Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History

364 Pages·2009·1.59 MB·English

by  Lynn Sacco

Unspeakable
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Unspeakable
Father-Daughter Incest in American History
LYNN SACCO
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
©2009The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sacco, Lynn.
Unspeakable : father-daughter incest in American history / Lynn Sacco.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-8018-9300-1(hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10:0-8018-9300-3(hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Incest—United States—History. 2. Child sexual abuse—United States.
3. Incest victims—United States. I. Title.
HV6570.7.S332008
364.15(cid:1)36—dc22 2008043992
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected].
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including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30percent post-consumer waste,
whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are
printed on paper with recycled content.
contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Incest in the Nineteenth Century 19
2 Medicine and the Law Weigh In 53
3 Gonorrhea and Incest Break Out 88
4 Protecting Fathers, Blaming Mothers 120
5 Incest Disappears from View 157
6 Incest in the Twentieth Century 182
Epilogue 209
Abbreviations 229
Notes 231
Index 343
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acknowledgments
A midlife career change is not for the faint of heart. And it would not have
been possible without the many people I encountered along the way who
offered me their time, friendship, criticism, advice, and encouragement.
The Women’s Studies program in the Department of American Studies at
SUNY-Buffalo ushered me into academia, and Elizabeth Lapovsky Ken-
nedy, Susan Cahn, Carla McKenzie, and Minjoo Oh helped me start the
process of moving from attorney to academic. Thank you.
Moving next to the University of Southern California for doctoral work
in history was one of the best decisions I ever made. My dissertation ad-
viser, Lois W. Banner, was unstinting in her efforts to support my research,
push my thinking farther, help me to understand and become an active
member of the profession, convince me to work on my writing, and be
the strong ally that is the stuff of graduate student dreams. And did I men-
tion she is a terrific friend? Without her mentorship I would never have
finished graduate school, let alone this book. The other members of my
dissertation committee, Steven J. Ross and Marsha Kinder, provided crit-
icism and encouragement in perfect measure, and their enthusiasm for
film and theory has enriched my life. I am grateful to the History Depart-
ment for both supporting and challenging me, particularly Elinor Ac-
campo, Philippa Levine, Terry Seip, Joseph Styles, and especially Carole
Shammas, and fellow graduate students Roger Brown, Pete La Chapelle,
and Sharon Sekhon.
I spent the 2000–2001 academic year as a Dissertation Fellow in the
Women’s Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Bar-
bara, where the amazing core and affiliated faculty lavished attention on
me, especially Jacqueline Bobo, Eileen Boris, Patricia Cline Cohen, Laury
Oaks, Erika Rappaport, and Janet Walker. Thanks also to dissertation
fellows Ruby Tapia and Sandra Soto and to history grad students Sarah
Case and Beverly Schwartzberg, who invited me to join their dissertation
vii
writing group. I first met Pat Cohen at a fancy reception during a confer-
ence in Montreal, where she demonstrated the meaning of patience by
kindly listening to me prattle on about my work. When I received the fel-
lowship at Santa Barbara, Pat worked hard on my behalf, including sup-
porting my application for a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship by
volunteering to serve as my mentor for two years. You can’t dream up
people like her.
My good fortune continued when I returned to Los Angeles and Emily
Abel invited me into her medical history reading group. With Emily, Janet
Farrell Brodie, Sharla Fett, and Alice Wexler I discovered the Aztecs, the
woman who walked into the sea, the courage and joy that is possible when
career and family collide, all things tuberculosis, and the pleasures of din-
ing near the ocean with women who know how to cook and appreciate
food. Their insights reshaped my project from a dissertation to a book—
and a much better book than I would have imagined without them. For
their intellectual support and modeling of the importance of friendship
possible between academic women, thank you.
When I left Chicago, no one would have predicted I would move ten
years later to Knoxville. My transition from city girl to southerner will
never be complete, but my colleagues in the History Department at the
University of Tennessee, especially Janis Appier, Steve Ash, Lorri Glover,
and Jeri McIntosh, have made it possible. Janis, Jeri, and Lorri read much
of this manuscript. Steve and Lorri read it all, and Lorri read it more times
than I can count; she alone is responsible for all errors. I found the Taoist
Tai Chi Society while in Buffalo, and connecting with its Knoxville mem-
bers has helped me, more than anything else, to understand and find a
place for myself in this nonurban culture. With Jenny Arthur, Bob Riehl,
Peter Rose, and Allen Johnson I have discovered Remote Area Medical,
green burial grounds, wood-fired pottery, and every brew pub in town.
Katherine Donohue, head of History and Special Collections, the Dar-
ling Biomedical Library, UCLA, offered to introduce me to physicians
who had trained in the 1930s through 1950s. Doctors Willard L. Mar-
melzat, Gertrude Finklestein, and Helen B. Wolff enthusiastically shared
with me their insights into the diagnostic process and commented on my
readings of the medical literature. Finding records for behavior that was
often denied or simply unrecorded was a challenge, and one that I would
not have accomplished without the sustained interest of archivists across
viii Acknowledgments
the county. I greatly appreciated the time, thoughtfulness, and assistance
of archivists and librarians, including Carol L. Bowers, Daniel M. Davis,
and Rick Ewig, the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming;
Carolyn Duroselle-Melish and Ed Mormon at the New York Academy of
Medicine; Jack Eckert and Molly Craig, Rare Books and Special Collec-
tions, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard; Tony Gardner, Special
Collections, California State University, Northridge; Anne Engelhart,
Diane Hamer, and Ellen Shea, Schlesinger Library, Harvard; David J.
Klaassen, Social Welfare History Archive, University of Minnesota;
KevinB. Leonard, University Archives, Northwestern University Library;
Adele A. Lerner and Jim Gehrlich, Archives, New York Weill Cornell
Center; JeffreyMifflin, Special Collections, Massachusetts General Hos-
pital; Susan Mitchem, the Salvation Army Archives; John Parascandola,
National Library of Medicine; Hynda Rudd, Los Angeles City Archives;
Diane Shannon, Rush–Presbyterian–St. Luke’s Medical Center Archives;
Gerard Shorb, the Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical In-
stitutions; Dace Taube, Regional History Collection, USC; Bob Vietro-
goski, Long Health Sciences Library, Columbia; Richard J. Behles, Health
Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore;
Peggy Cabrera, University of Arizona Library Special Collections, Main
Library, Tucson; Kenneth R. Cobb, Municipal Archives of the City of
New York; James Gerencser, Library and Information Services, Archives
and Special Collections Division, Waidner-Spark Library, Dickinson Col-
lege, Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Stephen Kiesow, Humanities Department,
Seattle Public Library, Washington; Patrick T. Lawlor, Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York;
Avril J. Madison, at the University of Washington Libraries’ Manuscripts
and University Archives, Seattle; Adrienne Millon, Ehrman Medical Li-
brary Archives, New York University Medical Center, New York; Rob-
ert L. Schuler, Northwest Room and Special Collections, Tacoma Public
Library, Washington; staff at the Charles E. Young Research Library De-
partment of Special Collections, UCLA.
Thanks also to the institutions and organizations that provided financial
support for this project: the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; the UC
President’s Postdoctoral program; the Women’s Studies Program, UCSB;
the USC Lambda Alumni Association; the Coordinating Council for
Women in History/Berkshire Conference of Women Historians; the
Acknowledgments ix