Dr. William M. Awl, Idealistic Founder of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum
- Dr. William M. Awl, Idealistic Founder of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum
A retired senior editor of the Current Digest of the Post Soviet Press. She has published articles on a variety of topics in early national and antebellum Ohio history, including black barbers (in Ohio Valley History) and the care of the mentally ill (in Ohio History).
Footnotes
1. William Awl to Thomas S. Kirkbride, July 7, Dec. 24, 1849, Kirkbride Papers, Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia (hereafter IPH); Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 580–83; Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 9–37.
2. Gerald N. Grob, The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 25–31; Annual Report of the Directors of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum to the Thirty-Eighth General Assembly (Columbus: Samuel Medary, 1839), 19.
3. Constance M. McGovern, Masters of Madness: Social Origins of the American Psychiatric Profession (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1985), 1–15, 52, 53.
4. J. H. Pooley, “Memoir of William Maclay Awl, M.D., of Columbus, Ohio,” Transactions of the Annual Meeting of the Ohio State Medical Society 32 (1877), 71–73. Pooley wrote that he drew heavily on “some interesting autobiographical memoranda” that Awl’s family supplied. “Samuel Agnew (1777–1849),” College History Encyclopedia, Dickinson Archives and Special Collections (hereafter DASC), http://archives.dickinson.edu/people/samuel-agnew-1777-1849 (accessed Jan. 15, 2014).
5. Pooley, “Memoir of William Maclay Awl,” 73–74; Minute Book, Medical Society of the 13th District of Ohio, 1824–32, Vol. 552, unpaginated, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus (hereafter OHS); Thomas Percival, Medical Ethics, or, A Code of Institutes and Precepts, Adapted to the Professional Conduct of Physicians and Surgeons (1803; Birmingham, Al.: The Classics of Medicine Library, 1985), 29.
6. Gazette (Lancaster, Oh.), Mar. 20, 1827; Ohio Adler (Lancaster), June 27, 1826; Pooley, “Memoir of Awl,” 76; Record (Somerset, Oh.), Oct. 26, 1827.
7. Perry County Commissioners’ Journal, pp. 1, 197, 198, 200, OHS; Pooley, “Memoir of Awl,” 76; John Curwen, The Original Thirteen Members of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (Warren, Pa.: E. Cowan and Co., 1885), 36; Fifth U.S. Census, 1830, Population Schedule (Perry County, Oh.), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NA).
8. Pooley, “Memoir of Awl,” 76; Perry County Commissioners’ Journal, pp. 1, 203, OHS; Cincinnati Gazette, Apr. 18, 1850; Tri-Weekly Cincinnati Gazette, Nov. 13, 1845; Ann Clymer Bigelow, “Cincinnati’s Neglected Insane Asylum,” Ohio Valley History 13 (Summer 2013), 3–24; Alan I. Marcus, Plague of Strangers: Social Groups and the Origins of City Services in Cincinnati, 1819–1870 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991), 104.
9. Ohio State Journal (Columbus), Nov. 22, 1876. Awl’s obituary incorrectly states that he was named physician to the penitentiary in 1833, but he served as physician in 1836–37; see William T. Martin, History of Franklin County: A Collection of Reminiscences of the Early Settlement of the County… (Columbus: Follett, Forster, & Co., 1858), 358–59, 362, 412–13; Wm. Maclay Awl, “Facts and Cases,” Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences 6 (Apr.–June 1832), 23–28; Pooley, “Memoir of Awl,” 77; Ann Clymer Bigelow, “Columbus’s Pioneer Doctor John M. Edmiston: The Fabric of His Life and Death,” Ohio History 110 (Winter/Spring 2001), 5–25.
10. Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and His Followers (Cincinnati: Harvey Publishing Company, 1909), 176; George W. Knepper, Ohio and Its People (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 1989), 183 (though Juettner and Knepper incorrectly identify Awl as a member of the state legislature); Ohio State Journal (Columbus), July 19, 1834; Alfred E. Lee, History of the City of Columbus, Capital of Ohio, 2 vols. (New York: Munsell & Co., 1892), 2:611; Pooley, “Memoir of Awl,” 78.
11. Journal of the Proceedings of a Convention of Physicians of Ohio, Held in the City of Columbus on the Fifth Day of January, A.D. 1835 (Cincinnati: A. Pugh, 1835...
