 Hi everyone. Thank you for attending Maladies in Medicines. Tonight we're so glad that you're able to join us. My name's Lauren. I'm a communications major here as part of Dr. Rosalyn Whitaker-Hacks event management class. We've had the absolute pleasure of assisting with this event. So one thing you might notice, you can't see yourself on the screen or type in the chat. This is because we're using Zoom webinar instead of Zoom meetings. So don't worry, you're doing it right. If you click on the button labeled chat at the bottom of your screen, you're going to see a link and that'll take you to a Q&A page, the padlet thing that you should have received some information about in our email. And you're welcome to post any questions or comments that you may have along the way. You also have the option of putting your questions directly in the Q&A section here in Zoom. Again, you're going to see that at the bottom of your screen just off to the right of that green button. It's labeled Q&A. Later this evening, we're going to be having a formal Q&A session that'll be further explained by my classmate Nick. And now it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Leslie Averill, Champlain's Chief Operating Officer and Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs. I hope you have a great evening everyone. Welcome to our eighth annual local history event. Welcome students, faculty, staff, trustees, and members of our local community. We are so pleased to have you here to discuss a topic that is not only important to our history but also incredibly relevant to our community today. Champlain College has hosted an annual local history event featuring our special collections since 2012. It's an event that demonstrates the importance we place in understanding and sharing the history of both Champlain and Burlington and reflects our recognition that Champlain is an integral part of the fabric of our community. First established in 1975, our special collections include the Champlain College Archives, the Llewellyn Collection of Vermont History, which arrived here in 2010, and the Henderson Family Papers, the collection that inspired tonight's program. Events like these require the behind-the-scenes support of many individuals. Thank you to Emily Christ, Bethany Dietrich, Erica Donis, Lyle King, Stephanie Kloss, Jessica Matera, Natasha Murray, Elizabeth Scott, Kay Lee Sullivan, and Sandy Euston. And a special thanks to students in Dr. Rosalynn Whitaker-Hex Events Management class, who have assisted with many aspects of this event tonight. Thank you Lauren Blake, Nicholas LaCoyle, Emma Lee, Alexis Miller, Diana Agati, and Claudia Roy. Now I have the pleasure of introducing our speakers for this evening. Gary Shatuk is a New Hampshire native and graduate of the University of Colorado and Vermont Law School. He served for over 30 years in the state's law enforcement community with the Vermont State Police, as Assistant Attorney General, and as an Assistant United States Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as a legal advisor to governments in Kosovo and Iraq. He has written many articles and books on the state's early history, including Green Mountain Opium Eaters, a history of early addiction in Vermont. His most recent publication, by the wand of some magician embracing modernity in mid-19th century Vermont, was published in 2020. Our second speaker is no stranger to Champlain College Community. Erica Donis is the director of Champlain Special Collections, a trove of archival materials that illuminate the history of our college and of our surrounding community. Among other duties, Erica hosts numerous classes in special collections, supports students' research and projects, and develops this local history event each year. A native Vermonter, Erica is a graduate of the Winter Tour program in early American culture, affiliated with the University of Delaware. She is the author of the book, The History of Shelburne Farms, A Changing Landscape and Evolving Vision. Gary Shattuck will be starting tonight's program. Thank you, Gary. Well, thank you, Dr. Averill. And also thanks to Erica Donis for the opportunity to participate in this program this evening. It's a whole new format for me with regard to opium issues. Having been involved with researching it, mainly in libraries and archives and what have to do. In the two books that you see before you, Green Mountain Opium Eaters and By the Wand of some Magician, where I go into much more detail about the drug situation, substance abuse situation in Vermont in the 19th century. My role here is to talk about examining the causes of addiction in early Vermont, which I have found to be an immense issue and something will be a challenge to reduce to just 20, 25 minutes. I'm trying to give you an overview of this. I think the easiest way to do this is to look at the works of a couple of people that were involved in the latter quarter of the 19th century. Some very important individuals that history has really not paid enough attention to. Dr. Carlton Pennington Frost, as you see here in his Civil War uniform, he's out of Hanover, New Hampshire, was one of Vermont's three surgeons reviewed and evaluated all of the Vermont soldiers that went off to war. We'll talk about him in a moment. Dr. Asheville, primarily Grinnell from the University of Vermont, living in Burlington contributed also very importantly we'll talk about him in a moment. And lastly, I want to give a nod to Congressman David Foster, who was the state's attorney for Chittenden County between 1886 and 1890 when these things that we're talking about took place. He went on to be a member of the House of Representatives of Washington in 1901 and was the person that introduced the first drug legislation for the National Congress. He died shortly before it became real as the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914, but he played an important part in bringing the issue to national attention. I picked out the most important titles of some of the works that took place in the last part of the century and evolve, starting off with Frost in 1870 when he was president of the Vermont Medical Society. He was the first one to really notice that we had a problem. And he brought it to everyone's attention in the society with his own opium, its uses and abuses. Then we have a 20 year hiatus here where anyone did any real reporting on it. And then we're picking up in the progressive area here, progressive era in the 1890s, when Dr. Elliott Shipman out of virgins wrote about the promiscuous use of opium in Vermont, followed by a doctor Cummings and Derby writing about opium, its uses and abuses. And then the bombshell of all bombshells about drug usage in Vermont. Grinnell's report in 1901 of the use and abuse of drugs in Vermont. And he wrote that year, stimulus and forensic medicine, a review of drug consumption in Vermont. There are a lot of reasons why Vermont was has been so wax and enforcing and creating and enforcing laws of the other states have adopted. We don't have the time to go into it, but the fact is in 1915 Vermont finally took the step to enact its first drug law as one of the last states to have done so. Grinnell's report in 1901 was devastating for the reputation of Vermont with regard to drugs, because it established that we had a significant problem that nobody had acknowledged up to this point. Frosted alerted everyone previously as well as Shipman, and Grinnell was seeing things by the 1890s that really caused a big concern. And he did a summary, a review of sales made by state pharmacies, doctors, the manufacturers, and he came up with amazing numbers that showed that Vermonters, then it had a population of roughly 343,000. Vermonters were consuming 47 pounds of opium a month. They were also taking in 19 pounds of morphine, 3,300 grains of morphine pills. A grain is happens to be a dose. And when you talk about morphine, because it's a distilled version of