Asylum

“ She represents to him the outer world; for she is the only creature belonging to it who ever crosses the threshold of his prison. The asylum chaplain, the asylum doctor, the keepers and the officials belonging to the asylum—all these are part and parcel of this great prison-house of stone, brick, and mortar and seem to be about as capable of feeling for him, listening to him, or understanding him, as the stones, bricks, and mortar themselves. ”

“ Is it, in short, not a radical error in the direction of an asylum, to place the inmates in such a position and under such circumstances, as to make them feel themselves workmen under compulsion, regularly employed, dealt with only as labourers and artisans, by being kept all day in their workshops, and in the evening and night brought together, because they are workers, and unlike the other residents of the asylum, who will in their opinion come to be regarded, as unlike themselves,—as the fitting occupants, and the only patients? ”

“ If a gendarme accosted me at night in the streets, I shook all over in the expectation of being removed to a French [Pg 122] asylum. If I saw an advertisement relating to an asylum in a casual newspaper, it was to lay it down in terror. There seemed to me but one power in the world—the power of the lunacy ‘law.’ Such is the confidence which our vaunted system, which professes to know no wrong without a remedy, could inspire in one who needed its protection so sorely as I. In one respect its might was certainly vindicated, for, abroad and at home, I thought that it could reach me anywhere. ”

“ For me to undertake to describe this asylum fully would be useless; to say the least it is a monster, and answers to the bottomless pit, I saw in my vision; beneath my window was a pit or yard, with from fifteen to twenty men; some bound; some up, and some down; some with naught but their shirt, and some with none—burnt to the quick by the rays of the sun. In this asylum hell I learn, by hearsay, there were five hundred patients, besides the bull-dog. I suppose [130] the club attendants were reckoned in the number, at least the lunatic barber was, most assuredly. ”

“ Visit the largest asylum, and you will no longer hear those frightful yells that at first terrified and always depressed the boldest hearts. Mechanical restraint is almost unknown; houses where many were chained during the day, and hundreds, I will assert, during the night, have hardly a strait waistcoat or a manacle in the whole establishment; and instead of the keeper with his whip and his bunch of leg-locks, you may see the clergyman or the schoolmaster engaged in their soothing and effective occupations. ”

“ I do not oppose the insane asylum—but I abhor and condemn the cut-throat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community. ”

“ They are kept here until there is room for them at the State Lunatic Asylum. Night and day their terrible cries and ravings echo through the dreary, waking hours and the fitful slumbers of the wretched men so soon to die. ”

“ While there are drawbacks unavoidably arising from the congregating of so many of the insane in one establishment, there is nothing connected with Seacliff Asylum to justify the common expression, "the horrors of a lunatic asylum." It is a home, as far as such a large institution of the kind can be made a home, where everything possible is done for the welfare and recovery of the unfortunate people on whose account it exists. ”

“ Louis XI. made all Paris a refuge in 1467.
His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred; but he must beware of leaving it; one step outside the sanctuary, and he fell back into the flood. The wheel, the gibbet, the strappado, kept good guard around the place of refuge, and lay in watch incessantly for their prey, like sharks around a vessel. Hence, condemned men were to be seen whose hair had grown white in a cloister, on the steps of a palace, in the enclosure of an abbey, beneath the porch of a church; in this manner the asylum was a prison as much as any other. ”

“ In the most of cases the patient is not consulted in the matter. In some cases, however, the patient is consulted, and consents to go; is made to believe that the asylum is like any other infirmary or hospital, where patients are taken to be nursed and cared for, and cured if possible. In the most of cases, perhaps, there is a kind of dread and horror attending a patient taken to the asylum, and very many go against their will. This opposition is generally attributed to their insanity, and is too generally received as evidence that such an one is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. ”

“ It is of great importance not merely to exclude from the [district] asylums those who, by reason of violence or irritability, are proper subjects for the county asylum, but also those who, from old age or disease, are unfit for the journey to the asylum, or who, from the slight degree to which their mind is affected, might more properly remain in the workhouse. ”

“ When he took charge of the Richmond Asylum it was insanitary and overcrowded, and more like a prison than a hospital. He introduced a humane regime, made the wards bright and comfortable, and found regular occupation for some 75 per cent, of the patients. By his advice a large branch asylum was built a few miles away in the country. In 1894, and again in 1896, 1897, and 1898, the asylum was visited by beri-beri, the outbreak in 1894 being specially severe. ”

“ To the eye of a casual visitor of an asylum, there does certainly appear a large number of patients, so quiet, so orderly, so useful and industrious, that, although there is something evidently wrong about their heads, yet the question crosses the mind, whether asylum detention is called for in their case. The doubt is not entertained by the experienced observer, for he knows well that the quiet, order, and industry observable are the results of a well-organized system of management and control ”

“ Every criminal who landed there was safe. There were in every suburb almost as many places of asylum as gallows. It was the abuse of impunity by the side of the abuse of punishment; two bad things which strove to correct each other. The palaces of the king, the hotels of the princes, and especially churches, possessed the right of asylum. Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was temporarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI. made all Paris a refuge in 1467. ”

“ But when they pack themselves up inside a wall, without even a bell, or if they have one with only fierce dogs to answer it, all we can do is to leave them to the Police, or the Government, or the Newspapers. The right of asylum is sacred in England. Of Continental intrigues we know nothing, and we refuse to be mixed up with them. ”

