History
By: Janet M. Krumm

(Special thanks to Gordon Dubois and Heather Crocker who collected, preserved and studied the huge amount of records from Laconia State School when it closed its doors. This article is the result of their research. Some additional material comes from the book Making Minds Feeble, by J. David Smith, an Aspen Publication.)

In 1901 legislation was passed that created the New Hampshire School for Feeble-Minded Children. The original law affected only those children considered feebleminded between the ages of 3 and 21. Subsequent amendments to the law broadened the eligibility, first to include girls over the age of 21, then to include any feebleminded people of any age.

An examination of the forces that led to the creation of Laconia State School demonstrates that how problems are defined in our community (and society at large) often shapes the solutions.

Background

As the above document indicates, there were two prevailing schools of thought regarding what was then termed "feebleminded" people. Several well-respected professionals had demonstrated that feebleminded people could be taught, and benefit from an education. In his book, Wild Boy in Avignon, Jean Itard of France described educational methods for children who were feebleminded. Eduard Seguin, also of France, used sensory activities to teach feebleminded children, and advocated that they live at home and have educational expertise available.

Samuel Gridley Howe founded the first public program in the U.S. for children with mental retardation. Located in a friend's house in Massachusetts, the program taught 8 teenaged boys functional skills. They were required to live in a special home for one year while receiving the education.  With the success of the program came the demand to help more children and the size of the house was expanded to serve 100 children, changing the nature of the endeavor from a project rooted in a community's response to a state's bureaucratic intervention.

In 1860, Howe abandoned his work in frustration. Commenting on his experience, Howe said: "Nowhere is wisdom more necessary than in the guidance of charitable impulses. Meaning well is only half our duty; thinking right is the other, and equally important, half."

The Eugenics movement shapes the debate

At the end of the 19th century, the eugenics movement came into prominence. Inspired by the work of Charles Darwin, eugenics advocated improving the inborn qualities of the human race. That meant eliminating the bad qualities.

"Feeblemindedness", for the eugenicists, was a condition that was hereditary, and involved not only impaired cognitive functioning, but also impaired moral functioning as well. Feeblemindedness was seen as the root cause of all social problems: adult crime, sexual immorality, juvenile vice and delinquency, and the spread of venereal disease. (The 1910 report of the Trustees of the New Hampshire School for the Feebleminded included this observation: "...in 1900 the legislature awoke to the fact that there were in this State between two and three hundred such children who were growing up ignorant and vicious, a constant menace to the community....".)

The solution for these problems, then, was the segregation of feebleminded people and the creation of measures which would prevent such people from having children. In a 1915 report of the Children's Commission to the Governor and Legislature, the authors quoted a report from the Virginia State Board of Charities to support its recommendation to segregate feebleminded women:  "In view of these facts it is apparent that our great problems of crime, insanity, and the social evil are inseparably intertwined with the problem of feeble-mindedness. Whatever progress we may make in the treatment of criminals there can be no great reduction of crime so long as we ignore the fact of criminal inheritance, and whatever we may do toward the segregation of the insane, or toward the suppression of the social evil, we shall contribute little toward the actual solution of these problems, so long as we make no attempt to stem the appalling tide of feeble offspring that is increasingly pouring forth from our large and evergrowing class of mental defectives. So far as modern investigation enables us to see, the most pressing social need of our time is the segregation of the feeble-minded."

I.Q. tests, marriage laws, and sterilization

In the second decade of the 20th century, the I.Q. test was developed. It was the first instrument to measure a person's intelligence. The first use of the Binet I.Q. test in the United States was in a state institution for feebleminded people in New Jersey. The test was heralded for its accuracy and its validity, and became a widely accepted tool for determining who was feebleminded. Now professionals had a means to scientifically identify feebleminded people.

