Carrie Buck: An American Nightmare
There’s no bigger privilege in life than being born in the right place at the right time. Everything else is variable but this starting point over which you have no influence can pretty much shape your future prospects and realistic life expectations. Being born upstairs at the Kensington Palace is one thing. On the other hand, being born as the son of an upstairs footman is a frustratingly close to luck that remains out of reach. Being Jewish or Catholic in WW2 Germany meant the difference between life and death. If you think it doesn’t get worse than that, you’re wrong. Evil is always an early bird. Especially when humans decide to meddle in eugenics.
This is a practice which involved preventing people deemed as inferior from procreation through sterilisation and keeping them separated from society in specially designed institutions. This is where it gets interesting. Long before the German doctor Mengele and his eugenic experiments on Jewish children, there was Dr. Albert Priddy, an American supporter of the method and the first superintendent of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and the Feeble Minded. It opened in 1910 and, believe it or not, closed in 2020 after evidence of malpractice which included unneccessary restraining, flawed diet, accidents etc. As an epileptic myself, I can’t see a similarity between that and mentally or intellectually dysfunctional people.
This sordid story could be accurately described as the American Nightmare. At a time when we’re so invested in adressing issues of discrimination, inclusion and acceptance, this is something that seemingly still exists only in digital rabbit holes and dusty medical archives. Ever since the landmark case of Roe vs Wade was overturned, people who never heard of it are again aware of its importance and role in the regulation of reproductive rights in America. This is instrumental to their politics and identity: landmark court cases that open doors to new possibilities and widespread benefits for the underprivileged. But amidst all the fanfare, we forgot an another landmark case, though without a happy ending.
I’m referring to Buck vs Bell, a 1927 case full of skin-crawling details regarding the procedures an American girl called Carrie Buck underwent due to dr. Albert Priddy. In the end, he actually got away with it since the court decided to uphold the law of forced sterilisation for patients like her. Though his methods were despicable, like disguising sterilisation in pelvic treatments, it didn’t affect the rising numbers of his victims. There’s no other appropriate word for it. These people were labeled and treated as inferior beings in the so-called land of the free and the home of the brave. Mengele must have taken a page from this playbook, if you look at American newspaper clippings, referring to the “health of the state”.
At the Colony in Virginia, Carrie joined her mother Emma who was already there beforehand. Looking back at the excuses for the enforced procedure, it included promiscuity, and a teenage girl went through the same hell for, as they called it, the habit of talking to little boys. I guess they had to come up with something to cover their tracks. According to Encyclopedia Virginia, between 1927 and 1972, approximately 3,800 patients were subjected to it under the state law. Carrie was raped by a nephew of her foster family at 17 and had a child that died at the age of 8. Unsurprisingly, the scandal embarassed them. They had her committed to the Colony. Frankly, this is just a stone’s throw away from Arab honor killings.
Today, being an epileptic is no longer an excuse for an atrocity like this. Social awareness regarding this is on a high level and it’s not a stygma. We have been raised to put on a brave face and hide our weaknesses in the past. Some took it to the other extreme, equalling weakness with virtue, but the most important thing is that had she been dealt a luckier hand with time, Carrie Buck wouldn’t have had to endure what she did. Especially since she led a normal life after her discharge until 1983 when she died at the age of 76. This woman who was wronged and abused by the system never got to enjoy life to the fullest. She regretted not being able to have more children. Dr Priddy died in 1925 without any comeuppance for it.
The poet Molly McCully Brown grew up in the vicinity of the Colony and devoted a collection of the same name to this house of horrors. Its highly visual language doesn’t hold back anything and transforms the book into a lyrical equivalent of Brueghel’s surreal visions of heaven and hell where desperation and pain are the only sensations you get to feel. The power of poetry conveys thoughts that we’re unable to articulate when faced with the faces of people doomed for the inconvenience they caused to so-called normal people. We should be ashamed for the heritage of eugenics. But don’t be fooled. Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s gone.
Most nights, they knot
the bed sheet in my mouth
so I will not bite my tongue.
Trust me, I know how it feels. I know what it looks like, to see a wound on your tongue when you wake up in the morning. I even wrote a poetry collection devoted to the same thing Brown refers to as “my own kind of damaged”. And I know how it feels to be treated as if you were made of glass. It can feel suffocating and restricting. They never put a bed sheet in my own mouth, but they might as well have because sometimes you’re afraid of your own body and how it’s going to react in certain situations. You’re never completely at ease. That can nag on your spirit if you let it get to you. But it’s impossible to always uphold this shield of secrecy without ocassionally letting your guard down. You can’t pretend strong all the time.
While I wasn’t born into English aristocracy, I’m happy no one will cut my balls off due to my condition. People in the past, like Carrie Buck, weren’t so lucky. It’s sad that someone like Josef Mengele needs to come along for you to open your eyes. Those assuming authority over who is worthy of being treated as a human belong into an institution, not vice versa. Now that we’re making progress with the development of AI, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein should be mandatory reading for scientists. Progress has consequences. . I’m sure Albert Priddy was convinced he was doing the right thing. Too bad he died before he could see what it looks like when Frankenstein cuts the leash. I’m afraid we might be on the brink of it.
This dark chapter of American history doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should. Just like slavery, this was a form of abuse and humiliation sanctioned by authorities. Epilepsy wasn’t welcome even at the English court: prince John lived a sheltered life at Sandringham House due to his deteriorating condition. He’s been deemed as the Lost Prince who slipped through the cracks of royal history. His governess was taking care of him and gathering local children as playmates. Stripped of dignity in the last years of his troubled life, he died at the age of 13 and became yet another of those obscure faces from royal family trees. Let’s hope we have changed, learned our lessons and won’t let it happen again. It’s a prayer in vain, I know. But prayers are like leaves: even the slightest breeze can make them fly.
