Crittenton General Hospital’s Forgotten Legacy Serving Single Mothers and Promoting Adoption in Michigan

By Rudy Owens, MA, MPH

Published March 16, 2019

One of the unexpected outcomes of the American adoption experience is how the stigma of illegitimacy created a cloak of invisibility around the birth of adoptees and their presence in the general population. The failure to count adoptees officially in state and federal vital statistics such as the U.S. Census up until the year 2000 also has promoted their hidden status.[1] The intersection of these outcomes can be seen in the story of Crittenton General Hospital of Detroit, demolished in 1975 and now largely forgotten.

The hospital’s historic mission dates to the late 1800s, at the dawn of the Progressive Movement. The hospital became the largest maternal care facility for single women that was created by the National Florence Crittenton Mission[2], a philanthropic organization that later played one of the most important roles in the country’s bold new experiment in expanding adoption in the 1940s.

Founded by a wealthy New York druggist, Charles N. Crittenton, the national mission quickly grew from its street ministry grassroots serving destitute women and prostitutes in New York in 1883. It was incorporated by Congress in 1898, and by 1909 it had established 70 homes across the country, just 26 years after its founding by the millionaire businessman. By 1933, it boasted of having served more than half a million women.[3]

Today, the former maternity homes and hospitals scattered from Detroit to Los Angeles to Seattle to Washington, DC, are now closed or razed. The organization today is a lightly staffed nonprofit called the National Crittenton Foundation, which serves at-risk, young women. Nearly all of the former homes and hospitals are closed.

Crittenton General Hospital’s disappearance from public memory today is closely tied to how society now views single motherhood as socially acceptable and the decline of adoption as a preferred choice for unwanted pregnancies. Only four decades have passed since single women could not raise children without social condemnation. Oddly, the stigma of illegitimacy attached to the Crittenton mission persists to this day, despite these new social norms.

The hospital was chartered to serve two socially scorned groups: single mothers and their infants, most of whom who were placed for adoption at Crittenton homes and hospitals after 1943. Even as the hospital was shutting down in 1974 after decades of serving as the largest birthplace for adoptees in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press covered its closing in January that year without any reference to the likely thousands of infants who were delivered there and placed for adoption.[4]

That narrative of omission continues more than four decades later. Crittenton General Hospital’s affiliate that opened in Rochester, Michigan in 1967, is now called Ascension Crittenton. In 1967, the two Crittenton hospitals were known as the Detroit and Rochester units.

The Rochester facility, despite its historic ties to the Crittenton name and mission, does not list any historical information about Detroit Crittenton from the early 1900s through 1967 on its company website today.

Ascension Rochester offers no background how its founding Detroit hospital was founded as a maternity facility for unwed mothers and their illegitimate babies. Its corporate communications also omit how the original Crittenton facilities in the Motor City played a pivotal role facilitating adoption in one of the country’s largest cities. [5] Even on the 50^th anniversary of the Rochester hospital’s opening in August 1967, the Rochester media ignored this important chapter of Michigan’s social history—one that was tied societal notions of illegitimacy.[6]

Detroit’s Historic Role in the History of the Crittenton Mission and Serving Single Mothers

All told, Detroit was home to five Crittenton maternity homes and hospitals from 1897 to the 1970s. [7]^{, [8]} Crittenton General Hospital, the largest of all Detroit Crittenton facilities, replaced an earlier hospital that operated from 1909 to 1929, which failed to meet growing local demand for services to its client population.

Fundraising in Detroit for a new hospital by the mission and the Young Women’s Christian Association raised $700,000 in 1927, at a time when Detroit was at its financial and manufacturing peak.[9] The city was home to 3,000 major manufacturing plants and the highest wages per capita in the country. The New York Times in 1927 could boast, “Detroiters are the most prosperous slice of average humanity that now exists or that has ever existed.”[10]

The hospital was built on 1554 Tuxedo Street and would serve Michigan women and their children from 1929 until its final day on March 22, 1974.

Ultimately, the hospital closed because of financial strains and economic decay in Detroit,[11] in addition to the national decline of adoption as a way to address illegitimate births. Overall, more women were choosing to keep their children as single mothers by 1973, the year of the historic Roe v. Wade decision. The building was demolished shortly after it closed, in 1975, and there are no historic markers honoring those whose lives began there.

