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Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74.4 (2000) 852-853



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Book Review

Insane Sisters: Or, the Price Paid for Challenging a Company Town


Gregg Andrews. Insane Sisters: Or, the Price Paid for Challenging a Company Town. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. xii + 262 pp. Ill. $29.95.

Gregg Andrews chronicles the story of sisters Mary Alice (Mollie) Heinbach and Euphemia B. (Feemy) Koller, who fought the Atlas Portland Cement Company from 1910 to 1927 over twenty-six acres of land in the company town of Ilasco, Missouri. Relying on various sources--especially court records and newspaper accounts of the lengthy legal proceedings--Andrews spins a complex tale of [End Page 852] greed, intrigue, and legal maneuvering that offers important insights into early-twentieth-century sex roles, class distinctions, and the interface between societal values and judgments regarding mental competence.

Like many industries of the period, Atlas Portland Cement Company sought control of the town in which it operated--a goal hampered by Mollie's inheritance of much of the townsite from her fifth husband, Sam Heinbach. Having had a previous husband's will challenged, Mollie took pains to ensure that Sam's was executed properly. Nevertheless, attorneys soon sought to break the will, arguing that Sam had been insane and offering 40 percent of any proceeds to his long-absent daughters. In reality, powerful men of the town wanted to deliver the property to the cement company. What followed was a lopsided struggle that pitted Mollie and Feemy (to whom Mollie deeded half the property in exchange for financial and emotional support) against the considerable resources of the local power structure. The surprise is not that the sisters lost, but that the battle took seventeen years.

As Andrews aptly notes, neither Mollie nor Feemy exemplified the then-current notion of True Womanhood: subservience, conformity, and docility. Both had been divorced. Feemy had embraced spiritualism, "magnetic healing," and other eccentric beliefs. She had also refused to care for her brother Tom's orphaned children even though she had ample funds. And Mollie had openly schemed to marry Sam, an incontinent alcoholic, for his property, and was willing to challenge the male power structure to keep it. Locals considered Sam himself "poor white trash" whose lack of capitalistic, entrepreneurial spirit branded him as insane in the eyes of those for whom materialism was the highest value. Ironically, the sisters, who had an abundance of entrepreneurial spirit, were ultimately declared mentally incompetent and, in Feemy's case, committed to a state mental hospital. Feemy's masterful use of the predominantly masculine weapon of the legal system was deemed "monomaniacal" and was cited to justify her confinement. In the end, the company acquired the land at a bargain price and the sisters were silenced.

Deviation from dominant societal values always played a role in the classification of people as mentally ill. In the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, openly criticizing the government was interpreted per se as a symptom of insanity. Certainly, as Andrews comments, the desire for "social control" over aberration often contributed to the commitment process. With insanity viewed predominantly as a legal rather than a medical construct, the criteria for declaring someone insane easily stretched to accommodate the desires of those who could afford the best lawyers. Andrews's meticulous case study of two "insane" sisters reveals just how badly commitment proceedings that relied on jury trials needed reform. Persons whose actions embarrassed powerful others might find themselves "railroaded" into mental institutions, as might those whose resources could be acquired in no other legal manner.



Sarah C. Sitton
St. Edward's University

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