Skid Row in Detroit

Skid row or skid road is a shabby urban area with cheap taverns, dive bars, dilapidated hotels frequented by lowlifes, alcoholics, and itinerants. The term skid road originally referred to the path along which timber workers skidded logs. Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Areas identified by this name include Pioneer Square in Seattle; Old Town Chinatown in Portland, Oregon; Downtown Eastside in Vancouver; Skid Row in Detroit and Los Angeles; the Tenderloin District of San Francisco; the Catherine Street District in Montreal; and the Bowery of lower Manhattan.

Detroit’s Skid Row is a decaying and residential area overrun by bars, pawnshops, flophouses and greasy spoon restaurants. Where men curse often and fluently against everything and everybody, where dirt and filth prevail, where hate and fear destroy courage.

According to a 1936 Detroit Free Press article, “Skid Row is a city within a city where an estimated 5,000 men live—most of them chronic alcoholics—stumblebums, human derelicts.” Skid Row inhabitants drink rubbing alcohol, cheap wine, Canned Heat, “bay horse”—a mixture of bay rum and other after-shave lotions—all kinds of concoctions to get the alcohol they crave.

A day on skid row begins at 7:00 am, when the bars open. From 6:00 am on, men are stirring in the flop houses and alleys, crawling from under newspapers or lean-tos in vacant lots and dumps, emerging from abandoned basements and from beneath parked semi-trailers, to be on the Avenue by the stroke.

A few uniformed policemen from a paddy-wagon rouse the men who aren’t stirring, loaded them up. They will be taken to court in front of Judge George T. Murphy. One fellow will be the 129th arrest, the 36th time that year; when Judge Murphy made a comment about his arrest record, the poor fellow responds, “Isn’t that grand,” he received 90 days at Detroit House of Correction (DeHoCo).

It also revealed that men can come back from skid-row. Danny, a pleasant-faced fifty-four-year-old Irish-American who lives in Detroit, is a case in point. Statistically speaking, Danny has returned from the dead. For a quarter century he lived either on the Avenue or in the Detroit House of Correction, a guest of the city because of drunkenness. The normal end of the likes of Danny, used to be either the Wayne County Hospital, for the insane or the Wayne County Morgue. He eventually found a spiritual program. He is one of the 250 exhibits cited to prove the Motor City’s contention that skid row can be abolished.

The most noxious of several skid-row areas in the Michigan metropolis is a nineteen block section bounded by Cass, Howard, Fifth and Jones streets. For five roaring blocks this municipal cancer lies athwart Michigan Avenue, the main stem from the Michigan Central Railroad Terminal to the glittering downtown hotel district.

Casualties of skid row are taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital. There are “wine sores” – foul smelling skin eruptions brought on by prolonged deficiencies of diet. There are broken bones, hideous head and eye wounds from falls and beatings by jack rollers.

There are many more stories of failures, than stories of successes.

The Co-founder of the Un-named Fellowship

Bob Smith was born and raised in St. Johnsbury, Vermont,  to Susan A. Holbrook and Walter Perrin Smith. His parents took him to religious services four times a week, and in response he determined he would never attend religious services when he grew up.

Bob began drinking in college. Early on he noticed that he could recover from drinking bouts quicker and easier than his classmates. He never had headaches, which caused him to believe he was an alcoholic from the time he began drinking. After graduation from Dartmouth College in 1902, he worked for three years selling hardware in Boston, Chicago, and Montreal and continued drinking heavily.

Bob Smith wanted to be a doctor. He somehow managed to persuade his family to let him pursue that aim. In the fall of 1905, when he was 26 years old, he entered the University of Michigan as a premedical student.  By this time drinking had begun to affect him to the point where he began missing classes. His drinking caused him to leave school, but he returned and passed his examinations for his sophomore year. The Dean had had enough of Bob’s drinking escapades and recommended his transfer. Years later this experience would help Dr. Bob to recommending very bad chronic alcoholics over to Ypsilanti State Hospital.

He transferred to Rush Medical College, but his alcoholism worsened to the point that his father was summoned to try to halt his downward trajectory. But his drinking increased and after a dismal showing during final examinations, the university required that he remain for two extra quarters and remain sober during that time as a condition of graduating.

