find themselves operating sudsy machines in the hot laundry. Twenty persons have been killed by maniacal fellow patients and quick-tempered keepers in the last 10 years, according to a recent report on St. Elizabeths by the Comptroller General of the United States.

Altogether, some five or six million persons have acquired a sublegal status through this lettre de cachet arrangement; any of them may be sent to the asylum offhand, without notice or opportunity for court hearing. According to a statement made by Doctor White to this writer, one-half the 4,000 patients of St. Elizabeths are held on these lettre de cachet proceedings.

The case of Mrs. Margaret M. Roche, former war nurse, takes us through this bastille of the United States Government in a most instructive way. She gives assent to the use of her name in this article.

Honorably discharged from war service in 1920, Mrs. Roche, then Miss Heeney, was allowed compensation for disabilities incurred in the service. She continued her nursing activities, however, and in 1922 was assigned to the Veterans' Bureau hospital at Perry Point, Md., where several cases of influenza had developed. One of her patients was the chief of the hospital's guards, David Roche. The wedding was celebrated in June, 1923. Two years later she contracted influenza herself, and becoming delirious, wandered out to the hospital campus. The hospital doctors pronounced her insane, and shipped her to Mount Hope Sanitarium. Within a few weeks the fever had run its course, the delirium had vanished, and Mrs. Roche realized where she was. She begged the doctors to find a place for her in Walter Reed Hospital, where, she understood, there was a ward for women patients. After several days of beseeching and pleading she was transferred to Washington. Never having visited the Capital before, she had no means of knowing that she had been consigned to St. Elizabeths instead of Walter Reed. Her case was diagnosed as dementia praecox and she was kept under close observation for two months. at the end of which time she was allowed at her husband's request to return to Perryville on parole.

At her husband's further request on April 20, 1926, she was finally discharged from the hospital as mentally competent. Being now legally qualified to transact business, she bought an automotile for $750, and at the suggestion of Mr. Roche signed a check for $1,000. Her compensation and 10 years savings, invested in stocks and bonds, amounted to about $6,000.

A few days after signing the check-May 4, 1926-Mrs. Roche was told by her husband that certain compensation due her was being held at St. Elizabeths, and that she was requested to call personally to receive it.

Her husband accompanied her as far as Baltimore, where he left her, agreeing to meet her on the return trip. He had business to attend to, he explained. At the last minute he reboarded the train, and, in a different coach, trailed his wife to Washington. From Union Station he followed her in a taxi to the hospital. From there he hurried to the Veterans' Bureau, whence he returned in less than 60 minutes with a lettre de cachet signed by Maj. Gen. Frank T. Hines, director of the bureau.

Meanwhile Mrs. Roche had called at the business office of St. Elizabeths and stated her errand. The officials evidently knew what was expected of them. She was detained, on various pretexts, until her husband arrived with the Veterans' Bureau order, when she was thrust into a ward and locked up. All her valuables were stripped from her, including the key to the strong-box containing her bankbooks, stock certificates, and a modest collection of jewelry. The key and other valuables were turned over to Mr. Roche, who bade his wife a fond good-bye through the bars, and left for Perryville.

The activities of Mr. Roche, as described above, are from a transcript of his own testimony, given with extreme reluctance under cross-examination at a court hearing a year or so later.

Mrs. Roche was kept in the ward for 10 months, or until March 11, 1927, when she succeeded in communicating with a Washington attorney, George F. Curtis, who, after hearing her story, accepted her case in consideration of her promissory note for $500 in lieu of a cash payment a detail of much importance to Mrs. Roche, all of whose funds were, by kindness of the hospital authorities, in custody of Mr. David Roche.

The habeas corpus proceedings immediately instituted by Mr. Curtis were fought tooth and nail by St. Elizabeths, the district attorney's office, the Veterans' Bureau, Mr. Roche, and-when the tide of battle seemed to be turning hopelessly against them-the corporation counsel's office and the municipal hospital.

