'Memory Of The Week': Dr. William Partlow's Decades-Long Crusade For Eugenics

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Apart from college football, Tuscaloosa is arguably most known for being the mental health capital of Alabama.

For better or worse, this can be traced back to the establishment of the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane in the mid-19th century.

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Known today as Bryce Hospital, which bears the name of its first superintendent, Dr. Peter Bryce, the hospital first opened in 1861 and was spared by torch-wielding Union troops occupying Tuscaloosa during the close of the Civil War.

ALSO READ: 'Memory of the Week': When The Civil War Came To Tuscaloosa

The effort to open the state's first hospital for the developmental disabled and mentally ill was thanks in large part to legendary advocate Dorothea Dix and ultimately saw its footprint expand to multiple campuses.

However, in 1923, the Partlow Developmental Center opened just a short distance from Bryce Hospital and would serve as the state's lone mental health treatment facility until the opening of the Wallace Center in Decatur in 1970.

Like Bryce Hospital, the Partlow State School was also named for its first superintendent, Dr. William Partlow, who was lauded during his day as an innovator in the field of mental health treatment.

This was nearly a century ago, though, and Partlow's legacy is a bit more complicated with the benefit of hindsight and when looking through the lens of a present-day historian.

Indeed, Partlow was a vocal champion of the field of eugenics, which is defined as the "study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable."

After making its way across the pond from England, eugenics came to be used by the American school of thought and many of its academics and physicians as a justification for the reproductive sterilization of the developmentally disabled and others deemed unfit for society.

While ultimately an unpopular opinion in his home state throughout his career, Partlow was far from alone in these beliefs.

Few likely know that Alabamian Helen Keller — a native of Tuscumbia who lost her sight and hearing at 19 months old — was a vocal supporter of both eugenics and the burgeoning euthanasia movement as approaches to mental health care began to shift and evolve into a highly valued field of health care.

Indeed, in a 1915 letter, Keller chastised certain physicians' idea of "life" by speculating that their definition of the concept "means just to breathe."

"Surely [scientists and physicians] must admit that such an existence is not worthwhile," Keller penned regarding the topic. "It is the possibilities of happiness, intelligence, and power that give life its sanctity, and they are absent in the case of a poor, misshapen, paralyzed, unthinking creature.”

Arguments are sure to be made defending Keller's and Partlow's sincerity regarding their views on eugenics and sterilization, with this author and historian accepting that both were intellectual products of their time.

Apart from their contributions to the field, though, none can deny how the entire dystopian concept of eugenics was cast into the dustbin of historical irrelevance thanks to its most infamous practitioners: the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

You know? The Nazis?

And it was at the hands of these racist, jackbooted thugs that millions were brutally murdered during "The Final Solution" that would later be known as The Holocaust.

Few may know, though, that the regime's massive leap toward the attempted genocide of the Jews was beta-tested with the Nazi "T-4" program that first resulted in the murders of 200,000 people with disabilities in what would become the practical and bureaucratic foundation for the extermination of more than 6 million innocents.

Back in the United States, though, and several years before Adolf Hitler rose to power, Dr. William Dempsey Partlow — a native of Ashville in St. Clair County — was elected superintendent of the Alabama State Hospitals after graduating from the University of Alabama Medical School in Mobile and starting an association with Bryce Hospital as an intern beginning in 1901.

In 1905, Partlow married Margaret Cummings, with whom he'd sire three children: William Dempsey Jr., Margaret Cummings Partlow and Nixon Beason.

After becoming superintendent of the system in 1919, the Alabama Legislature passed a bill to create what would become the Partlow Development Center just a stone's throw away from Bryce Hospital.

However, tucked away quietly in the legislation was a clause that granted permission to the superintendent of the new treatment facility to sterilize patients without consent, becoming the first law in Alabama that supported the practice.

Historians say this law was written in a way that gave the superintendent sole authority over the practice and resulted in a lack of safeguards for the patients, referred to at the time as inmates whether they had been convicted of a crime or not.

Many over the years have insisted that this legislation made it possible for Partlow to sterilize every single patient in his care during the time in which it was legal.

A list of the "conditions" appropriate for sterilization in Alabama during this time:

• Sexual perversions
• Sadism
• Homosexuality
• Masochism
• Sodomy
• Two rape convictions
• Anyone imprisoned three times for any offense

As an interesting and somewhat relevant side note: The same year Partlow became superintendent, the legislature also passed a law prohibiting those with venereal diseases from marrying.

Alabama State Health Officer Dr. James Norment Baker, another proponent of eugenics, also asked the state to pass a law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of anyone committed to state homes for the insane, reformatories, industrial schools and training schools.

While the legislature did, indeed, pass a bill with Baker's suggestions, Gov. Bibb Graves vetoed the measure.

