TEN YEARS AND TEN MONTHS
IN
LUNATIC ASYLUMS
IN DIFFERENT STATES.
BY
MOSES SWAN,
OF HOOSICK FALLS, RENSSELAER COUNTY, N. Y.
HOOSICK FALLS:
Printed for the Author.
1874.
AGENTS WANTED
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Address MOSES SWAN,
Hoosick Falls, N. Y.
TRANSACTIONS OF A SINGLE DAY.
But oh! tongue cannot tell or pen describe what I suffered at the hands
of the cruel and inhuman male attendant and the equally cruel and
barbarous female attendant, whose hearts were calloused and harder than
the adamantine rock.
But to my story. I was standing alone in the back hall, having just
finished washing the breakfast dishes and sweeping the floor (work
required of me), when the attendant came through the hall up to me with
a pair of handcuffs, which I shall represent by A (see engraving). B
represents the leather belt, with a large lock buckle attached to one
end. C represents the second strap, same as B. D is the feet straps or
bands to bind the feet. E is the muff or great confine for the hands. F
is attached to B, D and D, when on a person. As I said, I was standing
in the back hall when this male attendant came up to me and ordered me
to put on the handcuffs A. I had done nothing to be punished for, and
for the _first time_ refused to obey him, saying "I can't, I can't."
He immediately struck me with the strap and lock buckle B, again and
again, making marks upon my left shoulder which I shall carry to my
grave; when at last tired of that, he drew his long arm, pounded me in
the face until the blood, running down from my face, stood in pools on
the floor. The female attendant, hearing the noise, rushed out of the
cross hall with the muff, feet straps and strap C, heretofore spoken
of. As she approached us I appealed to her, and kindly asked her to
take him away. "Oh, no!" she said, much to my dismay, "I have come to
help him." The male attendant now stepped back a little with his fist
drawn, ready at any moment to strike me again. The female attendant, a
large, muscular woman, who could not have weighed less than two hundred
pounds, stepped up and buckled the strap around me so tight that I
could scarcely breathe, then stepping behind me took off my coat; she
next took up my right foot and placed upon my ankle fetter D, after
which she fastened another to my left ankle. (See engraving.) She then
buckled strap F into B, which was around my body; she next took cuffs
A and put them on my wrists; these have each a staple in one end and
a button hole in the other sufficient to receive the staple. She next
put on the great muff or hand confine E. It is made of heavy leather,
and is some eighteen inches in length, and about fifteen inches in
circumference; it opens on the front and at each end, and has a staple
in the middle at one end, and a button hole on the other; also staples
and button holes at both ends, as seen in the engraving. I did not
resist, for I knew it would do no good, though I had been terribly
beaten. She placed this last jacket upon me, drew all the straps
tight, and I had on the whole of the accursed harness.
Immediately after this the female attendant proceeded to open the doors
and lead the way down two flight of stairs to the bath room. The male
attendant took me by the arm and hurried me along after her; there we
were met by a patient by the name of E. Scott. I was there ordered into
a bath tub of cold water, compelled to sit down, compelled to lie down,
bound as I was hand and foot, and chilled through and through; my feet
were pressed hard against the foot of the bath tub and my shoulders
against the raised bottom of the tub. The water not being of sufficient
depth over the raised part of the bottom to cover my head or keep it
under water, the attendant took an old tin wash dish, and dipping the
water from between my legs poured the dirty water into my mouth and
down my throat, keeping my mouth pried open all the while. I begged for
my life; I cried for mercy; they would not desist, but again and again
filled the dish and poured it down my throat. I was almost strangled,
but not yet content, they both grabbed my legs and raised them from
the bottom of the tub, thereby drawing my head and shoulders into the
deeper water. Then the attendant, by the aid of Scott, held my head
under water until I was almost strangled. Whenever I was almost gone
they would raise it a moment for me to revive, and then jam it down
again under the water. Oh, fiend! can you tell how one feels in the
act of drowning, with no one near to pity. But He, who is everywhere
present, beholding the evil and the good, delivered me out of their
hands, blessed be his holy name forever and forever. Amen.
It was most unjust; if I was a lunatic it was unjust; if I was not,
it was none the less so. Strange, that in a free land, in a thickly
settled and civilized community, such barbarous and inhuman acts are
allowed by those in authority.
If we can learn, experience and suffer so much in one short hour, what
think you I learned, suffered and experienced in _ten long years_!
MOSES SWAN.
RECOMMENDATION.
_First Baptist Church of Hoosick Falls._
GREETING--This certifies that Brother Moses Swan is a member in our
church in good and regular standing, and has been for forty years, and
this is given him as a traveling letter.
