Butcher: A novel

Editor’s Note

Herewith, a biography comprised of divers voices, primarily that of my late father, Silas Aloysius Weir, M.D. (1812–1888), for thirty-five years Director of the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics at Trenton, New Jersey: by consensus among his fellow physicians, surgeons, & psychiatrists, the Father of Gyno-Psychiatry—that is, psychiatry with specialization in the female. But Silas Aloysius Weir also pioneered in other aspects of medical science, as this biography will reveal.

Originally, it had been my intention, as the executor of my father’s estate, to gather together a compendium of testimonies from his professional colleagues pertaining to the pioneering work of Silas Aloysius Weir, in commemoration of the (tenth) anniversary of his death; much of this original intention remains, of course, though it has been amplified by other documents, from unexpected sources, as well as my own commentary.

I have discovered that a fair representation of the life & career of Silas Aloysius Weir has been all but impossible to obtain. As a courageous if sometimes headstrong pioneer in his field, my father naturally stirred much resentment, rivalry, & censure during his lifetime; following his death, positions regarding his reputation have hardened, falling generally into two camps, of support & denunciation.

My own position, as executor, but also as my father’s eldest son, is nonetheless, I hope, objective.

It must be said, however, that Silas Weir was a most unusual scientific researcher, a pioneer not only in the field of psychiatry but of Gyno-Psychiatry, a controversial area of specialization to this day; along with his kinsman Medrick Weir, Father was a co-founder of this entire area of specialization, still but sparsely followed in the profession. In some quarters, Father was reviled as a physician who preyed upon his (helpless) patients, to advance his career as well as for more personal, prurient motives; yet, the fact remains, none of the more orthodox physicians of his time would have wished to examine Father’s typical (female) patient, let alone attempt to cure her of her maladies. For at the Trenton hospital, Father’s patients were often indigent persons, the flotsam & jetsam of the Earth, as Father called them. Though he had, for some time, a flourishing private practice in Trenton as well, among well-to-do patients, his greatest responsibilities were to the afflicted of the New Jersey State Asylum for Female Lunatics. This he believed to be a sacred trust placed upon him by the Governor of the State, the New Jersey Public Health Commission, the taxpayers of the State of New Jersey, & Providence itself, in which he never ceased to have faith.

(Indeed, it is a much-iterated theme of Silas Weir’s autobiography that he seemed to have been convinced that whatever he did, Providence was guiding his hand. The smallest tasks, Father believed to be essential to his destiny; what those of us of a younger generation would likely attribute to mere chance, if not the whimsicality of fate, Father interpreted as the will of God.)

I will allow that salacious rumors were circulated of Silas Weir, by persons who knew little of him; even among his Cleff in-laws, my mother’s relatives, from whom I must acknowledge I have become estranged, for reasons that will become clear in this biography.

So it is, testimonies from Father’s cohort of physician-associates have proved disappointing, over all, & would make for very dull reading in any case: hagiography, from his closest associates & defenders; or, incensed indignation, disgust, & disapprobation from his detractors. As I do not intend to elicit testimonies from Father’s relatives, from whom I am also estranged, there is a dearth of biographical material herein except for that supplied by Father himself, in excerpts from his (posthumously published) autobiography, The Chronicle of a Physician’s Life, which I have edited for inclusion here.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that the authenticity & accuracy of Father’s autobiography have been called into question by some historians. In particular, it has been charged against Silas Weir that he much exaggerated his surgical successes & deliberately failed to record his most egregious failures, as a physician is ethically bound to do. Following a devastating fire, in March 1861, in Silas Weir’s Laboratory in the Asylum at Trenton, records of his most controversial experimentation have been lost; all that is known of these accomplishments is what Father wished to preserve in the Chronicle.)

What I have amassed, finally, is, I hope, a convincing & authentic portrait of my father, Silas Aloysius Weir, M.D., comprised of a chorus of witnesses: some clearly biased & others more objective. The most unexpected, as it is the most unsparing, is Part V, excerpts from the best-selling memoir of Silas Weir’s most renowned former patient, Brigit Agnes Kinealy, provocatively titled Lost Girl, Found: An Orphan’s True Story Told by Herself (Matthew Carey Publishers, 1868), providing testimony regarding my father’s practices & personality impossible to acquire from other sources, & differing from my father’s accounts in most striking ways.