At the close of the first day of the trial-which required three days-Justice Hitz addressed his prospective jurors thus:

"This is a habeas corpus action for the release of a patient from St. Elizabeths Asylum. In the last year four persons have been thus released, and within 24 hours of leaving the hospital they committed suicide. Gentlemen, I wish you to give this case your most earnest consideration."

Immediately after adjournment I asked Justice Hitz for the names of the four rash persons he had commented upon. He was unable at the time to recall the names, and suggested that I communicate with him in a few days, when he would have the list for me. A week later I repeated my request. Unable to give the names, Justice Hitz remarked that "these rumors are hard to track down."

But his announcement about the suicides had come from the bench as a matter of judicial knowledge.

Several weeks later he explained that the suicides had occurred over a period of 10 years, instead of 1, as announced from the bench. In this same period, according to the report of Comptroller General McCarl, 30 patients had committed suicide while in the hospital and 20 had been killed. These facts were not brought to the attention of the jury.

At the outset of the hearing Maj. Horace T. Jones, counsel for the Veterans' Bureau, admitted that the order of Director Hines on which the hospital authorities had seized and held Mrs. Roche, was not a valid commitment, whereupon Mr. Curtis requested that the petitioner be released. This the court declined to do, and continued the case for one week, Mrs. Roche to be held meanwhile in Doctor White's custody.

Before the week had expired Mr. Roche filed a petition that his wife be declared of unsound mind, and that he, David Roche, be made her guardian and custodian of her property. Dr. A. E. Maryland, a Veterans' Bureau psychiatrist, submitted a certificate that Mrs. Roche was of unsound mind, suffering from dementia præcox.

On the second day of the trial five lawyers were at the counsel table opposing the release of the ex-nurse. Maj. Horace T. Jones and Mr. W. R. Gould represented the Veterans' Bureau; Assistant District Attorney G. D. Horning, jr., appeared for Doctor White; Attorney H. E. Coleman, of Perry Point, appeared for Mr. Roche, Mrs. Roche having filed a suit for separate maintenance when she learned of the lunacy petition, of which Mr. Norman Landreau, a Washington attorney, had charge.

On March 22, accompanied by Mr. Curtis and Dr. Charles D. Allen, a Washington physician, who has helped to free many persons from the asylum, I went to St. Elizabeths to interview Mrs. Roche about certain questions that had been ruled out of evidence at the trial. Attendants at her ward told us she was no longer at the insitution. They did not know when she had gone, nor where. Hurrying to the administration building and walking into Doctor White's office unannounced, we were fortunate enought to find that gentleman at his desk, plainly disturbed by our visit. Mrs. Roche had been sent to Gallinger (the municipal hospital) in no way controlled by Federal authorities, he told us. She would not be brought back until the 24th in time for the trial. She had been sent to the psychopathic ward for observation.

We hurried to Gallinger, arriving within 15 minutes. We were told by Dr. Marjorie Stuart, in charge of the psychopathic ward during Doctor Hickling's absence, that Mrs. Roche had been sent back to St. Elizabeths "five minutes ago on phone instructions from St. Elizabeths.

Leaving a small detachment of our company at Gallinger, in case Mrs. Roche should be shuttled back again we returned hastily to St. Elizabeths, where we found Mrs. Roche on her way to the asylum mess hall.

She had been sent to Gallinger about 11 o'clock that morning and had spent the intervening six hours in a continuous grilling by four Gallinger doctors, acting in relays, she told us.

Mrs. Roche had been held in St. Elizabeths for 10 months, at the disposal of 30 or 40 expert psychiatrists who compose the staff of the institution. Why she should be sent suddenly to a minor institution "for observation" was a mystery that was not solved until two days later, when her trial was resumed. On introducing the guardianship petition at the previous session, Mr. Landreau had disclaimed any intention of sending Mrs. Roche back to the asylum. There was no claim that she was of dangerous tendencies, or that there was any need of locking her up, and he assured the jury the proceedings were not for that purpose. The sole object of the hearing was to determine her mental fitness to handle her estate, and to keep designing persons from getting possession of her property. The jury could dismiss from their minds any fear that Mrs. Roche would return to the asylum whatever the verdict might be.