After graduation Dr. Bob Smith became a hospital intern and for two years he was able to stay busy enough to refrain from heavy drinking. He married Anne Robinson Ripley on January 25, 1915, and opened up his own office in Akron, Ohio, specializing in colorectal surgery and returned to heavy drinking. Recognizing his problem, he checked himself into more than a dozen hospitals and sanitariums in an effort to stop his drinking. He was encouraged by the passage of Prohibition in 1919, but soon discovered that the exemption for medicinal alcohol and bootleggers could supply more than enough to continue his excessive drinking. For the next 17 years his life revolved around how to subvert his wife’s efforts to stop his drinking and obtain the alcohol he craved while trying to hold together a medical practice in order to support his family and his drinking.

In January 1933, Anne Smith attended a lecture by Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group. For the next two years she and Dr. Bob Smith attended local meeting of the group in an effort to solve his alcoholism, but recovery eluded him until he met Bill Wilson on May 13, 1935. Bill, an alcoholic who had learned how to stay sober by helping other alcoholics through the Oxford Group in New York, was in Akron on business that had proven unsuccessful and he was in fear of relapsing. Recognizing the danger, he made inquiries about any local alcoholics he could talk to and was referred to Smith by Henrietta Seiberling, one of the leaders of the Akron Oxford Group. After talking to Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob stopped drinking and invited Bill to stay at his home. He relapsed almost a month later while attending a professional convention in Atlantic City. Returning to Akron on June 9, he was given a few drinks by Bill Wilson to avoid delirium tremens. He drank one beer the next morning to settle his nerves so he could perform an operation, which proved to be the last drink he would ever take. The date, June 10, 1935, is celebrated as the anniversary of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.

226 People Through Akron, OH Home of Dr. Bob & Anne

(Partial List of Michigan people)

Bill Griffith Wilson Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous

Bill Griffith Wilson was born on November 26, 1895, in East Dorset, Vermont.  His parents were Emily (née Griffith) and Gilman Barrows Wilson,  He was born at his parents’ home and business, the Mount Aeolus Inn and Tavern. His paternal grandfather, William C. W., was an alcoholic who never drank after a conversion experience on Mount Aeolus. Both of his parents abandoned him as a child. His father never returned from a purported business trip. His mother left to study Osteopathic Medicine. Bill and his sister were cared for by their maternal grandparents, Fayette Griffith and Ella Griffith, in their house. As a teen, Bill showed determination, once spending months designing and carving a working boomerang. After initial difficulties, Bill became the school’s football team’s captain and the principal violinist of its orchestra. Bill also underwent a serious depression at the age of seventeen following the death of his first love, Bertha Bamford, from complications of surgery.

Bill met his wife Lois Burnham during the summer of 1913, while sailing on Vermont’s Emerald Lake. Two years later the couple became engaged. He entered Norwich University, but depression and panic attacks forced him to leave during his second semester. The next year he returned, but was soon suspended with a group of students involved in a hazing incident. The entire class was punished since none of the students would take responsibility nor would they identify the perpetrators.

The June 1916 incursion into the U.S. by Pancho Villa resulted in Bill’s class being mobilized as part of the Vermont National Guard and he was reinstated to serve. The following year he was commissioned as an artillery officer. During military training in Massachusetts, the young officers were often invited to dinner by the locals. Bill had his first drink, a glass of beer, to little effect. A few weeks later at another dinner party, Bill drank some Bronx cocktails. He felt at ease with the guests and liberated from his awkward shyness; “I had found the elixir of life,” he wrote. “Even that first evening I got thoroughly drunk, and within the next time or two I passed out completely. But as everyone drank hard, not too much was made of that.”

Bill married Lois on January 24, 1918, just before he left to serve in World War I as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Coast Artillery. After his military service, Bill returned to live with his wife in New York. He failed to graduate from law school because he was too drunk to pick up his diploma. Bill became a stock speculator and had success traveling the country with his wife, evaluating companies for potential investors. (During these trips Lois had a hidden agenda: she hoped the travel would keep Bill from drinking.) However, Bill’s constant drinking made business impossible and ruined his reputation.

