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In this post-Newtown massacre world, the ineffective treatment of people suffering from mental illness and tragedies like the one which transpired in Connecticut have become the proverbial elephant in the room; everyone knows it is there but no meaningful action has yet been taken. While the hereditary nature of mental illness and the murder of a mother by her disturbed son may seem like profoundly modern phenomena, the shocking history of the Kendrick family reveals that this same debate over mental illness, violence, and what to do about it was raging more than two centuries ago.
In the Congregational Cemetery in the quiet town of Hollis lie for eternity several members of the Kendrick family, but their impressive slate headstones reveal nothing of the tortured existence and demise. For example, the marker of Daniel Kendrick Jr.http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=76005626 has customary sentiments of mortality from the late 18th century inscribed on it, but tells nothing of the circumstances of his death, and perhaps for good reason. One must delve into the print media of their time to learn the real story.
The May 25, 1790 issue of the Concord Herald reported that thirty-year old Kendrick had "in a fit of delirium, finished his existence by hanging himself in his barn. His wife found him suspended by a bridle, which she immediately cut and set him down...but Death had closed him in his iron jaws!"
Even more disturbing at the end of this obituary was the following disclosure: "It is a little remarkable, that the father, and a brother, of Mr. K. had died of delirium, in the course of a year." Could this actually be true?
The sad headstones in Hollis silently speak to us. On March 17, 1789 twenty-two year old Caleb Kendrick, Daniel's younger brother, had indeed passed away, though we will never the true cause of his death http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=76006995. Their father Daniel Kendrick Sr., a Revolutionary War veteran and town selectman, died soon after in May 1789, and his gravestone can be viewed here: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=76005685.
For the remaining members of the Kendrick clan, which included included thirteen year old John Kendrick, his older sister Hannah, and his mother Hannah, these must have been dark days indeed. They had buried three men of their family within a year but tried to preserve some sort of social decorum and normalcy by hiring New Hampshire stone carver John Ball to erect markers in memory of their loved ones. For more than a decade, the Kendricks persevered until another devastating tragedy would claim the surviving members of the family.
"Melancholy Relation": April 1805
Fifteen years after the dark days of 1789-90, the youngest of the Kendrick children John had begun to exhibit signs of the same mental illness (possibly depression) which had claimed the lives of his father and older brothers. The newspaper reports of the time are eerily reminiscent of those which followed the Newtown massacre; they tell of warning signs ignored and failed attempts to avert an impending tragedy. According to Amherst's own newspaper, John Kendrick "for several years past discovered symptoms of insanity; but had generally been able to conduct his business...and when well, was sober and regular in his deportment." (1)
But in April 1805, his behavior had become so alarming that the Kendrick's neighbors went to their house and "made his situation the subject of conversation with his mother and sister, who, though sensible to his derangement, were unwilling anything should be mentioned to him, or that it should be generally known." Like Nancy Lanza more than two hundred years later, Mrs. Kendrick was unfortunately paralyzed and lulled into a false sense of security by innate love for her son, and the refusal to believe that John was capable of doing harm to himself and others; "This reluctance in them undoubtedly arose from the severe sufferings which the family had before experienced , in consequence of insanity...The mother and sister doated on this only remaining son and brother...and therefore were unwilling his failings should be made public." But this inability to face their family's issues would cost them their lives.
At nine on the morning of April 22, John Kendrick appeared like a demon at the door of his neighbor, "his hands red with blood...for his mother, he said, was dead, and his sister nearly so." When the alarmed neighbors arrived at the Kendrick homestead, they were greeted with a revolting scene of carnage. Mrs. Kendrick had been "mangled in a manner to shocking to relate" and his sister inflicted with twenty fatal wounds with various tools and objects in their house, "such as the leg of a chair, a cane, a hammer, a pair of tongs...To describe the scene of horror would be too much for the finer feelings of nature." John Kendrick was immediately placed in the town jail, where he awaited a trial that never came. Below is a haunting description of him in the wake of the murders of his sister and mother:
One cannot blame John for not wanting to wear the clothes splattered with his mother's and sister blood, which suggests he was certainly capable of feeling remorse for his deadly deeds. But it is ironic that in the weeks that followed, the household goods and even clothes of the Kendrick family were sold off. I wonder who would have purchased the vestiges of this horrific tragedy?
By the time of this public auction, John Kendrick himself was dead, perhaps from sickness or suicide. (2) The fact that he was buried near his victims, and his father and brothers who had all committed suicide is in itself interesting, as there was a tradition in Anglo-America
to not allow the bodies of those who had committed suicide to be buried
inside the sacred ground of a cemetery. In fact, not too far away in
1806, when a man in Hallowell, Maine murdered his family and killed
himself, diarist and midwife Martha Ballard recorded that he was buried
in the middle of the road outside the cemetery. (3) But in a span of a few months, new headstones appeared in the Hollis cemetery, which spoke nothing of the tragedy that had obliterated an entire family:
John Kendrick: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=76006027
John Kendrick: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=76006027
In June 1805, the remainder of the Kendrick's possessions were put up for sale, but one wonders who would have wanted to attend an auction at the scene of a double murder?
Apparently, the house was inhabited after the Kendrick atrocity, but according to a local history website, the house was haunted. It also affords us a view of what the haunted Kendrick home site looks like today long after it vanished: http://www.hollisnh.org/windowsonhollispast/historicSites/sitesAcrossHollis/sites/035-063.htm
Like the media today in the wake of Newtown, newspaper editors in 1805 did not shy away from expressing what they thought should be done to prevent future incidents. In April 1805, the editor of the Farmer's Cabinet preceded contemporary calls for government intervention: "We would leave the fact on record, as a solemn warning, against allowing insane and distracted persons the privilege of doing mischief, by permitting them to go at liberty. We think it worthy of legislative attention." But in the wake of Kendrick tragedy of 1805, New Hampshire would take nearly another thirty-five years to
erect a facility specifically for the treatment of the mentally ill.
That is a story for another time. But the desperate pleas to improve the treatment of the mentally ill and protect those around them have remained unanswered because mental illness is still a taboo subject that has not received proper attention in our society. But if there is to be change, it must start in the homes of America, not the hollow halls of government.Unlike the Kendrick family, we need to stand united against our inner demons and not be ashamed to get our loved ones help if they need it. But let us hope we take more effective and immediate action in the wake of the enormous tragedy of our own time before it happens again.
Endnotes
1. Farmer's Cabinet, April 30, 1805. All subsequent quotes in this paragraph are from this paper, which was printed in Amherst for most of the nineteenth century.
2. Farmer's Cabinet, May 21, 1805.
3. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, based on Her Diary 1785-1812 (Vintage Books: New York, 1990), 291-296.