Thus, a document of inestimable value in the troubled history of Gyno-Psychiatry in which, all too rarely, the objects of the science, i.e., females, were allowed to have a voice.

That my eclectic biography is likely to be controversial—indeed, scandalous—to many readers is an inevitability which I must accept, as Silas Weir’s eldest son, at once a disappointment to the man, yet his most crusading chronicler & heir.

Jonathan Franklin Weir

Boston, Massachusetts

October 1898

PROLOGUE

MARCH 1861

…we had not begun murdering the Red-Handed Butcher before it was over. He had fallen at once to the filthy floor like a dumb beast smote by the hand of God slip-sliding piteously in his own blood. Weeping like a whipt child bereft of all hope & shamed & his clothing torn & yanked from him, in his nakedness mangled genitals bleeding between sallow old-man thighs we screamed with laughter to see. Hallelujah!—the cry of the wrathful Jehovah God of the Israelites pushing forward in the fury of joy like flood-waters overspilling the riverbank, the boldest of us were bent on murder, the joy of murder, our knives were hungry for the soft-fleshy chest of the Red-Handed Butcher who had kept us captive, the heart of the Red-Handed Butcher who had tortured us, the belly of the Red-Handed Butcher who had sodomized us even as the wisest of us cried—No! No, we must not!—it will be our doom, if we murder the Butcher-doctor.

Hid my eyes for I could not look upon it, what we had wrought.

I

YOUNG DOCTOR WEIR

The Suitor (1835)

Mrs. Elias Rollins, née Tabitha Tyndale

Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania

God forgive us!—we failed to recognize the young genius who appeared out of nowhere in our midst, in the autumn of 1835; indeed, like the silly geese we were, so blinded by our own vanity, & the puffery of our feathers, we mistook this inauspicious apprentice-doctor for something of a fool, though shy-seeming & clumsy & said to be of a very respectable family in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts.

Indeed, we laughed at him, for imagining himself a suitor!—of any of us.

Calling himself Silas Weir, M.D.—in a gravely solemn voice that could not escape boastfulness. Surely, the least attractive bachelor in Chestnut Hill that season!

The first thing you noticed about Silas Weir: His skin was unhealthily sallow, the very hue of earnest. The face of a young doctor who has kept himself indoors for too long, immersed in medical textbooks, airless operating theaters, & those dread places called morgues, where cadavers are cruelly dissected. A face both boyish & careworn, with worry-lines in the (high, bony) forehead like lines made by a fork in dough, & a squinting look about the eyes as of unease, guilt.

He was of moderate height. His head was overlarge upon his stooped & spindly shoulders; his stiff-tufted hair of no discernible hue, neither dark nor fair, needed a more expert trimming; his eyes rather deep-set in their sockets, like a rodent’s eyes, damp & quick-shifting. His ears were curiously white, protruding somewhat from his head. Yet there was an awkward sort of dignity in his bearing, as in one masquerading as someone he is not.

His clothing of lightweight dark wool was of good quality (so sharp-eyed Mother observed) but somewhat rumpled, as if he had been sleeping in it. His linen might have been fresh when he’d set out from his lodgings on the farther, downside of town, but after a few minutes in our over-warm drawing room it began to dampen; his stiff-starched collar began to wilt. In our brightly hued silks & satins, tight-laced inside our whalebone corsets, we young ladies were white-powdered with talcum, most densely in our armpits & in the netherworld between our legs, which had no name & was thus unnameable; if it was, for any of us, that time of month, we were buttressed between our thighs with thick gauze-bandages that soon became heavy with brackish blood that dried & chafed against our tender skin like the coarsest sandpaper; this, also liberally powdered with talcum, for it was, of all things, including even heinous sins & crimes, the worst possible fate, that that time of month might become evident to any others, & of these most particularly men; & of men, those designated eligible bachelors. In a panic of being discovered, sniffed-at, smelt, detected by (male) nostrils, we were perpetually on alert, which made us skittish & (occasionally) cruel, & certainly sharp-eyed, for we did not wish to be taken unaware.

Thus we took note of Silas Weir with some condescension, & relief, since clearly here was an eligible bachelor whose opinion did not matter to us in the slightest. Our Chestnut Hill suitors were known to us since childhood, & even the least handsome of them was handsome to us, like relatives; in truth, young Dr. Weir was not so much ugly as simply too ordinary, & lacking social graces.

