Francis A. Scratchley, 1858-1929

Recipient of Sophie Newcomb Fellowship Fund for Washington and Lee University, and long-time acquaintance of JLN

Francis A., or Frank, Scratchley had a number of interesting affiliations with JLN. In the years after Sophie’s death, he was one of a handful of beneficiaries of Josephine Louise Newcomb’s wealth. In the early to mid 1870s, she arranged for his receipt of a scholarship at Washington and Lee University. She apparently also loaned him Warren Newcomb’s watch and later, when he was attending New York University came to rely upon him to assist in finding her housing, accompanying her to dinner, and ultimately serving as her last physician. It was he who was the physician signing her death certificate. Their connection then lasted almost thirty years but appears never to have been without some friction. In the court case records, he discusses her preference for hotels: she preferred not “to keep house.” But he noted, she also wanted a companion in the hotel or nearby to go to dinner with and also to protect her. With Scratchley, she would visit Greenwood Cemetery and also go to the theater. He tried to interest her in funding St. Sophie’s Hospital in West Virginia, which he named for Sophie, but she resisted. There were other times, years even, when they were estranged. He recalled seeing her in New Orleans in 1893, for example, but not speaking to her. He became an expert on insanity, and eventually instructor and chair in the Nervous Diseases Department at NY University Medical School. He worked also in other facilities for the aged, infirm, and immigrants, and on Blackwell’s Island, often cited as the first mental hospital in the country. He translated from the German a textbook on “electro diagnosis” and electro-therapeutics.