One of the important medical men in Wellington County’s history is Dr. Stephen Lett, who served as the founding medical superintendent of the Homewood Retreat (later called the Homewood Sanitarium), which was on the edge of Guelph when it was established in 1883.
Stephen Lett was born in Ireland in 1847 and came to Canada with his family as a child. The family was well-to-do. Lett was educated by private tutors and at Upper Canada College in Toronto.
His initial career was a varied one. After leaving school he joined the militia and served at Port Colborne, Welland, and Fort Erie at the time of the Fenian agitation in the mid-1860s. He left the military in 1870. He then apprenticed with a doctor. Medical training was then quite variable in its quality, but Lett received sufficient training to qualify for membership in the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
During his military career Lett had become acquainted with John W. Langmuir, who also served in the militia in Niagara, and who was appointed the provincial inspector of prisons and asylums in 1869. Langmuir persuaded Lett to accept an appointment as assistant medical officer of the Malden Lunatic Asylum at Amherstburg, under Dr. Henry Landor. A short time later, Lett and Landor transferred to another facility at London.
When Dr. Landor died in 1877, Lett had assumed he would succeed to the senior position, but political factors came into play and Lett was sidetracked in favour of another man. Thin skinned and very sensitive to slights, Stephen Lett was unable to work with his new superior. J.W. Langmuir intervened, and had Lett transferred to the provincial asylum in Toronto.
During the 1870s, Lett had come to see that his own medical education was sketchy and deficient. During 1878 and 1879 he took courses at the University of Toronto, earning an MD degree. In 1883, Lett transferred to asylum at Hamilton.
By then Dr. Lett had formed an acquaintance with Charles Kirk Clarke, the Elora-born doctor who specialized in mental disorders. The two men agreed on many points in the treatment of mental disorders and the need to improve the quality of people employed in asylums.
As the public mental hospitals grew in size, staffing them adequately and providing effective treatments became more difficult. Oliver Mowat’s provincial government wanted to keep expenditures as low as possible. Consequently, mental hospitals became largely custodial facilities, with little in the way of treatment. Their role was to keep the mentally ill from harming the public or themselves.
That policy led to the rise of small private facilities with more ambitious goals for treatment. When he retired from the public service, Lett’s mentor, J.W. Langmuir, decided to found such a facility himself. He formed a partnership with E.A. Meredith, a former inspector of asylums for the federal government.
In 1882, Langmuir purchased part of the old Dr. William Clarke estate on the edge of Guelph, then owned by MP Donald Guthrie, for use as an asylum. The 19-acre parcel included a large three-storey residence and several outbuildings. The two men hired Guelph contractors to build additions to the house, which was to have a capacity of 50 patients, half of them women.
Not surprisingly, Langmuir sought out Stephen Lett to be the new hospital’s medical superintendent.
The new private hospital, named the Homewood Retreat, accepted its first patients in January 1884.
The setting, between Delhi Street and the Speed River, was an idyllic one, well suited to Dr. Lett’s theories on the treatment of mental problems, and particularly for dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction, which were the Homewood’s specialties under Dr. Lett.
Though it would grow to be Canada’s largest private mental health asylum in the 20th century, Homewood lurched along during its first years on a very shaky financial foundation. There was a small grant per patient from the Ontario government, but the Homewood relied largely on the fees charged to patients and their families.
That meant that the facility drew from the ranks of the well-off, and that the number of patients in residence was often far below capacity.
In addition to income that was lower than expected, Homewood also suffered from Lett’s poor skills as an administrator. He was sometimes less than prudent with money, and he had difficulty controlling his staff. In one case, in 1889, he failed to take action against matron Alice Finch, nurse, who was supplying patients with alcohol and opium.
Dr. Lett believed that the best method of curing substance addiction was to taper off the dosage over a period of time, often months, and to interest them in activities that would take their minds off drugs and liquor. Patients therefore had expensive stays at the facility, requiring constant supervision by staff. Lett also believed that marijuana could help in curing patients of their addictions to harsher substances.
He encouraged his staff to become totally involved with their patients’ activities so that their reintegration with society after discharge would be successful.
He saw dependency as a disease, rather than a vice or a moral failing. Lett’s methods were much in contrast with those of other medical and legal authorities of his time. One prominent Ontario doctor, for example, thought that women alcoholics were best cured with a minimum two years in jail.
Though a proud and sensitive man, Lett also had weaknesses in his character. He continued to be close to Langmuir, regularly seeking his advice and following Langmuir’s suggestions to the letter. One of those recommendations was that Lett attend medical conferences and meetings that were relevant to mental health.
By 1900, Dr. Lett was well known in the medical profession across the continent. Between 1886 and 1899 he authored articles in prestigious medical journals on the subjects of alcoholism, the use of opium, and cocaine addiction. He came to believe that heredity was a major factor in the appearance of addictions as well as other mental problems, and that addicts should not be blamed for their so-called weaknesses.
A skilled and effective writer, Dr. Lett also wrote for the popular press. His articles appeared in magazines and in newspapers in Guelph, Toronto, and elsewhere. By 1900, he was the best-known specialist in Canada on the subject of addictions and substance abuse.
Among those in Stephen Lett’s social circle in Guelph was Henry Peterson, the crown attorney. Before they met Peterson was already convinced that mental imbalances rather than criminal intent characterized some of those whom he prosecuted in court. Dr. Lett furthered Peterson’s understanding of mental problems, and that had a direct impact on the administration of justice in Wellington County.
Peterson was far ahead of his colleagues elsewhere in recommending that those with obvious mental problems be sent to a mental facility rather than to jail. Many times Peterson called on Dr. Lett to give expert testimony in court.
Stephen Lett suffered from a chronic neurological disorder, which became so severe that he was forced to retire in 1901, at the age of 54. He was not on the staff to see the name change to Homewood Sanitarium in 1902, or the start of construction on major additions to the facility in 1905.
Stephen Lett continued to live in Guelph until his death in 1905. Surviving him were his wife, Annie, a son and a daughter – and a legacy that deserves to be better known in Guelph and Wellington County.