LEWIS CRANDELL, _Clerk_.
Hoosick, _September 30, 1873_.
PREFACE.
I have been prompted by my friends and urged by a sense of duty to
write the history of the _Ten Years_ I spent in _Lunatic Asylums_, and
give it to the public. This I proposed to do as soon as I came out, but
I dreaded to expose my family to the scorn and reproach that would be
cast upon them by my telling the _whole truth_, and when I did conclude
to give it to the public, my feeble health prevented me, for a long
time, from doing any thing.
I commenced during the last summer to write a full account of _all_ the
_terrible acts_ that I experienced, saw and heard during those eventful
years of sorrow and affliction, hoping that at some future day I might
be able to give it to the public.
N. B.--I have prefixed an original engraving to the title page of this
little history, descriptive of an act that took place in one of the
back halls of the Marshall Infirmary or Lunatic Asylum, Ida Hill, Troy,
N. Y.
_This certifies that I was a patient in the above-named institution
from March 29, 1860, to October 13, 1870._
There are several reasons why the author offers to the reader and
public in the present form, ten years, ten months and thirteen days of
his life while he was unjustly held in lunatic asylums in different
States; and there are many reasons that prompt him to write upon the
_cruel_ treatment he received from beings with unfeeling hearts and
cruel hands, and there are good reasons why he has cause to write upon
the treatment of other poor creatures which came under his observation
who were confined within those walls up to October 13, 1870.
I herewith give to the public and reader a true statement of facts
relative to some of my former life, and ten years, ten months and
thirteen days while held in lunatic asylums by bars and bolts. Early in
the year of 1859, I found I had overdone and become unable to labor as
heretofore. My nervous system had become unstrung; I became somewhat
disheartened, and I grew weak in body. My spirits drooped, and I verily
thought I should be lost eternally. I became melancholy; the sun, the
moon and the stars lost their brilliancy to me, and the sweet music
and singing of the birds had lost their charm to me as heretofore; all
nature seemed dark and dreary, and, like Job, I said "O, that I had not
been." Things that were appeared as though they were not, and things
that were not as though they were. At length I closed my business
matters as far as in me lay. During the spring and summer of 1859 I
was under medical treatment up to August 29. All seemed unavailing.
The 29th of August I was persuaded in part and compelled to go to
Brattleborough, Vt., Lunatic Asylum to undergo a course of medical
treatment. I was brought home by Brother B. the last of November,
nothing better; staid home through the winter with my little family.
Although I had staid four months in this so-called Vermont cure-all
institution, I still crossed the green mountain toward my longed-for
home in low spirits and sadness. Cheerfulness is natural to the strong
and healthy, and despondency and gloom are usually the indirect
consequences of some physical ailment. I have been troubled very much
from my youth with the dyspepsia, nervousness, and bilious and other
ailments. Long before I went to Brattleborough I was thought by Dr.
Hall to have the consumption, who said my left lung was gone. Doctors
mistake, as well as ministers and people, and I am glad a mistake is
not a sin, neither is insanity. Mistakes sometimes arise from the want
of knowledge or strength, sometimes from want of watchfulness and care.
My great spiritual mistake was this (after having tried to serve the
Lord from my youth), I verily thought, these many years of sorrow, I
should be finally lost. This mistake arose from over-taxing the body,
which became weak, drawing the mind down. I believe the mind is the
man; so as man thinketh so is he. If he thinks right, he will act right
until the mind changes. We are not our own; we are all bought with
a price. I can say there is one who sticketh closer than a brother;
and, to-day, I can truly say, as did the Psalmist, the _Lord_ is my
shepherd; I shall not want; He maketh me to lie down on green pastures;
He restoreth my soul.
I stated in the outset there were many reasons why I undertake this
great work.
MY GOD FIRST AND THEN THE PEOPLE.
_Reason_ 1. Because I owe a duty to Him who rules and overrules all
things.
2. Because I feel it my bounden duty to let the public know that these
institutions are robbing some men and women of their liberty, and even
of their lives.
3. Because the poor we have always with us, and when we will we may do
them good.
4. I hope it may have a tendency to stimulate those who have authority,
and the public, to examine these places more critically, that they may
ameliorate, if possible, the condition of these unfortunate sufferers,
by providing them with attendants or nurses with kind hands and
charitable hearts.
With a hopeful prayer that this little history may serve the cause
of truth, by enlightening the minds of those who are inquiring after
truth, it is dedicated to the candid public by the author.
MOSES SWAN,
Hoosick Falls, N. Y.
TEN YEARS AND TEN MONTHS
IN
LUNATIC ASYLUMS
IN DIFFERENT STATES,
BY
MOSES SWAN,
WITH SOME REMARKS UPON HIS LIFE AND
PARENTAGE.
