postcard courtesy vance lauderdale
An old postcard shows the Gartly-Ramsay Hospital in the 1930s.
Dear Vance: What happened to the old hospital on Jackson that was demolished to make way for the Salvation Army headquarters? — C.D., Memphis.
Dear C.D.: For close to a century, Memphians have been fortunate to have access to medical complexes that can treat just about anything that ails us. Baptist, Methodist, St. Francis, St. Jude, and Le Bonheur immediately come to mind. But for many years, smaller, privately owned facilities treated those suffering from illnesses and accidents. I’ve written before about Collins Chapel Hospital, but others include John Gaston Hospital (now part of Regional One), Terrell Memorial Hospital, Mercy Hospital, Crofford’s Infirmary, and a dozen others. The largest, and perhaps the most successful of these, was the Gartly-Ramsay Hospital, located at 696 Jackson Avenue.
Let’s start with the original building, constructed in 1859 as a private residence on the Old Raleigh Road (as Jackson was originally called) for Edgar McDavitt. Born in Shelby County, Kentucky, he somehow made his way to Shelby County, Tennessee, in 1841. McDavitt started out in the insurance business, then moved into banking, and was extremely successful in both. By the 1870s, he was president of the Memphis Insurance Company, Memphis Bank of Commerce, and Planters’ Bank. Hailed as a “financial pioneer,” when he died in 1885, a eulogy published in the Daily Appeal observed, “The sterling stuff of which he was made could not do otherwise than inspire the affection lavished upon him by a sorrowing community.”
I’m sure my half-dozen readers will feel the same about me some day.
McDavitt left behind his lavish Greek Revival mansion (supposedly the first private home in Memphis to have a bathtub) and an estate valued at more than $100,000 — the equivalent of $3.5 million today.
photograph by vance lauderdale
A photo from 1990 shows the hospital abandoned and neglected.
Now our story picks up in Canada — well, some of it. Histories of Gartly-Ramsay Hospital usually mention that two Canadian physicians founded it. Newspaper accounts say that Dr. Robert Ramsay was born in Scotland in 1881 and moved to Winnipeg, Canada. He earned a degree in nursing at the famous Battle Creek Sanitorium in Michigan before moving to Memphis in the early 1900s
At some point along this journey, he met Dr. George Gartley, whose connection to Canada is vague. He earned a degree from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, specializing in obstetrics. In 1911, the two physicians purchased the old McDavitt place, vacant for years, and transformed the former residence into the Gartly-Ramsay Hospital. Extensive renovations converted the rambling home into a 50-bed general hospital, with state-of-the-art X-ray equipment and diagnostic laboratories.
Judging from old newspaper stories, it was the place to go for accident victims. I was surprised to read how many Memphians who had swallowed poison, fallen off a ladder, crashed their car, tumbled off their bicycle, or needed urgent medical care “were presently recovering at Gartly-Ramsay Hospital.”
Even so, the facility had a rather bumpy start. It seems their very first patient — a Mrs. Walter Willingham who had come there all the way from Fulton, Kentucky — required complicated obstetrical surgery. Dr. Ramsay later told newspapers, “She was an unusual case, and treatment for her used up every bit of the supplies we had.” For his part, Dr. Gartly said, “He was so discouraged that he told his family the hospital idea was a failure. But business picked up, and soon all beds were filled.”
They didn’t bother mentioning that the patient (somehow) survived their treatment, and afterwards even wrote them a letter of apology! “I am sorry that I almost disrupted your hospital idea,” she said, “but I wish to say again how much I appreciate the splendid service I was provided.”
By 1950, the hospital began to specialize in the care and treatment of psychiatric patients, “not only from the Mid-South but areas as far away as Florida, Michigan, Texas, and California.” It was supposedly the first hospital in our city to offer electro-shock therapy.
I don’t fully understand the roles of Drs. Gartly and Ramsay in connection with the hospital they co-founded. Gartly, it seems, actually lived at the hospital in the early days, and yet I came across this brief newspaper account from 1921: “Dr. George Gartly announces the removal of his offices to Suite 404-406 of the Goodwyn Institute.” Did he no longer have offices at his own hospital? What’s more, during the early 1920s, the society columns often mentioned, “Dr. George Gartly has returned to Memphis,” without saying where he had been, or why.
A scandal at Gartly-Ramsay caught the attention of Memphians in 1923. It seems an operating room nurse married a patient, “while he lay in bed in pink pajamas too ill to stand up.” The groom, a planter from Friars Point, Mississippi, told reporters he was actually in love “with a young woman high in Memphis society whose name was not brought out in the trial.” It’s all very complicated, but as soon as he recovered from his surgery, he sued to have the marriage annulled, claiming that “while he was at the hospital, he married without knowing what he was doing.” He told the judge, “After the ceremony he got hold of a quart of liquor and drank it, together with smoking all the cigarettes that he could get hold of.”
This peculiar marriage, as one might expect, was eventually annulled. Most of the Lauderdale nuptials ended about the same way.
The number of patients and staff quickly outgrew the old McDavitt mansion. In 1927, work began on a second building, “thoroughly up-to-date, making it a strictly modern institution.” In 1930, newspapers reported that Gartly-Ramsay would open a sanitorium on the grounds, and other expansions including a two-story building that would house more treatment areas and even a nursing school.
photograph by Carl Van Vechten / public domain / wikipedia commons
William Faulkner in 1954.
By 1950, the hospital began to specialize in the care and treatment of psychiatric patients, “not only from the Mid-South but areas as far away as Florida, Michigan, Texas, and California.” It was supposedly the first hospital in our city to offer electro-shock therapy.
Gartly-Ramsay developed such a reputation that in 1949 it attracted an extremely famous patient, author William Faulkner, who was treated there for various problems. This was an important time in his career, to put it mildly. That year he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, though he wouldn’t actually receive the honor until December 1950.
Some of the methods seem rather unusual by today’s standards, described in an article published in the September 1993 issue of this magazine, “Getting Closer to Faulkner.” Author Lisa C. Hickman interviewed Dr. D.C. McCool, one of the psychiatrists who treated Faulkner at the time, who recalled that patients were often given a dose of Metrozol, a drug that provoked violent convulsions, after which the patient fell into a deep sleep. “It was a rather drastic but effective treatment for depression at that time,” said McCool.
We don’t have any record of what Faulkner thought about it.
The hospital ran into problems in the 1950s. Gartly moved to Orlando, and newspapers made a point of reporting, “He has recently severed his connections with the hospital.” It was now under the full control of Dr. Ramsay and his son, Dr. Robert Ramsay Jr. But the hospital was having trouble competing with the larger, better-financed and -equipped medical facilities in this area. They shut down the School of Nursing, and gradually drew fewer patients. In 1955, Ramsay died of a heart attack. Without his leadership, the old hospital struggled to survive, finally closing on New Year’s Day, 1972.
The site, complete with the original mansion and other medical buildings, changed hands several times. For a while, it operated as the Greater Community Senior Citizens Center. In the 1980s, new owners transformed it into Jackson Manor, a “congregate-care” facility. “It is not a nursing home,” explained the director. “It will be a homey place with porches.” The Commercial Appeal added, “That means socializing. It means in-house neighbors who might be lonely on their own.”
That didn’t last long. In 1998, the entire site, empty for years, was cleared to make way for the Memphis Command Center of the Salvation Army. The Purdue Center of Hope at Jackson and McDavitt — yes, the street named after the property’s original owner — is a recovery campus, offering shelter to women and children facing housing crises. In January of this year, however, the Salvation Army suspended new admissions to the Purdue Center because of a drop in funding.
Got a question for Vance?
Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis Magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101
