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MANAGING
MADNESS
 MANAGING
MADNESS
WEYBURN MENTAL HOSPITAL
AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF
PSYCHIATRIC CARE IN CANADA

ERIKA DYCK AND ALEX DEIGHTON

WITH HUGH LAFAVE, JOHN ELIAS, GARY GERBER,
ALEXANDER DYCK, JOHN MILLS, AND TRACEY MITCHELL
 Managing Madness: Weyburn Mental Hospital and
the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada
© Erika Dyck and Alex Deighton 2017

21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database
and retrieval system in Canada, without the prior written permission
of the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or any other
reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright,
www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777.

University of Manitoba Press

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Treaty 1 Territory
uofmpress.ca

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

isbn 978-0-88755-795-8 (paper)
isbn 978-0-88755-537-4 (pdf)
isbn 978-0-88755-535-0 (epub)

Cover design by Frank Reimer

Interior design by Jess Koroscil
Cover image: Weyburn Mental Hospital © Michael Kesterton

Printed in Canada

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards
to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The University of Manitoba Press acknowledges the financial support for

its publication program provided by the Government of Canada through
the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba
Department of Sport, Culture, and Heritage, the Manitoba Arts Council,
and the Manitoba Book Publishing Tax Credit.
DEDICATED TO EVERYONE WHO HAS
ENCOUNTERED MADNESS
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix
Note on Photographs x
Acknowledgements xi

Introduction
WHO HAS SEEN THE ASYLUM? 1

Chapter One
OPTIMISM AND CELEBRATION 33
Chapter Two
EXPERIENCING THE ASYLUM 51
Chapter Three
FALSE STARTS 71
Chapter Four
SOCIALIZING MENTAL HEALTH CARE 87
Chapter Five
PILLS, POLITICS,
AND EXPERIMENTS OF ALL KINDS 115
Chapter Six
DISSOLVING THE WALLS 147
Chapter Seven
HOSPITAL DIASPORAS 174
Chapter Eight
CONSUMPTION AND SURVIVAL 200

Conclusion
LEGACIES 229

Notes 241
Bibliography 287
Contributors 307
Illustration Credits 310
Index 311
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
0.1. Indigenous admissions and discharges by year. 13

3.1. Combined annual admissions to Saskatchewan

mental health institutions. 80
3.2. Growth of defective population at Weyburn Mental Hospital. 82

3.3. Deaths and paroles among mentally defective population. 82

4.1. North Battleford-Weyburn residence of admissions, 1920–29. 91

4.2. North Battleford-Weyburn residence of admissions, 1930–39. 92

4.3. North Battleford-Weyburn residence of admissions, 1940–49. 93

4.4. Locations of Saskatchewan mental health facilities, 1944. 106

4.5. Locations of Saskatchewan mental health facilities, 1951. 106

5.1. Age at year of admission, Weyburn. 124

5.2. Diagnostic categories, North Battleford and Weyburn. 124

5.3. The distribution of diagnostic categories among the age and number of North
Battleford and Weyburn patients on admission, 1914–1948. 125
5.4. The diagnosis breakdown of North Battleford and Weyburn patients on admis-
sion, 1914–1948. 125
5.5. Gender distribution in patient population, North Battleford
and Weyburn. 126
5.6. Civil status of patients, Weyburn Mental Hospital. 126

5.7. Average length of all admissions (months), Weyburn Mental Hospital. 127

5.8. Average length of stay (months) by year and number of all admissions,
Weyburn Mental Hospital. 127
NOTE ON PHOTOGRAPHS
The images in this book are a small sampling of the hundreds of photographs
depicting the Weyburn Mental Hospital and the people whose lives intersected
with the institution. The photographs include some from the hospital’s early
days of construction and its first few decades of operation, courtesy of the Soo
Line Museum. Others come from an unpublished set of photographs taken
by Michael Kesteron in 1953, which he had intended to publish after visiting
Weyburn on assignment from Maclean’s magazine. Other photographs were kept
by staff working in mental health services in the 1970s and remain undated and
uncatalogued. The most recent photographs depict the closing of the hospital
and ultimately its destruction; we are grateful to Penny Dyck and Kam Theo
for capturing these moments to help bookend the rise and fall of this important
facility.
Photographs follow page 82 and page 178.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We want to begin by acknowledging the Treaty 4 territory where the Weyburn
Mental Hospital once stood and where this book unfolded. This book is the
product of the inspiration, reflection, collaboration, and ultimately hard work
of many people who have all encountered the mental health system in different
ways. We all have our reasons for getting involved in writing the book, and we all
have different people and experiences to thank for that motivation. What initial-
ly began as a more modest proposal from Hugh Lafave to write up a little some-
thing on the remarkable experiment(s) that unfolded in Saskatchewan gradually
grew in scope, and we quickly realized that the strength of our venture multiplied
as we joined with others who helped to nuance and enrich the discussion.
After several telephone calls, and a few visits to Ontario, Hugh introduced
me, Erika Dyck, to Gary Gerber, and our circle widened. We started by apply-
ing to the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation for a new investigator
grant to support the hiring and training of an archivist who could take the new-
ly deposited patient admission records and enter them into a database, which
we could then read, compare, and analyze to tease out patient experiences in the
first half of the twentieth century.
Alex Deighton took a course on the history of madness with me and the fol-
lowing summer volunteered to work in the archives retracing the earlier history
of the hospital. After many weeks reviewing institutional materials and govern-
ment records, he began writing up his impressions, and it was clear that he was
going to be an integral part of the team because of his sophisticated research
and sensitive analysis. Ultimately, Alex took the lead on Chapters 1 to 3.
Alex Dyck was a medical student at the University of Saskatchewan when
he approached me about doing a summer research project. We applied for fund-
ing from Associated Medical Services and received a student internship grant
for Alex to compare diagnostic categories over time and through different na-
scent systems of classification.
Along the way, I met John Mills through correspondence and ultimately col-
laborated with him on a paper. John was working on his own manuscript about
the history of psychiatry in Saskatchewan. Before he completed it, however, he
fell ill and passed it along to the team, allowing us to use parts of it for our own
purposes. Working with his widow, Ann Newdigate, and his son, Julian Mills,
 xii | MANAGING MADNESS

we have woven together parts of John’s work along with much of the passion
and insight of his original manuscript.
John Elias joined us later in the process but played a critical role in locat-
ing unarchived documents, many of which were in his possession after he served
many years in the Saskatchewan government and was responsible for revising the
Mental Health Services Act after introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights
and Freedoms. Without his organization, interest in, and passion for this subject,
much of the material for the latter half of the book would not have been possible.
Tracey Mitchell and I had long shared interests in progressive Saskatchewan
politics and survivor politics, but the evolving nature of this project allowed
us to come together again and put our words on paper as we worked through
some of our convictions about social justice and madness within a historically
contingent framework.
I am deeply indebted to each of these authors for sharing his or her pas-
sion, experiences, inspiration, and ideas. I am proud that we were able to work
together and make this a collaborative project, and the sum of our parts consti-
tuted a much stronger book in the end.
We have many others who helped us along the way to thank as well. We re-
ceived financial support from the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation,
the Canada Research Chair funds, Associated Medical Services, Inc., and the
University of Saskatchewan. We benefited from the technical support of the
Digital Research Centre and its guru, Jon Bath. My colleague Geoff Cunfer
not only encouraged us to embrace Historical Geographic Information
Systems methods but also introduced me to his technician, Mike St. Louis,
who helped us to clean the data and prepare the charts and maps in this
book. The Saskatchewan Archives Board, renamed the Provincial Archives of
Saskatchewan as the book neared completion, was instrumental in developing
the database that allowed us to compare patient admissions across institutions.
Anna Stoszek, Liam Currie, and Lisa Long were indispensable for negotiat-
ing the legal, ethical, and archival contours of creating this resource, and we
hope that it will provide a rich dataset for future researchers as well. Alexandre
Pelletier at the University of Ottawa joined us at our Ontario meetings and in-
terviewed Hugh Lafave repeatedly to capture his detailed reflections.
In September 2014, John Court and the Friends of the Centre for Addiction
and Mental Health Archives hosted a day-long workshop with our authors
alongside a crew of researchers in Toronto to explore the history of madness and
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | xiii

