Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Seeking Asylum from Grief

Early in May 1917 Augusta Waldeck returned to Longcliff Hospital in Logansport, Indiana.

We know she undergone treatment there starting in June 1904 for mental illness that was attributed — in a rather strained medical diagnosis — to terminal cancer of the abdomen (which turned out not to be terminal).

This time there was no need to look so far for a cause, and the Hobart News gave what was probably the medical as well as the layman's opinion when it explained that Augusta's mind had "become unbalanced, it is thought, on account of the death of her son, who was killed last fall at the Ainsworth railroad crossing."

A few days after seeing his wife put into the hospital, William Waldeck left for Illinois to attend his mother's funeral.


Source: Untitled social column. Hobart News 10 May 1917.

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