In 1933 Bill was committed to the Charles B. Towns Hospital for Drug and Alcohol Addictions in New York City four times under the care of Dr. William D. Silkworth. Silkworth’s theory was that alcoholism was a matter of both physical and mental control: a craving, the manifestation of a physical allergy (the physical inability to stop drinking once started) and an obsession of the mind (to take the first drink). Bill gained hope from Silkworth’s assertion that alcoholism was a medical condition rather than a moral failing, but even that knowledge could not help him. He was eventually told that he would either die from his alcoholism or have to be locked up permanently due to Wernicke encephalopathy (commonly referred to as “wet brain”).

In November 1934, Bill was visited by an old drinking companion Ebby Thatcher. Bill was astounded to find that Ebby had been sober for several weeks under the guidance of the evangelical Christian Oxford Group. Bill took some interest in the group, but shortly after Ebby’s visit, he was again admitted to Towns Hospital to recover from a bout of drinking. This was his third and last stay at Towns hospital under Doctor Silkworth’s care. Bill showed signs of delirium tremens. It was while undergoing treatment with The Belladonna Cure that Bill experienced his “Hot Flash” spiritual conversion and quit drinking. Earlier that evening, Ebby had visited and tried to persuade him to turn himself over to the care of a Christian deity who would liberate him from alcohol. According to Bill, while lying in bed depressed and despairing, he cried out, “I’ll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!” He then had the sensation of a bright light, a feeling of ecstasy, and a new serenity. He never drank again for the remainder of his life. Bill described his experience to Dr. Silkworth, who told him, “Something has happened to you I don’t understand. But you had better hang on to it”.

Bill joined the Oxford Group and tried to help other alcoholics, but only succeeded in keeping sober himself. During a failed business trip to Akron, Ohio, Bill was tempted to drink again. He decided that to remain sober he needed to help another alcoholic. He called phone numbers on a church directory and eventually secured an introduction to Dr. Bob S., an alcoholic Oxford Group member. Bill explained Doctor Silkworth’s theory that alcoholics suffer from a physical allergy and a mental obsession. Bill shared that the only way he was able to stay sober was through having a spiritual experience. Dr. Bob S was familiar with the tenets of the Oxford Group and upon hearing Bill’s experience, “began to pursue the spiritual remedy for his malady with a willingness that he had never before been able to muster. After a brief relapse, he sobered, never to drink again up to the moment of his death in 1950”. Bill and Dr. Bob S began working with other alcoholics. After that summer in Akron, Bill returned to New York where he began having success helping alcoholics in what they called “a nameless squad of drunks” in an Oxford Group there.

Being a lifelong friend of his sponsor Ebby, Bill was quite acquainted with Ebby’s family, especially his brother Thomas. Thomas and Bill shared a common interest in the stock market. Thomas was first employed in New York then in Detroit, so Bill made a few trips to Detroit in the years of 1936/1937 staying at the Book-Cadillac Hotel.

In 1937, one Sunday Bill and Lois failed to attend an Oxford meeting and they were frowned upon for failing to be there. This left a bad feeling between Bill and the New York group of members. Bill decided it was time for the former drunks to begin a break-away from the group and stand on their own. In the fall of 1937 Bill traveled to Detroit then Cleveland and finally to Akron to convince fellow alcoholics that they needed to make the break if they were to be successful in creating a program of recovery from alcoholism.

In 1938, after about 100 alcoholics in Akron and New York had become sober, the fellowship decided to promote its program of recovery through the publication of a book, for which Bill was chosen as primary author. The book was given the title Alcoholics Anonymous and included the list of suggested activities for spiritual growth known as the Twelve Steps. The movement itself took on the name of the book. Later Bill also wrote the Twelve Traditions, a set of spiritual guidelines to ensure the survival of individual AA groups. The AA general service conference of 1955 was a landmark event for Bill in which he turned over the leadership of the maturing organization to an elected board.