The first move at the next session of the hearing was the introduction of a petition that Mrs. Roche be comitted to St. Elizabeths Hospital, as an indigent insane person, or an insane person of homicidal or otherwise dangerous tendencies.

The petition was introduced by Assistant Corporation Counsel W. H. Wahly, the sixth lawyer to appear against Mrs. Roche in her efforts to leave the mad house.

So hurriedly was the maneuver executed that no summons was served on Mrs. Roche, although such summons is required by law; and the petition was brought into the court room, and proceeding started under it, before the clerk of the court had been given opportunity of recording it.

Mrs. Pearl Bellman Klein, a woman attorney appointed guardian at litem by the court in the interest of Mrs. Roche offered no objection, accepting, apparently, the Washington hypothesis that an alleged lunatic has no rights. Mr. Wahly, in charge of lunacy proceedings in the district, while unable to defend the legality of the petition in certain unimportant details, made a vigorous plea in favor of its expediency under the circumstances.

Mrs. Roche's attorney protested roundly against the transaction, and after 15 minutes' consideration the court ruled the petition out.

The "surprise" petition for Mrs. Roche's return to the asylum could not have been prepared without the cooperation of Dr. W. A. White, superintendent of St. Elizabeths, Dr. D. Percy Hickling of Gallinger Municipal Hospital, and W. H. Wahly, of the corporation counsel's office.

Only with Doctor White's permission could the unusual and questionable step be taken of removing Mrs. Roche, then a petitioner in a habeas corpus suit, from the asylum, and holding her in Gallinger "for mental observation."

Only with Doctor Hickling's permission could Mrs. Roche's irregular, if not illegal, reception at Gallinger be accomplished.

Mr. Wahly, who prepared the petition, knew that Mrs. Roche's removal to Gallinger was for the sole purpose of evading the law (and a very wise law) that forbids asylum doctors to sign lunacy certificates against their own patients, or persons who may become such.

Doctor White and his assistants were accordingly disqualified from signing the certificate that accompanied the petition for the imprisonment of Mrs. Roche. In the end Mrs. Roche won her case and has been living in Atlantic City and Washington, giving no indication of the ferocious propensities alleged in the petition.

Shortly after the Roche case the district attorney's office succeeded in convincing the court that jury trials in habeas cropus cases are not mandatory under the law, and the last few cases have been tried without benefit of this Anglo-Saxon institution—among them, the case of W. J. O'Brien, who, his habeas corpus petion denied, is now beginning his thirty-first year of confinement.

Before the jury trials were thrown into the discard, however, many extraordinary cases were brought to light.

The Jane Brown Ranson case is noteworthy as illustrating that wealth, culture, residence outside the District of Columbia, and knowledge of one's constitutional rights are of little avail when the psychiatric hierarchy initiates a witch-hunting festival.

Jane Brown Ranson was a practicing attorney of Richmond, Va., and a good one. In 1918 Mrs. Ranson dropped her legal practice, and enlisted as an Army nurse. She returned to Richmond with tuberculosis, as a result of which she became a beneficiary of the Veterans' Bureau.

She resumed her law practice, which was vigorous, determined and no respector of persons, democracy having won the title bout. In July, 1926, she was seized in her home late at night by a lunacy commission and thrown into a sanitarium, where she was held 48 hours, when a lettre de cachet arrived from General Hines, and Mrs. Ranson was hurried on to Washington and locked up in a ward in St. Elizabeths. Here she was held until February, 1927, when she established communication with Attorney Curtis, and became the forty-ninth person released from St. Elizabeths by that gentleman's efforts since May, 1926.