When it first opened, Crittenton General gave single and shamed pregnant women a place to give birth, as well as bond and stay with their children. Many were lower-income mothers.

In 1933, the mission reported Crittenton General had a low number of maternal deaths at the new and former hospital, with only four deaths in its first decades.[12] The hospital sought to help the single mothers “earn their living and providing for the care of their babies.”[13]

The hospital had three wings. The two wings that served mothers and their babies had 115 dormitory beds and 100 cribs, as well as 40 bassinets. It also featured a large nursery. A third wing catered to families with moderate incomes, which helped to supplement the hospital’s maternal services. During its decades of operation the hospital also served as a training facility for residents from medical schools and other hospitals.

The quality of care at Crittenton General was above average. One national study conducted of Crittenton hospitals and maternity homes and other maternity facilities in 1965 found that Crittenton facilities counted 14 infant deaths, or 9 per 1,000.[14] For the same year in the United States, infant mortality was nearly 25 per 1,000 births,[15] indicating women served by Crittenton facilities received health benefits that helped their children.

Many of the women who delivered their children at the hospital also stayed at the last of the city’s three Crittenton maternity homes, which opened in 1955 on Woodrow Wilson Avenue, adjacent to the hospital. The hospital originally housed its client population, as did other Crittenton homes and hospitals in other cities.

At the Crittenton Maternity Home, single pregnant women lived outside of public view, and then completed their pregnancy delivering their children at the hospital. The maternity home on Woodrow Wilson continued to be run by the Ford Hospital, and is now home to Cass Community Social Services.

Crittenton General Hospital’s history mirrors the larger social history of illegitimacy and adoption in the United States, straddling two eras and making it an important institution in Michigan’s social and women’s history.

Before the mid-1940s, Crittenton staff nationally encouraged single mothers to keep their babies at dozens of Crittenton facilities nationwide, in the best interest of the child and mother. This also fulfilled the organization’s historic mission to keep mother and child together and to combat the stigma of illegitimacy nationally.

After 1943, the philanthropic mission ended its long-running policy of not separating mothers and their infants. At this time, a new class of professionals, social workers, had taken control of maternity homes nationally and exerted more influence in the expansion of American adoption. Some Crittenton staff complained the placing of babies for adoption was not doing true Florence Crittenton work. But by the end of the decade, most Crittenton homes and hospitals were regularly arranging for the adoption of babies born by their clients in their facilities.[16]

This sea change coincided with a rise of out-of-marriage births and the emergence of adoption as the “most suitable plan,” as the American Academy of Pediatrics called national adoption practices it officially supported as the best societal approach to out-of-marriage pregnancy—particularly for white mothers.[17]

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, with its original mission abandoned, the organization became a major American institution in the promotion of adoption for mostly single white mothers. Young women who stayed at these facilities were strongly encouraged to relinquish their children to adoption agencies rather than keep their infants, at the urging of social workers, family members, faith-based groups, and churches. The mission itself had transformed into an adoption placement service from a service group dedicated to the union of single mothers and their kids.

During these decades, the national organization reorganized. Starting in 1950, the National Florence Crittenton Mission association created the Florence Crittenton Home Association, to serve as a clearinghouse for the dozens of homes nationwide. In 1956, the organization launched the Florence Crittenton League, which offered casework and adoption services—furthering the break from the agency’s original mission.

In 1960, the homes association changed its name to the Florence Crittenton Association of America, and it staffed its homes with professionally trained social workers. Many of those social workers strongly encouraged adoption as the best possible choice for single women boarders.[18]

The 1960s also marked the mission’s and association’s high water mark, providing maternal health and adoption services nationwide.[19]^, [20]

While there is no official count, the U.S. Children’s Bureau in 1984 estimated that nearly 2.7 million adoptees were relinquished between 1944 and 1977, without any state-by-state count known.[21] Two major historic trends ended the adoption boom era during this decade. In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its historic Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion. By the mid-1970s, more women were choosing to keep their children as single mothers as the stigma of single motherhood subsided.[22]

