Something About Snow
It was a wintry day in Exeter on February 3rd, 1908, when a wagon arrived at the Hoxsie homestead, and the coachman shuffled eight young men from their seats to the inviting glow beyond the open door of the snow-covered farmhouse. Having made the twenty-mile journey from the Almshouse at Howard, this was the first contingency of inmates at the Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded.
Guy Franklin King was Patient №2, and at 28 years was the eldest of his new bunkmates. As a child, he was raised at his mother’s home in the Telegraph Hill section of Boston. His father — 20 years Mrs. King’s senior — worked as watchman at the Old Colony Railroad Depot until suffering a fatal heart attack on Halloween night, 1877. Guy and his Mrs. King would have been destitute had it not been for a boarder at their home who soon after wed the young widow, though it would prove a happier marriage for mother than child.
Eager to start a life together, two months before their wedding, the new couple adopted Guy to a family in Rhode Island — but his disability became too much for his foster mother to bear. His new home not long to last, he was sent back to Boston, after which he was transferred from one institution to the next until his final and fateful return to Rhode Island where he was a homeless pauper on the eve of his 18th birthday.
For ten years, Guy King labored at the State Almshouse; Rhode Island’s poor farm. Though having spent nearly half his life in institutions, he was a bright, if slow, and industrious young man. Perhaps these were the very reasons he was one of just eight inmates selected to pioneer the establishment of a new and experimental farm colony for people with disabilities in the Exeter countryside some 20 miles south of the city. It was called the Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded; an institution that would one day bear the name of its first superintendent, Dr. Joseph Ladd.
From the start Guy King and the young Dr. Ladd were close. In the Exeter School’s early years, he was entrusted with the keys to a Ford and put to work as the institution’s mail and delivery driver, while the Doctor saw to it that each month a small sum was deposited in Guy’s name.
“I feel that some recognition of his faithful service is due him,” Dr. Ladd wrote to the State General Assembly in 1924, “about five dollars a month, having him sign a receipt for this money, but not necessarily knowing where it came from.”
One September afternoon the following year, while all the world around him was full with the daily life of a working farm, Guy arrived at the Ladd’s home on what would prove to be his final rounds.
“His face was very red and had a staring look,” Mrs. Ladd would later recall. An hour after his departure from their house, they found him crumpled at the foot of the short stairway in the vegetable cellar, entirely unconscious, his eyeballs protruding. When Dr. Ladd received the call, he came quickly, and Guy was immediately taken to the first aid room for examination; but no evidence of injury could be found.
Several times during the night, Guy, now the Doctor’s patient, convulsed and vomited; but not even an injection of atropine could abate it, and neither would he awake to tell his tale. At 5:15 the next morning, he stopped breathing; Dr. Ladd swabbing his mouth by his side.
Guy King’s burial fee amounted to thirty-six dollars and sixty-eight cents. It was nearly every penny he had earned as a driver.
Today, on an unassuming patch of ground by an old dirt road that runs along an abandoned plot of land, a crude stone marks Guy King’s final resting place; not in any municipal cemetery, but a potter’s field. It’s just a short walk from the crossroads where over one hundred years ago he first stepped from a wagon one snow-covered February afternoon to cross the threshold of that place we now call the Ladd School.
His Story Finds Its Way
What is it about Guy King that we should remember his name? That it appears — multiple times — in the esoterica and literature of, by and about the Ladd School? He was neither richer nor poorer, nor was his life any more or less remarkable, or tragic, than that of the 89 others whose bodies lie beneath the weather-worn and crumbling stones that flank his own. And yet, his story finds its way.
In 1981, Days of Darkness, Days of Hope was the title given a special issue of Rhode Island History — a quarterly periodical published and distributed by the Rhode Island Historical Society. It was part of a major, State-funded exhibition of photographs, commentary, lectures, and public service announcements “about the experiences of the mentally retarded and their families.”
Endorsed by several leading professionals in the emerging field of Human Services, and organized by Rhode Island historian John T. Duffy, this volume consists of just three essays. And, at some 160 pages in length, it swells with a wealth of wisdom and knowledge culled from centuries of recorded history. It’s here, between a recounting of the “leechdoms, wortcunning and starcraft of early England” and a recital of the trials and tribulations of newly formed parent organizations of late 20th century New England, that from one page a familiar story unfolds.
The late author and professor Eric C. Schneider writes:
“GK was born in 1881 and in September 1899 was admitted to the local almshouse. He was temperate, able to read and write, and had supported himself as a laborer, but in 1899 he was unemployable and local authorities thought he was feeble-minded. GK was transferred to the Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded in February 1908 shortly after it opened. GK had apparently become accustomed to institutional life during his eight years at the almshouse, but nonetheless at Exeter he soon became a valued worker. He drove the schools delivery truck, and his record mentioned that he did his job ‘better than any man we have ever been able to hire.’ [But] despite his ability he had only known institutional life. Thus, institutionalization became its own justification, and GK drove the school’s truck until his death at age forty-five in 1926.”
There can be no doubt that GK is our Guy King.
In 1956, Dr. Ladd was considerably beyond the age of retirement and might have also breathed his last at Exeter had he not been forced to surrender his position when scandal set into motion the fate of the school that eventually would bear his name.
Written in the passages of the Ladd School’s own periodical, The Exeter News, in January of that same year, he delivered what would prove his first and only interview for the little newsletter, recounting the story of one snowy evening emblazoned upon his memory.
Now, it is imprinted upon ours; an accidental parable of his own life, and a modern folktale of the most inconspicuous and unexpected kind.
Something About Snow
“Well, I had thought of giving you something about ‘snow’,” Dr. Ladd said, and began telling of the snow storms which used to beset the School in the early days of its existence.
Evidently there were some pretty blinding sleetstorms in those days also. Once a very dependable patient, by the name of Guy, who was sent on an errand in such a storm, stopped at the office (which then was in Dr. Ladd’s home) to pick up the mail. Dr. Ladd says that he had an intuition that something might go wrong, so he started after him to see that he didn’t lose his way. Evidently it was so bad that it was impossible to look ahead to see where one was going for more than a few seconds at a time. It happened, therefore, that Guy had left the road and circled around to crissross it several times.
The Doctor caught up with him just as he was crossing it again — heading in the wrong direction. He said, “Hi Guy … having any trouble?”
Guy answered in his very slow, deliberate monotone, “Yes … I don’t know where I am … can’t find the road.”
Dr. Ladd put him on the right track and started back himself. By glancing up every so often he could see the lights at his house and head himself in the right direction. As he came to a small hill, however, he found that his view of the lights was shut out, but he kept going in what he thought was the right direction. After a while he stopped to get his bearings and saw the lights way off to his left. He couldn’t understand how he had gotten turned around this much but struck out for the light once more. When he finally reached the spot where the light was coming from, he discovered that from the bottom of the hill he had started after the wrong set of lights, and had ended up over by the Colony instead of at his home at the other end of the reservation.
He remarked that it had been foolish of him to set his course by the lights in the first place, and that he finally made it home safely by taking note of the direction that the wind was coming from and, since he knew that this was a storm coming from the north, taking his bearings accordingly.
Contribute to Uncovering the Past
Explore the personal letters of Evelyn, Cora, and Dorothy in “Exeter Girls: Letters From a Feeble-Minded School” by Jason Carpenter. This collection offers a firsthand look at the lives of these women, committed to the Ladd School in early 1900s, and their struggle against societal injustices. Their compelling accounts provide a window into a misunderstood chapter of history.
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