opium, it's much more powerful. So an eighth of a grain of morphine would provide you with what they call the dose. They were consuming 32 pounds of coral hydrate, we'll talk about that, 25 pounds of Dover's pills, 32 gallons of lobnam and paragoric, 27 ounces of cocaine, and then they just threw in a little bit of hemp. The bottom line is that up through his analysis, Vermonters were consuming 3.3 million doses each and every month, 3.3 million doses a month, which is the equivalent of 1.5 grains for each man, woman, and child each day for a year. So these were staggering numbers. The pathways to addiction as as Grinnell identified, were through a very limited number of substances, primarily opium, which could be chewed and hailed and absorbed through various parts of the body. Opium first, we had it in the 1700s, certainly in the early 1800s, but it really caught the national customs people's attention in 1841, 24,000 pounds of it appeared on the docks of an Atlantic seaboard community. By 1867, just after the Civil War, the US was consuming 146,000 pounds. By the end of the century, 1898, it was up to 565,000. And then it just exploded between 1900 and 1909. It jumped from the 565,000 to 6.4 million pounds. It was a significant domestic production within the states of opium, and Vermont had people experimenting in that. I go into a lot more detail on this in some of the books, so I'm jumping over some of these things. It's interesting also to note in the 1870s, Vermont had such an excess of opium available to it, it was sending it out of state and sending it to Massachusetts who lodged its own complaints about that. And then it came into existence in the early 1800s as a derivative of opium, but it really didn't take off until the invention of the hyperdermic needle in 1853. Chlorohydrate, which is a sedative, is inhaled. It was created in 1869. And from that date on, Vermont started to suffer from that. So as these substances were created, Vermont lashed right onto them. heroin didn't make an appearance until 1898 when it was, it had been synthesized earlier by a British scientist, but then the Germans took it over and with the Bayer company and made a huge market out of that. And I also have to acknowledge the problem of alcohol in Vermont. That's a whole nother issue that is beyond the scope of what we can talk about now. Prohibition went into effect in 1852, but it was very lax as far as the enforcement goes. I'll give you in my book on opium. The prohibition of alcohol provides another avenue for people to take on another substance to abuse, and that happens to be opium. Now, you have to remember that throughout this part of this time in Vermont history is very much a society of caveat emptor. We had laws, yes, the legislature passed them. Our enforcement mechanism was very much questionable. The judges exercised the Andrew Jacksonian common man principle that a person of responsibility and a family was better to decide which way that family went than to have outside interference and the legislature for any number of reasons bought on to that. And we'll talk about that in the magician book, the effects of the railroad, and how it affected legislation and the state and how Vermont was such a hands off state, when it came to enforcing laws. And I have a volume here. This happens to be all the laws of Vermont in 1894. It's about 1200 pages. And within this, there are 22 pages devoted to alcohol, covered by 111. Different laws. If you look at the laws dealing with drugs is contained on less than a page and only deals with four for provisions dealing with it. Things didn't change until 1906 with the pure food and drug act that required manufacturers to identify the contents of the substances that were selling. The main players in this are the positions. The pharmacist the apothecaries and the manufacturers. So we have these three columns, and within each one of these columns. There is a whole host of things going on. And then we had a cross pollination of issues between the doctors and the manufacturers, the pharmacist and the doctors. And these were significant battles that went on that were just uncontrollable by the legislature and they were fought out in the marketplace. I'll give you an idea how prevalent opium was here's just a brief picture of a doctor in middlebury in the 1840s showing his sales of opium, and you just see the word opium listed up and down you can find this in a number of places. So opium was very prevalent in Vermont, beginning in the 1840s after it first became noticeably available on the docs. The, there we have significant problems within the medical profession dealing with licensing licensing did go into effect in 1876 but there was no oversight of it. Vermont had bogus medical schools in Bennington, Newberry, New Fane and Rutland by 1890, we had reportedly 562 doctors in Vermont, 86 of them without license, that's 15%. The wrong medical society was so concerned. It said that Vermont was a dumping ground for rejected doctors from other states. By 1902, just after the turn of the century Vermont had the highest per capita number of physicians in the country, compared to the population. 90% of all of these positions said that they compounded their own medicines they got the rough agreement in the wrong ingredients, ground them down mix them up and disperse them themselves. That's 90% of them. Another place to get drugs would have been through the pharmacies. In 1894, the Grinnell, who authored that study was complaining about the quality of the students that he was teaching. And these on the lower right they happen to be students of his. In the Vermont Medical School in 1890 and 95. This just gives you an idea of what they were of the types of men that they were training. It's not that they were not able to understand because they certainly receive lectures on drugs and their effects, but they didn't take it to heart as something that they were supposed to be involved with. The second column of players in this are the pharmacists. In 1770 the Vermont Pharmaceutical Association formed to try and bring professionalism to that profession. We see in 1877, a listing here of 142 drugists in Vermont of the 142 listed for them are in Burlington. This certainly goes up much higher in the next years by 1895 Vermont had 400 licensed pharmacists in the state. In the pharmacy trade it was considered the land of freedom essentially anybody could get into be a pharmacist. It didn't take any training to do it. So there was always problems within the profession to try and make themselves professionals and have the public understand that they were legitimate. We also were all would do things the doctors did like diagnose patients and sell alcohol to the public out the back door. The issue of prescriptions is also very interesting because doctors might write prescriptions in a patient patient might take it to a pharmacist for counseling, but then there were these battles between the three between the physician, the patient, the pharmacist, who owned this prescription, who dictated the course of its when you could distribute what you could distribute. And that was something that was never clarified and I see literature going into the 1920s, a battle still going on. Who owns the prescription. This is a lot of sneakiness going on doctors would write prescriptions to favored pharmacists, write them in code and get kickbacks from the pharmacist. The third of the manufacturers in Burlington we have the Henry Johnson Lord Company, RB Stevens and company, carpenter and company Burnett or Brett brothers, Jones and Riley, but the most mammoth one of that of course. Most people know as well as Richardson in 1882 was doing half a million a year in business, spending 100,000 a year and advertising 60,000 a year and postage, it published a 200 page catalog with opium infused products available. Massive advertising plastering its papers on buildings and actually on the Burlington breakwater. We had hired what they call pedestrian peddlers who would travel from town to town, Hawking drugs. And interestingly, they would contact postmasters in the towns and try and find addresses for invalids, so that they could go to their homes and push drugs on them. And this is a karma. I'm sorry to get to that one in a minute. The issue on with regard to the prescriptions that the pharmacist fill this is an interesting pair of journals that were held by Roland pharmacist. He talks about things around the 1870s or so that pharmacists did and they were compounding all kinds of products for paints for dies for animals. They were providing things to treat cows and horses and people. And when you look at the pharmacy prescription book from right after the Vermont pass its law. With regard to drug regulating drugs you see the notations in red. And these are all the sales that are made by opium to people that are consuming opium. I talk about the relationships between these people. The manufacturers certainly had the money, and they were in heavy contact with the pharmacist, and they would routinely take them over to meetings over in New York to avoid prohibition. And they use the, the steamships to do that. And this is a case of karma coming back to bite them. This did not happen on that occasion. The pilot of the Champlain to which was one of those boats that the pharmacist and manufacturers use drove it up onto the rocks and Westport, New York and destroyed $150,000 ship is determined he was high on morphine at the time. Now the abuse and addiction issue. Keep in mind patent medicines have been in existence for 100 years before we get up to the time we're talking about in the 1870s. There was this alteration going on at the time and this also goes on throughout the 1800s. It was, you'd find alcohol infused with opium you would find any number of drugs patent medicines infused with opium in order to give the kick to the customer. We had no way of analyzing the quality of drugs when Washington DC authorities inquired of Vermont. What is it that you do to study, or to assure that people are not getting adulterated drugs. This is an 1891 Vermont wrote back we do nothing. We don't have the money to do it in 1870. We begin to see the problem accelerating with frost production of the paper I pointed out on opium. We start seeing more reports of babies dying from opium. We see more suicides accidental overdoses suspected deaths of invalids and minorities and people that are disadvantaged in society, who die under suspicious circumstances which may include the use of overdoses being fed to them in 1875 a doctor warner who was a past president of the medical society died of coral of a coral coral hydrate overdose. Now it gets really interesting I really want to give thanks to the women's Christians Temperance Union, because they're the ones that really kicked a lot of people in the pants to acknowledge this in 1875. In 1883, excuse me created the narcotics committee. And it's sponsored Burlington competitions of school children to write essays on drugs, where they would receive a monetary award in 1882 the Vermont legislature mandated the Vermont children receive instruction on alcohol and drugs. Finally, in 1883, they ordered the production of a book dealing with drugs. So this is something that goes way back in Vermont history. This is the first public education book on drugs for Vermont children that you see here. In 1884 Vermont teachers are told they have to pass tests on stimulants and narcotics. This is a relationship between the between these three doctors, pharmacists manufacturers and their patients. Essentially, it's, it's a standoff situation, you see them all essentially as spectators, watching as the consumers of these drugs descend into addiction. This is one of the most wonderful. I mean, it's, I mean it's not a good thing, but it's most wonderful insights into the mindset of the professions. This is for the doctors. This comes from the runner library of Dartmouth. I found this in a student's notes. They're instructed to don't treat the opium habit at all let the patient go to an asylum. And they further counseled the students don't allow a patient to have a hypodermic syringe. Stick them yourself. The extra charge will do them no harm. It's not fun of them but they're certainly not telling them to go out and be involved in them. The reference to asylum is interesting because to get into the asylum you have to go through a probate court to get a court order to do that. And we do see that on occasion. That happening. And now this drugs touch all levels of Vermont society. Erica's send me to Shelburne Farms to find this picture here of William Stuart Webb. Was life, and he ran the farm owned and ran the farm. He was an extensive morphine addict in the late 1880s and then from the Vermont State Archives, this wonderful picture of a man with modeled skin. He was identified as a morphine and cocaine and cocaine addict. In 1890, Elliot Shipman from Virginia's was so perturbed at this. What was going on you say he called the drug usage a crying evil of the day. And he decried the loose method in which will be a morphine or being handled. Preaching to the medical profession about all of this and he's calling on them to intercede and he provides a number of examples of of problems talks about a doctor with a 10 year habit injecting himself and dying a gardener with a six year habit of 24 year old woman told by a doctor to go get a syringe and inject yourself. It's not bothering or a bothering him. A man carrying an ounce of opium around opium gums, so they have a constant high women seeking rest after opium pills, go to the needle and morphine women with menstrual pains going doctor shopping and getting all kinds of opium and chloral hydrate. Shipman did one of the most incredible things with its last woman was consuming so much morphine that he decided he would experiment and try and overload her system with it and provided her with a great quantity of it. The most he said that any he was aware of any doctor ever doing in order to try and jolt the system out of the addictive behavior it didn't work. Now addiction begins to get attention here in Vermont. And we see the Keeley Institute open up in Montpelier in 1892 and we see a picture of some of the attendees there reportedly 367 addicts went to the Keeley to get Keeley treatments in its very first year. This first patient being William Lord of Montpelier criminal defense attorney. In 1893, the Burlington Medical and Surgical Club turned into the Burlington Clinical Society was made up of 15 physicians from Burlington and surrounding communities that included Grinnell and Shipman. And it's interesting to see the papers that they were talking the subjects they were talking about. It wasn't drugs initially it was scarlet fever, Breitz disease tuberculosis, the effects of a climate. But then by April 19 for 1894. They start to talk about the drugs that are the women are taking because of cancer or what have you. And they're still experimenting with this. This experiment that shipment came up with a loading patients with extra amounts of drugs to see if they could overcome the addiction. They're also looking for a painless way to deal with addiction. In 1895 Ramon is beginning to transition out of its lethargy, and it finally appointed its first board of pharmacy that year and here are these dapper gentlemen constituting the first board, who requires pharmacists to have publicly posted licenses. In 1895 the VMS, the medical society is complaining about the number of doctors and clergy that are intemperate. This is an interesting statistic by 1900 nationally between 16 to 23 of all physicians are supposed to have been addicted to opiates in Vermont and at the turn of the century is estimated that there were 1577 addicts. In the 1890s also there are many drug stores opening up in Burlington. And we see many, many accounts of them being rated by authorities for