The Craig House Institute / Tioranda

The Tioronda Estate was purchased  in 1915 by Drs. Robert Lamb and Clarence J Slocum to be  a mental health treatment center. Clarence Slocum had visited a mental health facility where patients could walk around freely in Scotland, called the Craig Hospital, named this place the Craig House.  Until it closed its doors,the Craig House had a reputation for being the finest place for mental health rehab in the nation.  Many of the people who came there were famous and I shall discuss a few of them.  Jane Fonda’s mother , Frances Seymour (1886-1974) was the daughter of Eugene Ford Seymour, who was a descendent of Edward Seymour, First Duke of Somerset, brother of Jane Seymour,the third wife of Henry the VIII.  Frances Seymour married Henry Fonda in 1936 and was later hospitalized at Craig House, and there  she committed suicide in 1942. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda was there several times.  The last time was in 1934, after which she was transferred to another center in a catatonic state. During her stay here, there were many letters written between Dr Jonathan Slocum, Dr. C. Clarence Slocum’s son, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as between her and her mother and even from Eleanor Roosevelt.  They are all in a collection in the library of Princeton University.   Rosemary Kennedy was hospitalized there after having a lobotomy at George  Washington Hospital in Washington DC.  In 1941, doctors told her father that this neurosurgical procedure, lobotomy, would help her mood swings and sometimes violent outbursts. At the time, few lobotomies had been performed. Dr. James Watts carried out the procedure and Dr. Walter Freeman assisted, and described what it was like: “We went through the top of her head. I think she was still awake...The instrument looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut the brain tissue." As it was happening , he asked Rosemary questions. When she began to become incoherent , he stopped.”  This left her incontinent and with an infantile mentality,starring at the walls. This was certainly a tragedy, and lets us appreciate the potential  fallibility of any physician. From 1930 until she passed in 1948, Constance Whitey Warren was a guest there.  She was a famous sculptress. This shows Craig House was a place where people stayed a long time if they wanted, and could afford it. Many say the abandoned location is now incredibly haunted.