Those impressive likenesses of the older Silas Aloysius Weir, M.D., which have appeared in newspapers, & recently in Harper’s Weekly—so stern & assured, with a jutting jaw, & frowning eyes, revered as an award-winning research scientist & honored in the White House—are not at all how I remember sallow-skinned young Dr. Weir.

In our drawing room in Chestnut Hill in the fall of 1835, Silas Weir was a curious sight. He smiled when he should have been somber-faced, & he was somber-faced when he should have been smiling. His mouth was soft-seeming as putty & worm-colored; the prospect of such a mouth daring to kiss you would make you howl with laughter like a banshee. (None of us ever got that far in imagining, I am quick to reassure you!) He had the demeanor of a forty-year-old but was said to be only twenty-three!

His accent struck our ears as very—odd. You did hear people from Boston speaking like this, as if they had head colds; Silas Weir’s accent was even more pronounced. Though he could enunciate fancy-sounding words—(Aristotle, Galen, contagion, exsanguination)—the effect was comical. We’d have dissolved into giggles if we dared to exchange glances with each other as we’d done many a time in school & at church, except we weren’t children any longer but young ladies.

Every now & then like a snake flicking its tongue Silas Weir’s small damp eyes would glance in my direction: swiftly traveling from the toe of my slipper peeking from beneath my heavy skirt & petticoats to my cinched-in waist, to the lacy brocade of my bodice, lifting to my pale throat & pale-powdered face while not daring to actually meet my eyes.

Of course, it was not Silas Weir’s fault that he’d become a weekly, barely tolerated guest for tea at our house in Chestnut Hill—he had not invited himself. My great-uncle Clarence Tyndale was a deacon at our church, the First Episcopal Church of Chestnut Hill, where Silas Weir had joined the congregation; out of Christian charity, with every good intention, Uncle Clarence encouraged young Dr. Weir (as he called him) to pay a visit to our household. Silas Weir knew no one in Chestnut Hill, or so it was said. He’d just graduated from the Philadelphia College of Medicine & was an apprentice to our local physician, Ambrose Strether, who maintained a diminished practice as he neared retirement age (sixty); this was not a very promising start to a career in medicine for a young doctor.

(Only later would we learn that Silas Weir had been exiled—in a manner of speaking—by his own family, having failed to maintain the high standards of excellence expected of the Weirs of Concord, Mass.; performing with little distinction academically, thus failing to be admitted to Harvard College, which every male Weir had attended in the history of the family.)

No doubt, Uncle Clarence hoped to help the young Christian gentleman. Jesus’s admonition Love thy neighbor as thyself had burrowed into Uncle’s head like the ash borer into our stately ash trees, & made him a nuisance to his relatives.

An eligible young Christian bachelor who has studied to be a doctor. Who knows what his future will be. You young ladies will be kind to him, I know. You will make him feel welcome in Chestnut Hill, where, I fear, there is a history of class snobbery.

So long ago, makes my head swim.

I was just eighteen, having graduated from the Chestnut Hill Academy for Girls. My dearest closest friend, Fiona Fox, had graduated with me. Also in our circle was my (older) sister Katherine, a grave-faced beauty, & our lively cousins June & Jetta. And Belinda Prescott, the judge’s daughter. Have to say, without wanting to boast, that those years, in Chestnut Hill, our circle was the circle. Girls from the best families vied to be our friends just as their brothers & cousins vied to court us, but we were young & spoiled & choosy, which made us cruel.

Yes, I will acknowledge: We were pretty. All of us!

And very prettily dressed in our frilly flowery lacy ribbon-bedecked dresses with tight bodices & sprawling skirts to the floor, hiding our (slender, white-stockinged) ankles; inside our fine clothing we were obliged to sit very straight indeed, posture-perfect, laced into whalebone corsets so that, just barely, we could breathe.

My twenty-four-inch waist reduced to a sylphine nineteen inches, between the satiny glisten of the bodice & the flounce of the skirt, designed to entice a young gentleman’s eye.

That sick drowning look in Silas Weir’s face when he first saw the array of us like gladioli in a lush garden made us feel sorry for him—almost…

Holding his hat in both hands as Lettie escorted him to the doorway of the drawing room. Staring & blinking as if a blazing light were blinding his eyes. Quickly Momma put the awkward visitor at his ease, or tried to: Poor Dr. Weir stumbled over his own feet taking a seat beside the hearth, fiercely blushing. He had never been in such genteel company before, it seemed!