its institutions. We are grateful for all the help in organizing from John Court,
Jennifer Bazar, and Ed Janiszewski and for all the attendees who commented
on drafts of our chapters: Kenton Kroker, Megan Davies, Dorian Deschauer,
John Howland, Syd Jones, Tobin Hayley, Pat Farrell, and Alexandre Pelletier.
The next day Gary Gerber hosted us for lunch as we attempted to capture the
insights from this informative group. His hosting continued the next year when
we reassembled in Ottawa at his home for another round of discussion, reflec-
tion, laughter, and friendship.
The University of Manitoba Press has been wonderfully supportive of this
book project even as it took on an unorthodox and complicated authorship.
David Carr unflinchingly encouraged it, Jill McConkey shepherded it, and
Glenn Bergen helped to prepare it for publication. We are very grateful, of
course, to the two anonymous reviewers who provided critical and detailed
comments that improved the final version of this book. My friend Pat Farrell
has been a constant source of support for this project and went above the call of
friendship to help edit the text; I am grateful for his keen eye.
The medicine, psychiatry, and Canadian history communities have heard
draft versions of these chapters from some of the authors. We have been grate-
ful for the feedback and encouragement. Megan Davies and I began a nation-
al project on madness and deinstitutionalization a decade ago, and it inspired
me to listen to different voices and to untangle power relations in institutional
and non-institutional settings, in many ways breaking down the walls. Megan’s
friendship and dedication to that important political work have been major
factors in how we conceptualized this book. Following her lead, we have also
presented material to community groups, to Next Up (a youth leadership pro-
gram), and to public library audiences, and on television, radio, and newspaper
interviews. We are proud that the materials resonate beyond the academy and
are grateful for the candid and sometimes challenging feedback from the com-
munity, especially from people with direct encounters with mental health insti-
tutions. Jayne Whyte, I am forever inspired by you and your leadership.
Each of us has our personal friends and family members to thank, and I am
no exception. To my parents and in-laws, thank you for furnishing me with
the drive to write history about people who matter to me and for nudging me
in the direction of people whose stories deserve to be heard. To John, Felix,
and Amelia, I am sorry for the late nights and rushed suppers when Mom is
 xiv | MANAGING MADNESS

somewhere else—either literally or figuratively—but I am ever grateful for your

love and good humour.
Alex Deighton especially thanks Christine Charmbury and Bonnie Dahl at
the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan and his family for their support.
John Mills died before he completed his book, and his wife, Ann, loving-
ly nurtured this project on his behalf, reading drafts and offering suggestions
that help to honour his contribution to this historical project. He would have
thanked Wilma Clark and the late Art Clark and Sharon Russell and the late
Terry Russell. John worked with and interviewed these couples, who themselves
had intimate connections with mental health in Saskatchewan.
Hugh Lafave has been a major inspiration for completing this book. He ac-
knowledges his mentors, who not only welcomed him home in Saskatchewan
but also encouraged him to think beyond the institutional walls of the asylum
and imagine a place where mental health and illness coexisted in communi-
ties. He especially thanks the vision and leadership of Griff McKerracher, Sam
Lawson, Chuck Jillings, and Fred Grunberg but also the cooperation of all the
multidisciplinary teams that brought together nurses, administrators, social
workers, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and government
planners. Care in the community required building the community, maintain-
ing it, and tolerating its many permutations.
We are donating any proceeds from this book to Saskatoon Crocus Co-op,
a non-profit, charitable, member-guided cooperative that works on behalf of
people with mental health disabilities.

—ERIKA DYCK
INTRODUCTION

WHO HAS SEEN

THE ASYLUM?
W.O. MITCHELL’S BEST-SELLING NOVEL WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND? FOLLOWS A YOUNG
boy’s adventures in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.1 The Weyburn Mental Hospital
itself features in the book as an institution at the edge of the city, with a larger-
than-life mystique. The book sold over a million copies and became a popular
text on Canadian school curricula. It centres on the life of a boy on the prai-
rie as he struggles to understand the cycle of life, and as he and his family sur-
vive the economic depression of the 1930s, leaving a profound impression on
him and his attitudes toward others. For many twenty-first-century readers, the
Depression is now part of history, though its impact is still felt today in the hab-
its and attitudes of prairie families raised by survivors of this prolonged period
of struggle. But the impact of the Depression on everyday lives is beginning to
fade from significance.
As we remember the asylum in this book, it too is fading from both the land-
scape and recent memory. It once loomed large on the prairie, as a beacon of or-
der and a monument to civilization, making it one of the first things that people
would see as they approached the community of Weyburn. But it remained at the
edge of the city, existing for some as a legendary place where you would go if you
misbehaved, the butt of a joke for local kids, or a place that everyone knew but no
one dared visit, making it part of the local culture, while its inside remained in-
visible for most of the people living in the city. As the institution began releasing
patients into the community, some of them became estranged from their social
networks and friends, and some even returned seeking once again the asylum or
at least the remnants of friendly encounters that they had enjoyed inside its walls.
By the end of the twentieth century, after years of languishing behind boarded-up
windows and a crumbling exterior, the old asylum was torn down, leaving us to
wonder who indeed had seen the asylum in its prime and who might remember
 2 | MANAGING MADNESS

its larger-than-life existence or some of the more intimate details of the thou-
sands of individuals who had passed through its doors.
This book is as much about the history of this facility as it is about how we
remember the asylum as a place that housed people whom we struggled to under-
stand, help, or even fix. Invoking the phrase “who has seen the asylum?” attempts
to bring together those who fondly encountered the facility alongside those who
gladly celebrated its destruction. The mental hospital plays a central role in the
study that follows, but we are concerned primarily with how that place, now a
fading memory, cemented certain cultural, legal, and medical ideas about citizen-
ship. Even without a physical structure to house those ideas, we argue, madness
often remains relegated to the edges of our communities. In other words, it does
not matter who has seen or experienced the asylum, for the stigma of mental ill-
ness persists in our current system even without concrete buildings.

WILLIAM’S STORY
William H. watched his seeds scatter in the wind after planting them earlier
that week. The drought on the prairie in the 1880s was severe enough to war-
rant a formal investigation by the Canadian government, which sent surveyors
into the region that would become Saskatchewan and Alberta. They ultimate-
ly declared portions of it uninhabitable because of the desert-like conditions.
However, for William, the fact that the government later discouraged home-
steading in what would become the Palliser Triangle did nothing to alleviate
the stress of trying to feed his family and survive another prairie winter. As if
crop failure was not bad enough, his friends and neighbours seemed to be keep-
ing their distance from him lately, and even his wife had taken the children and
recently boarded a train to visit her sister in Ontario, leaving him alone with the
ruined crops and windblown prairie.
One night the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) showed up at his door.
He had been drinking that evening with the hired man who worked for his
neighbours. He had grown to suspect those neighbours since they disliked his
drinking, but when the police arrived that evening his suspicion grew to full-
blown paranoia. The NWMP officer explained that they had received complaints
from local residents that William had been behaving strangely and that he had
even been seen carrying a revolver. He denied these accusations, but his loose
speech and inebriated state did not help his case. The officer asked him why he
thought his neighbours had described him as “mentally unbalanced.” Feeling
 INTRODUCTION | 3

offended, William attempted to hide his rage, but paranoia and anger collided
and overtook his words as he spat out claims to the contrary. His outburst con-
vinced NWMP officers that he was potentially dangerous, and they apprehended
him that evening.
At the holding centre in the central western part of Saskatchewan, the police
officers reviewed letters that they had collected from William’s neighbours. “One
day he will appear fairly rational, and the next his talk is impossible to understand.
He has the delusion that his neighbours want to hunt him out of the country.
There is no foundation for this as they pity him and try to help him when he tries
to do something to help himself. . . . He is getting on the people’s nerves, and be-
fore anything untoward happens I take the liberty of reporting his state to you.”2
Others had complained that William was seen carrying a knife one evening
and a revolver a few weeks earlier. The police officers did not find any weapons
in his possession, and he denied these accusations, but the claims were noted
in their paperwork.
Then they began asking him whether any members of his family had ever
spent time in a jail or psychiatric institution. He admitted that, while he had
been growing up in Ontario, both his mother and his sister had been treated in
the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum periodically but were fine now. The officer noted
that William had a history of family psychiatric illness and could “become in-
sane at any time.” He added that “I consider [the man] to be a very undesirable
type of settler, and I would suggest that he be deported if it is possible to do so.”3
Desirable settlers, according to government sources at the time, were supposed
to cultivate the land and produce crops while maintaining a strong set of Anglo-
Saxon, Christian values through their moral codes of conduct. Transgressing
these unwritten codes, whether actively as William appeared to do or because
of race, often placed people and communities at odds with the government.
Indigenous people especially were excluded from mainstream narratives of prog-
ress and expected to live on segregated reserves, while unruly settlers like William
might have found themselves segregated in a psychiatric or penal institution.
William and other outsiders were at a greater risk of detection that could
lead to deportation if they were dependent on state services and thus consid-
ered a drain on society. Although we do not know where William originally
came from, we do know that psychiatric facilities eventually became impor-
tant sites for deportation, further underscoring the idea that madness or lunacy
needed to be rooted out of an otherwise healthy society.
 4 | MANAGING MADNESS

