Vermont
Number of Victims
253 sterilizations were
performed in Vermont making it the 25th
highest in the nation. About two thirds of the total sterilizations
were performed on women. Over 80% of the sterilized were deemed
"mentally deficient."
Period during which sterilizations occurred
Most sterilizations were
performed in the years 1931-1941, where about 200 people were
sterilized. According to Julius Paul, the last documented sterilization occurred in 1957 (Paul, p. 494).
Temporal pattern of sterilizations and rate of sterilizations
Nearly all of the sterilizations took place in the first couple of decades of the law’s existence. From 1933-1938, there were 131 sterilizations, or approximately 26 per year; and from 1938-1941, there were about 17 per year. Therefore, the period during which most sterilization occurred was from 1931-1940 where the rate of sterilization was about 6 per 100,000 residents per year.
Passage of Laws
Vermont approved its sterilization law on March 31, 1931, the 29th state to pass such a law (Gallagher, pp.185-186). An earlier law was passed by the legislature in 1913 to target the insane, feeble-minded, rapists, and confirmed criminals but was vetoed by Governor Allen Fletcher on concerns that it would be considered unconstitutional by the courts (Gallagher, p.53, Paul, p. 492). Another attempt at a law was made in 1927, and passed in the Vermont senate, but failed in the house (Gallagher, p.84).
Groups Identified in the Law
The 1931 law targeted “‘idiots’, ‘imbeciles’, ‘feeble-minded’ or ‘insane’ persons” residing in state institutions (Gallagher, p.185). This law applied to residents of the state also, not just those institutionalized. “Negative eugenics measures applied to those Vermonters who purportedly had comprised the quality of life for Vermont’s ‘elect’” (Gallagher, p.133).
Process of the Law
Two physicians attest to the fact that an “idiot, imbecile, feebleminded or insane” person is likely to beget same such children. Furthermore, these doctors had to testify that both the patient and society would benefit from the sterilization, and that the operation posed no significant mental or physical risk for the patient. The patient, or a legal guardian if the patient was deemed incompetent to make his/her own decisions, had to request in writing to undergo the operation and had to voluntarily submit to the procedure. If these requirements were fulfilled, it would be legal for a surgeon to sterilize the patient, with vasectomy (cutting the vas deferens) used for men, and a salpingectomy (cutting of the Fallopian tubes) for women (Gallagher, p.185).
Precipitating Factors and Processes
According to the United States Army’s Draft Board Exams administered to men drafted into the Army in 1917, Vermont had the second highest “defect rate” in the nation (Gallagher, pp. 39-40). Most of these, Public Health Secretary Dr. Charles Dalton argued, could have been prevented if they had been discovered and treated in early childhood. Others wondered if "poor inheritance" had contributed to the apparent "inefficiency" of Vermont's draftees (see Greenberg/Gallagher for further information). At a time when Vermont population’s population was stagnant, and agricultural towns seemed to be in decline, and the native Yankee stock was perceived to be replaced by alien French Canadians, such results in the 1920s fed into concerns about Vermont’s backwardness and the decline of a population of a state that prided itself for its self-reliance and ruggedness (Gallagher, pp. 39-45). As part of the agenda of social progressivism, social services were expanded to assist, support, and help educate the disabled, ill, and poor, but this social-scientific approach to social problems also included support for restricting the reproduction of those considered “unfit.”
The Committee on the Care of the Handicapped also fought for the law, arguing that it would allow institutions to turn out patients who wouldn’t threaten the community by bearing more defective children. The law also had added constitutional credibility due to the Buck v. Bell precedent, a U.S. Supreme Court decision (1927, shortly after the second failed attempt at a Vermont law) allowing for eugenic sterilization (Gallagher, pp. 122-124).
Groups Targeted and Victimized
Poor and socially ostracized families were targeted for investigation of the 3-D’s (delinquency, dependency, and mental defect). These families usually lived “outside the accepted moral or social convention of middleclass America” (Gallagher, p. 37). The 3-D’s were used to target the poor, the disabled, French-Canadians, and Native Americans, and women more so than men. French-Canadians and Abenakis were seen as a foe and threat to the early colonial settlers of Vermont. They represented “an insidious and continuous invasion” of Vermont and were therefore targeted (Gallagher, p. 45). Studies done on degenerate family lines were often traced back to French Canadian or Native American ancestry and was used to target these groups (Gallagher, pp. 80-82).
Interestingly, as it was historically believed that the French had interbred with the Abenaki, the prejudice against these two otherwise-disparate groups was in fact linked. The “gypsy” family was a prime example. The Vermont Eugenics Survey presented as defective three families that stood as paradigmatic for those considered unfit to reproduce: the Gypsy family, with “dark skin” due to African-American, Abenaki, and French Canadian, the “Chorea family,” whose members suffered from the debilitating medical illness Huntington’s Chorea, and the “Pirate family,” who lived on houseboats on Lake Champlain and also had French-Canadian ancestry (Gallagher, pp. 81).