CHAPTER I.
I, Moses Swan, was born in the town of Hoosick, Rensselaer county, New
York, March the 4th, 1812. My father was a native of Tyngsborough,
Berkshire county, Massachusetts. My mother was born in Greenfield,
Massachusetts, and there lived with her honored parents until my father
who being a mechanic, at the age of one and twenty years old, bade his
parents good-by and went out into the wide world, like other young men,
to seek his fortune, and by the by, as I have often heard him say, he
stopped at Greenfield, and worked a few months in the fall, and then
and there he became for the first time acquainted with Abigail Clark,
who in the course of time became my mother.
From Greenfield, my father crossed the Green mountain, with his pack
upon his back, down into North Adams, and whilst I am writing, methinks
I see him trudging along with his Yankee pack upon his back, from Adams
along to Williamstown, and by the old brick college and on, and on
he travels between the rugged rocks of Pownal, and the little river
that winds its way along down to old Hoosick. Here he finds himself
at Hoosick Four Corners, a pilgrim and a stranger in a strange land,
doubtless tired, but yet he presses onward a little farther, to the
west part of the town, to what is called the Cross neighborhood,
where he hired his board of Captain Ebenezer Cross; here he set up
business, for he was a cooper by trade and a practical farmer; here
doubtless he labored with industry and economy, having an eye out for
this Greenfield Abigail. And a kind providence smiled upon him, and
he returned to Greenfield, in search of Abigail Clark, and they were
married.
He was now in his twenty-fourth year. This year he was married to her,
who then left her parents' house and came with my father to Hoosick;
here, by their industry and economy, they soon saved enough to purchase
a small farm, about two miles and a half west of Hoosick Falls, where I
was born. I was the third son and the fourth child, one of seven sons
and a daughter, which my mother bore to my father.
Here upon the old south-western hill of Hoosick, upon the self-same
farm my parents lived and toiled together, until my father fell asleep.
I well remember the 27th day of February, 1842, when I stood by my
father's dying bedside and smoothed his dying pillow and wiped the cold
sweat from his brow, yes, I remember very well of closing his eyes in
death. I do not, I can't, I must not wish him back to this lower world
of sin and sorrow, of toil and woe, though there be joys in Christ for
his children, who walk not according to the course of this world.
While I am writing the foremost part of my little narrative, it will
be remembered, that I am speaking of things far back in the distance,
when things of a temporal kind were far inferior to what they now
are. Fifty years has made great changes and improvements in arts and
sciences in this country; true it is of Americans as the scripture
says, "ye have sought out many inventions."
And while writing, my mind is carried back to my boyhood, some fifty
years ago, when I, for the first time, took my father's oxen and went
to the field to plow, with one of the best of Pardon Cole's plows. Were
I to describe this wonderful plow, and we had its picture, we should
judge it more appropriate for a comic almanac than for an agricultural
show case. It truly was a huge looking thing, the beam or neap as the
Yankee would call it, was made of wood, and the land-side was wood and
the mould-board was wood, and then we had a little wooden paddle to
paddle off the dirt off the wooden mould-board at every corner when
necessary; and now for the point, it was forged out by a common country
blacksmith, one would suppose at the present day it was more fit to
iron off a hog's nose than to be used for a plow-share, in short, it
was what the Yankees call a hog plow. Let us compare this with the
plows now in use and be thankful for what we have. Well may it be said
by the inspired writer, "ye have sought out many inventions."
We might take most of the minor implements of the farmer, and speak
at length of the glorious improvements in farming utensils for the
last fifty years. But we will speak of but one more of this class, and
that is, the wonderful buggy or mowing machine, sweeping through our
meadows, drawn by horses where fathers and sons, fifty years ago, sweat
with an iron hook in hand to mow down their fields. What an onward
march is our world making in the things that are seen which are but
temporal that must decay with their usage.
Once more, I well remember when I was some ten or eleven years of age,
my parents promised me a visit to Troy for the first time, and I, like
most of other country boys, thought much of going to see the great
place; the buildings were so thick I could not see the city, as the
saying is. At the time, I had no shoes, and they were difficult to get
at that time, for I had first to get the shoemaker's promise and then
wait for the fulfillment. I got the promise, and the shoes were to be
done the day previous to my going to Troy. I went for the shoes at the
appointed time, and behold, I had the shoemaker's promise, for they
were not done. And this makes me think of an anecdote which took place
between a shoemaker and his wife, the wife says, "What made you promise
the lad when you knew you could not fulfill," the husband replies, "It
is a poor man that cannot make a promise:" there I was disappointed.
