“Unfeeling hearts and cruel hands”

Department for Males

There is more than one side to every story. The annual reports issued by asylums often painted a very respectable picture of patient life, talked of progress, and boasted high cure rates. But the stories in this section present a starkly different experience. These stories, the ones written by the patients, depict the 19th century asylum as a mismanaged, overcrowded, and underfunded place. The treatment offered was misguided if not inhumane. The attendants were untrained and the doctors vindictive, the food inedible and the conditions unspeakable. Many of the narratives here were written to break through the glowing façade presented by the institution and to expose these horrors to the unknowing public, and to a degree they were successful. In a handful of instances, publication led to investigation, and investigation led to reform.

Illustration from Etienne Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales (Paris, 1838).

Robert Newell, [Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. Department for Males, 111 North 49th Street, Philadelphia], ca. 1870. Albumen print.

The Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane opened in West Philadelphia in 1841 with Thomas S. Kirkbride as Superintendent. The Department for Males building was added in 1859 and built to the specifications of the Kirkbride plan. This photograph shows Department staff on the steps of the main entrance to the building.

Robert Fuller, An Account of the Imprisonment and Sufferings of Robert Fuller, of Cambridge (Boston, 1833). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

On Sunday, June 24th, 1832, Robert Fuller (born ca. 1795) was forcibly removed from his home and unwillingly detained at McLean Asylum. He claimed there was a conspiracy against him, orchestrated by some acquaintances and at the word of two doctors who barely examined him. Fuller wrote that McLean, though beautiful on the outside, was a place of neglect and cruelty, an institution of “bolts and bars.” He spent sixty-five days there. The Asylum charged $199.45 for his treatment, including the three weeks and five days he didn’t stay of the recommended thirteen weeks.

John B. Derby, Scenes in a Mad-House (Boston, 1838). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

John Barton Derby (1792-1867) was, like Robert Fuller, a short-term resident of McLean in the 1830s, where he was diagnosed with an “over excited imagination” before being moved to Dr. Nehemiah Cutter’s Retreat in Pepperell, Massachusetts. Derby did not detail his treatment, and made only passing remarks on the facility and the staff, but filled the pages with descriptions of his fellow patients. The last patient he described, a poet and failed politician, was in fact himself. Derby’s 1837 book of poetry, Musings of a Recluse, can be seen in another section of this exhibition.

Click here to listen to a passage from Scenes in a Mad-House by John Derby, read by Steven Peitzman.

McLean Asylum for the Insane, Rules and Directions for the Attendants at the McLean Asylum for the Insane (Boston, 1839). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Compiled and written by Luther V. Bell, M.D. (1806-1862), Superintendent of McLean Asylum from 1837-1855, this manual outlines the routine and daily duties expected of institution employees. Divided into thirty concise sections, there are rules pertaining to personal dress, deportment, the cleanliness of asylum restrooms, and the locking of doors. Rule five covers the treatment of patients, and forbids violence and the use of restraints, except when ordered by an officer.

John Perceval, A Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman, During a State of Mental Derangement (London, 1838).

John Thomas Perceval (1803-1876) was confined by his family at Brislington House and Ticehurst House for a total of three years following a spate of erratic behavior. His Narrative tells of the horrific conditions and maltreatment he endured while at Brislington, one of England’s most expensive private asylums. There he was kept in restraints, forced into cold baths, and underwent a treatment which involved severing his temporal artery. Following his discharge from Ticehurst in 1834, he went on to found the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society and advocate for “lunacy law” reform.

Click here to listen to a passage from John Perceval's Narrative, read by Michael Kierst-Krahel.

G. Grimes, A Secret Worth Knowing. A Treatise on the Most Important Subject in the World: Simply to Say, Insanity (Nashville, 1846). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Green Grimes (b. 1809) described his own condition as moral insanity and monomania, brought on by the death of a brother when Grimes was 14 years old, and exacerbated by a bout of bilious fever and a manipulative business partner. Written while a patient at the Insane Institution at Nashville, Tennessee, Grimes’s Treatise claims that the best treatment can be found at the “lunatic asylum nearest in your reach … under the care of men appointed by the State to take care of such persons,” and not at the hands of friends and family.

Philadelphia General Hospital, [Male Patients in Insane Exercising Yard] (Philadelphia, ca. 1899). Albumen print.

Courtesy of the Historical Medical Library at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Almshouse opened in 1732 at 4th and Spruce Streets, making it the first publicly-funded almshouse in America. Severe overcrowding led to a move in 1835 to Blockley Township just across the Schuylkill, and the almshouse became known as “Old Blockley.” In the early 20th century, it became Philadelphia General Hospital.

Isaac H. Hunt, Astounding Disclosures! Three Years in a Mad House (Augusta?, 1851).

Two days after Isaac Hunt was finally released from the Maine Insane Hospital in May of 1848, he went to the State House to petition for redress. There, he recounted the abuse he suffered at the hands of hospital staff and Trustees, alleging that he was forcibly given medication which worsened his condition and that all of his appeals were met with retaliation. In 1850, his petition sparked an investigation into malpractice and mismanagement, but a conflagration broke out in December of that same year, destroying half of the Hospital. Twenty-eight people died; twenty-seven of those were patients.

Click here to listen to a passage from Astounding Disclosures! by Isaac Hunt, read by David Swartz.

[John Weston], Life in a Lunatic Asylum: An Autobiographical Sketch (London, 1867). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

The author of this narrative, now presumed to be John Weston, was admitted to Bristol Insane Asylum shortly after his wife due to the distress he suffered when doctors would not release her. According to his story, Weston and his wife were not allowed to see each other often, and then only under very controlled circumstances. He also described daily life in some detail, including meals, the work he was assigned as a painter, and many of his fellow patients.

