Ten Days in a Mad-House and Other Stories (12 page)

One of the characters in Hall 6 was Matilda, a little old German

woman, who, I believe, went insane over the loss of money. She was

small, and had a pretty pink complexion. She was not much trouble,

except at times. She would take spells, when she would talk into the

steam-heaters or get up on a chair and talk out of the windows. In

these conversations she railed at the lawyers who had taken her

property. The nurses seemed to find a great deal of amusement in

teasing the harmless old soul. One day I sat beside Miss Grady and

Miss Grupe, and heard them tell her perfectly vile things to call Miss

McCarten. After telling her to say these things they would send her

to the other nurse, but Matilda proved that she, even in her state, had

more sense than they.

“I cannot tell you. It is private,” was all she would say. I saw Miss

Grady, on a pretense of whispering to her, spit in her ear. Matilda quietly wiped her ear and said nothing.

CHAPTER XIV.

SOME UNFORTUNATE STORIES.

BY this time I had made the acquaintance of the greater number of

the forty-five women in hall 6. Let me introduce a few. Louise, the

pretty German girl who I have spoken of formerly as being sick with

fever, had the delusion that the spirits of her dead parents were with

her. “I have gotten many beatings from Miss Grady and her

assistants,” she said, “and I am unable to eat the horrible food they

give us. I ought not to be compelled to freeze for want of proper

clothing. Oh! I pray nightly that I may be taken to my papa and

mamma. One night, when I was confined at Bellevue, Dr. Field came;

I was in bed, and weary of the examination. At last I said: ‘I am tired

of this. I will talk no more.’ ‘Won’t you?’ he said, angrily. ‘I’ll see if I

can’t make you.’ With this he laid his crutch on the side of the bed,

and, getting up on it, he pinched me very severely in the ribs. I jumped up straight in bed, and said: ‘What do you mean by this?’ ‘I

want to teach you to obey when I speak to you,’ he replied. If I could

only die and go to papa!” When I left she was confined to bed with a

fever, and maybe by this time she has her wish.

There is a Frenchwoman confined in hall 6, or was during my stay,

whom I firmly believe to be perfectly sane. I watched her and talked

with her every day, excepting the last three, and I was unable to find

any delusion or mania in her. Her name is Josephine Despreau, if

that is spelled correctly, and her husband and all her friends are in

France. Josephine feels her position keenly. Her lips tremble, and she

breaks down crying when she talks of her helpless condition. “How

did you get here?” I asked.

“One morning as I was trying to get breakfast I grew deathly sick,

and two officers were called in by the woman of the house, and I was

taken to the station-house. I was unable to understand their

proceedings, and they paid little attention to my story. Doings in this

country were new to me, and before I realized it I was lodged as an

insane woman in this asylum. When I first came I cried that I was

here without hope of release, and for crying Miss Grady and her

assistants choked me until they hurt my throat, for it has been sore

ever since.”

A pretty young Hebrew woman spoke so little English I could not

get her story except as told by the nurses. They said her name is

Sarah Fishbaum, and that her husband put her in the asylum because

she had a fondness for other men than himself. Granting that Sarah

was insane, and about men, let me tell you how the nurses tried to

cure(?) her. They would call her up and say:

“Sarah, wouldn’t you like to have a nice young man?”

“Oh, yes; a young man is all right,” Sarah would reply in her few

English words.

“Well, Sarah, wouldn’t you like us to speak a good word to some of

the doctors for you? Wouldn’t you like to have one of the doctors?”

And then they would ask her which doctor she preferred, and advise

her to make advances to him when he visited the hall, and so on.

I had been watching and talking with a fair-complexioned woman

for several days, and I was at a loss to see why she had been sent

there, she was so sane.

“Why did you come here?” I asked her one day, after we had

indulged in a long conversation.

“I was sick,” she replied.

“Are you sick mentally?” I urged.

“Oh, no; what gave you such an idea? I had been overworking

myself, and I broke down. Having some family trouble, and being

penniless and nowhere to go, I applied to the commissioners to be

sent to the poorhouse until I would be able to go to work.”

“But they do not send poor people here unless they are insane,” I said. “Don’t you know there are only insane women, or those

supposed to be so, sent here?”

“I knew after I got here that the majority of these women were

insane, but then I believed them when they told me this was the

place they sent all the poor who applied for aid as I had done.”

“How have you been treated?” I asked. “Well, so far I have escaped a

beating, although I have been sickened at the sight of many and the

recital of more. When I was brought here they went to give me a

bath, and the very disease for which I needed doctoring and from

which I was suffering made it necessary that I should not bathe. But

they put me in, and my sufferings were increased greatly for weeks

thereafter.”

A Mrs. McCartney, whose husband is a tailor, seems perfectly

rational and has not one fancy. Mary Hughes and Mrs. Louise

Schanz showed no obvious traces of insanity.

One day two new-comers were added to our list. The one was an

idiot, Carrie Glass, and the other was a nice-looking German girl–

quite young, she seemed, and when she came in all the patients

spoke of her nice appearance and apparent sanity. Her name was

Margaret. She told me she had been a cook, and was extremely neat.

One day, after she had scrubbed the kitchen floor, the chambermaids

came down and deliberately soiled it. Her temper was aroused and

she began to quarrel with them; an officer was called and she was

taken to an asylum.

