should be such an institution as an Insane Assylum, but let it come
under the jurisdiction of the Legislature, and not have all the power
consigned into the hands of a few individuals, over a distressed class
of beings, a money-making system, at the expense of happiness, in a
great measure. If it was thought best to have all power put into the
hands of one individual, then we should have a King in this country,
but it is not thought best. As that house is now, if any family
difficulty breaks out between the members, the stronger can take the
weaker, raise a cry that they are insane, deceive them in there, or
take them by force, and deprive them of their liberty; and the poor
individual is disarmed of the protection of the strong arm of our
country's laws. It gives power to children over their parents, parents
over children, brothers and sisters over each other, and neighbour
over neighbour. A case of children rising against a parent took place
while I was there. A poor widow woman having a family difficulty about
property, her sons rose against her, got an officer and brought her to
the Assylum, and she worked for them all the time she was there. In my
own case, I had property and ought to have a guardian appointed if I
was incapable of taking care of myself. Would it not be well to have it
a law that no person should be carried into an Insane Hospital without
the advice of a council of physicians, and not have it left to the
judgment of one person, for it is not an uncommon thing for persons to
be put in there who are not insane, and they cannot help themselves.
The public is completely deceived about the situation of their friends
after they are there. On visiting the building every thing presents a
fair appearance; but in order to know the evil of any place you must
first be in it. In the first place, I shall speak of what the poor
patients have to suffer on account of the neatness of the interior of
the building, as that is so often spoke of by visitors. A great deal of
pains is taken in every thing of an outward appearance, while things
that are not seen by visiters, are not regarded. The floors are, as it
were, the God that they worship; they must be washed every day, and
the poor patients suffer in being neglected during the time, which is
very frequently the case, and if a poor patient steps upon the floor
for sometime after, they have to take a severe reprimand, and are
locked up in their room all day as a punishment, because the attendant
is afraid the floor will have a mark upon it. It is all well enough
to keep clean; but the happiness of the poor patient is not regarded.
It is very tiresome to be confined to one room and not be permitted
to walk in it. Secondly, in cold weather the uncomfortableness of the
gallery is very trying. Some days not any fire, and deprived of every
privilege but that of breathing, and if in violent pain and suffering
the patients weep and make any complaint, they must be shut up in their
room, or stripped of all their clothes and showered with cold water,
and then carried to a stone dungeon. People are very much deceived
when they call to see their friends; and the poor distressed patients
are weeping their hours away to see them, and are shut out from all
religious influence.
CLOSING REMARKS TO CHRISTIANS.
Christian reader, whatever name you may bear, I address you, you who
have got the spirit of Christ witnessing with your spirit that you
are born of God. You have read what I have stated and you may be
ready to say you don't believe it; but lend me a listening ear with
an enlightened understanding, both by the spirit and knowledge, for I
have put forth this effort to make known this knowledge to the world,
to save you from the awful outrage of the wicked at the present day,
for you are liable yet to have the cry raised about you that you are
insane and to be taken and imprisoned as I have been, where violence
is used to force medicine down your throat which kills or destroys the
spirit of Christ in you. You are ignorant, I know, that this knowledge
is upon the earth, and the Bible does not give any account of it,
excepting in Heb. Chapt. vi. verse 4, 6; and St. Paul does not say how
it can be done. Christian reader it is you that ought to be interested
in what I say, and before you say that it is derangment, and give
strength to the wicked in the greatest crime that can be committed
upon an immortal being, condsider well what a crime you hold up. Why
should I wish to start such a thing before the world if it was not so?
for gladly would I kneel and lift up my voice in prayer to God and
leave behind the things that are behind and press on towards the mark
for the prize. Persecution to a christian is like water to a plant;
what is called derangement by some, or delirious about religion, can
be removed by medicine by the Dr.'s at the Charlestown Hospital. The
pains and distress of the operation cannot be found upon the annals
of cruelty of any nation, and then the distressed situation it leaves
one in,--neither love to God nor fellow beings. Dear christian reader,
what I tell you is the truth. Ask yourself the question, what did Dr.