violations of alcohol laws. That's because there were no laws dealing with drugs essentially. So the century closes with Grinnell's startling announcement that Vermonters are consuming this 3.3 million doses each and every month. Lastly, I'll just talk just for a moment on virtual blanchard. He was an inventor out of Middlebury, and he's supposedly had just over 500 inventions with an office in Burlington. I'm sorry, an office in Middlebury in a New York City. In 1877 he jumped on the bandwagon to try and deal with substitutes for alcohol and opium and tobacco, which you see in the middle of his advertisement here. And he created the so-called blanchard concentrated blood and nerve food. So, I mean he was a well-intended man, had a very interesting inventive career, but he ended up dying in 1910 as a morphine taker consuming it by the spoonful. So opium addiction, it touched all classes, it touched the young and the old. We had no laws to stop them. We had no medical profession that saw it an obligation to intervene into it. And as I said, the people lived the caveat after lifestyle. And now Eric is going to provide more information on a local woman there who was caught up in some of these issues. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. Thank you for setting up my presentation so nicely by grounding us in the greater historical context. Before I launch into my talk, I wanted to provide you with a little background. In 2019, a neighbor of Champlain College, Kathleen Ryan, donated a collection of historic papers that she found in a building she purchased in Burlington's Hill section. Last year, I've had the amazing opportunity to study these papers, which we now call the Henderson family papers. So thank you so much Kathleen for your donation. I also wanted to note that unless otherwise noted the illustrations I'm presenting tonight are all from the Henderson family papers or other collections items in the Champlain College Special Collections. I want to thank my student employee, Randy Carpenter for her assistance in editing all these illustrations for us. So let me start my screen share here. So this presentation tells the story of a woman named Lucy Benedict Henderson, a resident of Burlington in the late 19th century. The portrait on the screen which features two women leading their heads together probably depicts Lucy with her mother. It's the only possible image of her that we found to date. This photograph was only partially developed, leaving the heavy brown overtones that obscure the women's faces. This obscurity is a metaphor for Lucy Henderson's life in general. The surviving evidence leaves some gaps in our knowledge, gaps that leave us with as many questions as answers. What we know is that Lucy Benedict Henderson was a woman who had a tremendously vibrant life and an equally tragic death. Through her surviving papers, as well as what we can glean from contextual research, we can paint a portrait of Lucy as a high achieving school girl, as a fun loving young woman with a wide circle of friends, as a wife and mother, as a mature actress, as someone stricken with chronic illness and opioid dependency, and as someone whose family treasured her memory. Lucy was born in Salem, Wisconsin in 1861. While her parents had lived in Wisconsin for much of their lives they had New England roots. Her father had been born in Connecticut, and her mother was originally from Vermont. In 1873 when Lucy was 12, her parents appeared to have split up, and her mother, Maria Benedict took her and her sister Jesse to Burlington, where they moved in with her mother's cousin Albert Tuttle. Lucy's cousin Albert was a pharmacist and co-owner of the Park Drug Store on College Street. This is the brick Greek revival house at 95 Adams Street where Lucy, Jesse and Mary Benedict live with Albert Tuttle. During their time there in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, the address was 95 Adams Street. Later, the street addresses were renumbered so this house is now 99 Adams. Lucy's house was built as a duplex, but sometime after her death it was divided into several apartments. On the screen here are two views from Google Maps, one showing the outside of the house and the other showing its location near the intersection with South Union Street. Lucy's years on Adams Street appear to have been happy ones, while her mother kept house for the family Lucy and her sister attended Burlington schools, and Lucy later entered married life from this house. When she paid a visit to family back in Wisconsin in the summer of 1875, about two years after moving to Burlington, her cousin Albert wrote her quote, I tell you Lucy this old house is lonely. I missed the pattering of your little feet upon the kitchen floor. I would give a good deal to hear it just now. Lucy attended Burlington public schools starting with the Main Street Intermediate School, one of several neighborhood schools for children ages roughly 10 to 12. The Main Street Intermediate School was located at the corner of Main and South Union Streets on the site of the Future Memorial Auditorium. Lucy then attended Grammar School, what we would now call Middle School and High School in a building at the corner of College and South Willard Streets. On the screen is a postcard view of that structure along with a screenshot from Google Maps, with an orange dot indicating where the building stood. This school was a large two story brick building with a bell free in the front. It was not until a generation after Lucy attended school there that the new Edmunds High School building would be constructed in Burlington in 1901. Lucy was an excellent student. Her papers include her report cards, including this one from the fall term of 1876 when she was 15. She had a perfect attendance record that fall and mostly high marks for deportment. She did extremely well in reading, spelling and Latin, a little less well in grammar and arithmetic. Lucy graduated from high school in 1880. Her graduation ceremony, which was held in the first congregational church on South Manuski Avenue, included multiple student performances and presentations. Lucy participated in a debate with her classmate, Hiram Barber, on the topic of quote, pensions to literary men. On the screen is an excerpt from the Burlington Free Press, listing the program of events, and Lucy's name is indicated with the orange arrow. Throughout her young adult years, Lucy Benedict had a vibrant social life. Lucy and a close knit group of friends met regularly at each other's homes, went to dances and church events together and went sledding together. Lucy was full of fun with a great sense of humor. I get a sense of her as the life of the party. I'd like to read to you two excerpts from a letter she wrote to her best friend Catherine and standard, while visiting mutual friends in Alberg Springs, Vermont, in the summer of 1878. Lucy was 17 at the time. Up on the screen is the last page of that letter so you can get a sense of her beautiful cursive handwriting. She wrote, my dear kitty, perhaps you think I am rushing business to write to you so soon, but Annie is playing a mournful tune on the piano. Nell is listening and I must write or talk to someone. No fear, kitty, that I shall lose my heart as long as a tall, dark young man walks the face of the earth. But I've come pretty near it. There is a young fellow here whose parents keep the Alberg House. His name is Fred Peak. He has graduated in music. He called on us Saturday evening. Nell and I managed to buy a half a pound of chocolate, and there are just four left so you see we've been busy. Tonight when Annie came into the room the chocolates were on the table, but we heard her coming and I gave them a shove clear across the room and under the bed, and after she went out had to crawl under the bed after them. In May 1882 Lucy Benedict married William Henderson in a ceremony in Burlington's Unitarian Church. On the screen is an account of their