“ Other sections refer to the government and supervision of the asylum, the discharge of patients after their term of imprisonment has expired, and for the visitation of the asylum by the Commissioners in Lunacy.
From this Act sprang the asylum we proceed to describe.
Every one who reads the newspaper is familiar with the common expression occurring in the trials of prisoners who escape punishment on the ground of insanity, "To be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure;" but very [271] few would be able to answer the question, What becomes of these persons? ”

“ It is not strange that many of all the classes mentioned should be found in the asylum, but to see the imbecile and driveling idiot thrown into a lunatic asylum, carries prima facie evidence with it, that the object in placing them there was not to prevent their doing injury to themselves or others, nor for their recovery from their unfortunate state, for many of these were born so. ”

“ There is a state of mind that is not unfavorably affected [Pg 141] by placing them in the asylum—such for instance as one under the influence of hallucinations—there are many in that institution who believe they own the asylum, they think they run the institution with all its machinery! ”

“ Disappointment too is felt by patients rather at discovering that on their discharge from one asylum they are to be [Pg 128] transferred to another, instead of being set at liberty and returned to their homes; for few of the insane recognize their malady, and they will think much less about the character of the asylum they are in, than their confinement and restricted liberty. Again, it is not at all necessary to contrast the two institutions, by calling the one an asylum for curables, and the other an asylum for incurables ”

“ A glance at the annual reports of our lunatic asylums reveals the main occupations of the inmates and the apparent causes of their attacks. In a county asylum like Wilts the great majority of patients are farm-laborers, with their wives and daughters ”

“ Thousands of widowed mothers, learning that they can marry again if not encumbered with children, are putting their little ones in asylums. The asylum thus offers a premium to child-desertion. Rich people even are living in luxury, while their nephews, nieces, and grandchildren are being corrupted in orphan asylums! The niece of a President of the United States was, not long ago, in an asylum, while her uncle, aunt, and three cousins, occupied the White House! Such people often give as their excuse that the child was too vicious, or rude, or even homely, to be received into their families. ”

“ Where to provide for the lunatic population of a county considerably exceeds the legitimate dimensions of a single asylum, and yet the proportion of recent cases is too small to warrant the construction of a distinct institution for them, we have proposed the establishment of two asylums, each of a mixed character. ”

“ An average of seventeen hundred women this asylum harbors; the asylum for men up on Ward's Island even more. Altogether 1,419 patients were admitted to the city asylums for the insane in 1889, and at the end of the year 4,913 remained in them. There is a constant ominous increase in this class of helpless unfortunates that are thrown on the city's charity. ”

“ Sometimes to a hospital, sometimes to the country cottage, or to some brother or sister who can ill afford the burden of her sickness. Very often indeed she is taken to a lunatic asylum. A quarter of a century ago, we were told that the female wards of such asylums were filled mainly by servant-maids and governesses ”

“ I am aware that there are many innocent ones who are suffering in these institutions who are proper subjects for a prayer-meeting and not for a penitentiary. There are many received into these lunatic asylums that are more fit for State prison or penitentiaries than places like these, and these are they that cause so much bloodshed, as did Haly and Mrs. Anderson, in my case, being appointed attendants by the government of the asylum.
I have stated that about the time the civil war broke out I was placed upon a hall near the dining-room, the patients in this hall were more quiet at times. ”

“ It must also be borne in mind, that these distant territories offered an asylum to many who fled from the vengeance of the laws, men without principle, thieves, rogues, and vagabonds, who escaping there, would often interfere with the happiness and peace of some small yet well-conducted community, which had migrated and settled on these fertile regions. ”

“ Can it be proved that the above named cities ever had sixty patients in that asylum at any one time? It would take a hundred such asylums to take all that the State of New York would furnish if each county should send as many as the city of Utica, according to their number of inhabitants. ”

“ After breakfast yesterday my mother took me, as she had promised, to the Infant Asylum in the Corso Valdocco, in order to recommend to the directress a little sister of Precossi. I had never seen an asylum and I was greatly amused! There were two hundred of them, boy-babies and girl-babies, and so small that the children in our lower primary schools are men in comparison. ”

“ It shall be incumbent on all individuals who shall place an insane person in a foreign asylum, to present, every thirty days, to the Minister of the Interior a precise report of the physical and mental condition of the patient, prepared by the physician of the asylum. ”

“ It gave us, however, some consolation to reflect that should it occasion much distress, the fertile regions of America would afford you a safe asylum from poverty and in time from oppression also; an asylum in which many thousands of your countrymen have found hospitality, peace, and affluence, and become united to us by all the ties of consanguinity, mutual interest, and affection." [See Note 8 at the end of this chapter.]
"We offer our most grateful acknowledgments for the friendly disposition you have always shown towards us. We know that you are not without your grievances. ”

“ In all cases admitting of recovery, or of material amelioration, a gigantic asylum is a gigantic evil, and, figuratively speaking, a manufactory of chronic insanity. The medical attendant, as said before, is so distracted by multitudinous duties, that the sufferer from the acute attack can claim little more attention than his chronic neighbour, except at the sacrifice of other duties. ”

“ They stated, with truth, that from time immemorial it was their custom to afford an asylum to anyone demanding it, and that to surrender a man who had sought and found shelter with them would be a disgrace which they could not endure. ”