Ultimately, William was transferred south to the train line, where he wait-
ed until he was escorted to Stony Mountain Penitentiary in the neighbouring
province of Manitoba. He entered the prison without knowing how long he
would have to stay or what his crime was. The superintendent explained to him
that he was being detained for his own good, that he was a danger to himself,
and that the penitentiary was the best place for him until he was no longer dan-
gerous. William spent several years there.
At first, he tried to get better. He wrote letters to his wife pleading with her
to come back from Ontario and explained to the superintendent that there had
been a mistake. Sure, he’d had some bad harvests, but no one should begrudge
a man a few drinks and a frustrated response to difficult circumstances. After
a few years, the letters stopped coming from his wife, and William sank into a
resigned depression.
In 1914, Saskatchewan opened its first mental hospital in North Battleford.
William, along with 345 other inmates, were put on a train and sent to live
in the new hospital. The administrators in Manitoba argued that these
Saskatchewan residents were an expensive burden on their institution and, now
that Saskatchewan had its own facility, Manitoba should no longer be respon-
sible for their well-being.
William was excited by the possibility of leaving the dismal conditions to
which he had grown accustomed in Stony Mountain, but the train ride was
the highlight of his transfer. The North Battleford hospital sat perched on
the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, and the new building glistened
in the prairie sun, but behind its shiny doors the wards were all too familiar.
Within a few days, the superintendent busied himself on the wards, explaining
to staff that provincial dignitaries would be arriving the following week and
that patients needed to be sent out to the fields so as not to disturb the visi-
tors. William was fairly healthy and had retained a few skills from his years of
farming. He was quickly assessed as fit for work on the quarter-sections in the
back of the asylum grounds, and he soon became a valuable worker. He and his
ward mates funnelled out of the building every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the superintendent proudly entertained visitors—showing off the beauti-
ful grounds, the state-of-the-art medical technology, and the gleaming halls of
the palatial building. Rarely did visitors actually encounter a patient.
By 1921, the number of patients living in the North Battleford asylum
had swelled out of control, and the province opened its second asylum. The
 INTRODUCTION | 5

Weyburn Mental Hospital was hailed as the “last and largest” asylum ever built
in the British Commonwealth. These claims turned out not to be entirely true,
but Saskatchewan residents were nonetheless keen to celebrate them.
William joined 491 inmates selected from the North Battleford Mental
Hospital to board the train and move to the new facility in Weyburn. On the
train, William looked around at his fellow passengers and realized that some
of them were severely constrained by physical deformity, Down’s syndrome,
mental deficiency, and psychosis that came and went, often resulting in fits of
screaming and self-abuse. How had he ended up here? He could not remember
the last time that his wife had written a letter to him, and his memories of her
were beginning to fade. He wept. Neither his fellow inmates nor the attendants
noticed as he sank into his seat and watched a strange world pass by out the win-
dow. He wondered if he would ever be on the other side of that window again.
By the time the train reached Weyburn, the crowded cars reeked of human
sweat and fear. The standard-issue canvas clothes did not absorb the bodily re-
sponses produced by one who has come to realize that he or she has been con-
fined to an invisible life, a life without autonomy.
William waited in line as the patients who could walk on their own were
shuffled into the building through a side door; the front entrance was reserved
for visitors and staff, greeted by the golden staircase and its impressive marble
steps. William came to hate those steps, for on really cold days when he was
not released to work in the fields he wielded a bucket and a brush and was or-
dered to clean them.
They were told that this was the most modern facility on the continent. It
had the most up-to-date medical technology, and the expansive farmland gave
patients meaningful opportunities to develop skills in agriculture. Moral thera-
py, it was called. But William naively asked whether they would be paid for all
that work when they returned home. He knew full well that no one there had
any idea where home was anymore, but it seemed to be a reasonable question to
ask. He was rewarded for his query by being sent to clean the basement ward. It
represented the worst aspects of so-called existence. The basement was off limits
to visitors, and even the superintendent rarely saw it for himself. Half-dressed
people littered the floor, sometimes caked in their own excrement. Straw mat-
tresses and thick canvas blankets reinforced the austere inhumanity of the base-
ment ward with a vividness unparalleled by any other space of the hospital.
 6 | MANAGING MADNESS

William ultimately died in the Weyburn hospital. The nurse on the ward
noticed one morning that he had not risen from his bed, where he lay cheek to
jowl with fourteen other men in a cramped room.
William was buried in an unmarked grave on the hospital grounds. The hos-
pital maintained its own cemetery since the city of Weyburn refused to allow
psychiatric patients to be buried in the municipal graveyard. The superinten-
dent looked into his estate, finding that a few meagre possessions had accumu-
lated during his fifty-six years in the hospital system—a carving, an incomplete
deck of playing cards, and a dated and yellowed stack of letters from his wife.
William had long been estranged from any family members or friends in the
community, and his file indicated that, because of his lack of familial connec-
tions, there was no need for any follow-up with his next of kin. His case was
closed and filed alongside those of thousands of patients who had lived in the
Weyburn Mental Hospital.
William is a fictitious character who could have been a typical person in the
mental hospital system in the era before deinstitutionalization. The details of
his story come from archival records and a patient database with over 30,000 re-
cords of admission files and death certificates. We relied on what we know about
the transfer of patients, the quality of work and therapy, and the physical layout
of the hospital and its grounds. Although William is fictitious, the details of his
life are true to the empirical record, and the specific details of his apprehension
come from a real case of a man taken into custody by the police and, as far as we
know, never released. This book draws attention to some of the men and women
who encountered the Weyburn Mental Hospital, and it traces our cultural rela-
tionship with institutional care over the course of the twentieth century.

THE LEGACY OF THE ASYLUM

The asylum was an important institution for many decades. For thousands of
people, it was an employer, a hospital, an architectural work of art, a meeting
place, a prison, and a home. How we remember the asylum or mental hospital
depends on our relationship to it. For some, the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital
at Weyburn was an impressive building on the prairie that generated jobs. Its
architecture reflected traditional designs of asylums in other parts of Canada,
the United States, and Europe: a monument to civilization and, in some in-
stances, a monument to the British Empire. It occupied space, geographically
and culturally, alongside the rise of other major institutions in the region: the
 INTRODUCTION | 7

legislative assembly in Regina, the provincial seat of government; Indian resi-

dential schools; the provincial university in Saskatoon; the corrections and pe-
nal institutions farther north; and Fort San, the tuberculosis sanitorium near
Fort Qu’Appelle. These institutions dotted the landscape, reminding onlookers
of the growing pains of civilization and the reality of settlement that went hand
in hand not only with law and order but also with disorder and incarceration.
Many of these places, as American historian David Rothman has argued, were
parts of the process of settling an area and reminded people that institutions
were required to transform a frontier environment into a civilized nation-state.4
For many people, memories of the asylum are dark; it was an institution with
rigid rules, a place where one was under constant surveillance, a space occupied
by people considered deviant, disordered, defective, and disabled: a mausoleum
to the detritus of society. Somewhere between the utopian and dystopian imag-
es, people who directly experienced the asylum tend to have more complicated
and even conflicting perspectives. For some, it served as a community centre, a
public institution with the resources to host picnics, sports events, and visitors,
a place to make friends and inspire tolerance. An even smaller number candidly
remember the asylum as a place of reprieve from the insanity of everyday life, a
place where one could express her or his true self without fear of recrimination.
The old asylums across Canada are disappearing from the landscape. The
buildings are being repurposed, bulldozed, and in rare cases maintained under
changed circumstances or hidden from view in gentrifying neighbourhoods. In
Weyburn, the hospital was demolished, and developers have since constructed
condominiums on the site, obliterating any remnant of the old institution and
refashioning the space for modern urban living. Similar scenes have played out
elsewhere. The Queen Street Mental Hospital in Toronto, which once domi-
nated the urban neighbourhood in Parkdale, has changed dramatically in re-
cent years. Formerly comprised of working-class families and boarding homes,
the surrounding community is now home to upscale boutiques and fine dining,
making the intersection of Queen and Ossington barely recognizable to former
staff and patients of the once palatial asylum. To mark the rapidly retreating his-
tory of this neighbourhood, Friends of the Archives and Psychiatric Survivor
Archives of Toronto have installed a series of historical plaques, paying homage
to the many people who lived, worked, and died in the once famous facility.5 As
these buildings increasingly disappear from sight, how we remember them, or
whether we remember them at all, takes on greater significance.
 8 | MANAGING MADNESS