The complaint and petition in this Ransom case was made by one John A. Lile, who bears no blood relation to her whatsoever, and was sworn to before W. J. Griggs, justice of the peace in Richmond, Va. ́ Incidentally the arrest of this self-supporting woman, who was honorably discharged after her war service, occurred on the same day on which the complaint was sworn out!

Since leaving the hospital she is again practicing law in Richmond. None of the fearsome consequences predicted by Doctor White has resulted from her release, except the filing of suits for false detention against White and Hines.

Similar suits have been filed in behalf of Mrs. Roche and many others, which offers a suggestion as to why Doctor White and the Veterans' Bureau adopt such extreme measures in opposing habeas corpus releases from the hospital: No releases, no damage suits.

The case of Mrs. Edna Caspary, the last one to be heard before the right of trial by jury in such cases was abolished, helps us to appraise that attainments of psychiatry as practiced under Doctor White, one of the outstanding figures of that occult science in this country. Held in Gallinger Hospital for mental observation from September 30 to November 12, 1926, Mrs. Caspary was adjudicated of unsound mind on the testimony of Dr. D. Percy Hickling and Dr. A. E. Evans, of Gallinger, and condemned to St. Elizabeths where she remained until April, 1927.

At the habeas corpus hearing, wherein she was represented by Attorney Curtis, bête noir of the Veterans' Bureau, St. Elizabeths, the District Attorney's office and other eleemosynary agencies it developed that Mrs. Caspary, held in St. Elizabeths as a pauper, was the owner of $20,000 worth of real estate, which had been hocus-pocused from her possession into that of her father, who was the instigator of the original lunacy proceedings.

A spectacular feature of the trial was the arrival of Congressman Thomas L. Blanton, of Texas, who, hearing of the case, and of the high-pressure testimony of the four psychiatrists mobilized by the district attorney, joined the defense as associate counsel. And say what you like about Thomas L., he sure can tell 'em. Under the stream of swift, jagged English that he turned on those 12 good men and true, the delicately constructed testimony of the four expert psychiatrists withered up and melted away like a rose bush in machine-gun fire. Mrs. Caspary was released.

For six months the psychiatrists of St. Elizabeths had kept Mrs. Caspary under observation; the Gallinger contingent had kept her for a shorter period, but long enough, they testified, for them to complete their examination; they had probed into her mind, as it were, and had found there, not merely evidence, but the way they told it-proof, that she was insane, proof that the lay eye Icould not detect. To the ordinary observer she was a normal, rather more than ordinarily intelligent and well-disposed lady of 35 or so. The examiners represented the foremost psychiatrists of the United States. The measure of psychiatry's progress in this country is indicated by the fact that while these scientists were able to probe into Mrs. Caspary's mind and discover there unsuspected proofs of insanity, they could not discover the highly important and undisputed fact that she was the owner of $20,000 worth of property.

Who's looney now?

EXTENDED REMARKS OF MYRTLE DE MONTIS

AMERICAN EQUITY ASSOCIATION, Washington, D. C., March 1, 1929. GENTLEMEN: There was some question at the hearing you granted us yesterday as to the objects of the American Equity Association, of which I am secretary. The objects of our organization which will be found in our articles of incorporation are:

"To procure for all persons the rights, privileges, and immunities which are theirs under the Constitution and the laws of the United States and to which they are justly entitled as members of the human family."

My action in appearing before you has been prompted by the fact that I find these rights infringed upon and jeopardized in the policy and the actual practices of St. Elizabeths Hospital.

This touches directly upon the subject of expenditures in several ways, one of which is that you are asked to off-set the cost of living expenses by a claimed hazard. The equivalent therefore of certain living expenses is alleged by the asylum officials to be the pretended hazard. The hazard thereby gains a price. I wished to set forth to you, but was prevented by lack of time, the many cases in which false and untrue statements have been made by St. Elizabeths officials. time and time again, about the hazard in connection with specific cases.