Bell urge me to relate my christian experience for? why did he ask me
how much I read the Bible, more than any other book? What if one of our
missionaries were taken and imprisoned, and when they should be taken
out and come to tell of their sufferings and what was said to them
before the medicine was given to them, would it not show that the crime
was in accordance with the whole drift of their conversation. Why did
Dr. Fox say that I "must not think I was so filled with the spirit; any
minister would laugh at me." I had not told him I was. Why was I shut
up and no one allowed to see me?
Reader, make it your own case to be put in prison in a well state of
health among some of the worst characters, entire strangers, and about
three months in a stone dungeon, a poor unprotected girl.--Would it
not almost make you deranged? Had a poor persecuted christian ought to
be consigned into the hands of unconverted rough men? What criminal
ever was executed in our land but if they made the request to see
some minister or pious friend it was allowed them; but no, I was a
poor persecuted christian; I asked to see some minister, Mr. Winslow
I particularly asked to see; but no, the last and fatal blow must be
struck upon me. If I had violated the laws of our country, why not give
me a lawful trial in a court of justice and let me suffer the penalty
attached to the laws which I had violated? If I was in a weak state
and tryed about my spiritual state, was it right to shut me up away
from all my dear associates and godly influence? At first I thought
I was in a house of ill-fame. O, God only knows what I suffered and
what I afterwards had to go through. Had I been deceived into _such_ a
house it would have been nothing to what my situation is, and what my
sufferings have been.
Dear christian reader, I will show you by the Bible where I was when
I was carried into Charlestown Hospital. When I was converted I had
a strong hope to support me against the wind and tide of this world.
As an anchor is to a ship so is a hope in Christ Jesus to a person in
this world. They are saved from the pollution of the world through the
washing of regeneration; saved from the corruption that is in their own
heart and the temptations around them. There is but one religion that
is good for any thing, or one's religion is as good as another's. But
why is all this contention about religion? it must mean something. One
soul saved from sinning by being washed in the blood of Christ is of
more value than all this world. Dear reader, have patience and I will
soon bring you to the point that I wish you to understand. If holiness
is liable to become a disease, as they pretend to say it does, and man
has found out how to give medicine to take away from a person what
they call derangement and the agony is so great and then it leaves the
person in a state of suffering here of body and without the spirit
of Christ, a person must suffer forever, for out of Christ God is a
consuming fire; but in Christ a person can bless and praise God amidst
the burning flames. When a person is converted they are turned from
persuing the love of this world and seek after that holy love that is
in them which is Christ and let all their actions be constrained by
that love. After a person is converted they commence running after
a prize, which is Christ, and in Christ is all the Godhead bodily,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Again, Christ will thoroughly purge his
floor, cast out unclean spirits out of your heart and you enter the
second time without sin unto salvation. Again to all who look for him
he will appear the second time without sin unto salvation, change their
vile bodies and make them like unto his most glorious body, or baptize
them with fire and with the Holy Ghost, or being clothed upon with our
house from heaven, which is eternal, immortal and full of glory.
Christian reader, I had embraced the views that are agitated at the
present day, that the world is soon to be destroyed, or what is called
Miller's doctrine. All I aimed at was to get out of sin, or being
obliged to go with the multitude to commit sin, as I hated wrong and
unholy actions, and to get ready to go up to meet the Lord in the air
as every one that has this hope within himself purifies even as he is
pure; for it is by grace which you are saved and not of yourself, it
is the gift of God. What to me was gain I counted loss and dross; yea,
dung, if I could but win Christ. I so run as to obtain the prize in
six years. The prize is winning Christ, and in Christ Jesus is all the
Godhead bodily, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is the crown which
is immortal, eternal and full of glory. Truly I was full of the Holy
Ghost, entered into the holy city and had right to the tree of life,
which the leaves thereof are for the healing of the nations. Holiness
belongs to the heart, not to days, months, or years. The people of God
are to be the holy in all their actions and thoughts; they are saved
from following sin by having the spirit of Christ.