Scholars do not agree on how we should remember the asylum. Since the
1950s, social scientists have criticized the institution for gross abuses of power,
as spaces for rejected people, as sites for human experimentation, and as places
where patients surrendered their human dignity in exchange for the promise of
rehabilitation.6 Accordingly, some celebrate the destruction of these buildings.
However, others hold different views. Psychiatrists have sometimes regarded
the asylum as a necessary stage on a progressive path toward professionalization
and for providing opportunities to measure disease pathologies through careful
observations over long periods.7 Psychiatrists, though, have had their share of
critics.8 Nurses, social workers, and other staff members have likewise held con-
flicting and sophisticated views on the legacy of the asylum and its lessons for
the future of mental health care.9 Deinstitutionalization meant that staff mem-
bers, like patients, were plunged into disorienting circumstances when they left
the hospital, having to assume new roles with different boundaries, ethics, and
relationships in the community. The asylum had been their home and a source
of financial security, and they too moved out into the community with a mix-
ture of excitement and trepidation. Ex-patients have similarly diverse views of
and complicated relationships with the mental hospital following deinstitu-
tionalization. Some found comfort in the community or among family and a
sense of belonging in organizations that continued to lobby for mental health
services in a more decentralized, consumer-based pattern. Others, however, did
not look back. They formed radical organizations and adopted the language of
human rights to challenge the conceptualizations of mental disorder that had
bound them to the asylum in the first place.10 Others still have more complicat-
ed relationships with the asylum, for it provided some level of security, whereas
now the same people are often faced with homelessness or housing insecurity
exacerbated by the chronic underfunding of mental health services.
Patients and ex-patients have left their marks in different ways. Some pub-
lished accounts of life in the asylum, giving us clear details about the conditions
and how they experienced institutional life.11 We try to include these perspectives
here, using the names or pseudonyms provided by the original authors. In other
cases, the identities of patients are more difficult to discern as we read against the
grain of institutional records to interpret how patients were treated or how they
reacted to particular assignments or schedules. At times, we have only the patient
case number to identify an individual. In these cases, we do not have personal
information about a person’s identity beyond what was recorded in the case file,
 INTRODUCTION | 9

with names removed. In an effort to interpret how patients experienced life in the
asylum, we include records of their behaviour without their names.
We also use a variety of terms to describe behaviour and diagnostic cate-
gories, often remaining true to the language used at the time, in many cases
offensive today. “Feeblemindedness” and “mental deficiency” were once rather
generic terms covering a broad spectrum of features, usually combining low in-
telligence with learning disability and often infusing clinical ideas with cultural
assumptions about poverty, ethnicity, race, morality, or familial instability. We
retain the historical language to underscore how these terms were used to re-
inforce differences and to marginalize people within the mental health system.
The role of the social historian is not just to consider varied perspectives but
also to see through the walls of the edifice and plot the asylum on a three-di-
mensional map across space and time, positioning it within a broader historical
context. The building itself then blurs into a more ephemeral image, while its
surrounding community and the historical circumstances of its existence come
into sharper view. In this way, the asylum is much more than a set of walls; more
broadly, it functions as a prism, refracting myriad cultural, political, and econom-
ic values, which change according to the position of the observer. The asylum in
this book is just such a prism. Although we do describe its bricks and mortar,
ultimately we are interested in understanding what it reveals about our shared
history and cultural values. We are motivated to understand how mental illness
has been historically accommodated, rejected, and tolerated in our communities.
We emulate some of the contests and tensions over how we should remem-
ber the asylum. We range in age (from twenties to eighties), career, gender, and
experience—both in writing history and in relation to psychiatric institutions
themselves—but we are united in our resolve to bring this important history to
light. We do not necessarily share the same interpretation of what is important
about the story of the Weyburn Mental Hospital or what we should highlight
or question about how things were done. We share a commitment, however, to
social justice, and we recognize how significant social institutions have been for
cementing practices and influencing attitudes toward mental health. We know
that institutions introduce and maintain their own routines, which are very dif-
ficult to change. We share an interest in seeing improvements in mental health
outcomes, but we sometimes differ on how to achieve them or on what was
done well in the past and what should be avoided in the future.
 10 | MANAGING MADNESS

We hope that, by working through the process of constructing this histori-

cal text together, and by attempting to harmonize our differences without losing
our individual voices, our book exposes some of the debates over the historical
rise and fall of the asylum. Rather than parse our views into separate chapters, we
have tried to tame our differences by arranging them into an overarching narra-
tive that respects the points of conflict instead of submerging them for the sake
of a neat story. This history is not conducive to a tidy narrative. Patients and psy-
chiatrists did not always—if ever—enjoy a shared interpretation of an event or
a process. Indeed, even within their own groups, psychiatrists and patients often
do not agree on what was universally positive or negative about this past. We do
not claim to represent all perspectives. We do, though, make a genuine attempt
to honour the diversity of views and to recalibrate the historical power dynamics
by listening to different perspectives, especially to people whose opinions were
ignored or discarded as being just part of the cacophony of madness.

MAD LAWS
Mental health laws in Saskatchewan developed within the common law tradi-
tion and prioritized public safety over individual rights from their beginning.
In 1879, the dominion government passed An Act Respecting the Safe Keeping
of Dangerous Lunatics in the North-West Territories, the region that would lat-
er become Saskatchewan and Alberta. That act authorized the lieutenant-gov-
ernor to cause persons found “insane and dangerous to be at large” to be sent to
the penitentiary at Stony Mountain indefinitely. The second section of the act
provided that insane and dangerous persons already imprisoned for a criminal
offence could also be taken to Stony Mountain and detained indefinitely. The
final section allowed for the “retaking” of any insane person who escaped from
the penitentiary.12 Steeped in the language of criminality and protection for
society, the premise of early mental health law established a strong relationship
among mental health, criminality, and incarceration.
Madness was considered infantilizing, a condition in which people were
like eternal children, unable to make their own decisions, and therefore in need
of parental or state guidance. Such a conceptualization of madness reinforced
an idea that such people were subhuman and therefore could be subjected to
sub- or inhuman conditions. Moralizing evaluations of mental disorder dis-
carded mad behaviour as inherently evil or morally corrupt, justifying the need
to punish people and define their inferior status in society.
 INTRODUCTION | 11

The link between mental disorder and danger was strong in the public dis-
course on criminality and lunacy. In 1910, the president of the Prince Albert
Board of Trade appealed to Premier Walter Scott to consider building the first
provincial asylum in his town:

There is no doubt in our minds that we have in Prince Albert the

very best location for that Institution in the Province. Pleasant
surroundings conducive to a placid state of mind on the part of
patients is the most essential feature and condition for cure. We have
that unquestionably here. We have every condition favorable to a
location that any other place can offer and we have some that they
have not. The fact that the Penitentiary is here is one of these. The
most fertile source of Lunatics is the criminal class, in fact it is a
question if insanity and criminal tendency are not phases of the same
mental condition.13

Despite this request, the government ultimately located Saskatchewan’s first

hospital for the insane farther west, in North Battleford, in 1914. In the relative-
ly new province, the government was keen to distribute these opportunities—
important economic drivers for local communities—throughout the territory.
In anticipation of the opening of the first provincial asylum, the Saskatchewan
legislature passed An Act Respecting Insane Persons (the Insanity Act) in 1906.
It provided for information to be presented to a justice of the peace “charging”
that a person was “insane and dangerous to be at large.”14 The justice of the
peace was authorized to conduct a hearing and, on the basis of the evidence,
to commit a person to the nearest jail or asylum. Committal remained a legal
procedure. Judges could hear the medical evidence, but the decision to commit
someone to an institution was a legal one.
At this time, there was no provision for voluntary admission; all admissions
occurred through the legal system. Patients were immediately deemed and treat-
ed as incompetent, and all the expenses incurred on behalf of the insane person
were charged against the “estate of the lunatic” where an estate existed. In the act,
the province undertook to cover expenses for “indigent lunatics” but specifically
prohibited the committal of Indians unless the superintendent general of Indian
Affairs guaranteed in advance to pay the costs of upkeep for such patients.15
Since Indigenous people were the federal government’s responsibility, and
since the majority of admissions to mental hospitals required payment from a
 12 | MANAGING MADNESS

third party, the economics of confinement resulted in few Indigenous patients.