The Oxford Group And Detroit Connection

The Oxford Group was a Christian organization founded by American Christian missionary Dr. Frank Buchman. Buchman was an American Lutheran minister of Swiss descent who in 1908 had a conversion experience in a chapel in Keswick, England and as a result of that experience he would later found a movement called A First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, which eventually became known as the Oxford Group by 1931.

In 1932, a man named Rowland Hazard, son of a wealthy Rhode Island mill owners and a State Senator, had become a hopeless alcoholic, and in his quest for help had sought out the world-famous psychiatrist, Carl Jung. This story is documented in our Big Book.

In 1934, Ebby Thatcher, a childhood friend of Bill Wilson’s, was about to be locked up as a chronic drunk in Bennington, Vermont. He was visited by three men from the Oxford Group; Shep Cornell, Rowland Hazard, and Cebra Graves. They later sent Rowland Hazard back alone to see Ebby Thatcher. He acted as sort of a sponsor and told his story. He taught Ebby the precepts he had learned from the Oxford Group. Later, as we know, in December of that year, Ebby had the chance to relay these precepts to Bill Wilson.

Now we begin to see the emerging pattern of events in Akron and in the New York area in the ten year period before the start of AA. We see how, through the machinery of the Oxford Group and its key leaders, Frank Buchman and Sam Shoemaker, events conspired to make possible this meeting between Bill and Bob in Akron, Ohio, in 1935. Shep, Cebra and Rowland were part of the business teams which were working around the country in various cities. In 1934 Bill surrenders his life to God at the Calvary Episcopal Church mission run by Sam Shoemaker (Sam had met Frank Buchman in China in 1918 and by 1934 was regarded as the major leader of the Oxford Group movement in the United States and was hosting their headquarters).

Now enters the man most certainly responsible for the fateful Akron meetings between Bill and Dr. Bob. Jim Newton was surely the sole catalyst that ordained the Oxford Group would be in place in Akron, Ohio when Bill Wilson showed up there in 1935. This string of events plays out as follows:

Jim, at age 20, was a luggage salesman in New York who had come upon an Oxford Group meeting by accident (actually, he was looking for fun and games that night) in Massachusetts in 1923. He was converted at the party, got on his knees and gave the direction of his life to God at that time. He had met a lady named Eleanor Forde who greatly influenced his thinking about the movement. He and Eleanor were to re-meet and marry 20 years later in 1943. Several twists and turns of fate placed Jim Newton in Akron, Ohio and installed our next group of players. They were both, Oxford Group members and regular attendees at Oxford meetings. We will be talking about the intertwined relations of Henrietta Seiberling of the Seiberling (Goodyear) Tire and Rubber Co., Dr. Walter Tunks, Harvey and Russell Firestone, Sam Shoemaker, Frank Buchman, T. Henry and Clarace Williams, and Anne and Dr. Bob Smith.

Jim Newton went to Fort Myers in 1926, at the age of 21, to visit his father, and they bought a 35 acre tract of land across the road from the Thomas Edison Estate. Jim Newton became an adopted son to Mr. And Mrs. Edison, and often acted as host and toastmaster at Edison’s famous birthday parties which were attended by Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and many renowned business leaders and political figures.

Here begins another key set of circumstances to set the stage in Akron, Ohio. Harvey Firestone, Sr., offered Jim a job as secretary to the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. In 1926 and moved him to Akron, Ohio. Jim worked eleven years and was being groomed as president of the company when he resigned and went full time with the Oxford Group. Firestone’s clergyman was Rev. Walter Tunks. Jim joined Tunks’ church and became active in raising funds. These were groups of men who made attempts to convert others to the Oxford Group method of spirituality. Jim frequently met with the previously mentioned Shep Cornell and Rowland Hazard. He met T. Henry and Clarace Williams, husband and wife, Oxford Group members of Walter Tunks’ Church. The business team put on house parties in various cities (including Detroit) at the finest hotels and clubs. In January of 1933, Frank Buchman, leading a team of thirty men and women, descended on Akron for the first time to give “testimonials” at the Mayflower Hotel and in Akron churches and to initiate the townspeople in the experiences of the Oxford Group. Here we  can clearly see the input from Jim Newton’s parties with Firestone and Tunks’ Episcopal Church group to influence the choice of Akron as the site of this endeavor, rather than some other city. Had Jim not already been a business team member and living in Akron, it is unlikely that Buchman would have chosen this small, rather unknown city as a place to pursue his evangelistic efforts. Jim was the spokesman who introduced Buchman at all the affairs that week in Akron.

