Lunatic asylum

“ IF to-morrow we were to read that the whole of the inmates of some great metropolitan lunatic asylum had escaped, and were still at large, the inhabitants of London would be seriously alarmed. There would be a general feeling of insecurity, for among the inmates of all great asylums there are many whose form of insanity is dangerous to the community, even when it is not the most serious form of all—homicidal mania. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the readers of this true history will imagine for themselves a number of hospitals for typhus fever, where any one of them, man or woman, may be shut up among the worst cases upon the first symptoms of a cold in the head—with moral, social, and physical consequences beyond man’s power of description—they will know something of the meaning of private lunatic asylums, and our ‘lunacy-law.’ If they will further reflect upon the chances which they would then have of escaping the infection, they will not wonder that private lunatic asylums are not famous for cures. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have exhibited to Mayor Kemp, of Troy city, the accursed harness, and revealed to him the cruel treatment the lunatics undergo in Ida Hill Lunatic Asylum by the Cain family or their children.
I have told the president of the institution how badly I was treated when bound by Isabella, hoping to influence the government by setting before them the facts as I saw and realized them.
I have lectured privately and publicly with all long suffering upon the subject of asylum [100] life ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Annie lives no longer in the borderland between sanity and insanity; for she writes to me from a lunatic asylum, expecting that somehow I shall accomplish her deliverance. 105 One short year in service—a year full of hopes and struggles, of desires to do right, and compulsion to do wrong; a year marked by increasing violence and strange delusions—then Nature had its way, and the gates of a lunatic asylum closed upon her. But the magistrate never knew what a task he set me when he asked me to minister to the diseased mind of that poor woman. ”

“ Yet it is rare for a casual visitor to witness scenes of violence in a lunatic asylum. Those who are mischievous are trained to concentrate their dislike upon the medical officers and attendants rather than upon their fellow-patients. The matron of Hanwell Asylum, in her report for 1856, thus speaks of one of the criminal lunatics who belongs to this refractory class:—
“She seldom interferes with any other patient, the officers and attendants being the special objects of her furious attempts, and her mode of attack is peculiar ”

“ And I believe it to the full; though we know that mercifully there is nothing we forget so soon as pain. Add to that indefinable and wearing agony the surroundings of a large lunatic asylum—beyond conception the most cruel place for such a malady—with medical supervision merely nominal, where all, with scarcely an exception, are regarded [Pg 25] as incurably mad, and simply kept out of the way to save families trouble,—and the pen of a De Quincey would help me as little in the description as my own. ”

“ The lunatic department in the general prison at Perth was to be relieved from overcrowding by removing the insane prisoners to district, chartered, or private licensed asylums, with consent of managers of chartered and private asylums. As to the disposal of persons becoming insane in local prisons, these were to be removed to a lunatic asylum by a warrant of the sheriff; all asylums in which pauper lunatics were maintained by contract being bound to provide for the reception of such prisoner. ”

“ An hour after this scene, Mdlle. de Cardoville and the sempstress, Marshal Simon, his two daughters and Dagobert quitted Dr. Beleinier's asylum.
In terminating this episode, a few words by way of moral, with regard to lunatic asylums and convents may not be out of place. We have said, and we repeat, that the laws which apply to the superintendence of lunatic asylums appear to us insufficient. Facts that have recently transpired before the courts, and other facts that have been privately communicated to us, evidently prove this insufficiency. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The celebration of the centenary of a lunatic asylum gives birth to-day to a national festivity in which all civilized nations participate. This is a fact that would have well astonished the first founders of lunatic asylums, the Pinels, the Esquirols, the William Tukes, and the first organizers of Bloomingdale. The public opinion respecting the diseases of the mind, the care to be given to lunatics, is vastly different to what it was a century ago. ”

“ In his Ninth Report, this same Superintendent says,—“Some are sent to the asylum in a state of paralysis, some are aged and in a state of fatuity, and others when they become troublesome, or are in a diseased and feeble state of bodily health, and require more nurse-tending than they receive in the workhouses.... Under the existing arrangements, lunatic asylums are gradually losing their proper character of hospitals for the recovery of the insane, and sinking down to be mere auxiliaries to workhouses.” ”

“ Lamb] which suggests the inquiry how far the asylums in Ireland have proved effectual, I am directed to state that a very considerable accumulation of incurable lunatics has taken place in this asylum within the last few years, and for the reception of whom the House of Industry is inadequate. In consequence the Richmond Lunatic Asylum, which was established for the relief of curable lunatics, is at present occupied by [407] one hundred and seventeen patients, whom the medical officer deems incurable. ”