In 1915, New Hampshire passed legislation which regulated the marriage of people considered "mental defectives". The law stated: "No woman under the age of forty-five years, or man of any age, -- except he marry a woman over the age of forty-five years, -- either of whom is an epileptic, imbecile, feeble-minded, idiotic or insane person, shall hereafter intermarry or marry any other person within this state." The law also stipulated that no clergyman or other officer authorized by the state to solemnize marriages be allowed to perform a marriage ceremony for such people, nor could a city clerk issue a marriage license. Anyone violating this law was punishable either by fine or imprisonment, or both.

This effort to prevent feeblemindedness by preventing people from reproducing was expanded to include sterilization. In 1917, a law was enacted which permitted sterilization of people who were diagnosed as feebleminded or having mental disease. Initially, a person could not be sterilized without his or her consent, and the consent of the nearest relative or guardian. Later, this was amended to put the decision-making authority in the hands of the Board of Trustees and three physicians, and the consent of the individual was no longer needed.

(It is interesting to note that the marriage and sterilization laws passed in the United States were the models upon which Hitler fashioned the German laws of race purification.)

So there were two schools of thought about feebleminded people: they could be taught, and they should be segregated and prevented from reproducing in order to protect society. This was the climate in which the New Hampshire Home for the Feebleminded was created.

New Hampshire events leading to the legislation

Prior to the creation of the School, many feebleminded children lived in "almshouses", or county farms (predecessors to today's county nursing homes). Also living in the almshouses were paupers, yesterday's homeless people. Pauperism, at that time, was considered a disease that was inherited.

In 1893, there was a devastating fire at the Strafford County Farm, killing 41 or 44 "insane" people. A huge controversy arose about the conditions in the almshouses, particularly for children. In 1895, legislation was passed to provide for the education and maintenance of dependent children. As a part of that legislation, a state Board of Charities and Corrections was created to oversee the care of dependent people in the state who were housed in county farms. The Board recommended that radical changes were needed in the methods of caring for the poor and the mentally ill.

In 1896, a survey was done and it was reported that 420 children lived in almshouses. Within two years, all but 60 of those children were moved into foster care. Those 60 were feebleminded children. "Children 3 to 15 shall not be supported in the almshouse unless mentally incapacitated for education", read the legislation which created the Board of Charities and Corrections. Not considered appropriate for foster care, feebleminded children needed another option. What to do about them?

There was great pressure to build a school like the Fernald School in Massachusetts. The effort to do so was led the by Federation of Women's Clubs, under the influence of Lilian Streeter, a member and a nationally recognized advocate for children. Mrs. Streeter was named the Chairman of the Committee on Dependent Children for the New Hampshire State Conference of Charities and Corrections, whose 1915 report to the Legislature recommended institutional care for all feebleminded children, as well as special classes in school wherever feasible for all backward children.

Mrs. Streeter was one of the co-signers of the petition to the Legislature quoted above, which advocated for the creation of the New Hampshire School for Feebleminded Children. After the legislation was passed in 1901, communities around the state lobbied to have the institution located in their communities...it was considered very prestigious. Laconia was chosen for the site and the doors of the institution opened in 1903.

The first administration building on the grounds of The New Hampshire School for Feeble-minded, 1903.  This building was the living quarters of the Superintendent, and also served as the dining hall for the first residents.  Meals were cooked and served by the Superintendent's wife.

The Institution opens its doors

The site consisted of 250 acres of land, and three buildings: the Superintendent's house (which also served as the dining room for the children), a brick dormitory building for boys and girls, and a school building. The first Superintendent was Dr. Charles Sherman Little, a nationally prominent physician.

By 1906, there were 82 "inmates" (no longer referred to as "children"), and there was a waiting list of 117 children. Of the 82 people at the School, 57 came from the almshouses, and 25 came from homes.  Prior to the opening of the New Hampshire School for Feebleminded Children, most children with mental retardation lived at home. It was only the poor children without families who lived in the almshouses.