He had never gazed upon young ladies like us before, obviously.

How many times in that year, & part of the year to follow, Silas Weir returned to our house, I cannot recall. We did not take him seriously when there were certain others, far more attractive young men, of good Philadelphia families, vying with him for our attention; of all the eligible bachelors, Silas Weir was the runt of the litter. But he did not know that—of course.

After the first awkward visit, Dr. Weir never failed to bring flowers to present to Momma: often, coarse flowers like hydrangeas in full bloom, even hollyhocks & tiger lilies! (These flowers Dr. Weir very likely discovered growing wild in fields & ditches, as if we wouldn’t have suspected.) Momma had not the heart to discourage him. No other house in Chestnut Hill was open to him. It was not our fine-steeped English tea or our cook’s delicious tea-sandwiches & crumpets that drew the awkward young man, for he had scarcely any appetite in our presence; if he lifted a delicate teacup to his mouth, in his quivering hand, he was likely to spill the contents on his ill-fitting trousers. Politely we put questions to him which, all eagerly, with smiles exposing odd-shaped teeth & damp gums, he stammered to answer, as if we were genuinely interested, & not being merely polite; or, worse yet, at times, & I confess that I was one of those guilty of such cruelty, teasing him as one might tease a clumsy dog.

What did the young physician, one day to become so famous, tell us in our drawing room in Chestnut Hill, so long ago? I seem to recall a certain shy boastfulness as Silas Weir prattled of his plan to advance human knowledge & make a name for himself in the field of medical research, as well as achieving a career as a clinician & surgeon; he spoke of experimental surgery he was planning, with the hope of correcting congenital malformations in children & even infants. We winced to hear such vulgarisms as cleft-palate, club-foot, cross-eyed—crude expressions never uttered in mixed company. The dread word consumption the young physician dared speak; such obscene words as cadaver, confinement, even womb. (But perhaps it was not womb that was uttered by Silas Weir, this being a word we would not have recognized, as it was, literally, unspeakable; possibly in his nasal New England accent the awkward young doctor had actually uttered whilom, a most peculiar but poetical expression reminiscent of the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.)

Amid the decorous murmur of subdued voices, there would come a sudden stark silence as Silas Weir’s voice was exposed, overloud & foolish; the young doctor blushing fiercely & glancing about the room like one who has inadvertently appeared in public disheveled & in disarray, hoping that no one has noticed.

My friends teased me mercilessly that silly Silas was in love with me! My cousins June & Jetta were the worst.

Judging from Silas Weir’s manner if I merely glanced in his direction, let alone exchanged a few words with him, or smiled at him, this appeared to be so; when he dared to utter my name—M-Miss Tabith-a—it was in such a cracked, croaking voice we nearly forgot ourselves & burst into gales of laughter.

In turn, I took care never to call the young doctor anything other than Dr. Weir. I certainly never called him Silas. Despite what others thought, I did not encourage him even as a whim.

So, eventually, Silas Weir came to realize that Tabitha Tyndale was not attracted to him, & he turned, somewhat desperately, to dear Fiona, whose kindness of heart could not allow her to be rude to anyone, however clumsy, though neither did Fiona encourage Weir; & shortly thereafter, when Fiona’s attentions were dominated by her dashing suitor Rufus Clark, Silas Weir turned, with yet more desperation, to my flirtatious cousin Jetta.

Of all the girls in our circle, Jetta! Avid to toy with the naïve young man’s heart as a cat will toy with a mouse, initially an entire, living mouse, but eventually with just the remains of the mouse, its innards, its tiny skull, & last of all its rubbery little heart.

For Jetta was inclined to be something of a performer, provoking laughter at the expense of the (unknowing, unwitting) mouse—poor Weir so deluded as to think that the vivacious red-haired Jetta, aged seventeen, could be, for a fleeting instant, interested in him.

How we laughed at the fool, in the privacy of my bedroom afterward! So very hard, the tight-cinched laces binding my torso, waist, hips, & buttocks caused me such great pain, I nearly fainted & had to be unlaced.

You girls! That is very cruel of you, & not at all Christian. The poor young man adores you all. Is this a gracious way to repay him?—so Momma scolded us, sighing.