wedding printed in the Burlington Free Press. Lucy had known Will for several years as he was employed as a pharmacy clerk in her cousin Albert's drugstore. Will was four years older than Lucy having been born in Burlington in 1857 to Scottish and Irish immigrant parents. He also attended Burlington public schools, and like Lucy he was an honor roll student. Will appears to have gone directly into the workforce after completing high school, which of course was pretty standard for the time. He worked his way up at the drugstore from pharmacy clerk to pharmacists, and he eventually bought the business and rented himself. Like many drugstores at the time the park drugstore sold over the counter and prescription medication, and Lucy's husband and cousin would have been in charge of compounding compounding their own medicines for prescription orders. In addition to drugs the park drugstore also sold candy and chocolates, perfumes, personal care items like hair brushes and razors, and even surgical instruments for medical students at UVM. The park drugstore was one of multiple pharmacies in downtown Burlington at the time, but perhaps the oldest haven't been having been founded before the Civil War. It was located near the corner of church and college streets across the street from City Hall Park, and adjoining the building that now houses loonings restaurant. On the right on the screen is an illustration of the exterior of the drugstore. It's a four story brick building with a ground floor storefront. The upper floors extend over a street level alley on the side of the building. On the screen is a photo I took recently of the existing bank building on the site of the former park drugstore. Just to orient you a little bit more to the location of the drugstore. On the screen now is a postcard view of the intersection of college and church streets from the early 1900s. The orange arrow here is pointing out the park drugstore building. On the left side of the drugstore is painted on the front, and above that is a painted advertisement for a patent medicine called pain celery compound, which was sold by the drugstore. For the first few years after their marriage from 1882 to 1885 Lucy and will live with Lucy's family on Adam Street. Then, in 1886 they purchased their own home less than a block away at 239 South Union Street, shown here. The Greek revival house originally built in the mid 19th century is now a lawyer's office and has a large modern addition in the back. I've included a screenshot from Google Maps again, so you can see how close the family houses were to each other. 18 months after their marriage, Lucy and will had a son whom they named Albert Tuttle Henderson, after Lucy's cousin Albert. Her son, Bertie for short, shown here is a studio portrait of him as a boy. He's holding a black top hat and has a bit of a mischievous grin. Letters Bertie wrote to his mother at times when she was away from home in the early to mid 1890s, when he was between the ages of about seven and 13 provide wonderful glimpses of his life growing up in Burlington. He wrote about bicycling seven miles away to Shelburne Farms with a young friend, playing with the family's pet cat, and building a box to store candy, and then filling that box with free candy at the family drugstore, one of the perks of having a family business. Here is what he wrote his mother in October 1896 in the postcard up on the screen. Sunday noon, dear mama. I have just come home from Sunday school and church, and I'm waiting for Papa to come home pet. That's his new pet hamster is getting so tame that I can put my finger in the cage and feed him corn. We have got his wheel fix and he can run it some. He got out three times while we were fixing it. Once he got out in the sitting room, but we got him back. We're going to let him out this afternoon. Don't get lonesome and write to me soon. Goodbye sweetheart. Lucy was involved in amateur acting in Burlington, putting her debate experience from high school and her flair for the dramatic to good use. She played in at least two plays that we know of. In May 1891, she played model was a Suzanne de Roosevelt in a play called scrap of paper, a three act comic drama, which was performed at the Howard Opera House. Open in 1879 the opera house was located at the corner of church and bank streets in a building that now houses the echo clothing store, Pascola restaurant and the frog hollow gallery, among other businesses. In 1890 sketch of the opera house, which was a huge four story brick building, its auditorium accommodated between 1300 and 1400 patrons. Also on the screen is an excerpt of the program for scrap of paper, listing Lucy Henderson's name among the actors. In December 1891, Lucy was in another local play a two act comedy called a rice pudding, which was performed at the Unitarian Church by members of the church's social club. She played a character named Mrs Richards, a young wife and housekeeper. Lucy Benedict Henderson had a very full life, but she also suffered from chronic illness. For many years, perhaps starting when she was still in high school, she had severe headaches during with, during what she withdrew from her everyday life for periods of time, as she struggled to get well. We catch glimpses of her struggles through mentions of her illness and convalescences in correspondence with family and friends, surviving prescriptions and accounts in the gossip columns of Burlington's local newspapers, including this mention of her being indisposed in the Burlington Free Press from 1894. As time went on what started out as headaches devolved into additional health problems. Lucy developed ulcers and other severe gastrointestinal issues, and she had chronic insomnia. Her papers include multiple doctors prescriptions and prescription envelopes. We can hear two examples. At some point, we don't know exactly when Lucy became addicted to opioids, the primary option available at the time to manage pain. As Gary has mentioned, opioids were widely available in several forms in the 19th century, over the counter and by prescription, and Lucy of course had ready access to her husband and uncle's business, the park drugstore. In Burlington, Laudanum, a liquid medicine that contained about 10% opium, a very commonly used over the counter medicine at the time, or she may have consumed a patent medicine containing opium. Across the country, as Gary has mentioned, entrepreneurs concocted hundreds and hundreds of unregulated patent medicines, the majority of which were laced with either alcohol, opioids or both. Multiple patent medicines were manufactured in Burlington for a local, national and even international trade, including the three shown here. We know that the Henderson family drugstore sold at least pain celery compound, and probably more. Laudanum and patent medicines were tremendously lucrative business. The Wells Richardson company of Burlington, which made several patent medicines including pain celery compound was one of the most successful. As Gary has mentioned, it was a multimillion dollar company and employed as many as 400 people in Burlington at its height in the 1890s. Liquid morphine taken by injection was also widely available and a commonly prescribed medication for pain. Lucy took liquid morphine for several years. Many of the ailments she developed including gastrointestinal ulcer issues, ulcers and chronic insomnia are common side effects of morphine addiction. Lucy was certainly not alone. As Gary has mentioned, opioid dependency was a huge problem in 19th century America, and it often afflicted members of the middle and upper classes, those who had enough disposable income to afford medical treatment and medication. Women were particularly vulnerable. While men could resort to drinking alcohol to self medicate drinking was less socially acceptable for women. But the consumption of laudanum and patent medicines and the use of morphine was socially acceptable at the time. As her