By 1910, the School had a new superintendent, Dr. Benjamin Ward Baker, a nationally known and well-respected leader. The number of buildings had increased to include a farm building, a boiler house, a laundry, dining hall (which also housed a dormitory for employees), an additional dormitory (which allowed girls to be housed separately from the boys), and a hospital, in addition to the already existing school and administration building. There were 96 admissions in that year, with the average age being eleven years.

  A classroom for the first residents.  Archival Photo

With the emphasis on segregation, the goal of the Home was to be self-sufficient. Dr. Baker, in his report to the Legislature in 1910, recommended that the state purchase as much land as possible around the buildings, to prevent trespassing and to enable the School to raise all the food it needed for the inmates, as well as to feed the horses and cows.

Because of the change in laws regarding eligibility mentioned above, children were kept beyond the age of 21, especially women of childbearing age. The population quickly changed from all children to children and adults. By 1916, there were 293 residents and overcrowding became a problem.  To address the overcrowding, a parole program was instituted, allowing the most capable inmates to be placed in family homes. There they received room and board in exchange for their work as either domestics or farm laborers. However, it was not until 1925 that a parole agent, Herma Rowe, was hired to supervise home placements.

Genetics "research"

In 1912, the results of a study begun in 1906 of the hereditary nature of feeblemindedness were released. This study, called the Kallikak study, was considered a definitive proof that feeblemindedness was an hereditary trait. Done in New Jersey, the study traced two branches of a family whose female descendent was living at the Training School for Feeble-minded Girls and Boys in Vineland. Despite later professional criticism of the research methods and conclusions drawn, the study captured popular attention and a social myth was created that had ramifications in public policy.

This type of research was not unique to New Jersey. New Hampshire was conducting similar research of its own. In the 1910 Superintendent's report to the Board of Trustees, Dr. Baker reports: "...one of the improvements within which I want to call your attention, and which I hope is only the beginning of further research along that line, is the one of making careful hereditary studies of our children, with the view that the public may be shown the results of having in the general community this class of defectives. This work, which has largely been performed by the office assistant, (emphasis added)...consists of taking some of the most interesting families from which there are, say four in our institution, and then visiting the town from which they came and carefully making a record of as many generations of that family as possible, the whole later being charted and thus showing the number of feeble-minded, epileptic, insane and criminals. The results are very interesting and will be an object lesson to the public."

Note that the above "research" is being done by an office assistant, without any stipulation about his or her research credentials. Also note that this person, without any acknowledged medical or educational background, is being asked to make diagnoses of people, alive and dead, as to whether they were feeble-minded, epileptic, insane or criminals. In the cases of deceased individuals in particular, these diagnoses were made on the basis of remembrances of others who knew them, some only slightly.

The results of such "research" had powerful influences: the creation of legislation which prohibited marriage and, in 35 states across the country (NH included), permitted sterilization.

Ultimately, the conclusions of the "research," coupled with the use of the Binet I.Q. test, led to federal laws which created immigration quotas. These quotas were based on research which involved giving I.Q. tests to immigrants arriving on Ellis Island. Not surprisingly, there was a high percentage of people who scored in the "feebleminded" range. The quotas were instituted to prevent an influx of feebleminded people from abroad, with a heavy emphasis on people from eastern and southern Europe. At a time when Jews were trying to leave Europe to escape the Nazis, the United States was preventing their entry to our shores.

Conditions at the School deteriorate

In 1924, the name of the New Hampshire School for Feebleminded Children was changed to Laconia State School. The years during World War I, the depression and World War II were difficult years for the institution. Because there were less resources at home, more and more families applied for their family members to be admitted to the school. However, the state was not willing to increase the funding for the school. In the superintendents' reports in those years, there are requests for new construction and repairs that are repeated for years without being addressed by the legislature.

There is a dearth of records on individuals for this period, which is consistent across the country.

