_In the Mad-House._
On the road to Sing Sing again! The public may say I was surely an
incorrigible and ought to have been shut up anyway for safe keeping,
but are they right if they say so? During my confinement I often heard
the prison chaplain preach from the text "Though thou sinnest ninety
and nine times thy sin shall be forgiven thee."
Probably Christ knew what He meant: His words do not apply to the
police courts of Manhattan. These do not forgive, but send you up for
the third term, which, if it is a long one, no man can pass through
without impairment in body or in brain. It is better to make the
convict's life as hard as hell for a short term, than to wear out his
mind and body. People need not wonder why a man, knowing what is before
him, steals and steals again. The painful experiences of his prison
life, too often renewed, leave him as water leaves a rubber coat. Few
men are really impressionable after going through the deadening life in
stir.
Five months of my third term I spent at Sing Sing, and then, as on my
first bit, I was drafted to Auburn. At Sing Sing I was classified as
a second term man. I have already explained that during my first term
I earned over a year's commutation time; and that that time would have
been legally forfeited when I was sent up again within nine months for
my second bit if any one, except a few convicts, had remembered I had
served before.
When, on my third sentence, I now returned to Sing Sing, I found that
the authorities were "next," and knew that I had "done" them on the
second bit. They were sore, because it had been their own carelessness,
and they were afraid of getting into trouble. To protect themselves
they classified me as a second term man, but waited for a chance to do
me. I suppose it was some d---- Dickey Bird (stool-pigeon) who got them
next that I had done them; but I never heard who it was, though I tried
to find out long and earnestly.
When I got back to my cell in Sing Sing this third time I was gloomy
and desperate to an unusual degree, still eaten up with my desire
for vengeance on those who had sent me to stir for a crime I had not
committed. My health was so bad that my friends told me I would never
live my bit out, and advised me to get to Clinton prison, if possible,
away from the damp cells at Sing Sing. But I took no interest in what
they said, for I did not care whether I lived or died. I expected to
die very soon, and in the meantime thought I was well enough where I
was. I did not fear death, and I had my hop every day. All I wanted
from the keepers was to be let alone in my cell and not annoyed with
work. The authorities had an inkling that I was in a desperate state of
mind, and probably believed it was healthier for them to let me alone
a good deal of the time.
Before long schemes began to form in my head to make my gets (escape).
I knew I wouldn't stop at murder, if necessary in order to spring; for,
as I have said, I cared not whether I lived or died. On the whole,
however, I rather preferred to become an angel at the beginning of
my bit than at the end. I kept my schemes for escape to myself, for I
was afraid of a leak, but the authorities must somehow have suspected
something, for they kept me in my cell twenty-three hours out of the
twenty-four. Perhaps it was just because they had it in for me for
beating them on my second bit. As before, I consoled myself, while
waiting a chance to escape, with some of my favorite authors; but my
eye-sight was getting bad and I could not read as much as I used to.
It was during these five months at Sing Sing that I first met Dr.
Myers, of whom I saw much a year or two later in the mad-house. At Sing
Sing he had some privileges, and used to work in the hall, where it was
easy for me to talk to him through my cell door. This remarkable man,
had been a splendid physician in Chicago. He had beaten some insurance
companies out of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, but was
in Sing Sing because he had been wrongfully convicted on a charge of
murder. He liked me, especially when later we were in the insane asylum
together, because I would not stand for the abuse given to the poor
lunatics, and would do no stool-pigeon or other dirty work for the
keepers. He used to tell me that I was too bright a man to do any work
with my hands. "Jim," he said once, "I would rather see you marry my
daughter than give her to an ignorant business man. I know you would
treat her kindly and that she would learn something of the world. As
my wife often said, I would rather die at thirty-eight after seeing the
world and enjoying life than live in a humdrum way till ninety."
He explained the insurance graft to me, and I still think it the surest
and most lucrative of all grafts. For a man with intelligence it is
the very best kind of crooked work. About the only way the insurance
companies can get back at the thieves is through a squeal. Here are a
few of the schemes he told me for this graft:
A man and his female pal take a small house in town or on the outskirts
of a large city. The man insures his life for five thousand dollars.