When Jim first arrived in Akron, he had been welcomed into the Firestone family and became fast friends with a son, Russell (Bud) Firestone. Bud had a bad drinking problem and had already been sent to several hospitals to no avail. Jim went with Bud to still another drying-out place, on the Hudson River in New York and stayed through the entire 30-day program.

Jim Newton had helped bring to the city, the Oxford Group message of his alcoholic friend, Bud Firestone. The message led to Bud’s “miraculous recovery” which lasted a time. The message and the recovery were broadcast to an interested community by a grateful father, Harvey Firestone, Sr. and by widespread press accounts.

Clarace and T. Henry Williams began attending the Oxford Group meetings regularly. About the same time, a lady named Henrietta Seiberling, the wife of John Seiberling of the Seiberling (Goodyear) Tire and Rubber Co., turned to the Oxford Group after finding herself bestowed with personal and marital problems; separated from her husband. She turned to the Oxford Group and attended the first meeting at the Mayflower Hotel. She attended the meetings with a woman named Anne Smith, the wife of a well-known Akron surgeon who was in deep troubles with his own drinking.

The originators of the AA program had now begun fulfilling their roles. The kindly missionary-oriented couple, the Williams, had been so impressed by the Oxford Group message that they offered the use of their home. A compassionate lady named Henrietta, who had mastered some of the Oxford Group principles, had her eye on the biblical principles to help her good friend, Dr. Bob Smith, with his drinking problem. Added into the mix, was the doctor’s wife, Anne, who assembled books, spiritual readings and principals from the Bible and the Oxford Group, plus various other Christian readings, all the while praying for a solution to her husband’s drinking problems. Now it all converged together, when Bill Wilson, A New York stockbroker, and Dr. Bob Smith met on Mother’s Day, May 12, 1935, which Bill and Henrietta felt was the guidance of God. Bill had recovered from his disease and was determined to stay sober by seeking out and helping another drunk.

In our above research, we find the connections of the Oxford Group to Detroit. It was through the Ford-Firestone families’ business and social backgrounds. All three men, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison took an interest in the idea of “First Century Christianity,” because of world conditions. All was handled by Clara Ford, Henry’s wife, because she handled all the family’s charitable work.

In the book, The Believer, Clara Ford’s biography, it states, “…it was not so strange that she responded heartily to a suggestion made by Bishop Charles D. Williams of the Diocese of Southern Michigan. The Bishop explained that their mutual friend Harvey Firestone had written him saying that the Rev. Dr. Frank Buchman, founder of the religious movement known as the Oxford Group, expected to hold a series of meetings in Detroit. Dr. Frank Buchman was anxious to find someone who would give a dinner for him and his co-workers with a view to making plans for the meetings.” The book continues, “The Fords not only gave the introductory dinner but also entertained the leader and workers at the Dearborn Inn. Clara attended the meetings, sincerely moved by their basic message. She decided to attend some of the group sessions soon to be held near Boston^* and invited a number of interested friends to go along.
“Why don’t they take the ‘Fair Lane’?” Henry suggested. “It would be much simpler. You could live aboard the car, have breakfast and dinner on it, not bother about hotel rooms or luggage.” The Fords’ private car made the trip easy and comfortable for everyone.”