“How can they say I am insane, merely because I allowed my temper

to run away with me?” she complained. “Other people are not shut

up for crazy when they get angry. I suppose the only thing to do is to

keep quiet and so avoid the beatings which I see others get. No one

can say one word about me. I do everything I am told, and all the

work they give me. I am obedient in every respect, and I do

everything to prove to them that I am sane.”

One day an insane woman was brought in. She was noisy, and Miss

Grady gave her a beating and blacked her eye. When the doctors

noticed it and asked if it was done before she came there the nurses

said it was.

While I was in hall 6 I never heard the nurses address the patients

except to scold or yell at them, unless it was to tease the. They spent

much of their time gossiping about the physicians and about the

other nurses in a manner that was not elevating. Miss Grady nearly

always interspersed her conversation with profane language, and

generally began her sentences by calling on the name of the Lord.

The names she called the patients were of the lowest and most

profane type. One evening she quarreled with another nurse while

we were at supper about the bread, and when the nurse had gone

out she called her bad names and made ugly remarks about her.

In the evenings a woman, whom I supposed to be head cook for the

doctors, used to come up and bring raisins, grapes, apples, and

crackers to the nurses. Imagine the feelings of the hungry patients as

they sat and watched the nurses eat what was to them a dream of

luxury.

One afternoon, Dr. Dent was talking to a patient, Mrs. Turney, about

some trouble she had had with a nurse or matron. A short time after

we were taken down to supper and this woman who had beaten

Mrs. Turney, and of whom Dr. Dent spoke, was sitting at the door of

our dining-room. Suddenly Mrs. Turney picked up her bowl of tea,

and, rushing out of the door flung it at the woman who had beat her.

There was some loud screaming and Mrs. Turney was returned to

her place. The next day she was transferred to the “rope gang,”

which is supposed to be composed of the most dangerous and most

suicidal women on the island.

At first I could not sleep and did not want to so long as I could hear

anything new. The night nurses may have complained of the fact. At

any rate one night they came in and tried to make me take a dose of

some mixture out of a glass “to make me sleep,” they said. I told

them I would do nothing of the sort and they left me, I hoped, for the

night. My hopes were vain, for in a few minutes they returned with a

doctor, the same that received us on our arrival. He insisted that I

take it, but I was determined not to lose my wits even for a few

hours. When he saw that I was not to be coaxed he grew rather

rough, and said he had wasted too much time with me already. That

if I did not take it he would put it into my arm with a needle. It

occurred to me that if he put it into my arm I could not get rid of it,

but if I swallowed it there was one hope, so I said I would take it. I

smelt it and it smelt like laudanum, and it was a horrible dose. No

sooner had they left the room and locked me in than I tried so see

how far down my throat my finger would go, and the chloral was

allowed to try its effect elsewhere.

I want to say that the night nurse, Burns, in hall 6, seemed very kind

and patient to the poor, afflicted people. The other nurses made

several attempts to talk to me about lovers, and asked me if I would

not like to have one. They did not find me very communicative on

the–to them–popular subject.

Once a week the patients are given a bath, and that is the only time

they see soap. A patient handed me a piece of soap one day about

the size of a thimble, I considered it a great compliment in her

wanting to be kind, but I thought she would appreciate the cheap

soap more than I, so I thanked her but refused to take it. On bathing

day the tub is filled with water, and the patients are washed, one

after the other, without a change of water. This is done until the

water is really thick, and then it is allowed to run out and the tub is

refilled without being washed. The same towels are used on all the

women, those with eruptions as well as those without. The healthy

patients fight for a change of water, but they are compelled to submit

to the dictates of the lazy, tyrannical nurses. The dresses are seldom

changed oftener than once a month. If the patient has a visitor, I have

seen the nurses hurry her out and change her dress before the visitor

comes in. This keeps up the appearance of careful and good

management.

The patients who are not able to take care of themselves get into

beastly conditions, and the nurses never look after them, but order

some of the patients to do so.

For five days we were compelled to sit in the room all day. I never

put in such a long time. Every patient was stiff and sore and tired.

We would get in little groups on benches and torture our stomachs

by conjuring up thoughts of what we would eat first when we got

out. If I had not known how hungry they were and the pitiful side of

it, the conversation would have been very amusing. As it was it only

made me sad. When the subject of eating, which seemed to be the

favorite one, was worn out, they used to give their opinions of the

institution and its management. The condemnation of the nurses and

the eatables was unanimous.

As the days passed Miss Tillie Mayard’s condition grew worse. She

was continually cold and unable to eat of the food provided. Day

after day she sang in order to try to maintain her memory, but at last

the nurse made her stop it. I talked with her daily, and I grieved to

find her grow worse so rapidly. At last she got a delusion. She

thought that I was trying to pass myself off for her, and that all the

people who called to see Nellie Brown were friends in search of her,

but that I, by some means, was trying to deceive them into the belief

that I was the girl. I tried to reason with her, but found it impossible,

so I kept away from her as much as possible, lest my presence

should make her worse and feed the fancy.

One of the patients, Mrs. Cotter, a pretty, delicate woman, one day

thought she saw her husband coming up the walk. She left the line in

which she was marching and ran to meet him. For this act she was

sent to the Retreat. She afterward said: