State's history of lobotomies preserved at Georgetown mental institution

GEORGETOWN - The doctors at the Delaware Hospital for the Mentally Retarded had exhausted all their options. They tried medicating the 14 patients. They tried every treatment they knew of.

The patients still had "uncontrollable" behaviors. 

So, in 1964 the state mental institution in Georgetown, now called Stockley Center, wrote to the notorious Dr. Walter Freeman in California for help.

They wanted to learn how to do lobotomies. 

Freeman, who would perform 7,000 lobotomies in the United States in a 40-year period, traveled to Georgetown where, in a six-minute procedure, he inserted an ice pick-like instrument into a patient's brain through his or her eye sockets — without anesthesia.

A handful of doctors and nurses were tasked with holding the patients down. The goal was to cure mental illness. 

While the lobotomies in 1964 represent one day of the institution's almost 100-year-old history, the procedure was one of the many practices performed at the institution that are now considered to be cruel and ineffective.

And they are all documented in the mental institution's museum.

The Stockley Center museum is preserving the state institution's complicated past, with the hopes of history never repeating itself. Run by volunteer Linda Fleetwood, whose stepson is a resident of Stockley, the curated items show the evolution of treatment for people with disabilities — and how some of these methods occurred only decades ago.

“It is part of the history,” said Adele Wemlinger, the former executive director of Stockley. “And it shows how far we’ve come. I think time has taught us all a lot over the years.

"At the time, we thought we were doing the right thing.”

Opened in 1921 for "feeble-minded" children, the Stockley Center at one time housed more than 700 people with varying physical and mental disabilities. Stockley now cares for 49 adults, many of whom have severe physical disabilities.

Wemlinger, who retired from Stockley last year, asked Fleetwood to curate a museum about four years ago. As the institution was downsizing and remodeling buildings, staff members and parents were finding items she viewed to be artifacts. Wemlinger didn't want them to be thrown away.  

The museum, based in a small recreational room on the campus, has bookshelves of binders filled with old treatment plans, including the sterilization of patients who were as young as 2 years old. Photos show how black and white residents were segregated, with black patients receiving the ragged hand-me-downs of their white peers. 

Reports detail how parents barely visited their children. Some families, out of embarrassment, instructed nurses to refrain from saying they were with Stockley when they called them about their children. Instead, the nurses had to use code words. 

When the 14 Delawareans were lobotomized at Stockley in 1964, the doctors were focused on "curing mental retardation," Fleetwood said. But in reality, it only made the patients worse.

The doctors cut apart the two sides of their brain and then withdrew the ice pick, turning the patients into "placid souls," and made many of them blind, Fleetwood said.

Many of those patients lived at Stockley until they died decades later, she said. 

Fleetwood has saved the lobotomy consent forms signed by the patient's family members, which never mentioned blindness as a potential side effect. It also described lobotomies as a noninvasive procedure that would not involve a lot of stitches, Fleetwood said.

The consent form for the sterilizations, which were done to avoid procreation, didn't note that women's Fallopian tubes would be removed or that men would undergo vasectomies. 

While finding old photographs and documents, Fleetwood was surprised to learn that many of the residents were required to work while living at Stockley. Some would tend to the farm while others worked in the laundry room. 

Some people worked 60 hours a week and got paid very little, she said. 

"That tells me that they weren’t that handicapped if they could work on the farm six days a week," she said. 

The residents didn't always have disabilities, Fleetwood said. Sometimes they were homeless people or children with mild behavioral issues. 

As group homes became a more popular and suitable option for some residents in the early 2000s, Stockley began transitioning people out of the institution and into the community, said Marie Nonnenmacher, director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services.

Even though other states are closing their institutions, Nonnenmacher said there are no immediate plans to make changes to Stockley. There also isn’t a need to grow the number of people at the institution, she said.

Stockley operates on an $18 million budget, which is a significant decrease from previous decades, Nonnenmacher said. The institution now only cares for adults.

Fleetwood's stepson has lived at Stockley for almost 15 years. Since Jonathan, 35, is epileptic, nonverbal and non-ambulatory, he requires 24/7 care, she said. He's also fed through a feeding tube. 

To Fleetwood, Stockley is the only place that can look after her stepson.

"As long as I have a breath in my body, my stepson will be here," she said.

“I’m glad he is a present-day relative and not here in 1950," Fleetwood added. "I have seen all of the pictures from the way the old buildings were...they were in horrible shape. There was little for them to do."

Fleetwood is still curating the museum, constantly trying to get her hands on anything related to Stockley, from glass doorknobs to wooden wheelchairs. It's not easy.

Last Wednesday, the binder containing photos of the lobotomies and documents relating to lobotomies had disappeared, confusing Fleetwood.

She worries that if someone wanted to "clean up" Stockley's history, the binder would be the first to go.

That's why Fleetwood made copies and gave them to the State Archives. She never wants this history to disappear for good. 

DELAWARE HEALTH

This is why the mumps is making a comeback in Delaware

Hospital CEOs don't like Delaware plan to rein in health care costs

Senate bill would cover IVF, all fertility treatments for Delawareans

Contact Meredith Newman at 302-324-2386 or at mnewman@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @merenewman.