Rev. Hiram Chase, Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum: From August 20th, 1863, to December 20th, 1865 (Saratoga Springs, 1868). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

In the preface of his narrative, Hiram Chase (1806-1888) states that he was initially deterred from writing of his experience because “views of asylum life” had already been printed, and in “many instances the history was read only to laugh, and pity the insanity of the writer.” (He mentions specifically a woman from Syracuse who had been released from Utica right before he was admitted, possibly a reference to Phebe Davis.) Despite his hesitations, he wrote Two Years “for the purpose of opening the eyes of the people of the State of New York… to never send their wives, their children, or any of their relatives to a State institution.”

Frederick Hyren, Frederick Hyren in the Insane Asylum (Boston, 1871). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Frederick Hyren (b. 1812) was accused of trying to seduce a woman under the pretext of religious worship, declared as “honest, but insane” during his trial, and sentenced to Taunton Asylum. His accuser, the brother-in-law and legal guardian of the unnamed woman, also had her committed to the asylum in Worcester. Hyren observed that he was not the only sane person in the asylum and told his readers: “If there is a person whom you want to get rid of without taking his or her life, have a fool or knave doctor swear that he or she is insane, and then send him or her into an insane asylum… If he or she was not insane, he or she is very likely to become so by staying there.” He was confined for twenty-seven days.

Moses Swan, Ten Years and Ten Months in Lunatic Asylums in Different States (Hoosick Falls, 1874). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Moses Swan (1812-1889) refers to his experiences at Brattleboro and Ida Hill Asylums as “high schools to teach human nature.” The lessons were not kind. At the beginning of his narrative, he recounts a horrifying incident that occurred at Ida Hill: an attendant restrained him, forced him into a cold bath, held his head under, and poured dirty bath water down his throat. He lived at Ida Hill for over ten years, mostly in the ward for “uncurables.” After his release he bought a restraint, similar to the one used on him at Ida Hill, to exhibit during his lectures against maltreatment.

Julius Chambers, A Mad World and its Inhabitants (Detroit, 1876). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

In 1872, Julius Chambers (1850-1920) convincingly feigned insanity in order to gain inside access to Bloomingdale Asylum in New York City at the request of his editor at the New York Tribune. Allegations of abuse had been made by former patients against the Asylum, which Chambers then corroborated in his exposé. His story ran in the New York Tribune in August of 1876. Shortly thereafter, a dozen wrongfully-committed patients were released, and the hospital administration reorganized.

Herman Charles Merivale, My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, By a Sane Patient (London, 1879). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

About forty years after John Perceval was released from Ticehurst Hospital, Herman Charles Merivale (1839-1906) was admitted. Merivale’s experience at Ticehurst, a private asylum, was—like Perceval’s—not “especially painful” though he recalled his life there as “inconceivably terrible.” Merivale was a hypochondriac, and though his own doctors were assured of his sanity and eventual recovery, a relative ordered his removal to Ticehurst with the help of two inexperienced doctors. Under the law, Merivale was powerless. His liberty, as he said, his “very existence as an individual being, had been signed away behind [his] back.”

Luther Benson, Fifteen Years in Hell (Indianapolis, 1885). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

The fifteen years to which Luther Benson (1847-1898) refers in the title of his book was not the time spent inside the asylum, but rather the years which led to it. Benson, an Indiana lawyer and temperance lecturer, struggled with severe alcoholism, and wrote the bulk of his autobiography while at the Indiana Asylum for the Insane. After he was released he was able to regain his sobriety and continue his lecture circuit. He became so renowned in Indiana that he was offered a Congressional nomination in 1883 but declined. Fifteen Years was a success, and was reprinted in at least seven editions before his death in 1898.

Philadelphia General Hospital, [Garden in Center of Courtyard of Men’s Outwards] (Philadelphia, ca. 1899). Albumen print.

Courtesy of the Historical Medical Library at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Philadelphia General Hospital was located on the west banks of the Schuylkill River in what is now University City. It was the only municipal hospital in Philadelphia, serving many of the city’s indigent. The psychiatric facilities were moved to Northeast Philadelphia just prior to World War I.

Cyrus S. Turner, Eight and One-Half Years in Hell (Des Moines, 1912).

Between 1875 and 1910, Cyrus Turner (1856-1917) was admitted to three hospitals four different times. He recalls the kindness of the staff at the Iowa Hospital for the Insane, and the pleasure he got from strolling through the greenhouse and watching magic lantern shows. His experience at Woodcroft Sanitarium in Colorado could not have been more different. Sent there for reasons unbeknownst to him, he tells of weeks spent locked in the “crib” and abuse at the hands of attendants. His autobiography calls for reform, but it also earnestly begs its readers to remember those with mental illness, to visit them, and to not forsake them. He died in 1917 at the Clarinda Mental Health Institute in Iowa.

Marion Marle Woodson, Behind the Door of Delusion (New York, 1932). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

In 1931, Oklahoma became the thirteenth state to legalize the sterilization of patients in state-funded asylums. The Oklahoma law applied to men under the age of 65 and women under 47 who were scheduled for parole. Marle Woodson (1882-1933), a journalist and patient at Eastern Oklahoma Hospital in the early 1930s, describes the reactions of his fellow patients when they first learned about the passage of the law from the daily newspapers: “The two thousand men and women in the institution are in a foment… patients are frightened, wrought up, angry and muttering.” Over the next seven years, Oklahoma sterilized 49 men and over 235 women.