“We are traitors to any truth when we suppress the utterance of it”

Department for Females

By the mid-nineteenth century, more than half of those institutionalized in the United States were women. Doubly marginalized, being both female and mentally ill, their experiences were distinct from their male counterparts. The narratives of the women in this section tell of the abuse suffered not just at the hands of doctors and attendants, but at the hands of family and the law. They tell of involuntary and wrongful commitment, often by husbands or fathers, and mistreatment as a matter of course. While these women used their narratives to expose and to incite, to advocate for legal rights and better treatment, their published stories are also important works of agency and restoration. Their stories are more than personal, they are political.

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

Phebe B. Davis, Two Years and Three Months in the New York Lunatic Asylum at Utica (Syracuse, 1855).

Phebe B. Davis, The Travels and Experience of Miss Phebe B. Davis, of Barnard, Windsor County, Vt. (Syracuse, 1860). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

In part, Phebe Davis blamed Samuel Joseph May and the “backbiting” ladies of Syracuse for her removal to the asylum at Utica. Left on her own after the death of her father, Davis moved to Syracuse and became a dressmaker. Her autobiography, and its sequel, express her frustration at not being able to earn a decent living in Syracuse because members of the community thought her crazy, and therefore a danger to society.

Click here to listen to a passage from Two Years and Three Months by Phebe Davis, read by Charlotte Kirkby.

Elizabeth T. Stone, Exposing the Modern Secret Way of Persecuting Christians in Order to Hush the Voice of Truth (Boston, 1859). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Written eighteen years after her 1842 autobiography, Elizabeth Stone’s second publication builds upon her first, recounting her imprisonment at McLean Asylum. Sent there by her brothers against her will and because of her differing religious views, Stone maintained that she was maltreated, drugged, and experimented upon by the doctors during the 16 months and 20 days she was locked in. She, like many others, called the asylum system the “modern Bastille,” a dark impenetrable fortress of persecution and despotic control.

The Wild Woman or the Wrecked Heart: Being the True Autobiography of the "Wild Woman" (Philadelphia, 1864).

Alice Galon, the voice behind this first-person narrative, went mad after her paramour, Clarence Withrow, murdered their child. This story of romance, scandal, murder, and exploitation was based on a real story of a woman who was held captive by Capt. Northcote and exhibited around the country as the “Wild Woman of the Wachita (sic) Mountains.” While touring in Cincinnati in 1856, doctors and judges brought in the unnamed woman for questioning and examination. No one seemed to be able to agree on whether or not she was insane, but nevertheless she was sent to the Dayton Asylum. Northcote fled to New Orleans.

E.P.W. Packard, Modern Persecution, or Insane Asylums Unveiled (Hartford, 1873).

In Illinois in 1860, a man could have his wife committed to an insane asylum without her consent, and with only the word of a doctor. In Elizabeth Packard’s (1816-1897) case, the doctor came to her door disguised as a sewing machine salesman, and she did not know she was being “examined.” She spent three years at Jacksonville Insane Asylum. After her release, she learned that her husband had taken everything, and that she had no legal right to her own property or her children. Packard formed the Anti-Insane Asylum Society and spent the remainder of her life advocating for the rights of married women and for mental health reform.

Mrs. George Lunt, Behind the Bars (Boston, 1871). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Adeline T.P. Lunt was the third wife of author, attorney, and orator George Lunt, who came from a prominent New England family and served as District Attorney of Massachusetts. Written entirely in the third person, Lunt gave a critique of the asylum system through telling the stories of other women, but left her own experience hidden from our view. She offered an updated definition of the insane asylum: “a place where insanity is made.”

Click here to listen to a passage from Behind the Bars by Adeline T.P. Lunt, read by Elisabeth Yang.

Juliet Workman, The Cornets: or the Hypocrisy of the Sisters of Charity Unveiled (Baltimore, 1877). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Juliet Workman’s siblings thought that she had gone insane after she renounced her Roman Catholic faith and became a Protestant, and so had her admitted to Mount Hope Retreat. Workman’s narrative describes the torture she endured over the next two years at the hands of the Sisters of Charity, from being put in a straightjacket to the “head bath.” She wanted to prosecute, but all council she sought advised against it, saying the Roman Catholic Church could not be touched and that she had no means of redress because Mount Hope was a private institution.

Mary Huestis Pengilly, Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum (New Brunswick, 1884).

“They will not allow me to go home,” begins Mary Pengilly (1823-1893), “and I must write those things down for fear I forget.” Kept while she was a patient at the asylum in Saint John, Pengilly’s journal records the events and the people that marked her six months there. She was miserable, the food was inedible, and the treatment was abusive. Upon her release, she took her diary to the Solicitor-General and the Lieutenant Governor but nothing came of it. Pengilly self-published her diary and spent the final years of her life traveling North America selling her diary and advocating for reform.

Lemira Clarissa Pennell, Memorial Scrap Book (Boston, 1883). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

The written autobiography of Lemira Pennell (d. 1893) is pieced together alongside “scraps” from newspaper clippings and letters, thereby adding additional scattered voices to the story of one individual. Pennell believed it was her work in sanitary reform that landed her in the Maine Insane Hospital, and that it was retaliation from local officials who considered her an “unmitigated nuisance.” The letters and clippings she included all serve to support her theory and assert her sanity.