Christian reader, I know you must read this with mingled emotions;
and it must wring your heart with grief to think that the Son of God
has been crucified; but it leaves the person that was in possession
of this heavenly treasure of course to be forever in distress, for
there remaineth no more sacrifice, which must add double grief to you
in perusing these pages; or are you ready to throw it back upon me,
saying it is all a delusion; that man cannot destroy the soul; man's
power is not greater than God's. But, christian reader, it is knowledge
that man has obtained of chemistry. By putting two substances together
a third is produced unlike both. What the medicine is I know not,
but I think I could tell it if I saw it.--Christian reader, you have
never thought it to be very strange that a person could be poisoned to
death. In that case it seperates spirit from matter; and in this case
it seperates God's Holy Spirit from matter, for you know it is not
only a belief, for the Devils believe and tremble. But it is having
Jesus in you, the hope of glory, a praying spirit; and I wish you to
understand it is that praying spirit that can be taken from you by
medicine. The medicine hardens or petrifies the brain. In my case it
is the brain that lays in the back part of my head that is destroyed,
where the faculties of affection are located; for the volume of nature
and revelation agree. I refer now to the science of Phrenology, as
there is truth in it whether you believe it or not. The fifth Chapt. of
Gallations tells what you are by nature, and what you must be in order
to enter the kingdom of heaven. By sowing to the spirit, I crucified
my affections and lusts, ceased to do the works of the flesh. You may
think this is not in this world, but it is only winning the prize for
the high calling which is in Christ, or entering in upon the seventh
Sabbath.--As Dr. Bell has given me medicine that has killed that spirit
in me I have no idea of holiness or hatred to sin, and I have no idea
of worship, for we worship what we supremely love and bring all our
actions to bear upon that object on which our affections are set.--But
the idea of love is gone from me, and my body is void of happiness,
both carnal and spiritual.
Let there be a mighty cry made by the public, and search into the
iniquity of Charlestown McLean Assylum. I know it is held up by what
is called the popular class, but it is a combination of men, a system
that is worse than slavery, and any crime can be done there and covered
up under the garb of derangement, and no one interfere. Dear Christian
reader, I have put forth this appeal to let the christian world know
that this knowledge is known upon the earth, and it is in the hands of
the wicked. Why is the public so silent upon the sufferings of a poor
girl? If I had been taken by the uncivilized red man of the woods
and not half so cruelly treated, the papers would have been full of
it. If I had led a low, debasing life, and had been murdered like an
Ellen Jewett, the public would have been roused and the papers would
have been full of it from east to west, and from north to south; but a
more horrid crime has been done. O! THAT A DAGGER _had been plunged_
into my HEART _in the midnight hour_; it would have been but momentary
suffering and then my immortal mind growing and expanding throughout
the countless ages of eternity in the knowledge and wisdom of God.
Reader, you may be ready to throw it back upon me, saying it is
derangement, I expect it; let me once have heard of such a thing
and I don't know but I should have thought it derangement. But,
christian reader, it is you and you only that can understand a part
of my language, speaking about my spiritual life. All who formerly
knew me, who see me now, say that some cruelty has been done to me.
My old neighbors that knew me from a child, say that I am so altered
they hardly know me. My old New Hampton school mates that I have met
with since I was taken out of the Hospital, start back with surprise
and say that they can hardly trace a look in me that I once had, and
not a trait in my deportment that I once possessed. They say "that
countenance that once was lit up with happiness is now marked with deep
sorrow; those eyes that once sparkled with joy are now dead and sunken
with grief, and the language, and the voice are so different that some
destruction has come upon you;" and when I tell them what it is, my
long imprisonment, sixteen months and twenty days, not allowed to see
any one that I ever saw before, only three of my folks during the
time, nor allowed to write; how my happiness is taken from me, my body
racked and tortured, the distressed situation that I am in, they are
bathed in tears. "O tell me not, Elizabeth, that you are lost; you was
once so happy in the love of God," and the deep loud sob bursts from
their full hearts, "Can this be Elizabeth Stone; can this crime be done
and this cruelty practised here in the midst of us and covered up and
nothing said about it?"