Again we might speak of the many mechanical improvements, such as the
housewife's sewing machine, the telegraph, the steam powers and the
railways, and many other things of note that we have seen at our town,
county and State fairs. But lest I digress too far from the great
object I have set forth and have still in view, I will hasten to it.
I feel incompetent for the great work I have undertaken. It always was
hard work for me to write out my thoughts or speak before my superiors,
and many there are whom I esteem better than myself, yet, however good
my neighbors may be, they cannot do my duty nor stand in the judgment
for me.
I remember of asking my dear mother, many years ago, how old I was
when she took me by the hand and walked along by the side of the wall,
and from thence to the old log-house, where lay a young lady asleep in
death. Mother informed me that I was then three and a half years old.
I speak of this because it was the first person that I saw a corpse,
and to show that early impressions upon the tender mind are hard to
be eradicated. I have just been speaking of things that transpired in
1816, and, as it is true that one thing leads to another, my mind is
called to think of my beloved parents, and the early trainings they
gave their children; the beloved words of our Saviour is, "train up a
child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
from it."
At this early day of my life neither of my parents were joined to
the Saviour by a public profession; they were eastern people brought
up strictly under the Presbyterian order. I am very thankful they
taught their children to strictly keep the Sabbath and read the Holy
Scriptures, for they are the power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentiles, and the
Saviour said, "they are they which testify of me."
Old as I am, never have I heard one of my father's family use a word of
profane language, so far as I know, not one intemperate drinker. But we
are not a family without faults. In early life I became sensible that
I was a sinner; when but ten or twelve years of age the spirit of the
Lord strove very powerfully with me, and from time to time I grieved
its gentle influences from my heart, saying, like Felix, "go thy way
for this time," promising, that when I had a more convenient season I
would seek the salvation of my soul. I often felt sorry that I was not
a Christian, and many a time the tears would trickle down my cheeks in
penitence when but a child.
At this early period of my life, country children did not have the
advantages they now have, and it was so even with children living in
villages. I was a farmer's son, and I now well remember the shoemaker
that came from the east, and whipped the cat, as he called it, then
I got my year's stock of shoes, consisting of one pair; if these
did not last me till the cat-whipper came around again, I had to go
barefoot till he came again, or get the promise for another pair of
some other shoemaker, and that was about the same as going barefoot. I
well remember this day, in the days of my youth, many a time washing
my feet in the cold months of autumn, and my mother oiling them with
sweet cream, and putting me to bed. Many a time have I went to the old
district school-house to hear Rev. Aaron Haynes preach, when a boy, and
that too barefoot. I also remember of once hearing an old Rev. Bennet,
who came from Pownal to our school-house, and preached; the text I do
not remember. The prayer he made I cannot reiterate. But I very well
remember an anecdote he told, concerning himself, when he was a young
man (and methinks he was a little hypocritical at the time). Be that as
it may, it appears it was in a time of some excitement, and he said he
was away from home on a visit among some of his friends; sitting one
evening with his friends, it being nearly time to retire to rest, he
says to his friends, "Shall we have a word of prayer before we retire?"
"If you please," was the response. And now for the prayer. It was a
premeditated prayer, as he said, and he was not a Christian at this
time; the prayer he had framed up by his own wisdom and strength, he
thought very appropriate and very nice for the occasion; then said he,
"I bowed upon my knees to reiterate this nice prayer, and for my life,"
said he, "I could not recall a single word of it to my mind. I was
upon my knees, ashamed, and could not pray my nice prayer. I quickly
arose from my knees and ran for bed, leaving my friends to say their
own prayers, covering up my head in bed, with shame, to rest for the
night." I would here remark, if any there be who are now feeling they
need to pray, come to Jesus and ask him to give you that faith which
works by love and purifies the heart, and he will teach you to pray in
spirit and in truth, and you will not be ashamed nor confounded. Here
one passage of Scripture comes to my mind, and it is this: "Man know
thyself." Men are very apt to know their neighbors better in their own
estimation than they know themselves. First pull the beam out of thine
eye.
Self-examination and the study of human nature is a great work, I
think, if I have the right estimate upon them, having studied myself
and others, having the Scriptures in my mind more than forty long
years, as the scale whereby to discern between right and wrong, truth
and error; yet, if the truths of the Scriptures are not sent home upon
the heart by the Divine Spirit, they will be like the moon-light upon
the cold snow.
I feel thankful to-day that my mother, though long dead, taught me
in early life to read the Scriptures, for they are the power of God
unto salvation to every one that believeth. Not only good fathers and
mothers teach their children to read the word of God, but our Divine
Redeemer says, "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have
eternal life, and they are they which testify of me."