illness and addiction progressed, Lucy Henderson was treated in several private hospitals in Burlington, in the Boston area and in New York City. In Burlington she stayed at two of the five sanitariums in operation in the city at the time. These sanitariums were managed by independent physicians as an expansion of their private practices. At this time public hospitals like Burlington's Mary Fletcher hospital which opened in 1879 were primarily charitable endeavors serving the poor with large open wards and few private rooms. Sanitariums offered premium medical care, private rooms and access to the latest medical treatment and technologies to those who could afford it. Several of Burlington sanitariums treated morphine addiction, as well as other medical and psychiatric conditions. Lucy stayed at least once at the Willard Nervine at 89 North Prospect Street on the corner of North Prospect and Loomis, shown here is a contemporary illustration of the spacious three-story Queen Anne style building and this screenshot from Google Maps showing the location of the sanitarium. This building still exists and is now divided into apartments. The Willard Nervine had been founded in 1888 by psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Jackson Willard, who offered rest cures to patients suffering from quote tired and weak nerves. Dr. Jackson specialized in the treatments developed by the prominent Philadelphia physician, Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, a leader in the new field of neurology. Patients undergoing Mitchell's rescue were typically prescribed complete bed rest for six to eight weeks, regular massage and a rich diet. His treatment was famously chronicled in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. He also stayed several times at another sanitarium in Burlington, the Amy Proctor Sanitarium at 83 Pine Street, between college and bank streets, which opened in 1894. This sanitarium was owned by Dr. Lee Roy Bingham, who named it in honor of his mother. A surgeon by training Dr. Bingham performed surgeries on site and also treated patients with respiratory ailments and opioid addiction. I've yet to find an image of the sanitarium, but it did appear on contemporary maps. And so on the right you'll see an outline of the building in the 1900 Sanborn Fire Insurance map from UVM Special Collections. On the right is a screenshot from Google Maps showing you the site of the sanitarium, next to what is now the Vermont Federal Credit Union building. In fall of 1896, Lucy stayed at a private Manhattan sanitarium run by two women called Roper and Bright. On the screen here is an invoice from Roper and Bright for Lucy's treatment. The charges included room and board and nursing, extra nursing services, drugs and $5 loan to Lucy for her bookkeeping class. More on that in a minute. While staying at Roper and Bright, Lucy was attended by the neurologist Dr. Charles Dana, a professor of diseases of the nervous system and the mind at the New York Medical School and Hospital. Dr. Dana prescribed regular massage and electrical therapy for Lucy. In one letter to her husband, she wrote that she quote, had an electricity treatment with a small cell battery, one electrode at the base of the neck, and another on the ankle, and feet in tepid water. This treatment may have been an electro vapor bath, a popular treatment at the time. In this treatment, the patient sat with their feet in a foot bath, while mild electrical current was applied to certain spots on the body. She had years of medical treatment to multiple hospital stays and numerous attempts to break her opioid dependency took a toll on her mental health. Frustrated and sad that she struggled to so much to overcome her addiction, and that she spent so much time away from her family and treatment and recovery. She suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts. While she was in New York being treated by Dr. Dana, she wrote her husband quote, I am very blue and crying all day, and it breaks my heart to think I have to be away from you all. However, in October 1896, her treatment seemed to be working and Lucy was in recovery from her addiction and close to being discharged. She was prescribed an unidentified drug to ease her dependency. As Dr. Dana wrote Lucy's husband will, she had a long road ahead of her to full recovery. The first page of this letters up on the screen, but I'd like to read to you the letter in its entirety. My dear sir, I am very glad to inform you that Mrs. Henderson has now gone over 10 days without any morphine, and has stood the withdrawal very well. She is in good spirits most of the time and seems to be gaining daily. The most serious part of the matter however now confronts you, and that is keeping her well. Your wife as you know is a woman who has an extremely active mind, and one which the ordinary duties of a domestic life are not sufficient to occupy. It is absolutely necessary that you find for her some occupation when she gets home. The field of course is not a very large one, especially where you live. I have suggested however that she could be of some service to you and employ her own activities satisfactorily if she did some bookkeeping. Acting on this suggestion I have sent her to a business college, and she is already taking lessons in the art. I hope that this scheme is a feasible one. If not, you have got to set your wits to work and devise some other. I have told her that she must have a chain attached to her for the next year, that in other words you must practically be under surveillance all the time. The simplest way to do this perhaps would be to have her report once a week to her physician at home and let him give her an antidotal injection, which I will let her take home with her. I think she will be able to go home in a couple of weeks. I am now trying to get her to sleep without drugs and strengthen her general system a little. I cannot help adding that your wife has been a most willing patient, and has assisted me in every way in my attempts to help her out of her trouble. I most sincerely hope that our good results will continue. Thank you for the yours, Charles L. Dana. While this letter illustrates a paternalistic relationship between doctor and patient, and as was common at the time. Dr. Dana acknowledged the predicament that many middle class and affluent women found themselves in, in which society discouraged the use of their intellect and working outside the home. She was expected in mid November 1896. However, she relapsed almost immediately, and she was readmitted to the Amy Proctor sanitarium in Burlington. Sadly, her acute depression returned, and she died by suicide at the sanitarium on December 9 1896. She was 35 years old. On the screen is the headline from her obituary in the Burlington Free Press. Heraries ran in the other local newspapers as well, including the following account from the Burlington Daily News. Quote, Mrs. Henderson had for many years been a victim of some obscure disease of the brain, manifesting itself in violent headaches, for which relief had been sought of the physicians in vain. The most skillful doctors failed to discover the nature of the disease, and to afford any remedy. She was treated with morphine and the combined effects of the disease and the drug was such that she had been mentally irresponsible for much of the time for the past two years. She is survived by a husband and son, Albert, a student at the high school. She was bright and amiable and possessed a wide circle of friends and acquaintances to mourn her death. The husband and son and family have the sincerest condolences of the entire community. Mrs. Benedict Henderson had a short life, a life that was both vibrant and tragic. In many ways, hers is the story of an ordinary middle class woman of 19th century Burlington. Through her surviving papers we catch glimpses of her as a young student, a fun loving friend, a loving daughter, wife and mother, and as someone