The Odd Case of No Crittenton Birth Records in Archives

Despite the preeminence of Crittenton General Hospital serving single, unwed mothers in Michigan for decades, no official record of the number of so-called “out of wedlock” children born there can be found in likely archives. In the course of preparing a history of adoption and Crittenton General Hospital, the author contacted in the summer and fall of 2016 the University of Minnesota Library (archive of records for the national Florence Crittenton Mission), the National Crittenton Foundation (the mission’s successor agency), the Detroit Historical Society, the Detroit Public Library, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), and what is now called Ascension Crittenton Hospital. None claimed to have any records of Crittenton General Hospital births. In the case of MDHHS, the agency would not answer if its vital records section knew how many Michigan adoptees were born in the state after 1945.[23]

The peculiar lack of basic vital records such as the number of infant births for the preeminent maternity hospital in Michigan, where likely thousands of Michigan mothers relinquished their sons and daughters for adoption, is noteworthy and troubling.

Unlike Detroit, some Crittenton maternity hospitals have published their records, preserving their historic role serving pregnant single women. The Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers in in Peoria, Illinois, which opened in 1937, included a full hospital wing for birthing with pre- and post-delivery rooms—mirroring both the medical and boarding practices of Crittenton General Hospital in its first decades. The Peoria facility between 1938 and April of 1965 counted more than 4,000 deliveries.[24] Given the size of metro Detroit, as the fifth largest city in the United States by the 1950s, it is safe to assume thousands more infants would have been delivered in Crittenton General Hospital from 1929 through 1974.

Today those whose first days passed through Crittenton facilities are also trying to find their past and their parents through online sites, such as a forum called the Florence Crittenton Home Reunion Registry. It is dedicated by so-called Crittenton babies and used by adoptees born mostly in the boom adoption years from 1945 through 1975 at Crittenton facilities.[25]

One unidentified man born in 1963 at Detroit Crittenton Hospital wrote a typical post on a site called Cousin Connect that noted his mother was from Scotland, and his father backed out of marrying the mother. “Looking for birth parents, siblings, or other family,” he wrote. “Interested in obtaining medical info, heritage.” This adult adoptee, like all Michigan adoptees born in the three and a half decades after World War II, is denied access to records by the State of Michigan because of state law.

Michigan, unlike only nine states, denies all adoptees unfettered access to their original birth records.[26]^, [27] The state’s adoption laws pose almost insurmountable burdens for adoptees born between 1945 and 1980 to get their records.

Those born during these years have the greatest restrictions to obtain their original birth records, including their original birth certificates, except in rare cases by a court order.[28] Adoptees born in the years before 1945 and after 1980 have less restrictions—all codified in law. State health officials claim at most only one to two Michigan adoptees a month who were born during the boom years of adoption—and who face the most legal obstacles getting their birth records—even try to seek a court petition for their records.[29]

The national, state-level, and institutional record keeping that does not count Michigan-born adoptees and the laws that prevent this uncounted group of Michigan natives from knowing their past is not a historic coincidence. They also highlight unplanned outcomes in this national social engineering experiment,[30] still hidden by historic shame and reinforced by legal bias to those who were not born “legitimately.”

From a public health standpoint, it is unthinkable that no accurate record exists of the number of adoptees who were relinquished in the United States, Michigan, or even at one hospital in Detroit. The U.S. Census in its last two counts failed to account for all adoptees in the way it counted adoptees and foster children,[31] missing entirely the Crittenton General Hospital generation from Michigan and all other states.

The absence of accurate data on adoptee numbers diminishes their status, and thus undermines their efforts to restore their former legal rights to receive copies of their original birth records in most states, where they are denied access to their identity records unlike all non-adoptees.

Hiding the history of adoptees, including the history of facilities that brought them into the world like Crittenton General Hospital, marks another way adoptees’ stories and their basic rights are undermined. Telling the story of their mothers and the historic role of facilities that served them both in the mid- to late 20^th century can begin to correct this historic wrong.

Author note: This article was written prior to the publication of my memoir on the U.S. adoption experience, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are: An Adoptee’s Journey Through the American Adoption Experience. An earlier version of this article, which includes a photo essay of historic Florence Crittenton Mission maternity homes and hospitals can be found on my now-inactive blog (rudyowensblog.com). 