Of such antics in the drawing room at our Friday afternoon teas, Papa knew nothing—fortunately! Never did Papa step a foot inside these gatherings, which interested him, a Calvinist businessman, for whom genteel conversation had little allure, not at all.

In the end, his daughters would marry young men of whom he approved, because he knew & respected their fathers, as they respected him; all the rest was mere banter & flirtation, & harmless.

But next time Silas Weir came to our house, presenting Momma with an untidy bouquet of black-eyed Susans & daisies, Jetta’s pretense of interest in the young doctor had waned, for there were other, more interesting young men at the gathering; nor did Fiona pay more than stiffly polite attention to him, leaving him quite forlorn. By this time also, Elias Rollins had returned to Chestnut Hill, in his West Point cadet’s dress uniform, so ravishing a sight I could hardly look elsewhere; in an instant, though my perfect posture, predicated by the invisible corsetry, did not allow any suggestion of it, all my coquettish defenses melted.

For here was a handsome young man whose father my father respected, as he did business with him in the city; here was a young man who was indeed a suitor.

Yet awkwardly, with no idea of how foolish he was being, & how futile his behavior, Silas Weir dared to tug a chair in my direction, in an attempt to join the conversation between Elias & me, like a donkey trying to frolic in a meadow with two Thoroughbred colts. Coldly I stared at the ill-favored young man with the absurd Boston accent, as if I had never seen him before; I did not introduce him to Elias, for I saw no purpose to it; each stammering word he uttered to us, I did not seem to hear.

At last Momma noticed, & took pity on Weir, & came to slip her arm through his, & led him to one of our older relatives to be introduced as a most promising young physician, new to Chestnut Hill.

The look on the morose horse-face! The deep flush, the narrowed rodent-eyes & hurt mouth—you don’t expect a fool to be so wounded.

It was that afternoon, as Momma bade Silas Weir farewell in the foyer of our house, that she murmured, in a tone of deep regret, I think we will not be home next Friday, Dr. Weir. We are all going away, you see. I am so sorry.

"Oh. I am sorry. Weir could not have been more stunned if someone had struck him over his thick head with a poker. W-where?"

‘Where’—?

—are you going?

So naïvely Silas Weir asked this rude question, with such a look of boyish innocence, Momma did not cut him dead as she might have wished, but murmured something about a death in the family, a funeral, a period of mourning…

Ah, I see! I am so, so sorry. May I offer my condolences, Mrs. Tyndale?

You may, Dr. Weir. You may.

Even as our Irish girl escorted him out of the house, & out of our lives forever, with a barely suppressed smirk of derision.

—

Rid of the pest at last! We all rejoiced, for we would not miss Silas Weir.

Yet, I did feel some semblance of guilt, amid my buoyant happiness at my own thrilling future.

At least one further time, to our surprise, Silas Weir appeared at our house, at a large Christmas gathering. It was probable that Uncle Clarence had invited him, though Uncle Clarence denied it afterward; but we did not put it past the desperate suitor to be spying on our household, noting the occasion of a large gathering & simply following guests inside, knowing that in such gracious surroundings he would hardly be turned away at the door.

Lovesick, with damp rodent-eyes, gazing about the drawing room, fastening onto me.

But this time, I was determined to discourage him. Making it a point to approach Silas Weir as I had never approached him before, gaily lifting my hand to him—My news, Dr. Weir, is—I am engaged!—in triumph showing him the beautiful heirloom engagement ring, a square-cut diamond edged with rubies, that had once belonged to Elias Rollins’s great-grandmother.

His eyes, which had brightened at my approach, were sicklied over with a look of pond scum, & his mouth went slack in dismay. I am not proud to confess, I was heartless. I am sure, my eyes shone with triumph. Like stepping on a moth you didn’t mean to step on, didn’t mean to injure, but now the pathetic thing is flapping & fluttering in the grass & you just feel unaccountably annoyed.

Despite his shock, Dr. Weir managed to stammer congratulations. Fortunately, my dashing fiancé Elias was not present, which made the encounter somewhat less of a strain for Weir, who did his valiant best to recover, & not to take his leave immediately. Indeed, the entire drawing room had gone quiet, for my cruelty to Silas Weir registered as a kind of frisson in the hearts of Fiona, & Katherine, & Belinda, & June, & Jetta, who, long in states of apprehension & anxiety regarding the more suitable young men of our acquaintance, could rejoice in our unalloyed collected contempt for the interloper.