In Pass It On, on page 170, it says, “During the 1930’s, the O.G. practice of ‘witnessing’ was helping alcoholics throughout the country. The movement had proliferated all over the United States…” It goes on to say, “It is possible that alcoholic members of those groups eventually came into A.A. In all probability, the Oxford Group attracted alcoholics simply because it appealed to people with problems.” About 1933-34, the Oxford Group was established in the Detroit area. Bill W. was a constant traveler to the Detroit Area in 1935 staying at the Book-Cadillac Hotel, probably visiting with Ebby Thatcher’s brother, who worked in Detroit as a stockbroker, Bill Wilson’s profession. In Dr. Bob and the Good Old-timers‘, on page 99, it states, “…Bill wrote to Lois about a Detroit man they had been working with that summer of 1935. ‘He is rather above middle age and typical of many I have seen in Towns (Hospital),’ Bill said. ‘He is not so far advanced, but will get cracked in a couple of years more. Poor chap, he wants to keep it all a very dark secret, so we couldn’t draw him out.” So, we can see Bill Wilson was making trips to Detroit and probably attending local Oxford Group meetings.

By 1937, people were staying sober, but there still was no fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. An example is Harry B. from the Lansing area sends telegrams to his wife, Ruth, indicating how he is doing. They are dated Nov 21, 1937 and discuss the hope for the future. Harry got sober at a clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, and then he says he attended meetings down in Detroit. Also, in 1937 people were becoming disillusioned to the movement. In the book,  The Believer, the book states, “…Clara was genuinely interested in the meetings, but she also recognized certain elements in Buchman program which disturbed her, especially the frank and open confession of personal sins. She wrote: ‘The first public confession can be stirring but the tenth strikes one as the same old thing and the fatal suspicion arises that confessions are made not through humility but to persuade. They sounded coached and artificial.”

On page 171, in Pass It On, it states, “There were several reasons for Bill’s departure from the Oxford Group. He had a growing conviction that alcoholics needed to work with their own kind, a view he would continue to hold for the rest of his life.” It further states on page 177, “Later in 1937, Bill made a trip to Detroit and Cleveland looking for work. He didn’t find a job, but he did visit Dr. Bob and Anne in Akron.” This appears to be a journey to convince other locations to break-away from the Oxford Group, as the New York groups of drunks were doing.

By the summer of 1938, there appeared at the Detroit Oxford Group a timid falling down drunk of a young man, who’s parents had died a few months earlier. In his story, he says a group of his friends had passed a hat to send him away to a new program to help alcoholics recover. These people weren’t his personal friends, he had none left, but they were members of the Oxford Group, who passed the hat just to get this pest out of town. This little timid man was to be the starting point of Alcoholics Anonymous in Detroit and Michigan.

Dr. Benjamin Rush’s Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Mind and Body catalogues the consequence of chronic drunkenness and argues that this condition is a disease that physicians should be treating. Rush’s writing marks the beginning of the American Temperance Movement.

Rev. Lyman Beecher’s Six Sermons on Intemperance describes those “addicted to sin” of intemperance, notes presence of “insatiable desire to drink,” and describes warning signs of addiction to distilled spirits.

Dr. Samuel Woodward calls for creation of inebriate asylums. The idea was to punish these people for their disorders and provide them with a strong reason to stop using and start living their lives in a new way. Interventions for alcoholism involved yelling and even physical abuse, and the treatment that followed used many of the same tactics. Perhaps some people were “scared straight” with these methods, but it’s almost certain that these methods also did a significant amount of mental harm to the people who endured them.

The Washingtonian Society organized by and for “hard cases,” will grow to more than 600,000 members before its precipitous decline in the mid-1840s. Many local Washingtonian groups are replaced by a new social institution — the Fraternal Temperance Society, some of which are organized exclusively for “reforming” men.

Lodging Homes and later (1857) a Home for the Fallen is opened in Boston –marking the roots of the 19th century inebriate home. As inebriate homes spread, they will spawn several alcoholic mutual aid societies such as the Godwin Association.

By the 1870s’ the New York State Inebriate Asylum, the first in the country, is opened in Binghamton, NY. A growing network of inebriate asylums will treat alcoholism and addiction to a growing list of other drugs: opium, morphine, cocaine, chloral, ether, and chloroform. The opening of the Martha Washington Home in Chicago marks the first institution in America that specialized in the treatment of inebriate women. Jerry McAuley opens the Water Street Mission in New York City, marking the beginning of the urban mission movement. This movement, spread across America by the Salvation Army, caters its message and services to the “Skid Row.” The urban missions will birth such alcoholics’ mutual aid societies as the United Order of Ex-Boozers. The missions are linked to religiously-oriented, rural inebriate colonies.