By 1942, there were 614 people living at Laconia State School. There developed a class society within the School, with the more capable individuals working (without pay) and the less capable doing nothing. At this time, the farm at the School yielded huge crops, providing capable workers with plenty to do. Women helped care for other less capable inmates, which augmented a meager staff. Staff were working 51 hours a week on two shifts, with one staff person typically responsible for 30 to 50 people.

Inmates did leave Laconia State School. During the war years, those able to enlist in the armed services were encouraged to do so. However, in order to return to the community, inmates had to agree to submit to sterilization. The law provided that inmates could be sterilized without the consent of a parent or guardian. The Board of Trustees of the Laconia State School were invested with the authority to decide such matters.

By 1950, conditions at the School were grim. The dormitories were overcrowded. Some residents worked around the institution, but many did nothing for the entire day. Rooms were drafty, beds were pushed together with no room in between. There was no room for personal possessions. The walls and floors of the buildings were made of brick and tile. Drains were built into the middle of the floor to facilitate cleaning, which consisted of hosing down walls and floors. Furniture was selected for its facility in cleaning, so there were no stuffed chairs or couches. Benches lined the walls.

There was very little privacy. There were no stalls in the bathroom and often not even seats on the toilets. In one building which housed 80 people, there was only one toilet with a pull chain, and a pipe jutting out of the wall for use as a shower. Inmates were hosed down in communal showers and personal hygiene was poor. The outstanding characteristic of the institution was the overwhelming stench.

Inmates did not have personal clothing items. People wore what was available, whether it fit or not, creating a bizarre look. There were no shoes available, only cloth slippers, and not enough for everyone. It was common for the inmates to be barefoot. Some didn't even wear clothes.  Drugs were used to control the inmates because the staffing shortage was so severe. In 1952, a television was donated to the School and that became the preferred "program" for the inmates. Televisions soon filled the common rooms, encased in boxes covered with wire, and controlled by the staff.

Hungerford and the parent movement - agents of change

In 1952, change arrived in the person of Richard Hungerford, the new Superintendent. For the first time, the superintendent was not a medical doctor, but a teacher. He brought a change of philosophy and began a reform movement. His tenure lasted only seven years, but the movement he inspired and facilitated planted the seeds for the lawsuit that would occur twenty years later.

Instead of discouraging parents from visiting the School, Hungerford invited them in. He was one of the first persons in the nation (the first in New Hampshire) to recognize the potential political power of parents as reform agents, and helped them to organize.  He even invited parents to film the institution, and a newly created parent organization, the Great Bay Association, did just that. In 1956, they made and paid for a film of the Laconia State School as it was in the early fifties, and showed it to community groups throughout the state.

This disclosure of conditions at Laconia State School happened at the same time that the world was discovering the true extent of the Nazi atrocities in Germany, and the two events became linked in the public mind. When pictures of conditions at the Laconia State School were published by the Portsmouth Herald, public reaction was that it looked like Nazi Germany, and there was a demand to "do something."

Parents organize

Parents of residents at the School, under the tutelage and with the support of Hungerford, organized and created the New Hampshire Council for Retarded Children in September, 1953. In addition to this State Council were born loosely organized regional groups: the Keene Association, the Great Bay Association, the Nashua Regional Unit, the Manchester Unit, and the Exeter Unit. These groups were the predecessors of the New Hampshire Association for Retarded Citizens (now known as The ARC) and its regional chapters.

The parents' group became a powerful force advocating for improvements at Laconia State School and in the communities. Through the use of the film mentioned above, the parents brought to the attention of the public the terrible conditions at the school. They hosted conferences which focused on how to organize existing resources into a statewide program for the mentally retarded. They developed out-of-state associations with other groups. They appealed to community groups across the state to donate needed items to the School to supplement the minimal supplies allotted by the state. They created a St. Nicholas Club to provide gifts for the residents at Christmas. They worked with Hungerford to build an all-faiths chapel on the grounds.