afflicted with chronic illness and opioid addiction. Her family's choice to preserve her papers speaks volumes about how much they treasured her memory. Her story endures through those papers, and I have been honored to share it with you this evening. Before we move to the question and answer portion of our event, I wanted to touch on a couple of additional points. While tonight's presentations have been rooted in the past, many of the issues that Gary and I touched on are, as we all know, sadly still relevant today. Our loved one is struggling with addiction or experiencing suicidal thoughts. Help is available. On the screen now, our resource is available to you, whether you are affiliated with Champlain College, part of the local Burlington community, or living in other areas of the United States. We still have much to learn from Lucy's papers. If you found her story compelling, please join us for a volunteer transcription project, which will launch in two weeks. We will be transcribing portions of her correspondence so we can glean more details about her life, and so we can make her story more accessible. No prior experience with transcription is necessary, and all you need to participate is a computer connected to the internet that can open PDF documents and shared Google documents. Please email me for further information. And my email address is up on the screen, and it will also be included in a follow-up email that will go out to you in a few days. Thank you so much. And I look forward to hearing your questions and comments. I'm going to turn things over now to Nick LaCoyle, a student who is monitoring our question and answer this evening. Hello, everyone. My name is Nicholas LaCoyle. I am a third year junior here at Champlain College, and I'm also part of the event management class assisting with tonight's event. I wanted to talk with everyone for just a few seconds about the Padlet Q&A portion of our event tonight. The Padlet is an interactive online pinboard for users to collaborate post questions and engage and respond to one another. To get started, click on the link posted in chat to open up our Padlet wall. From the link, a screen very similar to what you're seeing here will appear. Again, scroll down and double-click to create a post. Or in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, you can click on the little icon down here, and it will open up a text box. Then begin by writing either question or comment in the title box. In that, put in your name just so we're familiar with who's there and who we are responding to. In the subtext, write your question or comment, whatever it may be. And when you're all set, you can just click right outside the text box and it will post it right to the group wall. Also feel free to collaborate with others, like comment and post. The Q&A session will last for almost 30 minutes or so. So remember to keep your Zoom window open so you can hear Erica and Gary's response to your questions. Any questions that don't get answered at the end of the night will be answered and sent out along with a recording of the event following our conclusions this evening. We'll give it about a minute or two for questions to keep coming up and appearing, but our Padlet room is now live, so feel free to click the link in the chat to get started. And if this is a challenge to anyone or the external link doesn't seem to work, do feel free to add your questions or comments in the Q&A part of our Zoom webinar. We will be scanning these and relaying them to Erica and Gary as well. Thank you guys so much and post your questions. So Nick, do you have a question you want to start with? I do. I was waiting for him to filter in real quick. But one of the first questions we have, and Erica, I believe one of these is for you. Elise Gwitt asked, what was in the celery compound? The green celery compound manufactured in Burlington by Wells Richardson Company. Lots and lots of alcohol, a little bit of celery root, and a bunch of other ingredients as well. Gary, if you have more details on that, please feel free to chime in. As soon as the pure food and drogac came in in 1906, they finally got their hands on the pain celery compound and did a close analysis of it. It was 20% alcohol and, as you say, very minimal vegetable compounds. It was a big scam. Very, very lucrative scam. And we got another question. Someone posted that they would be interested in hearing more about the role and social acceptance of alcohol versus opioids and how that influenced opioid use. Well, alcohol had was very much a part of Vermont society from the time of the revolution on until prohibition went in in 1852. Opium was used, but very minimally. And it was pretty much left up to the individual. If you were quiet about it, nobody was going to bother you about it. But the alcohol, the distilled alcohol became such a concern. That's what drew Vermont attention and came to the prohibition of that. What's interesting is that the Vermont temperature union created in 1826 did not address opium at all. Just look strictly at alcohol. And we don't see organized people going against opium until we see the women's Christian temperature union in 1875. All right, and I have another question that is popping up a little bit as well. Someone asked is what was the typical or excuse me, was it typical of the time that Lucy's obituary acknowledged that she died by suicide. That seems pretty rare now. Gary, if you have some thoughts on this please feel free but I think it was fairly unusual. Her story that was a one that was actually a big news item, both in Burlington, and the story was picked up and printed in newspapers in the Boston area in and in her, her former hometown in Wisconsin as well. So it was certainly of local interest. And I suspect with the family's permission that they included so much detail about her health issues. They were referred to repeatedly throughout the 1800s. In the early 1800s when somebody tried, died of a drug overdose. They were essentially made fun of and you can find any number of entries, go to newspapers.com or some of the other newspaper services and put in opium and suicide and you'll come up with any, any number of them throughout the 18th century. And to the details that Erica is talking about, because of Lucy's situation. All right, and we have another question coming in from Mark how we're operating all prescribed or we're opiates all prescription, where there are also any other, or whether also over the counter preparations available. I mean, opium was very much available and you could dependent on your creativity and your access to either a physician able to give it to you, or a apothecary pharmacist, or going straight to a manufacturer peddler who's selling it. I need a prescription for it. But the, but I think that the, this is a class issue. I think you would find that people in the upper classes would have more difficulty scoring a deal with with a low level opium dealer and would get an intern instead via a doctor's prescription. There's a lot of, there's a relationship here between doctors and females. Also that goes throughout the 1800s. They're very close relationship and doctors were essentially the place where the women went to unload of all of their problems and many, many prescriptions and access to drugs were caused because of that relationship. Right. And along with that, someone asked as well, how were upper class addicts treated versus middle class versus lower class. Erica, you want to go on Dr. Well. Sure. So, I think addiction, as Gary mentioned into his presentation afflicted people from all walks of life. And certainly people in the upper classes were afflicted, perhaps even more so than people in the lower classes because they had the disposable to access opiates in a way that poor people may not have. And so Gary mentioned in his talk, Dr. William Seward Webb, the founder of Shelburne Farms. And we know that he was significantly addicted to