Source: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/chalonerjohn/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:40:40+00:00

Document:
John Armstrong Chaloner was a celebrity and writer known for coining the catchphrase “Who’s looney now?” in the aftermath of psychiatric experiments and own legal troubles regarding his sanity. Great-grandson of John Jacob Astor; from Cobham (Albemarle County), Virginia. Collection includes business and personal correspondence, legal papers, writings and drafts by Chaloner, printed materials primarily composed of newspaper clippings, and some personal financial documents and photographs. The letters, almost half of the collection, are concerned with Chaloner’s attempts to have himself declared sane after a four-year involuntary internment in Bloomingdale Asylum at White Plains, New York.
The John Armstrong Chaloner papers have been arranged into five series: Correspondence, Legal Papers, Writings/Drafts, Printed Materials, and Personal Materials. Correspondence, almost half the collection, comprises business and personal correspondence. Most the content consists of Chaloner’s communications and consultations with various attorneys in New York, North Carolina, and Virginia that address his multiple legal battles. Legal Papers consists of legal briefs, appeals, court transcripts, depositions, memos, and notes from Chaloner’s various legal petitions and trails. Writings/Drafts comprises manuscript drafts, notes, and some published versions of Chaloner’s assorted publications. Printed Materials includes an assortment of magazine articles, advertisements, invitations, flyers, and newspaper clippings. Personal Materials includes some personal photographs and an assortment of financial documents such as bills, receipts, cancelled checks, and ledger sheets.
[Identification of item], John Armstrong Chaloner Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
Almost half of the collection, Correspondence comprises both business and personal letters. Most of the content consists of Chaloner’s communications with various attorneys in New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia that address his multiple legal battles. The letters discuss his efforts to regain possession of his estate, verdicts from psychologists concerning his mental condition, the circulation of his sonnets on European politics prior to 1914, and congratulations on his receiving a favorable verdict from the U. S. Supreme Court regarding his sanity. Also includes content on the fostering of motion pictures for rural areas. The series contains one nineteenth-century typed transcript of a letter from 1782 regarding the Revolutionary War in Virginia.
Correspondents include: J. W. Bickett, Philip Alexander Bruce, Richard Evelyn Byrd, J. H. Choate, Dr. John Staige Davis, Richard, Donaho, W. A. Dunn, Walter Duranty, John W. Fishburne, Armistead C. Gordon, James Lindsay Gordon, M. M. Habbiston, Charles Hartnett, Thomas N. Hill, Herbert W. Jackson, Joseph Jastrow, Claude Kitchin, J. P. Morris, Lee Slate Overman, W.L. Phelps, William D. Reed, John D. Rhodes, J. M. Stoddard, Morris Streusand, F. H. Treacy, Frederick A. Ware, J. E. White, Micajah Woods, the governors of South Carolina and Georgia, and with the Washington Post.
Locations for much of the correspondence remain on the eastern coast of the United States: New York, New York; White Plains, NY; Concord, North Carolina; Halifax County, NC; Raleigh, NC; the Western State Hospital in Roanoke Rapids, NC; Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia, PA; Albemarle County, Virginia; Lynchburg, VA; and Staunton, VA.
Legal Papers consists of legal briefs, appeals, court transcripts, depositions, memos, and notes from Chaloner’s various legal petitions and trails. Included are the cases Thomas T. Sherman v. John Armstrong Chaloner, Chaloner v. Sherman, Chaloner v. New York Evening Post, Chaloner v. United Industrial Company, and Heil J. Evans v. Omer B. Johnson et. al., Ferguson v. Crawford, Chaloner v. Society of the New York Hospital, Miller v. Chaloner, and William Dike Reed v. Chaloner.
Documents within the series come from multiple courts and legal appeals, such as the Southern District Court of New York, the New York Supreme Court, Virginia Western District Court, West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit), and the U. S. Supreme Court.
Legal briefs, appeals, court transcripts, opening statement drafts, memos, notes, correspondence; includes the cases Thomas T. Sherman v. John Armstrong Chaloner, Chaloner v. Sherman, Chaloner v. New York Evening Post, Chaloner v. United Industrial Company, Heil J. Evans v. Omer B. Johnson et. al.
Writings/Drafts comprises manuscript drafts, notes, and some published versions of Chaloner’s assorted publications. Included are treatises on the lunacy laws of various states, Chaloner’s experiments in psychology, a variety of sonnets, and drafts of two plays: Robbery Under Law, and Saul, A Tragedy in Three Acts.
Personal Materials includes an assortment of postcards, photographs, and financial documents. Postcards and photographs include snapshots, formal portraits, and buildings in Roanoke Rapids, NC. Financial documents include bills, receipts, cancelled checks, and ledger sheets. The ledger sheets include the finances for the Merry Mills, Chaloner’s estate in Albemarle, VA.
John Armstrong Chaloner (1862-1935) was a celebrity and writer known for coining the catchphrase “Who’s looney now?” in the aftermath of psychiatric experiments and own legal troubles regarding his sanity. Known in his youth as Archie Chanler, Chaloner was the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor. When Chaloner’s family learned he believed he possessed a new sense that he called the “X-Faculty,” they had him committed in March 1897 to a psychiatric hospital in New York. In June 1899, a court declared Chaloner insane and ruled he be permanently institutionalized. Chaloner escaped in November 1900 and entered a private clinic, where doctors declared him competent and able to function in society. He spent the next two decades crafting legal strategies to challenge his New York verdict and lunacy laws in general. His case became the cause célèbre for many leading psychologists. Continually at odds with his family, in 1908 Chaloner legally changed his name from Chanler to what he believed to be its original spelling. Chaloner reconciled with his family in 1919, when they no longer opposed his petition for a New York court to certify him legally sane, but kept his changed surname.
Throughout his legal battles, Chaloner published almost two dozen books and articles on his experiments with psychotherapy and his stay in the insane asylum. Books like The Lunacy Law of the World (1906) attacked psychiatric medicine, which proved controversial within the field. Chaloner had also married the novelist Amélie Rives in 1888, but the couple divorced in 1895. After his escape from the asylum, Chaloner lived near her Albemarle County home for most of his remaining life on his own estate, the Merry Mills. Chaloner died of cancer in 1935.
The John Armstrong Chaloner Papers were acquired by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library from 1936-1954.
Accession(s) described in this finding aid: 36-828 and later accessions.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.