Indian agents would have to budget for their stay, and the additional paper-
work and expense seemed to deter the regular admission of psychiatric patients
from the Indigenous population. As Canadian historians such as Maureen Lux
and others have shown, the treatment of Indigenous populations tended to em-
phasize segregation and economic efficiency. Lux describes how Indian Health
Services helped to establish a wholly separate set of Indian hospitals, justified
based upon overlapping concepts of biological racism and state priorities that
favoured low costs over real investments in health outcomes.16 Once inside an
institutional system, whether an Indian hospital or an Indian residential school,
Indigenous residents were faced with further health challenges, as identified by
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as well as several academic
studies. For example, Ian Mosby’s work on nutritional experiments in Indian
residential schools further highlights the economic approach supported by
state officials. Mosby uncovered a series of experiments on children deprived of
healthy food; calories were replaced at times by vitamin supplements to gauge
how few nutrients were required to sustain life.17 These examinations not only
help to explain how multiple institutional networks operated in parallel during
the “age of confinement” but also serve to remind us that some of the institu-
tionalized populations remained separate from one another.
Psychiatric patients in the provincial mental hospitals would rarely have en-
countered Indigenous people on the wards, as either staff members or patients.
As the institutions began closing down and the locus of care shifted to the com-
munity, the patient population also changed. Service provisions, federal/pro-
vincial budgets, and a growing consumer mentality likewise altered how people
encountered mental health as well as whom the system identified as needing
support. In the era of care in the community, Indigenous people and non-In-
digenous people alike relied on mental health services, but the rate of mental
illness rose more dramatically among the Indigenous population. In the latter
half of the twentieth century, Indigenous mental health increasingly appeared
on the health-care landscape, but Indigenous patients were even more detached,
for they had not experienced conventional pathways out of psychiatric institu-
tions but had entered the system from other institutions steeped in colonialism.
The early years of confinement largely concentrated on local non-Indige-
nous residents and immigrants and adopted a legal tradition that emphasized a
connection between lunacy and criminality. The first provincial mental health
 INTRODUCTION | 13

law came into effect in 1906 and remained in place for thirteen years until An
Act Respecting the Apprehension and Detention of Dangerous Lunatics (the
Dangerous Lunatics Act) was passed in 1919.18 This act differed little from the
original act but made provision for “committal to the custody of friends,” which
relaxed the reliance on institutions per se. This clause introduced language that
would eventually provide the basis for trial leaves, or paroles, from the asylum
into the care of family members or friends.
During the First World War, Saskatchewan again changed its laws to ac-
commodate returning soldiers. The number requiring care continued to grow,
and managing the provincial institution and nascent mental hospital became
a larger portfolio. The responsibility ultimately transferred from the minister
of public works, who had overseen construction, to the attorney general, who
managed the legal framework governing operations at the hospital and firmly
placed the business of the asylum within the legal arena.

14

13

12

11

10

8
QUANTITY

0
194 4
194 0

1943

194 5

196 4
193 4

1946

1948
1949

195 4

1960

1963

1965
1930

1933

1935

1950

1953

1955
1936

1938
1939

1956

1958
1959

1962
1922

1932
1923

1925

1951
1952

1957

1961
1926

1928
1929

1931

1937

1942
1927

1947
1941
1924

YEAR

ADMISSIONS DISCHARGES

Fig ure 0.1. INDIGENOUS ADMISSIONS AND DISCHARGES BY YEAR.

 14 | MANAGING MADNESS

In 1919, the Saskatchewan legislature passed An Act Respecting Lunatics

and Their Estates,19 which provided for an administrator of lunatics’ estates
to be appointed to manage the estates of lunatics, including all personal and
real property, entitlements, and interests, during their lifetimes and upon their
deaths. Upon an order of the court, the powers of this administrator soon ex-
panded and applied not only to people defined as lunatics but also to people
not found to be lunatics, but nonetheless admitted to the provincial hospital
for the insane, and those incapacitated by mental infirmity, whether deteriorat-
ing mental capacity because of age or suspicion of hereditary degeneracy. These
legal provisions meant that, once admitted to the system, inmates or patients
had few rights to appeal or even the legal right to retain their property or assets.
An Act Respecting the Care and Treatment of Mentally Diseased Persons
(the Mental Diseases Act) in 1922 represented a shift in mental health law.20 The
act still contained provisions for legal committal, but it granted authority to the
medical profession for determining committal by two medical certificates. This
shift in the law reflected the growing power of the medical profession within psy-
chiatric care and the increasing reliance on more nuanced diagnostic categories
over relatively crude categories of sanity and insanity, which merely provided a
legal definition. Also, for the first time, provision was made for the voluntary ad-
mission of patients (though it was not fully voluntary, for they were detained and
required to serve notice of up to five days before discharge). In spite of this clause,
very few patients entered voluntarily and the legal change was more symbolic
than anything. The change of language from “insanity” and “lunacy” to “men-
tal diseases,” also reflected in the names “hospitals for mental diseases” for the
institutions at North Battleford and the newly established hospital at Weyburn,
nonetheless signalled a shift toward the medicalization of madness.

THE LAST ASYLUM

Formally called the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital, Weyburn, it opened its
doors in 1921 and was considered the last traditional asylum built in the British
Commonwealth and the largest asylum built in North America.21 Although
these hyperbolic claims were ultimately misleading, the mythology associated
with the institution captivated the public imagination and has continued to
shape local reactions to its legacy. Simultaneously a symbol of both progress
and a bygone era, the hospital embodied a set of contradictions from the outset.
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 CHAPTER XXVII
THE LITTLE STREET SINGER