Major Proponents
(Photo origin: Vermont Eugenics: A Documentary History, available at http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/partnersf.html)
Henry F. Perkins led the way for the Vermont eugenics program. He was born in 1877 in Burlington and grew up two blocks from the University of Vermont campus green, where his father was a well known professor. Perkins was a professor of Zoology at UVM from 1902-1945, being known for his eugenics education. In 1927. In 1927-28, he took a sabbatical to solicit funding and organize a comprehensive survey of rural Vermont, including all aspects of rural life that might explain the causes and effects of rural decline in the state. What resulted was the Vermont Commission on Country Life that used eugenic ideas to develop a plan for community development in the state (see Greenberg/Gallagher [http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/overview2.html]).
From 1931 to 1934 he was the president of the American Eugenics Society. Here Perkins shared the Eugenics Survey and Vermont Commission on Country Life to a national audience. The survey closed in 1936 and Perkins became director of the Fleming museum until his 1945 retirement (Gallagher, pp. 9-41). Ironically, as Kevin Dann (p. 20) has commented, he, “whose Eugenics survey publications had labeled alcoholism as one of the prominent ‘traits’ of defective Vermont families, spent his last years as a bedridden alcoholic before dying of liver failure in 1956.”
“Feeder institutions” and institutions where sterilizations were performed
(Photo origin: Vermont Heritige Network, available at http://www.uvm.edu/~vhnet/hertour/hthome02.html)
Brandon School of the Feeble-Minded: This school was established in 1912 and housed poor, disabled Vermonters and some who had been sterilized. When it opened, the available spaces filled rapidly and had a waiting list in a few years. “The superintendents of Brandon had difficulty at times restricting the use of this facility to those for whom it was intended” (Gallagher, p. 52). It was renamed the Brandon Training School in 1929, and it closed in 1993. It is located at 184 Jones Drive in Brandon. For further information, see Greenberg/Gallagher (http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/vssf.html). Vermont's Department of Mental Health's website does not mention past eugenic practices on its website (http://healthvermont.gov/mh/programs/hospital/index.aspx).
(Photo origin: Vermont Heritige Network, available at http://www.uvm.edu/~vhnet/hertour/hthome02.html)
Vermont State Hospital for the Insane: The hospital housed the mentally ill and continues to operate today. It is located at 103 Main St. Waterbury, Vermont. For further information, see Greenberg/Gallagher [http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/vsh.html].
Vermont Reform School: The concern over the treatment of juvenile offenders led to the establishment of this school in 1865. It was renamed the Vermont Industrial School in 1898. It is located in Vergennes. Demand for more space led to the creation of the Brandon School (Gallagher, p. 51). For further information, see Greenberg/Gallagher [http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/vis.html].
Riverside Reformatory: The reformatory was an institution that housed women, mainly sexual delinquents (adulteresses, prostitutes, others) in Rutland (Gallagher, pp. 105-106). For further information, see Greenberg/Gallagher [http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/rrw.html].
Opposition
There was significant religious opposition from the Catholic communities of both the Irish and French Canadians (Gallagher, p. 119). These groups, however, tended to be poor and disenfranchised and Protestants were politically, socially, and economically dominant (Gallagher, pp. 45-46). In 1930, the Casti Connubi (On Christian Marriage) was issued by Pope Pius XI. He condemned eugenics (especially sterilization), marriage based on heredity, and all forms of family planning that “interfered with the body’s natural functions” (Gallagher, p. 119).
There wasn’t a significant amount of protesting on the eugenics issue by the Vermont population. Vermonters were concerned with the decline of the rural community and the loss of Vermont traditions and values due to the “racial exodus”, the plight of Vermont farmers, and the immigration of French Canadians (Gallagher, p. 123).
Increasing scientific criticism of eugenics was coming out as Vermont implemented its rather late sterilization plan (Gallagher, p. 108). The ideology of eugenics was largely on the defensive in the 1930s as the media gave credence to scientists who criticized sterilization as a tool to steer human evolution (Gallagher, p. 134).
Bibliography
Dann, Kevin. 1991. "From Degeneration to Regeneration: The Eugenics Survey of Vermont, 1925-1936." Vermont History 59: 5-29.
Gallagher, Nancy L. 1999. Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State. Hanover: University Press of New England.
Greenberg, Hope, and Nancy Gallagher. "Vermont Eugenics: A Documentary History." Available at <http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/>
Paul, Julius. 1965. "'Three Generations of Imbeciles Are
Enough': State Eugenic Sterilization Laws in American Thought and
Practice." Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.