therapy developed in France and England. Through her work and political influence, she steered mental healthcare in the United States toward a more compassionate and humane philosophy.

The 1870 Oregon Federal Census for East Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon, showed 11 attendants (9 men and 2 women) and 2 children living at the asylum. They cared for 128 identified inmates: 33 women ages fifteen to sixty-eight and 95 men ages six to sixty. The average age was thirty-eight. Charity was listed as being forty-eight years old. She had now been institutionalized for sixteen years.

Abigail Scott Duniway visited the asylum in 1871 and published her findings in The New Northwest. She described the patients as fond of their gentlemanly physician, Dr. Hawthorne. One elderly gentleman told her, “We have a very comfortable home here, madam; I had no idea that the accommodations were so good.” Another elderly woman concentrated on working colorful rags into floor mats. Duniway marveled at an elderly African American woman, Polly Holmes, age sixty-eight, a mother of twenty-three children and “a hideous monster of mein [sic] sufficient to convert Darwin himself to a life long adherence to his own theories. Twenty-three children! To nurse through measles, whooping cough, mumps, scarlet fever, rash, teething, weaning, jaundice and dysentery! No wonder she’s insane.”²⁶ Duniway noted that at that time there was no female physician attending patients in the asylum. She did not mention meeting Charity; however, in such a small facility it would be highly unusual if she didn’t.

By 1872 there were 165 patients (125 men and 40 women). The state allocated $135,000 to support the asylum for the 1873–74 biennium.²⁷ That same year, Dr. Loryea sold his portion of the asylum to Dr. Hawthorne and left Oregon with his family.

The patient count continued to grow. By September 30, 1874, there were 195 patients: 140 men and 55 women. The 215 patients admitted to the asylum during the previous two years included the following: chronic mania (100), acute mania (39), epilepsy (24), dementia (34), monomania (2), melancholy (2), and idiocy (14). During the same period, 33 patients (25 men and 7 women) had died in the asylum.²⁸ It was estimated it would cost $58,000 (about $6 per week per patient) to care for the patients for the next year.²⁹

The Portland Weekly Oregonian of October 8, 1874, had this to say about the concept of insanity: “Insanity, like fever, consumption, etc. is a disease, but of the brain and like any other disease requires the best treatment and care to obtain a speedy and permanent cure, but by poor treatment and neglect will linger along and in many cases when a cure could have been wrought no cure be performed.”

Various proposals were investigated to replace the Hawthorne Asylum, but Dr. Hawthorne’s ability to successfully navigate Oregon politics ensured the state continued to maintain his current contract. Senate Bill 31 was proposed in 1876 in an effort to force the counties to help pay for patients admitted from their area. It also provided that two physicians and one lawyer would have to agree on a person’s sanity instead of a single county judge. Senate Bill 102 also proposed a special tax to build an asylum. The ideas were ahead of their time, but the voters weren’t ready and both bills were rejected.

By July 1877, there were 230 patients and it was costing the state about $70,000 a year, paid in gold, to support the asylum. This amount represented 42 percent of Oregon’s yearly tax base.³⁰ It was costing $8,325 a year just in sheriff’s bills for transporting patients to the asylum. The costs raised questions about extravagance, and some people accused Dr. Hawthorne of extorting money from the state and manipulating the political process. “Dr. H. is an accomplished lobbyist, and he keeps at the capitol a considerable train, among whom have been Sweeney and Johns, witnesses last week before the senatorial investigating committee.”³¹

Another protest about Dr. Hawthorne’s contract for the insane surfaced in October 1878, stating that he had manipulated the law used to identify patients sent to the asylum and that this “accounts for our insanity being of a milder type. In other states judges could send only the really insane to the asylum. Here everybody is sent whom it is convenient to have out the way of anybody else, and profitable for the contractor to keep.”³² For the first time an article in a newspaper stated that the primary objective of the asylum was to protect the community and keep it safe from the insane instead of cure the insane. The governor approved a six-year contract with Dr. Hawthorne beginning December 1, 1878, for the care and keeping of the insane and idiotic, providing that if the state should build an asylum within four years then the contractor would turn the patients over to the state.

Cornelius Austin conducted the federal census of 1880 in East Portland, Multnomah County, on June 16, 1880. At that time there were 285 inmates: 204 men and 81 women. Twenty were male Chinese, one was female Chinese (Toy May), and one was a black male. The youngest was a nine-year-old girl and the oldest was an eighty-seven-year-old woman. Some well-known families were named, e.g. Frank G. Herron (age forty), Amanda Fournoy (age thirty-two), and Malinda Applegate (age forty). Malinda and Charity had entered the asylum within a few months of each other. One was sent there by the state and the other by her family.

Charity Lamb died in September 1879 of apoplexy. She was fifty-eight years old. Her name appears for the last time in the Mortality Schedule at the end of the 1880 census. During the nearly twenty years Charity had lived at the asylum, 1,349 patients had been received and treated.³³ The asylum’s dead were routinely interred at the nearby Lone Fir Cemetery. Although Charity’s name is not listed in the cemetery records, she was most likely buried there.