It wasn't long before they realized they needed funds, and in 1955, they participated in the national fundraising campaign of the National Association of Retarded Children (NARC), an annual campaign which grew more successful each succeeding year.

A major achievement in the early years of the parent movement was the creation of the Summer Workshops for teachers at the Laconia State School. Targeting public school teachers throughout the state, the purpose was to train teachers how to teach children with mental retardation. Teachers could receive either undergraduate or graduate credit for completing the workshop.

Additionally, the parents' group lobbied to pass legislation amending the Public School law to include "educable child with retarded intellectual development" under the definition of handicapped, which before had meant only physically handicapped children. They fought for mandatory education for children with mental retardation, but the legislation that ultimately passed merely allowed education.

Change....and reaction

Meanwhile, under Hungerford's direction, physical changes at the school were taking place consistent with his philosophy. Two cottages were built, which were more home-like. There were curtains on the windows, room for private possessions, bedrooms for 2 or 3 people instead of large groups. He instituted co-educational activities for the residents, and succeeded in having a geriatrics building built.

Hungerford inspired admiration and support from the parents, but, as time went on, the legislature did not look kindly upon what were considered his "radical ideas". In the History of the Early Years of the New Hampshire Council for Retarded Children, 1953-1960, Edna St. John wrote: "When (Richard Hungerford) came to New Hampshire in 1953 he was hailed with hosannas. Then, as his total professional and moral commitment to the retarded came to be understood, he was looked upon with wariness, and finally and tragically with hostility. In the main, New Hampshire's bureaucracy felt no moral commitment whatsoever to the retarded and from now on it was going to keep a close rein on its financial commitment. The accolades had turned to venomous criticism."

The parents circulated petitions in support of Hungerford, collecting 1,600 signature on one petition alone in a matter of hours. But to no avail. Hungerford resigned in 1960.

Reform was here to stay

But 1960 was the year John F. Kennedy was elected President. President Kennedy drew national attention to the plight of people with mental retardation because of his family's personal experience with his sister Rosemary. The President's Commission on Mental Retardation was created, and federal funding became available for research projects designed to improve conditions at institutions and develop community services for people with mental retardation. There was increased national attention and energy focused on the problem.

At this time, Laconia State School had a new superintendent, Arthur Toll, an educator from the Berlin School District. Under Toll's administration, the emphasis on education continued, but was somewhat tempered because of the fallout from Hungerford. Despite these efforts, the medical mindset was firmly entrenched. Therapies were the prevalent program for residents, and medication was frequently used to control and make people fit into a norm.

In 1961, the Board of Trustees was dismantled by the legislature and more power was concentrated in the hands of the superintendent and the Department of Health and Welfare.

As the institution grew, familiar components disappeared. In 1968, the farm program was shut down, and in 1970, the dairy herd was sold. The more capable people went into community placements, leaving behind those with more severe disabilities. A Work Incentive Program was instituted that was based on a developmental theory of learning and a small portion of people worked in sheltered workshops.

The number of residents continued to grow. In 1962, there were 990 residents; in 1974, there were 1,000 residents, with a waiting list of 400. On the federal level, increased funding became available from numerous sources. The Hospital Improvement Grant was a federal effort to develop model programs in institutions. Title I funding became available to provide educational services. The Developmental Disabilities Act was passed and with it came funding to the states.

 Archival Photo

Protective laws passed

In 1975, the New Hampshire legislature passed a law (RSA 171-A) which mandated "the Division of Mental Health to establish, maintain, implement and coordinate a comprehensive service delivery system for developmentally disabled persons."   It was this law which created area agencies, defined eligibility, and guaranteed certain services to eligible clients. The service delivery system mandated by the law included Laconia State School as well as community agencies, and mandated that each client in the system have an individual service plan.

It also guaranteed that: "Each developmentally disabled client has the right to adequate and humane habilitation and treatment including such psychological, medical, vocational, social, educational or rehabilitative services as his condition requires to bring about an improvement within the limits of modern knowledge."