Is this the state of our country, that the rights of a poor female are
trampled upon, and the laws of our country, where there has been so
much blood spilt to work out the liberty of every free born son and
daughter of America. And because I endeavor to make known to the world
this crime, I am threatened with a second imprisonment, by my brother
Eben. If it is a crazy story surely it will do no harm, and if it is
not, why had it not ought to come out. Let a council of physicians be
held upon my body and see if I am a person that can enjoy life. I think
that minds that understand the organization of the human body and its
functions will say that some outrage has been commited upon me. If I
had lost my reason is it right to take the advantage of a crazy person
and destroy happiness. Charlestown McLean Assylum is to a weak excited
person as a grog-shop is to an intemperate man, or a house of ill-fame,
to a licentious person; they can be completely ruined. I hope this will
be looked into before another one is destroyed, and that those still
remaining in that awful place of imprisonment, weeping their hours
away, may be relieved by seeing their friends soon. May God awaken the
mind of the public to the sufferings of the helpless.
I am frequently asked the question, by those who hear of my sufferings,
if I don't think I shall be happy after death. I will answer this here
so every one may know what my dreadful situation is.--No! for reasons
before stated.
At the request of many of my friends, I have been examined by a
magnetized somnambulist, and I am requested to state the result of the
examination to the public. I was examined the first time by Mr. Fowler,
the Phrenologist, taking a lock of my hair to Miss Gleason. She stated
that I had great distress in the back part of my head, my spinal marrow
was dry; distress in my limbs, inclined to sit forwards; disagreable
feeling at my stomach; nervous temperament; needed kind treatment, &c.
The 15th of July I was examined again by Miss Gleason, being personally
present. She was magnetized by Mr. Butrick, a stranger to me. I did not
go into the room till after she was asleep. She stated about the same
as she did the first time, but added that my brain looked dark; that I
had been in such distress it was a wonder I had lived through it; and
I still was in distress; my brain was drawn together and she clenched
her hands together in order to convey the idea; she remarked upon
my disposition, being very decided in my opinion; an enquiring mind,
desiring to labor with my head rather than my hands, which had incensed
my relations against me; and it would have been better for me if they
had put me into the grave alive than carried me to the Hospital. If I
had never been carried there I should not have been as I am now; for
the future I could not labor with my head. If I published my sufferings
to the world it would not be believed because I could not now use
language to express myself. She thought it would be investigated.
July 23d, I was examined in public by Mrs. Pease, at the Masonic Hall,
who was with Mr. Shattuck lecturing on Magnetism. I was an entire
stranger to them both. She stated that I was nervous, distressed in
the back part of my head; that some powerful mineral medicine had been
given to me, which had injured me; that I had been cruelly deceived.
She described the medicine to be pills and a liquid, very dark and
some colored resembling saffron; that it had injured my brain, and it
never ought to have been given to me; and I had been injured by unkind
treatment; my ambition led me to go beyond my strength in labor and
reading, and _that_ medicine ought not to be given to any one, &c. Many
were present who had heard of my sufferings and were surprised to hear
her tell it so exactly. May God bring to light this awful crime, for
my sufferings do not end in this world, although the crime was done by
others.
In conclusion, before this work is attributed to insanity why will not
the public demand an examination of the affairs and management of the
Mc'Lean Assylum, and see whether my charges be true or false.
ERRATA.
In the 25th line first page, read "It" for "I." Same page 5th line from
the bottom, read "I" for "It." On 4th page, 24th and 25th lines, after
"refused to obey him" read "for my teacher said without the mind was
enlightened by the Spirit of Christ it was not prepared for knowledge."
Page 10th, 33d line, for "Eliza Dammus" read "Caroline Dammers." On
12th page, 4th line, read "David" instead of "Daniel." On page 22d,
18th line, for "him" read "my mother." Same page, 20th line, for "too"
read "to come." Same page, 29th line, for "noon" read "night." On 26th
page, 12th line from bottom, for "non-spiritual" read "nor spiritual."
On the 28th page, 22d line, read "from suffering, for matter cannot
be annihilated; but I should to" &c. On 29th page, 9th line, instead
of "and said they are," &c., read "and says the organs are," &c. Same
page, 16th line from the bottom, for "Dr. Fox," read "Dr. Bell." On
31st page, 8th line, for "Dr. Kay," read "Dr. Ray."