Dr Francis de Marneffe
Anglo-belgian director of Mclean Hospital, which treated Sylvia Plath and maths genius John Nash
FRANCIS DE MARNEFFE, who has died aged 97, was the long-serving general director of the Mclean Hospital, at Belmont, Massachusetts, America’s bestknown psychiatric facility, whose residents have included the poets Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath; musicians, among them James Taylor and Ray Charles; and the mathematician John Nash.
Dr de Marneffe spent his entire medical career at Mclean, serving in a clinical and administrative capacity. He was also a distinguished oarsman, and on April 28 this year he was due to be one of five inductees at King’s College, London, to be honoured in their Sports Hall of Fame for his rowing achievements.
Francis Laurent Armand de Marneffe was born in Belgium on May 7 1924, the youngest child of a Belgian father and an English mother. His father was a physician in the medical service of the Belgian army who retired as a major-general. Francis was 16 when Germany invaded Belgium in 1940.
He left Brussels and crossed France with only a bicycle and 500 francs. In the midst of German attacks and fleeing refugees he made it out of Bordeaux on the last boat going, and reached Britain, later maintaining that this was the making of him.
He attended Bloxham School in Oxfordshire and in 1943 joined the RAF, trained in Canada and became a fighter pilot. He was assigned to the Belgian air force as a flying instructor and was officially demobbed in 1946.
He stroked the winning crew in the Wyfold Challenge Cup for coxless fours at Henley that year, and received the cup from Princess Elizabeth. He also stroked a Thames Rowing Club IV in the Olympic Trials, part of the 1948 Olympic Games in London.
Meanwhile de Marneffe studied Medicine at King’s College, University of London, graduating in 1950.
Some 70 years after his Henley win, Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent arranged that he should take part in a 4,500-yard row past, and made history as the oldest Henley winner (at the age of 92) ever to do so. He was prevailed upon to inform the Queen of this feat.
On graduating he went to the United States, later undertaking a paediatric residency in Honolulu, before living out what he called a “Somerset Maugham fantasy” in Hawaii.
He was drawn to psychiatry, rather than “listening to heart, percussing chests, or palpating abdomens”. He trained at Massachusetts General Hospital and in 1953 secured a residency at the Mclean Hospital, becoming a naturalised American in 1957.
When de Marneffe arrived at the Mclean, the hospital largely provided a home for chronically ill patients, mostly affluent, some benefiting from trust funds. One lady who lived to 100 had been there for 65 years.
As he described it: “Many of these patients were on the surface relatively well put together, but when you started talking to them you often found some very deep and fixed hallucinations that the patients had learnt not to talk about.” The hospital offered a library, physiotherapy, ward activities and even a beauty parlour. Among numerous changes in his time, the medications chlorpromazine and reserpine began to replace the then customary ECT treatment and lobotomies, which were eventually phased out at Mclean’s.
De Marneffe took over as director in 1962, and worked tirelessly to get the hospital onto a secure financial footing. In 1962 running costs were an annual $3 million. By 1986 they were
$59 million. In his 25 years at the helm, de Marneffe played a vital role in turning the Mclean into America’s leading psychiatric hospital, and was as closely involved in the clinical developments at the hospital as in its administrative life, which involved high-level fundraising for the creation of new units. Between the ages of 54 and 61 he ran marathons to raise funds.
During his time, the hospital became renowned for treating troubled adolescents.
His contributions included the construction and development of the Hall-mercer Children’s Center and the Rehabilitation Center, as well as spearheading the founding of the Arlington School for students with mental health challenges.
He recruited the neuroscientist Seymour Kety to the Mclean and convinced the philanthropist Joseph Mailman to give $1 million towards a new laboratory, and to persuade four friends to provide the next $1 million.
De Marneffe established that the medical records of the patients should remain confidential in perpetuity.
When the Mailman Research Center was opened by the First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, in 1977, he refused to reveal the names of the patients to the Secret Service, to their annoyance, though he ensured that one particular resident remained under lock and key for the duration of the visit.
De Marneffe took particular exception to a gossipy account of the hospital, Gracefully Insane (2001), by Alex Beam. He also had to face up to the publicity the hospital received when The Bell Jar was released as a film, based on the book by Sylvia Plath, a patient in 1953, and Girl, Interrupted, likewise the story of another patient, Susanna Kaysen.
But he admired A Beautiful Mind (2001), with Russell Crowe playing John Nash: de Marneffe considered that the film portrayed successfully the insidious nature of paranoid delusions.
When he retired in 1987, the hospital’s trustees named their latest construction – containing a library and a 500-seat cafeteria – the Francis de Marneffe Building. And the following year he dedicated a fountain outside the building to his wife.
De Marneffe was interested in how psychiatric issues diminished criminal responsibility. In 1958 he was asked to examine Jack Chester, a young man who believed himself responsible for the death of his father, and who had shot his fiancée because he could not live with her and could not live without her.
Chester had made a dramatic outburst in court, stating: “I am a drug addict, an alcoholic and a cold-blooded murderer.” De Marneffe testified that the defendant was suffering from a severe mental disease – a personality disorder, which had existed since the age of 12. The disorder was “characterised by impulsive action of a very sudden onset”. Eventually the conviction was about to be overturned when Chester hanged himself.
De Marneffe was not afraid of controversy. He petitioned a judge to prevent a patient being discharged, fearing that the man’s former girlfriend was in danger. The judge refused to commit him. When the patient did shoot his girlfriend, de Marneffe released the facts to the press, after which the judge telephoned him to say he should not issue any further statements.
De Marneffe was also president of the Boston Chapter of the French Heritage Society, and his love of France and staunch upholding of French values caused the government of France to appoint him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 2018.
In 1955 he married Nancy Edmonds, then a nursery school teacher, and they had a son and two daughters. They were divorced in 1967. Two years later he married Barbara (Bobbie) Hopkins, whom he had recruited to run a new public relations department in the hospital in 1964. In retirement they settled at Fox Hill Village in Westwood. She predeceased him in 2017 at the age of 87.
De Marneffe himself remained active and alert to the end, relishing his visits to Britain, where he entertained an eclectic group of English friends at the RAF Club.
Dr Francis de Marneffe, born May 7 1924, died April 15 2022