A MANIA FOR ECONOMY – JOHANNA BRANDT’S STORY
Much has been written and filmed lately about hoarders, people with obsessions and the inability to throw anything away, so much so that their homes become literally littered with senseless, unhealthy, garbage. Hoarding is not something new. The story of Johanna Brandt, a housewife from Davenport, Iowa, begins in the early 1900’s. Mrs. Brandt was said by the news media to have a “mania for economy”.
You may wonder how I came to meet Johanna Brandt in print from so long ago. I have a cousin, Dick, from Malibu, California, who loves genealogy. One day after his mother passed away he found a photograph in her things, of a mysterious looking man sporting a derby cap. On the back of the photo was penciled his name, “John True” and the date he “left” in 1909. My cousin, in his 80’s had recently found out that his mother was born illegitimately, but not until after she passed away. Her parentage was never a topic of conversation with her children while she lived. Dick believed this man in the photograph was his biological grandfather so I decided to help him find out more about the distinguished looking man with the derby cap. At the time John True “left” my cousin’s grandmother was about three months pregnant.
My searching led me to the residence of my cousin’s mother’s place of birth stated on her birth certificate, a street address located in downtown Davenport, Iowa. I studied the location and found out who lived at that residence shortly before his grandmother’s birth, and it was Johanna Brandt. I never did find a connection between Johanna and my cousin’s mother or biological grandfather. But I never forgot about Johanna after I started researching her life.
Mrs. Johanna Brandt was living with her husband, Peter, and young son, Johann, near 5th and Gaines Street in Davenport in the year 1900. The Brandts were of German heritage. Johanna and Peter recently celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary and had lost 3 young children, leaving them with just one son, Johann, or John, as he later preferred. Johanna filed for divorce in 1901 stating her reason as cruel and inhumane treatment from her husband. The divorce was denied. But again in 1902 both Peter and Johanna filed for a divorce decree and this time it was granted.
In March of 1902, Johanna filed a complaint with the district attorney telling him that her husband had threatened to kill her. The complaint was taken seriously and Peter was arrested and sent to jail. The Board of Health was called in the next day, and when they witnessed the Brandt household in it’s hoarder attire, Peter was set free. Later he said how he enjoyed his stay at the jail and how it was the first time in years he felt at peace, had plenty to eat, and a nice bed to sleep on.
Upon Peter’s release from jail he was told he had four days to clean up his wife’s mess. He began this endeavor by hauling out a small portion of Johanna’s trash into the street near his home and lighting it on fire while she went on her daily trek collecting more trash in nearby alleys. When Johanna came home to find a portion of her precious hoard in flames she located the sheriff and told him her husband was burning down her house. The sheriff had Mrs. Brandt’s number so he paid no attention to her rants. Johanna returned home later and assaulted Peter. As a result, she found herself locked up in the city jail with a request to determine her sanity.
A look at the Davenport Tribune gives a glimpse at the situation at the Brandt household on March 15, 1902: Economy Her Mania – Mrs. Brandt is in Jail Because of it – Has Picked Up Rubbish in Alleys and Elsewhere for Years Past and Has Piled the Rooms of Her House Full of It – When Her Husband Starts to Burn It She Assaults Him “If the board of health would permit Peter Brandt to leave the contents of his house at 518 Gaines Street in the condition they have been for some years past, and if Mr. Brandt had enough of the showman in his nature to prompt him to charge an entrance fee to those wishing to inspect the interior of his home, he could, with a little judicious advertising in the daily papers, soon become independently rich. The Brandt house at the number stated is a monument to the spirit of economy run riot. Mrs. Brandt is the person who had this sense of saving developed in her to such an extraordinary degree. Her desire not to permit any article to go to waste led her to keep every rag and rusty nail, as well as every other kind of thing that has come into her hands in the past five years, the period during which her mania for economy has manifested itself.”
Millions of Things – “Not only did she thus treasure and zealously guard every article that came to her in the course of her household work, but she explored the alleys for a radius of a mile from her house and picked up whatever she was able to find, carrying it to her home and piling it up in the cellar and garret and all the other rooms in the place, so that fully one-half of the cubic feet of space in the building was occupied by the stacks of rubbish. Thousand, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of articles are in these piles. Nothing but exaggeration can convey any idea of the situation. Of old hats alone, headgear for men and women, there must be a thousand. Of rags, dishrags and other kinds, there cannot be less than 10,000. Of stove lids and pieces of stove lids there are hundreds, and of rusty nails, cut nails and wire nails, all sizes, there must be at least a million. These are only a few of the articles that comprise the contents of the rooms at the Brandt home. Every sort of thing that can be called to mind is there in profusion.”
Attorney, Henry Ditzen, took photographs at the Brandt home in efforts to capture the sheer volume of rubbish and document something so bizarre and rarely seen. If those photos still exist in some city archives they would be a real novelty. Ditzen’s aim was to use the photos as evidence and prove the point that Johanna was in need of committment. He questioned how anyone could amass and live with such a collection of rubbish without being insane.
Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Brandt was indeed declared insane and sent to a hospital at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. How long she was an inmate at this hospital is unknown but she was not certainly not cured of her affliction while an inmate there.
In 1910, Johanna’s ex-husband, Peter Brandt, was employed as a gardener for a private family and continued to live at the home on Gaines Street in Davenport. His son, John, then 21, was employed as a gasoline machine builder and lived with Peter. Johanna lived alone on Brown Street in Davenport and listed herself as “divorced” in 1910. Her address was the same as stated on the birth certificate of my cousin’s mother. Perhaps Johanna took in boarders for an income, and an unwed mother with nowhere to turn. This is something we may never know for sure.
In 1926, Johanna Brandt again made the press for her accessive hoarding at her residence back on Gaines Street and was committed for what may have been the remainder of her life. I don’t know how she came to live back on Gaines Street again, but surmise her ex-husband, Peter, may have passed away and she was able somehow to move back in to her former home. It is possible they were never legally divorced.
I read again in the newspapers how her habits of hoarding had again gotten her into trouble. Davenport Democrat and Leader, Jan 22, 1926: “Mrs. Johanna Brandt, 68, whose pet idiosyncracy for years has been the collecting of odds and ends and the storing of the accumulation in her home, was arraigned before the Scott County Insanity commissioners this afternoon preliminary to the commitment to a state institution. County officials, who visited Mrs. Brandt's home, informed the board they had never before seen such an accumulation of junk.”
Davenport Democrat and Leader, Jan 24, 1926 – Aged Woman with Maia for Collecting Castoffs Ordered Sent to Hospital – “A mania for collecting odds and ends of clothing, discarded furniture, metals, broken bits of glassware, pieces of crockery and even ashes dumped in the alleys by her neighbors cost Mrs. Johanna Brandt, 68, an eccentric character residing at fifth and Gaines streets, her freedom late Friday when the Scott county Insanity Commission ordered her committed to St. Elizabeth’s hospital for treatment. When county officials visited her home, over her protest, they were astounded by the sight that greeted their eyes. Every room in the little two story framed dwelling was crammed jam full with a weird assortment of articles, salvaged as the result of countless journeys through the streets and alleys of the city. She has moved her furniture out of doors in order to make room for the varied assortment of article that choked the rooms. Old papers, magazines, odds and ends of wood, stray pieces of broken furniture, castoff clothing, rags, bottles, and even ashes. Officials estimated there were more than 30 wagon loads of junk – the only word that properly describes the conglomeration of articles – stored in the house. Orders to clean out the place were given Saturday.”
The 1926 article goes on further to say that nearly every county and city official and many attorneys through the city of Davenport were acquainted with Mrs. Brandt. She often had grievances she wished to pursue, whether make believe or otherwise.
Johanna did not change with the times in her mode of dress but continued to wear 1890’s style clothing, funny little jackets with ballooned sleeves and flounced skirts. She always wore a little bonnet and was seen on the streets carrying a large market basket with her on her travels that she carried her new found treasures home in. For a time has a guardian appointed to watch over her and during this period she fared better. When her savings were exhausted she reluctantly appealed to the county for aid and an order was given her by the “overseer of the poor”. When officials visited her home in 1926 they found the order tucked away with her many odds and ends, just another piece of paper. The County Board decided she could best be helped at the state hospital.
It is not certain what caused Johanna Brandt to take on her hoarding compulsion but it is clear she was never able to shake it. It apparently began in about 1896, in part due to her frugal ways, but mushroomed into an unhealthy way of life for the Brandt family. Perhaps the loss of three of her young children caused depression to set in. At first Peter was easy going and accepted his wife’s collecting whims, but as time went on he could no longer handle the situation. He most likely was also concerned about their son, John, and when he did separate from Johanna he took John with him. By 1920 John had married and he and his wife still lived in Davenport. He was employed as a machinist for a wash machine company.
On the 1930 census, Johanna Brandt was listed as an “inmate” in Davenport. This is the end of her trail. I am guessing she never came back home but died institutionalized, a victim of mania.
SOURCES:
Federal Census: Iowa, Scott County, Davenport 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930
Davenport Democrat and Leader
Davenport Tribune
NEXT YEAR SCARES ME
Let’s plan to do this next fall they say
Or let’s keep that in mind for next year.
Since I’m not too sure if I’ll be here yet then
I cringe and try to hide my fear.
I’m in no hurry for next month or even next week
I’ll take today and tonight and enjoy them
Next year is so far away in my mind
It’s uncertainty makes me not want to go there.
I never thought of living life that way until cancer
Marched into my world, again, and then again.
Now I feel like telling the world to slow down
To stop thinking of things so far ahead.
I wish people would enjoy today, right now
And stop talking about long term thoughts.
Because when I’m forced to think that far ahead
I feel sad and uncertain and scared
