In Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, he writes of the “sanitarium at Canton” and going to “… that Canton madhouse, and [then] together we shall go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth.” Canton, Massachusetts, is about twelve miles south of the city of Boston. And about two-thirds of the way from Providence to Boston. At circa 1900 there was, however, no madhouse or even a disease sanatorium there.
But the presence of Canton Junction on the Providence – Boston train line suggests Lovecraft knew it, at least from the train windows. There is a large viaduct which carries the train, and Lovecraft would have enjoyed sweeping views across the Canton topography. He must have been across it many times.
Longest and tallest railway viaduct in the world, when built in 1835.
Interestingly Canton is about two miles east of Walpole, and of course Walpole is also the name of the father of the gothic novel. There was however no asylum at Walpole, Mass. Looking at the list of train stations on the line, and the map, Lovecraft may have been able to see East Walpole in the distance, across the marshland, from the Canton Viaduct.
There was however a large and real asylum at Foxborough (aka Foxboro) (opened 1893, closed 1976), originally the state’s treatment asylum for chronic alcoholics. Foxborough was two train stops before Canton, on the Providence to Boston line. It’s thus not impossible Lovecraft knew that asylum from the train window, as it was likely within sight as the train passed.
Train line passing alongside the asylum site, Foxboro station just a quarter mile south. (With thanks to the ghost-hunter who identified the laundry building of the site, and thus gave me my bearings).
A blogger who has investigated it talks of a road approach through marshlands made of “cranberry bogs [that] looked like blood pools”. He also usefully notes… “After 1905, the Massachusetts Hospital for Dipsomaniacs and Inebriates went through a gradual transition to a psychiatric institution”, which another source states was due to the alcoholic inmates constantly escaping in search of drink. Thus by the time Lovecraft came to write “Innsmouth”, it was indeed a general “madhouse”.
What of “my poor little cousin” in “Innsmouth”? I assume he was loosely modelled after Lovecraft’s beloved-and-lost cousin, Phillips Gamwell. Thus Gamwell’s home in Cambridge, Mass., might be the place to look. But I can find no asylum or sanitorium there.
There was also the large official Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane, at Worcester, which may have formed a mental model for Lovecraft. It certainly looks like the sort of place many readers will have in mind.
What of Canton, Ohio? No madhouse there. The nearest was Massillon which is eight miles away, and also the main Ohio state asylum at Columbus some 130 miles from Canton…
But my feeling is the Foxborough asylum was the inspiration for the Lovecraft called the “Canton madhouse”, knowing that readers in his circle who knew the Boston – Providence railway line would make the connection with Foxboro madhouse (four miles south, on the train track, from Canton).
Lovecraftians will also recall Lovecraft’s planned but never written ‘Foxfield’ stories. See: Will Murray’s “Where Was Foxfield?” in Lovecraft Studies No. 33 (1995). Also to be found in Dissecting Cthulhu: Essays on the Cthulhu Mythos. For those unable to pay the prices now asked for either of these, The Lovecraft Encyclopedia usefully summarises the essay… “it indicates that Foxfield is east of Aylesbury and Dunwich and northwest of Arkham.”
However, Olmstead’s grandfather James Williamson hailed from Ohio, so how can you be so certain that Olmstead’s cousin is in a madhouse in Canton, MA and not in Canton, OH?
Well, yes… I guess given the Olmstead lineage it could refer to either place. And no way of being sure, other than perhaps that the narrator first talks of “the sanitarium at Canton” in relation to a visit to Cleveland. But we’d still have to then stretch a point, to get out to a real asylum at Massillon. And why pick Canton, Ohio, anyway, other than just randomly for its convenient rural proximity to the city of Cleveland? Usually Lovecraft picks places for a reason, or for some in-joke. If the asylum is instead in Mass., that would put it just some 30 or so miles from the key model for Innsmouth. But possibly the forthcoming Armitage Symposium paper, “The Shadow Over Lake Erie: A Trip to Cleveland and its Influence on H.P Lovecraft’s Innsmouth” will soon be able to shed more light on the matter?
I have an alternative idea that Lovecraft might have been referring to the Massachusetts Hospital School when he wrote about a sanitarium in Canton. This school was established to help physically disabled children in 1907, and was expanded by a major land purchase in 1920. Thus, I think it could have been mentioned in local papers prior to Lovecraft writing Shadow over Innsmouth in 1931, and so he referenced it to add the the sense of realism at the close of the story.
https://cantonmahistorical.pbworks.com/w/page/34431209/Massachusetts%20Hospital%20School#:~:text=The%20facility%20opened%20in%201907,new%20school%20house%20in%201927.
I’m not sure why he used ‘madhouse’ in one instance in the story and ‘sanitarium’ in two instances. I believe sanitarium was a word used for places where people with long term physical ailments convalesced, and not really a synonym for an asylum. I’ve read sometimes ‘sanitorium’ was used specifically for contagious ailments like tuberculosis, but I’m not sure how specifically the words really were used. Anyway, sanitarium as a place for physical illness makes a bit more sense in that Shadow has less emphasis about madness and more about physical transformations and Lovecraft’s associated anxieties about miscegenation. Also, Lovecraft’s story says it is the ‘poor little cousin’ – I believe meaning a younger person, which again is consistent with the Mass. Hospital School, which was for children. So, by the parlance of the day, there was in fact a facility in Canton MA that might have accurately been called a ‘sanitarium.’
Thanks Luke.
Yes, the terminologies and timelines of disability in the U.S. are indeed complex. One should not forget social class, often an almost-forgotten category among today’s commentariat. Lovecraft’s Providence aunts would have been far from comfortable talking of a relative sent to the ‘madhouse’, whereas ‘sanitarium’ would have been a far more agreeable term for them and their genteel circle. Also a usefully vague term, as there could be sanitariums for a variety of problems and diseases.
The “Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children” [was later the] “Massachusetts Hospital School (MHS), located on an 160-acre suburban campus in Canton, fifteen miles southwest of Boston” and opened in 1907. I think you have something there, congratulations. That’s a good candidate, though not a “madhouse”. Had 720 children in 1926, according to their Annual Report. Was a hospital for physical problems, not mental. Now called the Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital for Children.
Canton is a small place, so I guess the next questions would be… could Lovecraft see it easily from the train on the way to Boston, and if so did it give the appearance of a ‘madhouse’? The answer would appear to be ‘no’, as here (in circa 1910) it looks fairly low-rise and not very gothic… https://jurn.link/tentaclii/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/stateschool.jpg
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