The University of Vermont has extensively studied and documented the history of sterilizations across the country and said those targeted in Alabama were males, including delinquent boys deemed flight risks, the poor and the mentally deficient.

At this time, one can't help but lament the incredibly low threshold for someone to be committed to a state mental institution for the rest of their life, not just in Alabama, but across the country.

Lutz Kaelber, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Vermont, points out that while Alabama never established a standalone mental health treatment facility for those in its Black population, this should not lead to a conclusion that there were not racist components to the practice to sterilization.

Kaelber, instead, insists that this reflected the belief that the "betterment" of the Black "race" could not be achieved by such measures as those being used on their White counterparts, thus any attempts were likely considered at the time to be futile.

Historians have written at length about how the concept of eugenics and the practice of sterilization were not well-received in Alabama, where it was the belief of many outside of the walls of state asylums that it was the responsibility of the individual's family to take care of those with mental illness or disabilities.

Kaelber reinforces this notion by saying that the state of Alabama sterilized a confirmed total of 224 individuals while the practice was condoned — a figure he insists is comparatively low to that of other states where sterilization was more widely accepted.

Nevertheless, Partlow would champion eugenics and sterilization for the rest of his career and life, while at the same time developing a hospital system that was praised for its self-sufficiency and grew its footprint by leaps and bounds.

This institutional independence was primarily due to the rich farmland owned by the state and tended by the patients at its mental health facilities.

At the Partlow Boys Farm Colony, the present site of Ol' Colony Golf Club, fields were planted and livestock raised in an effort to feed the ever-growing population of the institution while also providing what was viewed as recreational therapy for the patients doing the labor.

Over the years, demand for bed space steadily climbed and, in 1931, saw the state purchase 1,172 acres of property known as the "Rice Valley," for the grand sum of $45,000.

The purpose of the large land grab was for the establishment of a farm colony for young white boys, with a separate farm colony established on Columbus Road for Black patients.

While very little was written about the segregated Columbus Road site, the Partlow Boys' Colony was founded to alleviate the strain on the regrettably named Partlow State School for Feeble-Minded Children on the south side of the Black Warrior River.

One crop report found in a local paper in 1941 said that more than 6,600 biscuits were consumed at every meal across the state's footprint of mental health facilities in Tuscaloosa County, in addition to 180 pounds of sugar used every morning just for the countless cups of coffee poured to start the day.

Partlow's agricultural capabilities also saw its farms annually produce 160,000 pounds of pork.

This practice was a celebrated one, both in the rural community beyond its campus and in the state legislature, thus resulting in Partlow's administration earning a reputation for the outstanding and humane care of its patients at a time when truth be told, there were few other options. So, it's probably best if we consider this the "glass half-full" perspective.

The sterling reputation of Dr. William Partlow, though, allowed him to continue expanding the facilities and capabilities of the state's hospitals. All the while, he continued to push for compulsory sterilization of the developmentally disabled and others in his care.

Despite the last sterilizations occurring in June 1935, the practice was deemed unconstitutional by the Alabama Supreme Court that same year after justices ruled that it violated the Due Process Clauses of the state and federal constitutions, given that a patient would not have the right to appeal their proposed sterilization to a court.

Partlow was an influential figure in his field during those years, even serving as president of the Southern Psychiatric Association in 1937 and as a fellow in the American Psychiatric Association.

While Partlow could still sterilize patients with their consent or that of their legal guardians, he continued to fight and reintroduced the bill in the legislature in 1939 and 1943.

Both measures failed in the legislature before 1945, when a bill was introduced that would have allowed for the sterilization of every inmate or eligible individual in state asylums. This measure actually passed the Alabama Senate, but failed to garner the necessary support in the House of Representatives to make it to the governor's desk.

Regardless of how Partlow's support of eugenics is likely viewed and interpreted by most today, including your author, he was a celebrated and respected man during his time and by all accounts was considered a progressive thinker when it came to the field of mental health.

In 1941, he was honored with a public tribute for his four decades of service and was also credited as the "father" of the University of Alabama Medical School in Birmingham, which would go on to become UAB.

What's more, his obituary would later state that at the time of his retirement in 1941, the institution's property holdings had increased by nearly 4,000 acres, while the assessed value of its buildings and facilities had risen from $1.35 million in 1919 to $5.73 million when he retired.

William Dempsey Partlow died at his oldest son's house on Sherwood Drive in Tuscaloosa on Tuesday, July 7, 1953, at the age of 76 after battling illness for several years prior.

Partlow is buried in Tuscaloosa Memorial Garden and left a legacy that is still remembered by so many in Tuscaloosa and across Alabama, whether they realize it or not, thanks to the staying power of the Partlow name in the field of mental health.

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