Notes

[1] Rose M. Kreider and Daphne A. Lofquist, “Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2010,” Current Population Reports P20-572 (US Census Bureau, Washington, DC. 2014), 4, accessed February 28, 2016, https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-572.pdf.

[2] Otto Wilson, Robert South Barrett, and National Florence Crittenton Mission, Fifty Years Work With Girls, 1883-1933: A Story of the Florence Crittenton Homes (Alexandria: The National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1933), 270.

[3] Wilson, Barrett, and Crittenton, Fifty Years Work With Girls, 60.

[4] Detroit Free Press, “Silent Halls, Empty Beds at Crittenton,” January 24, 1974, 64.

[5] “The History of Ascension Crittenton,” Ascension Crittenton (website), accessed August 20, 2017, http://www.crittenton.com/about-crittenton/history-of-crittenton/.

[6] Deborah Larsen, “How Crittenton Hospital Came to Rochester,” Rochester Media, last modified August 15, 2017, Accessed August 17, 2017, http://www.rochestermedia.com/how-crittenton-hospital-came-to-rochester/.

[7] Rochester Clarion, “A Salute to Crittenton Hospital” (supplemental), August 3, 1967. Item provided to author by Ascension Crittenton Hospital.

[8] Wilson, Barrett, and Crittenton, Fifty Years Work With Girls, 271.

[9] Wilson, Barrett, and Crittenton, Fifty Years Work With Girls, p. 275.

[10] Stefan Link, “Detroit: Capital of the Automotive Age, Global Urban History, last modified December 6, 2015, accessed August 20, 2017, https://globalurbanhistory.com/2015/12/06/detroit-capital-of-the-automotive-age/.

[11] Detroit Free Press, “Silent Halls, Empty Beds at Crittenton,” 64.

[12] Wilson, Barrett, and Crittenton, Fifty Years Work With Girls, p. 276.

[13] Wilson, Barrett, and Crittenton, Fifty Years Work With Girls, p. 277.

[14] Florence Crittenton Association of America, “Services to and Characteristics of Unwed Mothers, 1965,” (August 1966), Box 67, Folder 6, 11, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, Florence Crittenton.

[15] Helen C. Chase, “Ranking Countries by Infant Mortality Rates,” Public Health Reports 84, no. 1 (1969), 22.

[16] Regina Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls. Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 89.

[17] American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Adoptions, Adoption of Children (Evanston, Illinois: American Academy of Pediatrics, 1960), 9.

[18] University of Minnesota. National Florence Crittenton Mission Records, last modified 2006, http://discover.lib.umn.edu/cgi/f/findaid /findaid-idx?c=umfa;cc=umfa;q1=crittenton;rgn=main;view=text;didno=sw0006m.

[19] Old Dominion University Patricia W. & J Douglas Perry Library, Florence Crittenton Home of Norfolk Records, 1894-1977, Special Collections and University Archives, last revised 2013, accessed August 15, 2017, https://www.lib.odu.edu/archon/?p=collections/findingaid&id=120&q=.

[20] Pollak, Michael, “Women on the Margins,” New York Times, December 7, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/nyregion/all-about-the-crittenton-homes-for-young-women-on-the-margins.html.

[21] Penelope L. Maza, “Adoption Trends: 1944–1975,” Child Welfare Research Notes #9 (US Children’s Bureau, August 1984), Child Welfare League of America Papers, Box 65, Folder: “Adoption—Research—Reprints of Articles,” 1–4, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.

[22] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Report to Congress on Out-of-Wedlock Child Bearing (Hyattsville, MD: September 1995), accessed May 13, 2016, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/misc/wedlock.pdf: 142, 182, 187, 247-8.

[23] Jennifer Eisner (Press Officer, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services), email to author, July 27, 2016.

[24] Woodbridge Professional Building, “History of Woodbridge,” accessed August 13, 2016, https://woodridgeprofessionalbuilding.com/history-of-woodridge.

[25] Florence Crittenton Home Reunion Registry, accessed January 31, 2017, http://www.florencecrittentonhome.com/aboutus.html.

