INCIDENTS OF ASYLUM LIFE.
There is little in the wards to help one pass the time. All the asylum
clothing is made by the patients, but sewing does not employ one’s mind.
After several months’ confinement the thoughts of the busy world grow
faint, and all the poor prisoners can do is to sit and ponder over their
hopeless fate. In the upper halls a good view is obtained of the passing
boats and New York. Often I tried to picture to myself as I looked out
between the bars to the lights faintly glimmering in the city, what my
feelings would be if I had no one to obtain my release.
I have watched patients stand and gaze longingly toward the city they in
all likelihood will never enter again. It means liberty and life; it
seems so near, and yet heaven is not further from hell.
Do the women pine for home? Excepting the most violent cases, they are
conscious that they are confined in an asylum. An only desire that never
dies is the one for release, for home.
One poor girl used to tell me every morning, “I dreamed of my mother
last night. I think she may come to-day and take me home.” That one
thought, that longing, is always present, yet she has been confined some
four years.
What a mysterious thing madness is. I have watched patients whose lips
are forever sealed in a perpetual silence. They live, breathe, eat; the
human form is there, but that something, which the body can live
without, but which cannot exist without the body, was missing. I have
wondered if behind those sealed lips there were dreams we ken not of, or
if all was blank?
Still, as sad are those cases when the patients are always conversing
with invisible parties, I have seen them wholly unconscious of their
surroundings and engrossed with an invisible being. Yet, strange to say,
that any command issued to them is always obeyed, in about the same
manner as a dog obeys his master. One of the most pitiful delusions of
any of the patients was that of a blue-eyed Irish girl, who believed she
was forever damned because of one act in her life. Her horrible cry,
morning and night, “I am damned for all eternity!” would strike horror
to my soul. Her agony seemed like a glimpse of the inferno.
After being transferred to hall 7 I was locked in a room every night
with six crazy women. Two of them seemed never to sleep, but spent the
night in raving. One would get out of her bed and creep around the room
searching for some one she wanted to kill. I could not help but think
how easy it would be for her to attack any of the other patients
confined with her. It did not make the night more comfortable.
One middle-aged woman, who used to sit always in the corner of the room,
was very strangely affected. She had a piece of newspaper, and from it
she continually read the most wonderful things I ever heard. I often sat
close by her and listened. History and romance fell equally well from
her lips.
I saw but one letter given a patient while I was there. It awakened a
big interest. Every patient seemed thirsty for a word from the world,
and they crowded around the one who had been so fortunate and asked
hundreds of questions.
Visitors make but little interest and a great deal of mirth. Miss Mattie
Morgan, in hall 7, played for the entertainment of some visitors one
day. They were close about her until one whispered that she was a
patient. “Crazy!” they whispered, audibly, as they fell back and left
her alone. She was amused as well as indignant over the episode. Miss
Mattie, assisted by several girls she has trained, makes the evenings
pass very pleasantly in hall 7. They sing and dance. Often the doctors
come up and dance with the patients.
One day when we went down to dinner we heard a weak little cry in the
basement. Every one seemed to notice it, and it was not long until we
knew there was a baby down there. Yes, a baby. Think of it—a little,
innocent babe born in such a chamber of horrors! I can imagine nothing
more terrible.
A visitor who came one day brought in her arms her babe. A mother who
had been separated from her five little children asked permission to
hold it. When the visitor wanted to leave, the woman’s grief was
uncontrollable, as she begged to keep the babe which she imagined was
her own. It excited more patients than I had ever seen excited before at
one time.
The only amusement, if so it may be called, given the patients outside,
is a ride once a week, if the weather permits, on the “merry-go-round.”
It is a change, and so they accept it with some show of pleasure.
A scrub-brush factory, a mat factory, and the laundry are where the mild
patients work. They get no recompense for it, but they get hungry over
it.