Steinitz' Mental Illness

Randall Island in 1855

     Wilhelm Steinitz (May 17, 1836 – August 12, 1900) was described as a sharp-tongued and violent tempered man which some have ascribed to his having what is known as Short Man Syndrome, or Napoleon Complex; he was barely five feet tall, plus he also suffered from congenital lameness. His end was undignified and tragic.
     Although he had long and friendly relationships with many people including Ignac Kolisch, Mikhail Chigorin, Harry N. Pillsbury, Bernhard Horwitz and Amos Burn, Steinitz himself admitted that under provocation he could become abusive in published articles and wrote, "Nothing would induce me to take charge of a chess column...Because I should be so fair in dispensing blame as well as praise that I should be sure to give offense and make enemies." 
     Although he had a strong sense of honor about repaying debts, Steinitz was poor at managing his finances and died in poverty in 1900, leaving his widow to survive by running a small shop. 
     After he lost his championship title in 1894, Steinitz traveled to Russia in a bid to reclaim the championship from Lasker but was defeated. Shortly afterward he suffered a mental breakdown and was confined to a Russian sanitarium where he spent his time playing chess with any inmate up for a game. 
     By the turn of the century, his erratic behavior had become even more pronounced and the stories are that he talked on wireless telephones and played chess with God. These stories have been examined in detail by Edward Winter HERE. 
     The New York Times used Steinitz' case to illustrate the perils of chess: “It is not without significance that the death of Steinitz should have been due to mental disorder….His death seems to be another admonition that ‘serious chess’ is a very serious thing indeed.” 
     According to an article appearing in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on Tuesday, August 14, 1900 Steinitz had died the previous Sunday “a maniac in the Manhattan State Hospital on Randall's Island.”  Note most sources say he died on Ward's island, but it was actually on Randall's Island.  This is likely because today the two islands are co-joined, but in Steinitz' day they were separate.
     The article noted that during the height of his fame that while many honors had been heaped upon him, they all faded away and during the last three months of his life he had been confined to a public asylum and his friends had “almost forgotten that he lived.” 
     Steinitz came to the U.S. in 1883 and when he was 63 he married a 28-year old woman. They lived in a Harlem and in February of 1900, he astonished his wife by telling he that it was electricity that governed the children's health and that bolts of electricity kept him in good health. Additionally, he informed his wife that he was in electrical communication with chess players all over the world. He sat in a rocking chair in their apartment and imagined he talked with his friends in various European capitals. 

Inmates line up for a meal on Randall's Island

     Eventually he was pronounced insane and taken to Bellvue Hospital and from there to Randall's Island on February 8, 1900. His wife had no money to pay for private treatment and the Manhattan Chess Club raised $300, or about $9,000 in today's currency and Steinitz was transferred to River Crest, a private asylum in Astoria, a section of Queens. 

All that is left of River Crest

     Today at Ditmars Boulevard and 26th Street, there’s a curious ramp leading to a dead end, with a pair of gateposts. A high school now occupies the rear of the site. The ramp and gatepost are all that remain of River Crest Sanitarium, established there in 1896. 
     The asylum’s founder was Jonathan Joseph Kindred, M.D. There is a Kindred Building on 31st Street near Ditmars, most likely named for U.S. Rep. John J. Kindred (1864-1937), a Virginia native who moved to Queens and was elected to the House of Representatives, serving from 1911-13 and 1921-29. Dr. J.J. Kindred, the physician, founded several mental hospitals in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. He was also a practicing attorney. 
     River Crest Sanitarium had closed by 1961 and was replaced by Mater Christi High School, now St. John’s Prep. Also, 26th Street was formerly known as Kindred Street, in honor of the Virginia doctor/lawyer.
     On April 7, 1900 Steinitz was released from River Crest having been pronounced as improved, but less than a month later, for the third time, he was declared as not being of sound mind. He was then taken to the Manhattan State Hospital on Randall's Island on May 2nd and remained there until his death. 

Location of Steinitz' funeral today

     His funeral was held on Tuesday, August 14, 1900 at 132 Essex Street in New York. Today the location, which sets between a Latin American restaurant and bar, is vacant. Steiniyz was buried in Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn.

     Short Man Syndrome, from which it has been suggested that Steinitz suffered, is also known as Napoleon Complex which may be a misnomer. While Napoleon is widely believed to have been very short, in fact historians have calculated his height to be around 5 feet 6 inches which was average for the time period. 
     It is a condition in which a person has to deal with a feeling of inadequacy which can come from a lack of height, or their perceived lack of height. This is particularly common in men who gain a lot of confidence and status from physicality and who often gain pleasure from being able to feel physically imposing. 
     It's a form of overcompensation and is one of the ego defense mechanisms as described by Freud, the idea being that the individual could this way protect themselves from the belief that they were smaller in size. At the same time the lack of confidence regarding their height might cause them to try and distract from it by proving themselves able to ‘mix with the big boys’. 
     The stereotype is that the man suffering from it is aggressive, likely to shout and talk loudly and seek attention and be eager to prove himself. Other personality traits have also been linked it it such as risk taking behavior and jealousy. 
     Scattered around the five boroughs are a set of islands (Roosevelt Island, North Brother Island, Randall’s Island and Wards Island, Rikers Island, and Hart Island) that have all been places where the poor, sick and criminal were sent to be treated (or sometimes just confined). 
     These are the Islands of the Undesirables with the water serving as a kind of moat to keep the inhabitants isolated. Until the 1960s, Randall’s and Wards were two distinct islands, with the stretch between them known as Little Hell Gate. But even before Manhattan dumped its construction rubble to fill that gap, both islands have long histories as drop-off points for unwanted items which included orphans, people dying of smallpox, the criminally insane and juvenile delinquents. Eventually the city even built a sewer plant on the site. 
     The city bought Randall’s Island in 1835 from a farmer named Jonathan Randel. In the 19th century, the island housed an orphanage, a poorhouse, a potters field (with over 100,000 buried there), a children's hospital and, as it was actually named, an Idiot Asylum. Today the cemetery has been paved over!
     The most notorious institution of all was probably the House of Refuge, a reform school completed in 1854 and run by the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. 
     The House held both street urchins and hardened criminals. The children spent four hours a day in religious and secular classes and six and a half hours caning chairs and making shoes. Children who misbehaved were hung up by their thumbs. In 1887, the institution stopped using the inmates as workers and conditions improved slightly, though there were still reports of inhuman treatment by drunken officers and armed revolts by the boys. 
     The New York City Asylum for the Insane later became the world’s largest mental institution and is now the Manhattan Psychiatric Center which is still located on the island. The Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center is also on Wards, housing the criminally insane which includes Raymond Weinstein.