The history of Western State and DeJarnette Sanitarium

Between the late 1700s and the 1970s, Virginia had a practice of institutionalizing handicapped populations that were inadequately served in Virginia localities. The commonwealth was an early state providing services for the mentally ill.
By 1836, Dr. Francis T. Stribling was superintendent of the Western Lunatic Asylum, where he established a respected record of care. Other Virginia institutions were established to serve persons with profound handicaps including the deaf, the blind and the developmentally disabled. The Western Lunatic Asylum opened in Staunton in 1828.
By the 1920s, a social philosophy taught in some state universities, called eugenics, gained support in the General Assembly, adversely affecting mental hospitals and the care of the disabled. Eugenics justified state discrimination, involuntary sterilization of persons and genocide of persons designated undesirable.
The General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Law of 1924, which discriminated against Native Americans and blacks. Thirty states in the same period passed laws which permitted forced sterilizations of mentally impaired persons.
Leading proponents of eugenics were Dr. Walter A. Plecker (registrar, Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics, 1912-46), Dr. Harvey E. Jordan (dean of medicine by 1939, University of Virginia) and Dr. Joseph S. DeJarnette.
DeJarnette graduated from the Medical College of Virginia in 1888 and was superintendent of Western State Hospital from 1906-43. DeJarnette advocated legal sterilizations of those unable to support themselves because of a mental condition and those who were “syphilitic, epileptic, imbeciles and drunkards.”
His testimony before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927 about Virginia’s sterilization policy convinced the court to uphold the Racial Integrity Law of 1924. Carrie Buck, of the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg, had sued to prevent a sterilization.
By the 1930s, Virginia institutions served 9,500 patients. Virginia operated institutions for the insane in Staunton, Williamsburg and Marion, and a colony for the epileptic and feeble-minded in Lynchburg. Between 1927 and 1979, Virginia sterilized 8,300 residents, including blacks, Native Americans, the feeble-minded, the promiscuous and the poor.
Dr. DeJarnette had different treatments for middle-class patients with mental disorders. He convinced the Virginia General Assembly by 1932 to construct a semi-private sanitarium for middle-class patients with mental afflictions, including drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally distressed. DeJarnette Sanitarium opened in 1932. Another building opened in 1938. The facility had golf and tennis courts and 171 beds.
In the U.S. Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia (1963), contesting Virginia’s Racial Integrity Law of 1924, the court ruled in 1967 the law and other similar laws used by 16 states violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
DeJarnette Sanitarium’s mandate changed in 1972 to serve children with severe emotional disorders, and the facility was renamed the DeJarnette Center. A new children’s psychiatric hospital was constructed on the Western State Hospital campus across U.S. 250 from the former DeJarnette Center in 1996.
The new facility was named the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents by state officials in 2001, after the General Assembly refused to use Dr. DeJarnette’s name because of his discredited history. DeJarnette Sanitarium (1932-96) now sits vacant on the Frontier Culture Museum property.
The Virginia General Assembly approved funding in April 2008 for construction of a new Western State Hospital. A new 40-acre campus and hospital will be smaller and serve fewer patients than the current facility, which has an 1,800 patient capacity and opened in 1952.
K.W. Stanley is a Waynesboro resident, historian and TNV correspondent. Contact him at .