morphine for probably the last 20 years of his life. He also like Lucy suffered from chronic illness. In this case, it may have started out as back issues. And he was, he was given or he took morphine as a pain reliever, and quickly got hooked. And in fact, he and Lucy shared a doctor, Dr. Lee worry Bingham, one of the doctors that Lucy saw closed his sanitarium when he had the opportunity to become Dr. Seward Webb's private doctor. And so he then went on spent the rest of his career, the last 15 years of his career, traveling with Seward Webb to the web's various family homes, and also on vacations to treat him and basically feed his, his morphine addiction. And Erica, along with that, how many sanitariums were there in Vermont. So there are five that I've identified in Burlington. And there were a smattering and other parts of Vermont from what I can tell from listings of medical facilities from the time we're talking the time period we're talking about is the 1880s through about the 1920s, there were a couple of sanitariums that were holdovers in the Burlington area through the 1940s. So we're at this time period where the concept of a hospital for someone who is in the middle class or, or affluent isn't is a new thing so we have this kind of transitional period where the art there are a lot of these private medical facilities that offer the same services that we would, we would now look for in our regular community hospital. They also had access to the Vermont State Hospital through the probate court when somebody was deemed a danger to themselves in order to take it into custody and send it. I looked at some of the stats for the state hospital in the early 1900s and it was, I expected to find much more addiction in there I was really surprised that of the several hundred people that were that went through the doors, a very small percentage of them were related to temperance problems, whether it's alcohol or drugs. So I think that your sanitarium issue in the communities might have been the only other realistic access to, to the everyday person, and certainly they didn't have access to a physician traveling with them like Dr Webden. Alright, I got another question from Dr Roz and this one's also had a couple of likes as well. Do you know anything about the decision process that led Lucy going to Dr Diana. Was there something he was doing that wasn't being done in Burlington. That's a really good question and I wish I had a solid answer. Hopefully more information will come to light as we, as we, as we dive into this transcription project. I can tell you what my guess is at this point, which is that she was in this cycle of treatment and relapse and treatment and relapse and she was. She and her family were trying every available option they could get their hands on to to treat her and certainly addiction treatment was another medical field in its infancy, like so many of the ones that we've discussed tonight. So there were various strategies, and not really one necessarily accepted strategy for treating an opiate addiction. And so Lucy may have heard of Dr Dana, both because he was a prominent physician affiliated with a prominent New York hospital, but also because he was a Vermont native there and also have been a personal connection as well. Hopefully more information will come to light on that. Alright, and I have another question here from Jess Matera. What options were available for people who could not afford opium based medicines. Alcohol maybe. I think the answer to that question is very, very little. So, either, you know, regular alcohol spirits or beer, or a patent medicine would perhaps be a lower cost, then, then a, then treating the pain with with morphine. Right. And on top of that, I have a question here do you see any parallels with the most recent opioid addiction crisis in the role of pharmaceuticals. For example, oxy cotton from Purdue pharmaceuticals. I think there's a clear connection I mean it's a repeat of what was going on back then. I mean the pharmacist and the drug manufacturers. They, they dictated how the drugs were distributed. Because there was, as I said, there were no laws governing that. And you compare it to the, to the current day. Hopefully, hopefully a problem. Maybe there's a dereliction of law enforcement going on. I'm sure that police knew full well was going on for much longer than has been indicated. Alrighty, and I have another question here it was in response to a question posted in our Q&A chat box. Gary I believe you answered it but someone asked whether a paragraph, a paragraph mentioned was the same as the paragraph she and myself were given as a kid in the 60s. This is in regards to the question asked. I believe, I believe it was asked by Mark. I don't know what the other compounding of either the ones sold in the 50s and 60s, which is what the question I answered versus what was sold in the 1800s. The suspicion is the ones that were sold today were much pure. They probably not quite as adulterated as that back then. I think I think paragraph went out in the 1960s. Somewhere in there. In regards to that too. Someone asked, do ovaries today have the same or similar ingredients in regards to the early 90s as they did then. ovaries. I'm not picking up the question. All right. Do opiates today have the same ingredients as they did in the early 1900s. Well, it's certainly much more refined today than they were back then. Yeah. No, this is probably they're probably not the exact same but they're probably not too far off. Remember heroin was introduced in 1898. And that took right off them. And at least what asked also, if there would be a copy of the last slide available about people that help are about places that help people with addiction. Definitely, I can include that in the email that will be going out to everyone who registered in a few days when the recording is available. Okay. I just had a comment here. Someone just as they remember it being very tasty but they're not certain how effective. Some of the paragormic medicines were they last had it in 1968 or 1969. They were touched it. I have no idea. We also have another question here. I think that's referring to the title family that I mentioned in my talk. And I think there is an extended family connection, but not a close one to the the titles that were running in the publishing publishing business and in the Burlington area. I think that just about concludes our Q&A portion of our event tonight. I wanted to thank everybody for coming out and participating. We hope you that you enjoyed your experience had all your questions and comments answered in a fun and collaborating way to conclude our event for the evening. Thank you all for joining us this evening. Every year a local history that brings important topics to light and this year is definitely no different. I want to extend a special thanks to local resident Kathleen Ryan who's donation of the Anderson Family Papers collection to Champlain College. A special collection provided us with the opportunity to share the story of Lucy Benedict Anderson with you tonight. We're deeply honored to have the support of Pat Robbins and Lisa Schamburg as well. As you know Pat and Lisa have generously sponsored our local history event since 2016, making it possible for us to share the rich history of our community with you. We're deeply honored to have their support again to share. Pat Lisa, much thanks. I encourage you to take inspiration from Pat and Lisa and Kathleen as well and perhaps consider supporting Champlain College's special collections. You know philanthropic support of special collections allows us to invest in preserving the many stories and materials from our story past and to share them with you through events such as this. We hope to see you next year back on Champlain campus for what I'm sure will be another fascinating exploration of the history of our community. So I thank you for attending and please have a wonderful evening.