The Kellam Cancer Hospital advertised in a variety of publications locally and in surrounding states. This ad is from the 1904 Richmond City Directory.
The West End didn’t want them.
The Richmond City Board of Health refused the Kellam Cancer Hospital’s permit, while the Henrico County Board of Supervisors posed violent opposition, the Times-Dispatch reported, “to the erecting of a building on the proposed site for such a purpose.”
Nearby Henrico property owners convened in Hancock’s store at Vine and Main streets to “wait on the proprietors of the hospital and dissuade them from their purpose of building in the West End.”
At noon on March 31, 1905, 40 to 50 businessmen, physicians and property owners met with Dr. Harry Kellam, the family representative from the Kellam Cancer Hospital. The firm’s apparent success in the previous five years prompted its move from the three-story reclaimed Madison Hotel at 12th and Bank streets by Capitol Square. The Kellams purchased property for a new facility by what was then the boundary line of Richmond and Henrico at Lombardy and West Main streets, and they requested a connection to Richmond’s water and sewer lines.
The city’s Board of Aldermen on Oct. 10, 1905, approved of the Common Council’s granting of water and sewer privileges to the Kellam Cancer Hospital, but with additional language that the city did not give “consent.” The approved verbiage isn’t clear about whether the aldermen disapproved of the hospital itself or the Kellam methodology.
Patriarch Frederick C. Kellam and his son Harry appealed by letter to Henrico’s supervisors. The Kellams believed that the rejection was due to board members’ “misapprehension … in supposing that cancer, which will be one of the diseases treated in the hospital, is infectious or contagious.”
The Kellams had brought their alleged cancer cure to Richmond in the spring of 1900. Frederick Charles and Eunice West Kellam, parents of seven children, operated the hospital. Frederick came out of Belle Haven in Accomack County and later worked in Kentucky and West Virginia. Each of his four sons periodically joined the family business. Dr. James Henry “Harry” Kellam (Medical College of Virginia Class of 1903 — an unremarkable student) served as vice president and physician-in-charge. Frank, when not the company secretary, worked as a traveling salesman. Charles Edison and Thaddeus eventually filled the positions of clerk and attendant. Daughters Lillian, Fern and Mary wed and moved away.
In February 1903, the Virginia Senate took up, and not for the first time, a bill requiring all medical practitioners to appear before the State Board of Medical Examiners. The Richmond Times reported that “the osteopaths, Christian Scientists and Healers were out in full force to enter their solemn protest.” Former Secretary of the Commonwealth Joseph T. Lawless represented this group, which included the Kellam Cancer Hospital, before the committee. “This institution professes to cure cancer,” explained the Times, “and the secret of their success is carried in the breasts of the proprietors.”
Lawless argued that it was unfair for the healers to stand before a board comprising members of a profession averse to their practices. In the Kellams’ advertising, the legislature’s ambivalence toward regulation was interpreted as an endorsement of their practices. The Richmond Academy of Medicine, however, did not consider the Kellams legitimate members of their profession.
Despite the hesitations and trepidations, the Kellams’ three-story brick building arose at 1617 W. Main St, where the hospital remained in business until 1930.
The Kellam Cancer Hospital advertised in a variety of publications here and in nearby states. The firm offered train fare for consulting and free treatment for practicing physicians, and it required no payment until after the cure took hold.
The ads often included fulsome praise of its treatments from former patients or their relatives, and potential guests were invited to “come and see the Cancers we have removed [preserved in alcohol, one source says] and cured from our now happy patients.”
The Richmond Times-Dispatch described the Kellam Cancer Hospital as having “immaculate halls, up-to-date furnishings, attractively-arranged rooms.”
The Kellams’ cancer cure came without surgery, radium or X-rays. They also claimed to cure deep sores and burns. Another ad urged, “Remember, almost every Chronic Sore, Lump, or tumor, especially in the breast, is Cancer, and is often neglected until the case must be refused as incurable.”
In a description of the hospital, the Times-Dispatch said, “The Kellam Cancer Hospital offers quiet and sunlight to the occupants of the institution. Immaculate halls, up-to-date furnishings, attractively-arranged rooms, it is almost a rest resort in all outward appearances.” The first floor treated older patients; women stayed on the second floor and men on the third.
Patients could rent an apartment “during their sojourn,” with a private bath and a sitting room fitted with white wicker furniture. Downstairs lounges were stocked with books, magazines and games. “Everywhere the system of modern improvements dominates,” the article gushed, reading like an advertisement. “The instruments and equipment for the dressing rooms are of the best, the medical fixtures are above reproach.”
On Aug. 3, 1907, the social reformist Collier’s Weekly published another entry in an ongoing examination by Samuel Hopkins Adams of the national patent medicine craze and widespread medical malpractice. His earlier work had led to the passage of the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
“Grief is the portion of the Kellam Cancer Hospital of Richmond, Virginia,” Adams declared. “It offers the invariable and hollow mockery of testimonials and endorsement, which, as has been repeatedly shown, can be wheedled, browbeaten or bribed out of the victims of any form of quackery.”
In the Aug. 29 issue of the Baptist and Reflector news journal of Nashville, Tennessee, the publisher made a strenuous argument against Adams, touting the curing of Kellam patients using “a treatment of soothing oils and antiseptic bandaging. I have seen the work going on in the hospital, have talked with the patients under treatment, and can positively state that Mr. Adams is guilty of a shameful slander in speaking of that institution as a fake or a fraud.”
The Nashville writer asserted that professional jealousies by physicians led them to urge the Virginia General Assembly to end the Kellam practice: “The legislature saved the institution and on the ground that it was doing too much good to close it up.”
Fred Kellam died at his residence of heart failure at age 78 on May 4, 1929; Eunice followed him at 76 on April 13, 1930, though she was at their hospital (heart disease and senility).
The senior Kellam’s demise, and perhaps the Depression, ended the hospital. Harry Kellam attempted to open the Restmore Convalescent Home in the building, but that didn’t last, either. He moved around, to Rose Hill in Southwest Virginia, to family in Kentucky and later West Virginia, where at age 81, he died after a fall, on March 14, 1960. He outlived his brothers, all of whom ended their days in Richmond.
The Kellam building at one point became the Richmond Transient Service Bureau. This corner of West Main was later taken up by garages for Pepsi-Cola and today is primarily occupied by the Try-me Gallery.