I T was Christmas Eve, and very nearly dark, when Mrs. Lanier,
driving up St. Charles Avenue in her comfortable carriage quite
filled with costly presents for her children, noticed a forlorn little
figure, standing alone at a street corner. There was something about
the sorrowful looking little figure that moved her strangely, for she
turned and watched it as long as she could discern the child’s face in
the gathering twilight.
It was a little girl, thinly clad in a soiled and torn white frock; her
black stockings were full of holes, and her shoes so worn that the
tiny white toes were visible through the rents. She hugged a thin,
faded shawl around her shoulders, and her yellow hair fell in matted,
tangled strands below her waist; her small face was pale and
pinched, and had a woe-begone look that would melt the hardest
heart. Although she was soiled and ragged, she did not look like a
common child, and it was that indefinable something in her
appearance that attracted Mrs. Lanier’s attention, for she thought as
the carriage whirled by and left the child far behind, “Poor little thing!
she didn’t look like a street beggar. I wish I had stopped and spoken
to her!”
It was Lady Jane, and her descent in the scale of misery had been
rapid indeed.
Since that night, some four months before, when Madame Jozain
had awakened her rudely and told her she must come away, she had
lived in a sort of wretched stupor. It was true she had resisted at first,
and had cried desperately for Pepsie, for Mam’selle Diane, for Gex—
but all in vain; Madame had scolded and threatened and frightened
her into submission.
That terrible midnight ride in the wagon, with the piled-up furniture,
the two black drivers, who seemed to the child’s distorted
imagination two frightful demons, madame angry, and at times
violent if she complained or cried, and the frightful threats and cruel
hints of a more dreadful fate, had so crushed and appalled the child
that she scarcely dared open her pale little lips either to protest or
plead.
Then the pitiful change in her life, from loving care and pleasant
companionship to utter squalid misery and neglect. She had been,
suddenly taken from comparative comfort and plunged into the most
cruel poverty. Good Children Street had been a paradise compared
to the narrow, dirty lane, on the outskirts of the city, where madame
had hidden herself; for the wretched woman, in her fear and
humiliation, seemed to have lost every vestige of ambition, and to
have sunk without the least effort to save herself, to a level with
those around her.
Madame had taken a terrible cold in her hurried flight, and it had
settled in her lame hip; therefore she was obliged to lie in her bed
most of the time, and the little money she had was soon spent.
Hunger was staring her in the face, and the cold autumn winds
chilled her to the marrow. She had been poor and in many bitter
straits, but never before like this. Now she dared not let any one
know of her whereabouts, and for that reason the few friends that
she still had could not help her. She was ill and suffering, and alone
in her misery. Her son had robbed and deserted her, and left her to
her punishment, and, for all she knew, she must die of starvation.
Through the aid of the negro Pete, she had parted with nearly
everything of value that she had, and, to crown her cruelty and Lady
Jane’s misery, one day when the child was absent on a begging
expedition she sold the blue heron to an Italian for two dollars.
The bird was the only comfort the unhappy little creature had, the
only link between the past and the miserable present, and when she
returned to her squalid home and found her only treasure gone, her
grief was so wild and uncontrollable that madame feared for her life.
Therefore, in order to quiet the child, she said the bird had broken
his string and strayed away.
 After this, the child spent her days wandering about searching for
Tony.
When madame first sent her out into the street to sing and beg,
she went without a protest, so perfect was her habit of obedience,
and so great her anxiety to please and conciliate her cruel tyrant.
For, since the night when madame fled from Good Children Street,
she had thrown off all her pretenses of affection for the hapless little
one, whom she considered the cause of all her misfortunes.
“She has made trouble enough for me,” she would say bitterly, in
her hours of silent communion with her own conscience. “If it hadn’t
been for her mother coming to me, Raste wouldn’t have had that
watch and wouldn’t have got locked up for thirty days. After that
disgrace, he couldn’t stay here, and that was the cause of his taking
my money and running off. Yes, all my trouble has come through her
in one way or another, and now she must sing and beg, or she’ll
have to starve.”
Before madame sent her out, she gave Lady Jane instructions in
the most imperative manner. “She must never on any account speak
of Good Children Street, of Madelon or Pepsie, of the d’Hautreves,
of Gex, or the Paichoux, or of any one she had ever known there.
She must not talk with people, and, above all, she must never tell her
name, nor where she lived. She must only sing and hold out her
hand. Sometimes she might cry if she wanted to, but she must never
laugh.”
These instructions the child followed to the letter, with the
exception of one. She never cried, for although her little heart was
breaking she was too proud to shed tears.
It was astonishing how many nickels she picked up. Sometimes
she would come home with her little pocket quite heavy, for her
wonderful voice, so sweet and so pathetic, as well as her sad face
and wistful eyes, touched many a heart, even among the coarsest
and rudest, and madame might have reaped quite a harvest if she
had not been so avaricious as to sell Tony for two dollars. When she
did that she killed her goose that laid golden eggs, for after the loss
of her pet the child could not sing; her little heart was too heavy, and
the unshed tears choked her and drowned her voice in quivering
sobs.
The moment she was out of Tante Pauline’s sight, instead of
gathering nickels, she was wandering around aimlessly, searching
and asking for the blue heron, and at night, when she returned with
an empty pocket, she shivered and cowered into a corner for fear of
madame’s anger.
One morning it was very cold; she had had no breakfast, and she
felt tired and ill, and when madame told her to go out and not to
come back without some money, she fell to crying piteously, and for
the first time begged and implored to stay where she was, declaring
that she could not sing any more, and that she was afraid, because
some rude children had thrown mud at her the day before, and told
her not to come into the street again.
This first revolt seemed to infuriate madame, for reaching out to
where the child stood trembling and sobbing she clutched her and
shook her violently, and then slapping her tear-stained little face until
it tingled, she bade her go out instantly, and not to return unless she
brought some money with her.
This was the first time that Lady Jane had suffered the ignominy of
a blow, and it seemed to arouse her pride and indignation, for she
stopped sobbing instantly, and, wiping the tears resolutely from her
face, shot one glance of mingled scorn and surprise at her tyrant,
and walked out of the room with the dignity of a little princess.
When once outside, she held her hands for a moment to her
burning face, while she tried to still the tumult of anger and sorrow
that was raging in her little heart; then she gathered herself together
with a courage beyond her years, and hurried away without once
looking back at the scene of her torture.
When she was far enough from the wretched neighborhood to feel
safe from observation, she turned in a direction quite different from
any she had taken before. The wind was intensely cold, but the sun
shone brightly, and she hugged her little shawl around her, and ran
on and on swiftly and hopefully.
 “If I hurry and walk and walk just as fast as I can, I’m sure to come
to Good Children Street, and then I’ll ask Pepsie or Mam’selle Diane
to keep me, for I’ll never, never, go back to Tante Pauline again.”
By and by, when she was quite tired with running and walking, she
came to a beautiful, broad avenue that she had never seen before.
There were large, fine houses, and gardens blooming brightly even
in the chilly December wind, and lovely children; dressed in warm
velvet and furs, walking with their nurses on the wide, clean
sidewalks; and every moment carriages drawn by glossy, prancing
horses whirled by, and people laughed and talked merrily, and
looked so happy and contented. She had never seen anything like it
before. It was all delightful, like a pleasant dream, and even better
than Good Children Street. She thought of Pepsie, and wished that
she could see it, and then she imagined how enchanted her friend
would be to ride in one of those fine carriages, with the sun shining
on her, and the fresh wind blowing in her face. The wind reminded
her that she was cold. It pierced through her thin frock and scanty
skirts, and the holes in her shoes and stockings made her ashamed.
After a while she found a sunny corner on the steps of a church,
where she crouched and tried to cover her dilapidated shoes with
her short skirts.
Presently a merry group of children passed, and she heard them
talking of Christmas. “To-morrow is Christmas; this is Christmas Eve,
and we are going to have a Christmas-tree.” Her heart gave a great
throb of joy. By to-morrow she was sure to find Pepsie, and Pepsie
had promised her a Christmas-tree long ago, and she wouldn’t
forget; she was sure to have it ready for her. Oh, if she only dared
ask some of these kind-looking people to show her the way to Good
Children Street! But she remembered what Tante Pauline had told
her, and fear kept her silent. However, she was sure, now that she
had got away from that dreadful place, that some one would find her.
Mr. Gex had found her before when she was lost, and he might find
her now, because she didn’t have a domino on, and he would know
her right away; and then she would get Mr. Gex to hunt for Tony, and
perhaps she would have Tony for Christmas. In this way she
comforted herself until she was quite happy.
 After a while a kind-looking woman came along with a market-
basket on her arm. She was eating something, and Lady Jane, being
very hungry looked at her so wistfully that the woman stopped and
asked her if she would like a piece of bread. She replied eagerly that
she would. The good woman gave her a roll and a large, rosy apple,
and she went back to her corner and munched them contentedly.
Then a fine milk-cart rattled up to a neighboring door, and her heart
almost leaped to her throat; but it was not Tante Modeste. Still, Tante
Modeste might come any moment. She sold milk way up town to rich
people. Yes, she was sure to come; so she sat in her corner and ate
her apple, and waited with unwavering confidence.
And in this way the day passed pleasantly and comfortably to Lady
Jane. She was not very cold in her sheltered corner, and the good
woman’s kindness had satisfied her hunger; but at last she began to
think that it must be nearly night, for she saw the sun slipping down
into the cold, gray clouds behind the opposite houses, and she
wondered what she should do and where she should go when it was
quite dark. Neither Tante Modeste nor Mr. Gex had come, and now it
was too late and she would have to wait until to-morrow. Then she
began to reproach herself for sitting still. “I should have gone on and
on, and by this time I would have been in Good Children Street,” said
she.
She never thought of returning to her old haunts or to Tante
Pauline, and if she had tried she could not have found her way back.
She had wandered too far from her old landmarks, so the only thing
to do was to press on in her search for Good Children Street. It was
while she was standing at a corner, uncertain which way to turn, that
Mrs. Lanier caught a glimpse of her. And what good fortune it would
have been to Lady Jane if that noble-hearted woman had obeyed the
kindly impulse that urged her to stop and speak to the friendless little
waif! But destiny intended it to be otherwise, so she went on her way
to her luxurious home and happy children, while the desolate orphan
wandered about in the cold and darkness, looking in vain for the
humble friends who even at that moment were thinking of her and
longing for her.
 Poor little soul! she had never been out in the dark night alone
before, and every sound and movement startled her. Once a dog
sprang out and barked at her, and she ran trembling into a doorway,
only to be ordered away by an unkind servant. Sometimes she
stopped and looked into the windows of the beautiful houses as she
passed. There were bright fires, pictures, and flowers, and she heard
the merry voices of children laughing and playing; and the soft notes
of a piano, with some one singing, reminded her of Mam’selle Diane.
Then a choking sob would rise in her throat, and she would cover
her face and cry a little silently.
Presently she found herself before a large, handsome house; the
blinds were open and the parlor was brilliantly lighted. A lady—it was
Mrs. Lanier—sat at the piano playing a waltz, and two little girls in
white frocks and red sashes were dancing together. Lady Jane
pressed near the railing and devoured the scene with wide, sparkling
eyes. They were the same steps that Gex had taught her, and it was
the very waltz that he sometimes whistled. Before she knew it, quite
carried away by the music, and forgetful of everything, she dropped
her shawl, and holding out her soiled ragged skirt, was tripping and
whirling as merrily as the little ones within, while opposite to her, her
shadow, thrown by a street lamp over her head, tripped and bobbed
and whirled, not unlike Mr. Gex, the ancient “professeur of the
dance.” And a right merry time she had out there in the biting
December night, pirouetting with her own shadow.
Suddenly the music stopped, a nurse came and took the little girls
away, and some one drew down the blinds and shut her out alone in
the cold; there was nothing then for her to do but to move on, and
picking up her shawl, she crept away a little wearily, for dancing,
although it had lightened her heart, had wasted her strength, and it
seemed to her that the wind was rising and the cold becoming more
intense, for she shivered from time to time, and her bare little toes
and fingers smarted badly. Once or twice, from sheer exhaustion,
she dropped down on a doorstep, but when she saw any one
approaching she sprang up and hurried along, trying to be brave and
patient. Yes, she must come to Good Children Street very soon, and
she never turned a corner that she did not expect to see Madelon’s
little house, wedged in between the two tall ones, and the light
gleaming from Pepsie’s small window.
 CHAPTER XXVIII
LADY JANE FINDS SHELTER