“ I learned from ex-Judge Robertson and others the law to send a patient to a lunatic asylum. Two physicians examine the patient, pronounce him or her insane, by oath; the county judge being notified to this effect, issues an order and the patient is sent to the smut mill of hell or to a lunatic asylum.
It must not be understood that the same mode of operation is practiced in all cases. Some patients are supported in the Troy institution solely by the county ”

“ Hogan, as a duty, to let the people know how patients are treated in lunatic asylums. Although I have received maltreatment in asylums in New York and Vermont States, [91] I am not altogether opposed to these institutions, for there are insane persons who have no homes, yet I protest against maltreatment. We are received as insane, unfortunate beings, use us kind, and the good Lord will reward you. Will lecture upon this subject, and exhibit the asylum harness, when arrangements are made in proper places. Address M. Swan, Hoosick Falls, Rensselaer county, N. Y. ”

“ The inquiries set on foot proved utterly without effect: not the slightest intelligence of the fate of the child was obtained—and the grief and distraction of the bereaved mother resulted in temporary insanity. She was confined in a lunatic asylum for seven or eight months, and when pronounced convalescent, found herself homeless, and almost penniless, in the world. This sad story I had heard from one of the keepers of the asylum during her sojourn there. ”

“ It not unfrequently happens that idiots who have lived for many years in union houses, and have always been considered harmless and docile, under the influence of some sudden [Pg 63] excitement, commit a serious overt act, and are then sent to an asylum. One of the most placid and harmless patients in this asylum, who is habitually entrusted with working tools, is a criminal lunatic, of weak intellect, who committed a homicide on a boy, who teased him while he was breaking stones on the road. ”

“ A considerable portion of this numerous class, not less, perhaps, than a fourth of the whole, are subject to gusts of passion and violence, or are addicted to disgusting propensities, which render them unfit to remain in the workhouse; and it is the common practice, when accommodation can be procured, to effect the removal of such persons to a lunatic asylum, where their vicious propensities are kept under control, and where, if they cannot be corrected, they at least cease to be offensive or dangerous. ”

“ After full discussion, the Charity Organization Committee resolved "that the arrangement which has been made for idiots, imbeciles, and harmless lunatics in the Metropolitan Asylum District is applicable in its main principles to the rest of England, viz. that they should be removed from workhouses and county lunatic asylums, and that young persons of those classes should be suitably educated and trained." ”

“ Villainous conspiracies, for personal motives, to set the lunacy law in motion, are rare enough, I do not doubt. But the law favours them. What is not rare, I doubt even less, is the imprisonment in these fearful places of people who are perfectly sane, but suffering from some temporary disorder of the brain, the most delicate and intricate part of all the mechanism, and the least understood ”

“ The primitive custom of confining dangerous lunatics (for the harmless are allowed their full liberty outside) in the common prison is soon to be done away with. A large lunatic asylum is rapidly nearing completion near Danilovgrad—another memorial of Prince Nicolas' improvements.
The prisoners were sleek and fat—those imprisoned for long terms or for life bearing witness of the good treatment which they receive at the hands of [70] the authorities. One youngish man in particular attracted our attention, a merry laughing fellow whose girth had reached alarming proportions. ”

“ At common law it appears that a lunatic cannot be placed in an asylum unless dangerous to himself or to others, but under the Lunacy Acts the placing of a madman in an asylum is considered as a part of the treatment with a view to the cure of the patient. ”

“ It is with feelings of deepest sorrow that your physician is compelled to state, that patients continue to be sent to the asylum in very advanced stages of bodily and mental disease.... So long as no violent or overt act has been perpetrated; so long as the sufferer can be ‘managed’ in the privacy of his miserable home, or by the ‘cheap’ resources of a workhouse, he is often detained from the lunatic hospital. ”

“ When reform, utter and complete, has been devised and carried out, insanity may be ‘eliminated’—I quote the same writer again—more than he thinks; for [Pg 96] a blessing may fall on men’s efforts which seems very justly denied to them now. As long as this form of false imprisonment is possible, as long as scores of sane men and women are being maddened in private asylums, and hundreds of mad people being driven madder, insanity in England will not decrease. As for its proper medical treatment, I have nothing to do with it and nothing to say to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Their action is threefold: [389] (1) they may initiate the removal of their chronic insane from institutions; they may co-operate with asylum officers in readily removing such lunatics as these officers intimate to be fit for being boarded out, and in procuring suitable guardians and homes for them; and (3) they may, by well-directed efforts, instead of hurrying every lunatic into an asylum, as the practice with some is, provide in like manner for those idiotic and insane paupers who, even when they first become chargeable, do not require asylum treatment and care.... ”