Sonoma State Home-Main Building

About this property

The Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC) was a large state school in California, United States for people with developmental disabilities, and is located in Eldridge in Sonoma County. Former names for this hospital include California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble Minded Children (1883); Sonoma State Home (1909); Sonoma State Hospital (1953); and Sonoma Developmental Center starting in 1986. The center closed on 31 December 2018. It opened at its current location on November 24, 1891, though it had existed at previous locations in White Sulphur Springs near Vallejo, California starting in 1883; a location in Fasking Park in Alameda County; and another location in Santa Clara (near the intersection of Market and Washington Street) from 1885 to 1891. In 1902, Governor Henry T. Gage ordered an investigation by Frederick Winslow Hatch, the General Superintendent of State Hospitals in California for Dr. William M. Lawlor, the Superintendent of the California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble Minded Children. Lawlor was charged with the cruel treatment of patients under his care, including children. Dozens died at this hospital in an outbreak of Spanish influenza in 1918. California was the third state to pass a compulsory sterilization law in 1909, the Asexualization Act. F.O. Butler was the superintendent of Sonoma State home starting in 1918. He believed that sterilization benefited both the individuals and society as a whole, Both through public promotion and actual operations, he was largely responsible for thousands of sterilizations. He himself is estimated to have performed at least 1000 sterilizations throughout his career. During his time as superintendent, Sonoma acted as a kind of "revolving operating room." In an attempt to expand beyond the institution (and get around a legal loophole), Sonoma admitted patients solely for the purpose of being sterilized and then released. According to a study conducted by Paul Popenoe, between the years 1922–1925, 25% of those females sterilized fell into this category. This aggressive approach is likely the reason for Sonoma's comparatively high number of sterilizations. Sonoma was said to have sterilized more "mental defectives" than any other institution in the world. Often overlooked, Sonoma conducted dangerous tests and trials on patients into the 1960s. Testing in mental institution alleviated the compensation and consent required for researches. Such treatments, including radiation dosing experiments, resulted in countless injuries and deaths that are still being investigated. A story in the October, 1952 issue of the Sonoma Index-Tribune, described the test of a live polio vaccine on "61 boys and girls (who) took the new vaccine in a glass of chocolate milk … regarding it merely as an extra 'treat'." The Index-Tribune article clarifies that parents of the young subjects had given their permission for the tests.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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