Anna Agnew, From Under the Cloud; or, Personal Reminiscences of Insanity (Cincinnati, 1886). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Anna Agnew (1837-1917) was committed to the Indiana Hospital (later Central Asylum) for seven years following an episode during which she gave her young son laudanum and then tried to end her own life. She was hospitalized with what was described as a case of “acute mania” so severe that the attendants and other patients sometimes referred to her as “the devil.” Her probable diagnosis has since been identified as bipolar disorder. Agnew’s memoir also contains an appeal to end “asylum tourism”, arguing that the practice did patients more harm than good. She died at Dixmont Hospital in Pittsburgh, where she had been a resident since at least 1894.

Click here to listen to a passage from From Under the Cloud by Anna Agnew, read by Laurie Hardy.

"Tell the Truth," or the Story of a Working Woman's Wrongs (New York, 1884).

On the eve of the 1884 presidential election, a scandalous story concerning one of the candidates broke in a Buffalo, NY newspaper. The story alleged that Governor Grover Cleveland had, ten years prior, fathered an illegitimate child with a young woman named Maria Halpin. In an effort to cover it up, Cleveland had Halpin abducted and illegally committed to an asylum, and her child removed from her custody. Halpin asserted that Cleveland had raped her and afterwards threatened to ruin her if she went public with the story. She later agreed to surrender her son and drop all charges of assault and abduction for $500.

Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. View from the Portico. Department for Females, Phila (Philadelphia, ca. 1865). Albumen on stereograph mount.

The Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in West Philadelphia, known colloquially as “Kirkbride’s Hospital,” boasted large grounds filled with gardens and gazebos, all specifically designed to offer comfortable and humane accommodations to those in residence.

Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, Gymnasium, Department for Women, Interior View (Philadelphia, undated). Reproduction.

Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Collections

The gymnasium pictured here is strung with garlands, perhaps in advance of a holiday celebration, weekend entertainment, or dance.

Rose and Barbara Trautman, Wisconsin's Shame (Chicago, 1894). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Barbara Trautman, a young teacher from Sauk City, Wisconsin, awoke one Saturday morning to find two doctors in her room, who had been observing her while she slept. When pressed, the doctors offered no explanation, but later that afternoon Barbara and her sister Rose were taken from their home against their will, and sent to Mendota Asylum. Put away for what they believed were reasons related to their involvement in labor reform, the sisters spent two years at Mendota and Northern Hospital. In each of the sisters’ narratives, they describe physical abuse, drugging, attempted escapes, solitary confinement, and finally a trial by jury.

Margaret Starr, Sane or Insane? Or, How I Regained Liberty (Baltimore, 1904). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

For reasons that long remained a mystery to her, Margaret Starr was carried off to Mount Anchor Asylum in September of 1902. There, she began keeping a diary, recording the activities of the asylum and its head nurse, Madam Pike. She describes the sewing room and its “agreeable diversions,” plays and concerts in the recreation hall, but otherwise day after day of the same routine. She escaped after fifteen months, and only then learned that she had been sent away under the power of the “lunacy law,” with a certificate of insanity signed by two physicians she barely knew.

Philadelphia General Hospital, Sewing Room with Nurse and Female Patients Present (Philadelphia, undated). Albumen print.

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

Many of the narratives in this exhibition discuss the jobs that the authors were assigned while institutionalized. At hospitals that practiced moral treatment, this work was considered a part of therapy, but it was also a means of making the hospital more self-sufficient.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (Boston, 1899). Gift of Charles E. Rosenberg.

Though not strictly an autobiographical narrative, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) wrote the fictional short story The Yellow Wallpaper in response to her experience under the care of Silas Weir Mitchell. Mitchell prescribed her a course of rest cure, essentially confining her to bed, and even told Gilman that she should never write again. In the story, an unnamed woman suffering from what is presumed to be post-partum depression is prescribed a similar treatment by her physician husband. Gilman’s protagonist—like Gilman herself—finds that her condition worsens severely under this isolating treatment, indeed causing the very thing it was meant to cure.

Click here to listen to a passage from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, read by Hannah Rapaport-Stein.

William Playfair Portraits of Cases of Rest Treatment (England, ca. 1880). Cabinet cards.

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

The six women in these photos were diagnosed with hysteria and neurasthenia, a condition whose symptoms included anxiety, fatigue, headaches, and depression. Under the supervision of Dr. William Playfair, they were prescribed a course of rest cure. He exhibited these portraits, depicting the women before and after their treatment, at a meeting of the British Medical Association in 1889. The posed and styled nature of the portraits asks us to consider how much these photos might have been editorialized, and whether they are indeed an accurate representation of the potential outcomes of the rest cure.

Developed by neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, this treatment called for seclusion, rest, a regimented diet, massage, and electrically-induced muscular stimulation. Mitchell describes women diagnosed with hysteria, a vague catchall diagnosis, as “the pests of many households” and “annoying examples of despotic selfishness.” His theory postulated that their only chance at recovery was through the “absence of all possible use of brain and body,” supplemented by over-feeding, massage, and—in serious cases—hysterectomy.

The yellow wallpaper pictured here was designed for this exhibition by Tiffany Wisser, after the original 1899 design by E.B. Bird. This wallpaper was used as a backdrop for the Playfair portraits in the original gallery exhibition.

“There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit.”

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (Boston, 1899)