A T last, when she began to feel very tired and sleepy, she came
to a place where two streets seemed to run together in a long
point, and before her she saw a large building, with lights in all the
windows, and behind it a tall church spire seemed nearly to touch
the stars that hung above it so soft and bright. Her tearful eyes
singled out two of them very near together that looked as though
they were watching her, and she held out her arms, and murmured,
“Papa, mama, can’t I come to you? I’m so cold and sleepy.” Poor
little soul! the stars made no answer to her piteous appeal, but
continued to twinkle as serenely as they have done since time
began, and will do until it ends. Then she looked again toward the
brilliantly lighted windows under the shadow of the church spire. She
could not get very near, for in front of the house was an iron railing,
but she noticed a marble slab let into the wall over the porch, on
which was an inscription, and above it a row of letters were visible in
the light from the street lamps. Lady Jane spelled them out.
“‘Orphans’ Home.’ Or-phans! I wonder what orphans are? Oh, how
warm and light it is in there!” Then she put her little cold toes
between the iron railings on the stone coping, and clinging with her
two hands lifted herself a little higher, and there she saw an
enchanting sight. In the center of the room was a tree, a real tree,
growing nearly to the ceiling, with moss and flowers on the ground
around it, and never did the spreading branches of any other tree
bear such glorious fruit. There was a great deal of light and color;
and moving, swaying balls of silver and gold danced and whirled
before her dazzled eyes. At first she could hardly distinguish the
different objects in the confusion of form and color; but at last she
saw that there was everything the most exacting child could desire—
birds, rabbits, dogs, kittens, dolls; globes of gold, silver, scarlet, and
blue; tops, pictures, games, bonbons, sugared fruits, apples,
oranges, and little frosted cakes, in such bewildering profusion that
they were like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. And there was a merry
group of girls, laughing and talking, while they hung, and pinned, and
fastened, more and more, until it seemed as if the branches would
break under their load.
And Lady Jane, clinging to the railing, with stiff, cold hands and
aching feet, pressed her little, white face close to the iron bars, and
looked and looked.
Suddenly the door was opened, and a woman came out, who,
when she saw the child clinging to the railing, bareheaded and
scantily clothed in spite of the piercing cold, went to her and spoke
kindly and gently.
Her voice brought Lady Jane back from Paradise to the bitter
reality of her position and the dreary December night. For a moment
she could hardly move, and she was so chilled and cramped that
when she unclasped her hold she almost fell into the motherly arms
extended toward her.
“My child, my poor child, what are you doing here so late, in the
cold, and with these thin clothes? Why don’t you go home?”
Then the poor little soul, overcome with a horrible fear, began to
shiver and cry. “Oh, don’t! Oh, please don’t send me back to Tante
Pauline! I’m afraid of her; she shook me and struck me this morning,
and I’ve run away from her.”
LADY JANE, CLINGING TO THE RAILING, LOOKED AND LOOKED
 “Where does your Tante Pauline live?” asked the woman, studying
the tremulous little face with a pair of keen, thoughtful eyes.
“I don’t know; away over there somewhere.”
“Don’t you know the name of the street?”
“It isn’t a street; it’s a little place all mud and water, with boards to
walk on.”
“Can’t you tell me your aunt’s name?”
“Yes, it’s Tante Pauline.”
“But her other name?”
“I don’t know, I only know Tante Pauline. Oh please, please don’t
send me there! I’m afraid to go back, because she said I must sing
and beg money, and I couldn’t sing, and I didn’t like to ask people for
nickels,” and the child’s voice broke into a little wail of entreaty that
touched the kind heart of that noble, tender, loving woman, the
Margaret whom some to-day call Saint Margaret. She had heard just
such pitiful stories before from hundreds of hapless little orphans,
who never appealed to her in vain.
“Where are your father and mother?” she asked, as she led the
child to the shelter of the porch.
Lady Jane made the same pathetic answer as usual:
“Papa went to heaven, and Tante Pauline says that mama’s gone
away, and I think she’s gone where papa is.”
Margaret’s eyes filled with tears, while the child shivered and clung
closer to her. “Would you like to stay here to-night, my dear?” she
asked, as she opened the door. “This is the home of a great many
little homeless girls, and the good Sisters love and care for them all.”
Lady Jane’s anxious face brightened instantly. “Oh, can I—can I
stay here where the Christmas-tree is?”
“Yes, my child, and to-morrow there will be something on it for
you.”
 And Margaret opened the door and led Lady Jane into that safe
and comfortable haven where so many hapless little ones have
found a shelter.
That night, after the child had been fed and warmed, and was
safely in bed with the other little orphans, the good Margaret sent
word to all the police stations that she had housed a little wanderer
who if called for could be found safe in her care.
But the little wanderer was not claimed the next day, nor the next
week. Time went on, and Lady Jane was considered a permanent
inmate of the home. She wore the plain uniform of blue, and her long
golden hair was plaited in a thick braid, but still she was lovely,
although not as picturesque as when Pepsie brushed her waving
locks. She was so lovely in person and so gentle and obedient that
she soon became the idol, not only of the good Margaret, but of all
the Sisters, and even of the children, and her singing was a constant
pleasure, for every day her voice became stronger and richer, and
her thrilling little strains went straight to the hearts of those who
heard them.
“She must be taught music,” said Margaret to Sister Agnes; “such
a voice must be carefully cultivated for the church.” Therefore the
Sister who took her in charge devoted herself to the development of
the child’s wonderful talent, and in a few months she was spoken of
as quite a musical prodigy, and all the wealthy patronesses of the
home singled her out as one that was rare and beautiful, and
showered all sorts of gifts and attentions upon her. Among those who
treated her with marked favor was Mrs. Lanier. She never visited the
home without asking for little Jane (Margaret had thought it best to
drop the “Lady,” and the child, with an intuition of what was right,
complied with the wish), and never went away without leaving some
substantial evidence of her interest in the child.
“I believe Mrs. Lanier would like to adopt little Jane,” said Margaret
one day to Sister Agnes, when that lady had just left. “If she hadn’t
so many children of her own, I don’t think she would leave her long
with us.”
 “It is surprising, the interest she takes in her,” returned Sister
Agnes. “When the child sings she just sits as if she was lost to
everything, and listens with all her soul.”
“And she asks the strangest questions about the little thing,”
continued Margaret reflectively. “And she is always suggesting some
way to find out who the child belonged to; but although I’ve tried
every way I can think of, I have never been able to learn anything
satisfactory.”
It was true Margaret had made every effort from the very first to
discover something of the child’s antecedents; but she had been
unsuccessful, owing in a measure to Lady Jane’s reticence. She had
tried by every means to draw some remarks from her that would
furnish a clue to work upon; but all that she could ever induce the
child to say was to repeat the simple statement she had made the
first night, when the good woman found her, cold and forlorn, clinging
to the iron railing in front of the Home.
But Lady Jane’s reticence was not from choice. It was fear that
kept her silent about her life in Good Children Street. Often she
would be about to mention Pepsie, Mam’selle Diane, or the
Paichoux, but the fear of Tante Pauline would freeze the words on
her lips. And she was so happy where she was that even her sorrow
for the loss of Tony was beginning to die out. She loved the good
Sisters, and her grateful little heart clung to Margaret who had saved
her from being sent back to Tante Pauline and the dreadful fate of a
little street beggar. And the warm-hearted little orphans were like
sisters to her; they were merry little playmates, and she was a little
queen among them. And there was the church, with the beautiful
altar, the pictures, the lights, and the music. Oh, how heavenly the
music was, and how she loved to sing with the Sisters! and the
grand organ notes carried her little soul up to the celestial gates on
strains of sweet melody. Yes, she loved it all and was very happy, but
she never ceased to think of Pepsie, Madelon, and Gex, and when
she sang, she seemed always to be with Mam’selle Diane, nestled
close to her side, and, mingled with the strong, rich voices of the
Sisters, she fancied she heard the sweet, faded strains of her
beloved teacher and friend.
 Sometimes when she was studying her lessons she would forget
for a moment where she was, and her book would fall in her lap, and
again she would be sitting with Pepsie, shelling pecans or watching
with breathless interest a game of solitaire; and at times when she
was playing with the children suddenly she would remember the
ancient “professeur of the dance,” and she would hold out her little
blue skirt, and trip and whirl as gracefully in her coarse shoes as she
did when Gex was her teacher.
And so the months went on with Lady Jane, while her friends in
Good Children Street never ceased to talk of her and to lament over
their loss. Poor Mam’selle Diane was in great trouble. Madame
d’Hautreve was very ill, and there was little hope of her recovery.
“She may linger through the spring,” the doctor said, “but you can
hardly expect to keep her through the summer.” And he was right, for
during the last days of the dry, hot month of August, the poor lady,
one of the last of an old aristocracy, closed her dim eyes on a life
that had been full of strange vicissitudes, and was laid away in the
ancient tomb of the d’Hautreves, not far from Lady Jane’s young
mother. And Mam’selle Diane, the noble, patient, self-sacrificing
daughter, was left alone in the little house, with her memories, her
flowers, and her birds. And often, during those first bitter days of
bereavement, she would say to herself, “Oh, if I had that sweet child
now, what a comfort she would be to me! To hear her heavenly little
voice would give me new hope and courage.”
On the morning of Madame d’Hautreve’s funeral, when Paichoux
opened his paper at the breakfast table, he uttered such a loud
exclamation of surprise that Tante Modeste almost dropped the
coffee-pot.
“What is it, papa, what is it?” she cried.
And in reply Paichoux read aloud the notice of the death of
Madame la veuve d’Hautreve, née d’Orgenois; and directly
underneath: “Died at the Charity Hospital, Madame Pauline Jozain,
née Bergeron.”
 CHAPTER XXIX
TANTE MODESTE FINDS LADY JANE

