Allan McLane Hamilton

Allan McLane Hamilton c.1890

Prof Allan McLane Hamilton FRSE (1848-1919) was an American psychiatrist and alienist of Scots descent, specialising in suicide and the impact of accidents and trauma upon mental health, and in criminal insanity (appearing at several trials). He was a founder of the New York Psychiatrical Society. He was Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College in New York. He was the grandson of Alexander Hamilton and wrote his biography.

Life

He was born in Brooklyn in New York on October 6, 1848, the son of Philip Hamilton (1802-????) and his wife, Rebecca McLane (1806-1893).^[1] His paternal grandfather was America’s founding father, Alexander Hamilton.^[2]

In 1881/2 he gave evidence on the sanity of Charles J. Guiteau (who assassinated President James A. Garfield in 1881) during his trial.^[3]

He appears to have visited Scotland in the late 1890s. In 1899 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir James Crichton-Browne, Sir Thomas Grainger Stewart, Sir John Batty Tuke and Sir James Dewar.^[4]

He died on November 23, 1919 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts aged 71.^[5] He is buried in Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery outside New York.^[6]

Publications

See^[7]

• Suicide in Large Cities (1875)
• Recollections of an Alienist (1916)
• Nervous Diseases; their Description and Treatment
• Railway and Other Accidents with relation to Injury and Disease of the Nervous System
• Types of Insanity: An Illustrated Guide
• The Drum (1910) (a poetry collection)
• The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton (1910)
• Recollections of an Alienist (1916)
• A System of Legal Medicine

Family

He married twice: firstly to Florence R Craig; secondly to May Copeland Tomlinson. He had one child by his first marriage: Louis McLane Hamilton (1876-1911) who predeceased him.

References