Gabrielle

In my last post I wrote about a young woman who had undergone a leucotomy in 1962. In this post I will write about a young woman who underwent a leucotomy in 1950 with tragic results.

In October 1952 the incoming president of the psychiatric section of the Royal Society of Medicine chose as the theme for his address “death due treatment”, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine in January 1953. He listed the deaths in England and Wales that had been caused by different psychiatric treatments over the past five and a half years:

Leucotomy 180

Electroconvulsive therapy 67

Insulin treatment 44

Continuous narcosis 8

Malaria therapy 6

Many of those who died due to leucotomy were young: just over a quarter were aged 19-35, with 40 per cent aged 36-55 and a quarter aged 56-75. Over one half were women. After discussing the deaths, W.S. Maclay added: “I think that it is permissible to mention as a possible lethal complication of leucotomy three murders committed by leucotomized patients who are now in Broadmoor”. A brief description followed:

“The third is a woman of 38 years of superior intelligence. For many years she was subject to migraines and to phases of depression with obsessional thought and actions. She received a great deal of psychotherapy and other psychiatric treatment culminating in a leucotomy all without benefit. She then murdered her daughter and attempted suicide.”

Thanks to a report in the Times newspaper (3 June 1960) about a divorce case, we know that the woman of “superior intelligence” was Gabrielle De Wolfe, daughter of Australian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Paul Greig Dane. Her husband, theatrical agent Earl Felix Sylvester De Wolfe, was suing for divorce on the grounds of his wife’s “incurable unsoundness of mind”. The couple had married in 1942, with Earl departing almost immediately for service in the RAF. He returned to civilian life in 1946 and Gabrielle gave birth to their child in December 1947. In April 1950 Gabrielle underwent a leucotomy. According to the report in the Times:

“The operation had been partially successful in that it alleviated her distress. On the other hand severe intracranial bleeding had supervened upon it, resulting in severe epilepsy, and personality changes had taken place.”

In March 1951 “she attempted to gas herself. She survived but killed her child.”

In May 1951 Gabrielle was tried for murder. She was found guilty but insane and admitted to Broadmoor Hospital. Her husband obtained his divorce and was soon remarried.