W HEN Paichoux read of the death of Madame Jozain in the

Charity Hospital, he said decidedly: “Modeste, that woman
never left the city. She never went to Texas. She has been hidden
here all the time, and I must find that child.”
“And if you find her, papa, bring her right here to me,” said the
kind-hearted woman. “We have a good many children, it’s true; but
there’s always room for Lady Jane, and I love the little thing as well
as if she were mine.”
Paichoux was gone nearly all day, and, much to the
disappointment of the whole family, did not find Lady Jane.
His first visit had been to the Charity Hospital, where he learned
that Madame Jozain had been brought there a few days before by
the charity wagon. It had been called to a miserable little cabin back
of the city, where they had found the woman very ill, with no one to
care for her, and destitute of every necessity. There was no child
with her—she was quite alone; and in the few lucid intervals that
preceded her death she had never spoken of any child. Paichoux
then obtained the directions from the driver of the charity wagon, and
after some search he found the wretched neighborhood. There all
they could tell him was that the woman had come a few weeks
before; that she had brought very little with her, and appeared to be
suffering. There was no child with her then, and none of the
neighbors had ever seen one visit her, or, for that matter, a grown
person either. When she became worse they were afraid she might
die alone, and had called the charity wagon to take her to the
hospital. The Public Administrator had taken charge of what little she
left, and that was all they could tell.
Did any one know where she lived before she came there? No one
knew; an old negro had brought her and her few things, and they
had not noticed the number of his wagon. The landlord of the squalid
place said that the same old man who brought her had engaged her
room; he did not know the negro. Madame had paid a month’s rent
in advance, and just when the month was up she had been carried to
the hospital.
There the information stopped, and, in spite of every effort,
Paichoux could learn no more. The wretched woman had indeed
obliterated, as it were, every trace of the child. In her fear of
detection, after Lady Jane’s escape from her, she had moved from
place to place, hunted and pursued by a guilty conscience that would
never allow her to rest, and gradually going from bad to worse until
she had died in that last refuge for the miserable, the Charity
Hospital.
“And here I am, just where I started!” said Paichoux dejectedly,
after he had told Tante Modeste of his day’s adventure. “However,”
said he, “I sha’n’t give it up. I’m bound to find out what she did with
that child; the more I think of it, the more I’m convinced that she
never went to Texas, and that the child is still here. Now I’ve a mind
to visit every orphan asylum in the city, and see if I can’t find her in
one of them.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Tante Modeste. “We’ll see for ourselves, and
then we shall be satisfied. Unless she gave Lady Jane away, she’s
likely to be in some such place; and I think, as I always have,
Paichoux, that she stole Lady Jane from some rich family, and that
was why she ran off so sudden and hid. That lady’s coming the day
after proves that some one was on madame’s track. Oh, I tell you
there’s a history there, if we can only get at it. We’ll start out to-
morrow and see what can be done. I sha’n’t rest until the child is
found and restored to her own people.”
One morning, while Lady Jane was in the schoolroom busy with
her lessons, Margaret entered with some visitors. It was a very
common thing for people to come during study hours, and the child
did not look up until she heard some one say: “These are the
children of that age. See if you recognize ‘Lady Jane’ among them.”
 It was her old name that startled her, and made her turn suddenly
toward the man and woman, who were looking eagerly about the
room. In an instant the bright-faced woman cried, “Yes! yes! Oh,
there she is!” and simultaneously Lady Jane exclaimed, “Tante
Modeste, oh, Tante Modeste!” and, quicker than I can tell it, she was
clasped to the loving heart of her old friend, while Paichoux looked
on, twirling his hat and smiling broadly.
“Jane, you can come with us,” said Margaret, as she led the way
to the parlor.
There was a long and interesting conversation, to which the child
listened with grave wonder, while she nestled close to Tante
Modeste. She did not understand all they said; there was a great
deal about Madame Jozain and Good Children Street, and a gold
watch with diamond initials, and beautiful linen with initial letters, J.
C., embroidered on it, and madame’s sudden flight, and the visit of
the elegant lady in the fine carriage, the Texas story, and madame’s
wretched hiding-place and miserable death in the Charity Hospital; to
all of which Margaret listened with surprise and interest. Then she in
turn told the Paichoux how Lady Jane had been found looking in the
window on Christmas Eve, while she clung to the railings, half-clad
and suffering with the cold, and how she had questioned her and
endeavored to get some clue to her identity.
“Why didn’t you tell Mother Margaret about your friends in Good
Children Street, my dear?” asked Tante Modeste, with one of her
bright smiles.
Lady Jane hesitated a moment, and then replied timidly, “Because
I was afraid.”
“What were you afraid of, my child?” asked Paichoux kindly.
“Tante Pauline told me that I mustn’t.” Then she stopped and
looked wistfully at Margaret. “Must I tell now, Mother Margaret? Will it
be right to tell? Tante Pauline told me not to.”
“Yes, my dear, you can tell everything now. It’s right. You must tell
us all you remember.”
 “Tante Pauline told me that I must never, never speak of Good
Children Street nor of any one that lived there, and that I must never
tell any one my name, nor where I lived.”
“Poor child!” said Margaret to Paichoux. “There must have been
some serious reason for so much secrecy. Yes, I agree with you that
there’s a mystery which we must try to clear up, but I would rather
wait a little while. Jane has a friend who is very rich and very
influential—Mrs. Lanier, the banker’s wife. She is absent in
Washington, and when she returns I’ll consult with her, and we’ll see
what’s best to be done. I shouldn’t like to take any important step
until then. But in the meantime, Mr. Paichoux, it will do no harm to
put your plan in operation. I think the idea is good, and in this way
we can work together.”
Then Paichoux promised to begin his investigations at once, for he
was certain that they would bring about some good results, and that,
before many months had passed, Mother Margaret would have one
orphan less to care for.
While Margaret and Paichoux were discussing these important
matters, Tante Modeste and Lady Jane were talking as fast as their
tongues could fly. The child heard for the first time about poor
Mam’selle Diane’s loss, and her eyes filled with tears of sympathy for
her gentle friend. And then, there were Pepsie and Madelon, Gex
and Tite—did they remember her and want to see her? Oh, how glad
she was to hear from them all again; and Tante Modeste cried a little
when Lady Jane told of that terrible midnight ride, of the wretched
home she had been carried to, of her singing and begging in the
streets, of her cold and hunger, and of the blow she had received as
the crowning cruelty.
“But the worst of all was losing Tony. Oh, Tante Modeste!” and the
tears sprang to her eyes, “I’m afraid I’ll never, never find him!”
“Yes, you will, my dear. I’ve faith to believe you will,” replied Tante
Modeste hopefully.
“We’ve found you, ma petite, and now we’ll find the bird. Don’t fret
about it.”
 Then after Margaret had promised to take Lady Jane to Good
Children Street the next day, the good couple went away well
pleased with what they had accomplished.
Tante Modeste could not return home until she had told Pepsie as
well as little Gex the good news. And Mam’selle Diane’s sad heart
was greatly cheered to know that the dear child was safe in the care
of the good Margaret. And oh, what bright hopes and plans filled the
lonely hours of that evening, as she sat dreaming on her little gallery
in the pale, cold moonlight!
The next day Pepsie cried and laughed together when Lady Jane
sprang into her arms and embraced her with her old fervor. “You’re
just the same,” she said, holding the child off and looking at her
fondly; “that is, your face hasn’t changed; but I don’t like your hair
braided, and I don’t like your clothes. I must get Mother Margaret to
let me dress you as I used to.”
And Mam’selle Diane had something of the same feeling when,
after the first long embrace, she looked at the child and asked
Mother Margaret if it was necessary for her to wear the uniform of
the Home. “She must wear it while she is an inmate,” replied
Margaret smiling. “But that will not be long, I suspect. We shall lose
her—yes, I’m afraid we shall lose her soon.”
Then Mam’selle Diane talked a long while with Margaret about her
hopes and plans for Lady Jane. “I am all alone,” she said
pathetically, “and she would give me a new interest in life. If her
relatives are not discovered, why cannot I have her? I will educate
her, and teach her music, and devote my life to her.”
Margaret promised to think it over, and in the mean time she
consented that Lady Jane should remain a few days with Mam’selle
Diane and her friends in Good Children Street.
That night, while the child was nestled close to Mam’selle Diane
as they sat together on the little moonlit gallery, she suddenly asked
with startling earnestness:
“Has your mama gone to heaven, too, Mam’selle Diane?”
“I hope so, my darling; I think so,” replied Diane in a choked voice.