Charles Kirk Clarke

Charles Kirk Clarke (1857 - 20 January 1924) was a psychiatrist who was influential in Canadian politics.

Clarke was born in Elora, Ontario, son of a prominent Ontario parliamentarian. He graduated from University of Toronto in 1879 and went on to found the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene (now the Canadian Mental Health Association ) in 1914 with Dr. Clarence Hincks.

As Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto, he oversaw creation of the Department of Psychiatry, and development of the medical school.

Clarke first practised psychiatry at the 999 Queen Street institution in Toronto. In 1880, then took a post at the Hamilton asylum.

Clarke was an early proponents of eugenics, emphasizing the importance of restrictive laws that would limit the immigration and marriage of the "mentally defective." To them, such laws seemed necessary to stem the explosive growth of state and provincial mental asylums where foreign-born patients made up more than 50 percent of the hospital population. Further, the growth of hereditarian views in science supported eugenic proposals; psychiatry's desire for greater respectability in the medical profession made eugenic "science" attractive. By 1905, Clarke had abandoned the movement, and many of the other leading psychiatrists would follow suit by the end of World War I, when it was clear that eugenic measures were not having the desired effects.

He then joined his brother-in-law at the psychiatric hospital in Kingston. He succeeded his brother-in-law at the facility after he was murdered by a paranoid patient. Clarke survived a separate attack by a patient and carried on in Kingston until 1905 when he succeeded Dr. Daniel Clark as superintendent of the Toronto Asylum. In 1911 he resigned from government service and was appointed superintendent of the Toronto General Hospital.

Clarke became ill in the autumn of 1923 and died in Toronto early the next year.

References

Dowbiggin IR. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940. ISBN: 0801433568