Researchers believe that at least 140 indigent patients were probably buried under what is now a parking lot at Lone Fir Cemetery at Southeast Morrison and Twenty-first Streets.³⁴

Finally, in 1880, recognizing that they had three years until Hawthorne’s contract expired, the legislature authorized the building of a state asylum in Salem. Section six (laws of 1880, page 51) provided: “For the purpose of carrying into effect the provisions of this act, there shall be and is hereby appropriated of the surplus money, now in the treasury or which may hereafter arise under an act entitled ‘An act to provide for a tax to defray the current expenses of the state and to pay the indebtedness thereof,’ Approved October 26, 1876, the sum of $25,000 * * * to be used in the construction of said insane asylum, to be known as the ‘Insane Asylum Building Fund.’” Additionally a county tax was initiated and paid into the fund.³⁵ The act indicated that the new asylum would be located in Salem on 107 acres already owned by the state about one half mile east of the penitentiary. The new asylum would sit on a small rise with a splendid view of the city.

Let the trustees be carefully chosen because of their high character and independence from political or pecuniary influence. Let them be few in number, so as not to be unwieldy, and so, slow of united action. Let them represent the state in all the concerns of the hospital, and be responsible for its proper equipment, organization, and conduct. Let them appoint its officers and approve of its employees, and let these officers be responsible to the trustees, who should see to it that none but those of the largest experience, attainments, and character be put in place, and when in place that no agitation as to tenure of office or necessity for political influence, or legislative lobbying, shall be allowed to divert them from their proper hospital work, who, to be well done, must not only have a full staff of medical officers; but these officers should have charge of all the concerns of the hospital as whatever bears upon it as a hospital must also bear upon it as means of cure, and who can administer the means of cure so well as the physician.³⁶

Unfortunately the upcoming legislatures ignored the advice, and for many years political patronage ruled asylum employment. Instead of hiring the best to supervise and treat the patients, each new governor reserved the right to appoint men from his own party, creating a system in turmoil open to graft and corruption.

Dr. James C. Hawthorne died on February 16, 1881.³⁷ He was born in 1819 in Pennsylvania and arrived in Portland in 1857. For twenty-one years he had been the heart of the Oregon State Insane and Idiotic Asylum. Even though he was a Democrat, he had remained friendly and cooperative with Republican politicians—an astonishing ability in an era when political affiliations defined a man. He was married and had two daughters, Louise and Catherine.

After his death, Dr. Simeon E. Josephi, connected with the asylum for the previous fifteen years, became superintendent until it closed in 1883. Dr. Josephi later became superintendent of the Oregon State Insane Asylum in Salem from 1885 to 1886. He continued Dr. Hawthorne’s modern methods of treating patients as individuals. Instead of classifying and treating patients as a group, physicians began to regard the mentally ill as having separate personalities and problems different from each other and therefore needing dissimilar treatments to be cured.

The earliest contract with the Hawthorne Asylum established the form and method Oregon would use to finance care for the insane for the next one hundred years. Cost became based on the amount of money allocated per patient per week or month. The more patients were admitted, the more money it cost the state. This escalation seemed endless until the concept of community healthcare was developed in the 1960s.

1. Frank Branch Riley, letter dated April 22, 1969, addressed to the editor of Transcontinental Lecture Tours. Vertical file for Charity Lamb, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland, Oregon.

2. Diane L. Goeres-Gardner, Murder, Morality and Madness: Women Criminals in Early Oregon (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Press, 2009), 15.

3. Oregon State Prison Inmate Case Files, 1853–1983, Oregon State Archives, Salem, Oregon.

4. Steve Wade and Laurel Paulson, “Charity and Justice,” Extracting Roots II, Frying Pan (June 1979), Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland, Oregon: 23.

6. “Oregon Hospital for the Insane, Portland 1861–1881,” Oregon State Hospital Museum Project, http://oshmuseum.wordpress.com.

7. Eugene Snyder, Portland Names and Neighborhoods: Their Historic Origins (Portland, OR: Binford and Mort, 1979).

9. Fran Genovese, “Buckman: Planning a Garden for Forgotten Residents,” Oregonian, October 23, 2008.

15. Alex Beam, Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 11–12.

17. J.S. Giltner, “Report of the Inspecting Physician to the Insane Asylum: Oregon. To the Legislative Assembly Thereof, for the Sixth Regular Session, September 1870” (Salem, OR: W.A. McPherson, State Printer, 1870), 4.

23. Giltner, 5. Also J.S. Giltner, “Report of the Visiting Physician of the Oregon Hospital for the Insane for 1867–8” (Salem, OR: W.A. McPherson, State Printer, 1868), 3.

24. O. Larsell, “History of Care of Insane in the State of Oregon,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 46, no. 4 (1945): 304. In contrast he later states on page 307 there were 122 patients in 1870.

26. The New Northwest (Portland, Oregon), September 8, 1871. Polly Holmes was the only black female patient at the asylum and is listed in the 1880 census.

33. Ronald B. Lansing, “The Tragedy of Charity Lamb, Oregon’s First Convicted Murderess,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 101, no. 1 (2000): 73.