In the 1880s’ cocaine is recommended by Sigmund Freud and a number of American physicians in the treatment of alcoholism and morphine addiction. Bottled home cures for the alcohol and drug habits abound; most will be later exposed to contain alcohol, opium, morphine, cocaine and cannabis.

In 1879 Dr. Keeley announced the result of collaboration with John R. Oughton, an Irish chemist, which was heralded as a “major” discovery” by Keeley. The discovery, a new treatment for alcoholism, resulted in the founding of the Keeley Institute. The treatment was developed from a partnership with John Oughton, an Irish chemist, and a merchant named Curtis Judd, “Fargo, N.D., History Exhibition”. The institute attempted to treat alcoholism as a disease. Patients who were cured using this treatment were honored as “graduates” and asked to promote the cure. Dr. Keeley became wealthy through the popularity of the institute and its well-known slogan, “Drunkenness is a disease and I can cure it.” His work foreshadowed later work that would attribute a physiological nature to alcoholism.

By 1900, as inebriate homes and asylums close, alcoholics are relegated to city “drunk tanks,” “cells” in “foul wards” of public hospitals, and the backwards of aging “insane asylums.” Wealthy alcoholics/addicts will continue to seek discrete detoxification in private sanatoria known as “jitter joints,” “jag farms” or “dip shops.”

The Charles B. Towns Hospital which was located at 293 Central Park West in Manhattan was started as a treatment hospital in 1901, and with the roaring twenties and the increase in alcoholism made it successful, however, after the stock market crash of 1929 admissions to the hospital had significantly declined. The hospital aimed at drying out the well-to-do patient. The Charles B. Towns for Drug and Alcoholic Addictions in New York City marks the beginning of a new type of private “drying out” hospital for affluent alcoholics and addicts. It was an expensive detoxification facility and one was not admitted unless the fee was paid in advance or a backer guaranteed to pay the fee which in those days was $200 to $350 for a five day stay. At this time the Chief of Staff was Dr. William Duncan Silkworth. Silkworth had lost all his savings in the market collapse and he had come to Towns to help alcoholics.

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Alcoholism, Fort Detroit & the Michigan Territory

Alcoholism has always been a scourge in Detroit. One of the earliest articles we had found in a Detroit newspaper was in the Detroit Free Press on August 19, 1853.

It tells the tale of a 105 year old man being arrested for public drunkenness by the Sheriff of Wayne County. In the story it goes on to tell how the man had fought in the war of 1812 as well as the Revolutionary War, specifically the Battle of Lexington.

McDonnell, James

Aug 19, 1853

“A REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER IN JAIL. —JAMES MCDONNELL, aged 105 years, was committed to the Wayne County Jail on Tuesday Evening. Charged with vagrancy and drunkenness. He was found lying in the street after 9 o’clock at night. Mr. A. S. JOHNSON, the Jailor, has furnished us with MCDONNELL’S history, as given him by that individual himself. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1748, and came to this country, at the age of 19 years, as a soldier in the British army. He continued in that service until after the commencement of the Revolution, and was at the battle of Lexington, at which time he held the post of Sergeant, and fought against the Colonists, though not, he says, with a very good will. Soon after that battle, he went over to the cause of liberty, as he called it, taking with him a large number of his British comrades. He remained in the American army until the close of the war, during which he was in sixteen battles, -was honorably discharged, and settled soon after, in Richmond, Virginia, where he has resided ever since, with the exception of the three years of the war of 1812, during which he acted as a volunteer in the American army. He was at the battle of Bridgewater, under Gen. SCOTT where he was severely wounded; and returned home to Richmond as soon as his wounds would permit him to do so.

Mr. JOHNSON says he has complete confidence in the old man’s statements, on account of the minuteness with which he gives the details. Notwithstanding his great age he is as straight as a candle, and as nimble as a boy, and goes through with the infantry drill and broadsword exercise in a masterly manner He is quite the curiosity.”