At the same time that the bill was being debated in the legislature, Michael Dillon, a Superintendent of the Central Connecticut Regional Center, was invited into Laconia to make recommendations on how to improve the program. His observations reflect the bleak atmosphere of the School. Despite the gains secured by the lobbying efforts of the parent movement, living conditions at the school remained desolate.  Buildings were old, lacked privacy, needed renovations. Resources were few, clothing spare, shoes almost non-existent. Understaffing was rampant, turnover frequent, burnout the norm. Education programs were limited, arbitrarily offered, poorly organized. The entire School had only one Speech Therapist and one Audiologist. Recreational services were few and did not serve all residents.

Dillon ended his report with the following remarks: "In the end, however, while federal funds may lighten the cost, the state of New Hampshire must consider what it will provide to its handicapped citizens. Will it tolerate its citizens to live in a barren, sterile environment, devoid of stimulation? Will it seek to find a better, more humane way of providing for them?.......The issue then is apparent. What needs to be done is known. That it is costly is true. Who will take the initiative?"

 The same year the report was submitted, parents put on more pressure to improve conditions. Parents invited the community in to see the institution. Jack Melton, the new Superintendent, was appointed to clean things up and get things back on track. He implemented the Intermediate Care Facility for people with Mental Retardation (ICF-MR) funding system, purchased adaptive equipment and increased the number of occupational, physical, and speech and language therapists.

He invited the Foster Grandparent program into the School, which augmented the efforts of the staff. Holidays became times of great celebrations for the residents. More residents were getting services, especially education. There was more community placement (but not much follow-up). Despite the fact that from 1974 to 1979, New Hampshire moved from 44th in the nation in its daily spending for clients to 5th in the nation, conditions were still not optimal.

On April 12, 1978, parents took a major step and filed a class-action lawsuit against the State of New Hampshire. (At this point there were 1,100 residents with 500 staff working three shifts.) The grounds of the lawsuit were that New Hampshire had violated its own law (recently passed RSA 171-A) for the provision of a minimum amount of services. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, the suit charged that New Hampshire was in violation of the U.S. Constitution: "The complaint alleges widespread deprivations of (the residents’) rights to freedom from harm, and to habilitative treatment in the least restrictive setting under the eighth and fourteenth amendments."

New Hampshire was not the first state to file such a lawsuit. As conditions at similar institutions around the country were being revealed, parent groups resorted to the power of the court to force change. The Garrity v. Gallen suit resulted in a court order to reduce the size of the institution and ordered 235 community placements, stopping short of ordering the institution to close it doors altogether. A backlash in the communities resulted. Hostility emerged to having group homes in the local communities. Newspapers were filled with articles about community reactions as well as letters to the editor protesting this move.

Concurrently with the lawsuit, the state developed a plan called Action for Independence which called for an expansion of community services and created the area agency system as we know it. Standards regulating that system, however, were not established until 1984.

Because of the lawsuit and the resulting court order, improvements were made to the physical plant at Laconia, and the numbers of staff were increased. Staff training was implemented, using Social Role Valorization and normalization as the guiding philosophies.  Alongside the efforts to improve the conditions at Laconia were efforts to build an effective community based system. Community Care Waivers allowed Medicaid funding to be used for placements in the community, when previously, all Medicaid funds were used exclusively to provide care in institutional settings.

In 1986, Rich Crocker became the last Superintendent at Laconia State School. It was during his administration that the institution was slowly and carefully downsized to the extent that the Governor announced it was not economically viable to keep it open any longer. On January 31, 1991 the doors of the institution closed for the last time.

 Since 1941, this has been the final resting place for those who spent their lives at Laconia State School.  The headstones are all flat in the ground so there is no visible sign from the road hinting at the purpose of this hallowed ground, save a statue which has been relocated from the front of the grounds of what used to be the Laconia State School.