If the question of hazard is to be counted in consideration for certain expenditures, then I claim the right to go fuller into details and prove the gross exaggeration of St. Elizabeths authorities as to the hazard, showing that they distort facts and make false presentation of facts in order to magnify the elements of hazard. As I pointed out to you that Doctor White has stated Mr. O'Brien

"shot two clerks" when Mr. O'Brien did not shoot two clerks and has never shot anyone.

Another instance of this was presented in the case of Tisdale when Doctor White put forth the question "How many people did he kill?" This was an insidious slur made to harmfully injure a defenseless man whom Doctor White had held illegally shut up in his institution for years. Dr. William A. White is unfair and unjust toward the defenseless inmates he holds in his power in many cases which I can further set forth as I have in these two cited. He deliberately misrepresents the facts and the condition of the inmates in order to scare people about them, and uses arbitrary power to prevent them from obtaining their simple rights.

The profession of psychiatry is a danger to the public, as well as hazardous to the patients confined, in that persons are killed in St. Elizabeths Hospital and false death certificates issued by the hospital management.

Money is asked of Congress to develop this institution for the use of a training center for psychiatrists. We have shown you that one such doctor coming out of their instruction of psychiatry is a constant menace to public safety, driving around the streets drunk, running into people and knocking them down in safety zones, fleeing from the scene of accident after having cracked their skulls open, etc. This is Harry J. Crawford, who is now the psychiatrist of Sing Sing prison. Another graduate from Doctor White's school is a doctor by the name of Knute Houck, whose wife was fished out of the river dead when he was found disposing of her clothing in a manner that had he not been of the class of privileged persons in the District of Columbia he would have been taken seriously to account.

At this moment in the city of Seattle a psychiatrist by the name of Royal B. Tracy is under charges of manslaughter in the death by poison of a Ella Viola Fallis. We have shown you that the District alienist, Dr. D. Percy Hickling, has committed perjury on the witness stand in his eagerness to send people into St. Elizabeths Hospital.

I contend that psychiatry is potentially dangerous to the public at large not only in the actual hazard of the acts of such as I have named above, but in the legislation which its agencies are making a determined effort to get passed all over the United States to deprive American citizens of liberty without due process of law.

Again, this touches directly upon the expenditures as you are asked to make appropriations for St. Elizabeths to be used as a center for the training of recruits and for the spreading of psychiatric ideas.

I

Doctor White states he has letters in which he is consulted from all over. state that I have letters from all over in which are voiced an ever-increasing protest against the evils and injustices practiced upon American citizens under the cloak of psychiatry, of which Doctor White is the recognized head, and who by the use of Government funds has advertised himself far and wide and his profession.

If money is to be appropriated for the use of establishing St. Elizabeths as a training center for psychiatrists, then I claim the right to show what actually goes on in this institution and also to show the pernicious effects upon the public which are advanced under the name of psychiatry.

And if money is to be advanced to entertain visitors from all over the world here, then I claim the right to show that these visitors get much better consideration in the food set before them than the patients do, and they are not given a true picture of the living conditions of the patients. This institution is primarily a place for the housing of Government charges. But these have become a secondary consideration in the management of the place, for they do not get as much hospitality in kind as do the visitors of foreign nations.

Another offset presented is the requirement of devoting the superintendent's entire time to the duties of this office. If this is to count against living expenses, then what return is made to the United States Government for the use of the prestige of this position in going out to acquire private funds in appearing at lunacy trials for gain? The case of Harry K. Thaw and Leopold and Loeb are not the only ones which have taken Doctor White away from the requirements of his office. If the matter is gone into it will be found he has had an extensive gain from such practice, and what offset does the Government get from this use of this position for private profit?

Much of the representations upon which you are asked to appropriate funds are based on pure bunk. What I ask is a chance to debunk a lot of this bunk out of the presentations made to Congress in order that Congress may intelligently