[26] American Adoption Congress, “State Legislation,” last modified 2017, accessed March 11, 2017, http://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/state.php.

[27] Gregory D. Luce, “OBC Access Maps,” Adoptee Rights Law Center, last modified June 2017, accessed June 2017, https://adopteerightslaw.com/interactive-maps/.

[28] Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, “Release of

Information from Michigan’s Adoption Records,” last modified September 2016, accessed August 20, 2017, https://www.michigan.gov/documents/FIA-AdoptPub439_12970_7.pdf.

[29] Tamara Weaver, email to Glenn Copeland, “Subject: Re: Story of Interest: Michigan Not Releasing Original Birth Certificate to Adult Adoptee,” March 21, 2016.

[30] Barbara Melosh, Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 10.

[31] Kreider and Lofquist, “Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2010.”

 

Bibliography:

American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Adoptions. Adoption of Children. Evanston, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics, 1960.

American Adoption Congress. “State Legislation.” Accessed March 11, 2017. Http://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/state.php.

Ascension. “Crittenton Becomes Ascension Crittenton Hospital.” August 2, 2017. Accessed August 12, 2017. https://ascension.org/news/news-articles/2017/08/02/16/06/crittenton-becomes-ascension-crittenton-hospital.

Crittenton Hospital Medical Center. “The History of Crittenton.” Accessed August 13, 2016. Http://www.crittenton.com/about-crittenton/history-of-crittenton/.

Detroit Free Press. “Silent Halls, Empty Beds at Crittenton.” January 24, 1974: 64.

Eisner, Jennifer. Email communication to author, July 27, 2016.

Fessler, Ann. The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

Florence Crittenton Association of America. “Services to and Characteristics of Unwed Mothers, 1965.” August 1966. Box 67, folder 6. Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, Florence Crittenton.

Kunzel, Regina. Fallen Women, Problem Girls. Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Kreider, Rose M. and Daphne Lofquist. “Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2010, Population Characteristics.” U.S. Census Bureau, April 2014. Https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-572.pdf.

Larsen, Deborah. “How Crittenton Hospital Came to Rochester.” Rochester Media. Accessed August 17, 2017. Http://www.rochestermedia.com/how-crittenton-hospital-came-to-rochester/.

Luce, Gregory D. “OBC Access Maps.” Adoptee Rights Law Center (website). Accessed June 2017. Https://adopteerightslaw.com/interactive-maps/.

Link, Stefan. “Detroit: Capital of the Automotive Age.” Global Urban History. Last modified December 6, 2015.Accessed August 20, 2017. https://globalurbanhistory.com/2015/12/06/detroit-capital-of-the-automotive-age/.

Maza, Penelope L. “Adoption Trends: 1944-1975.” Child Welfare Research Notes, no. 9, U.S. Children’s Bureau, August 1984. Child Welfare League of America Papers, box 65, folder: “Adoption—Research—Reprints of Articles,” Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.

Melosh, Barbara. Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (website). “Release of Information from Michigan’s Adoption Records.” Accessed August 20, 2017. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/FIA-AdoptPub439_12970_7.pdf

Old Dominion University Patricia W. & J Douglas Perry Library, Florence Crittenton Home of Norfolk Records, 1894-1977, Special Collections and University Archives. Accessed August 15, 2017. https://www.lib.odu.edu/archon/?p=collections/findingaid&id=120&q=

Pollak, Michael. “Women on the Margins.” New York Times. Accessed February 2, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/nyregion/all-about-the-crittenton-homes-for-young-women-on-the-margins.html.

Rochester Clarion. “A Salute to Crittenton Hospital (supplemental).” August 3, 1967.

Weaver, Tamara. Email to Glenn Copeland. “Subject: Re: Story of Interest: Michigan Not Releasing Original Birth Certificate to Adult Adoptee,” March 21, 2016 and March 22, 2016.

Wilson, Otto, Robert South Barrett, and National Florence Crittenton Mission. Fifty Years Work With Girls, 1883-1933: A Story of the Florence Crittenton Homes. Alexandria: The National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1933.

Woodbridge Professional Building. “History of Woodbridge.” Accessed August 13, 2016. http://www.woodridgeprofessionalbuilding.com/history.shtml.