After they have lived there a while, and passed perhaps as music
teachers, they take the next step, which is to get a dead body. Nothing
is easier. The man goes to any large hospital, represents himself as a
doctor and for twenty-five dollars can generally get a stiff, which he
takes away in a barrel or trunk. He goes to a furnished room, already
secured, and there dresses the cadaver in his own clothes, putting his
watch, letters and money in the cadavers pockets. In the evening he
takes the body to some river or stream and throws it in. He knows from
the newspapers when the body has been found, and notifies his woman
pal, who identifies it as her husband's body. There are only two snags
that one must guard against in this plot. The cadaver must not differ
much in height from the person that has been insured; and its lungs
must not show that they were those of anybody dead before thrown into
the water. The way to prepare against this danger is to inject some
water with a small medical pump into the lungs of the stiff before it
is thrown overboard. Then it is easy for the "widow" to get the money,
and meet the alleged dead man in another country.
A more complicated method, in which more money is involved, is as
follows. The grafter hires an office and represents himself as an
artist, a bric-à-brac dealer, a promoter or an architect. Then he jumps
to another city and takes out a policy under the tontien or endowment
plan. When the game is for a very large amount three or four pals are
necessary. If no one of the grafters is a doctor, a physician must
be impersonated, but this is easy. If there are, say, ten thousand
physicians in Manhattan, not many of whom have an income of ten
thousand a year, it is perhaps not difficult to get a diploma. After
a sheepskin is secured, the grafter goes to another State, avoiding,
unless he is a genuine physician, New York and Illinois, for they have
boards of regents. The acting quack registers so that he can practice
medicine and hangs out his shingle. The acting business man takes out a
policy, and pays the first premium. Before the first premium is paid he
is dead, for all the insurance company knows. Often a live substitute,
instead of a dead one, is secured. The grafter goes to the charity
hospital and looks over the wrecks waiting to die. Some of these poor
dying devils jump at the chance to go West. It is necessary, of course,
to make sure that the patient will soon become an angel, or everything
will fall through. Then the grafter takes the sick man to his house and
keeps him out of sight. When he is about to die he calls in the grafter
who is posing as a physician. After the death of the substitute the
doctor signs the death certificate, the undertaker prepares the body,
which is buried. The woman grafter is at the funeral, and afterwards
she sends in her claim to the companies. On one occasion in Dr. Myers's
experience, he told me, the alleged insured man was found later with
his head blown off, but when the wife identified the body, the claim
had been paid.
* * * * *
One afternoon, after I had been at Sing Sing five months, I was
taken from my cell, shackled hand and foot, and sent, with fifty
other convicts, to Auburn. When I had been at Auburn prison about six
months I grew again exceedingly desperate, and made several wild and
ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I would take no back talk from the
keepers, and began to be feared by them. One day I had a fight with
another convict. He struck me with an iron weapon, and I sent him to
the hospital with knife thrusts through several parts of his body.
Although I had been a thief all my life, and had done some strong arm
work, by nature I was not quarrelsome, and I have never been so quick
to fight as on my third term. I was locked up in the dungeon for a week
and fed on bread and water in small quantities. After my release I was
confined to my cell for several days, and used to quarrel with whoever
came near me. The keepers began to regard me as a desperate character,
who would cause them a great deal of trouble; and feared that I might
escape or commit murder at any time. One day, I remember, a keeper
threatened to club me with a heavy stick he had. I laughed at him and
told him to make a good job of it, for I had some years still to serve,
and if he did not kill me outright, I would have plenty of time to get
back at him. The cur pigged it (weakened). They really wanted to get
rid of me, however, and one morning the opportunity came.
I was feeling especially bad that morning and went to see the doctor,
who told me I had consumption, and transferred me to the consumptive
ward in the prison. There the doctor and four screws came to my
bedside, and the doctor inserted a hyperdermic needle into my arm. When
I awoke I found myself in the isolated dungeon, nicknamed the Keeley
Cure by the convicts, where I was confined again for several weeks, and
had a hyperdermic injection every day. At the end of that time I was
taken before the doctors, who pronounced me insane. With three other
convicts who were said to be "pipes" (insane) I was shackled hand and
foot, put on a train and taken to the asylum for the criminal insane
at Matteawan. I had been in bad places before, but at Matteawan I first
learned what it is to be in Hell.
Why was I put in the Pipe House? Was I insane?
In one way I have been insane all my life, until recently. There is a
disease called astigmatism of the conscience, and I have been sorely
afflicted with that. I have always had the delusion, until the last
few months, that it is well to "do" others. In that way I certainly was
"pipes." And in another way, too, I was insane. After a man has served
many years in stir and has contracted all the vices, he is not normal,
even if he is not violently insane. His brain loses its equilibrium,
no matter how strong-minded he may be, and he acquires astigmatism of
the mind, as well as of the conscience. The more astigmatic he becomes,
the more frequently he returns to stir, where his disease grows worse,
until he is prison-mad.
To the best of my knowledge and belief I was not insane in any definite
way--no more so than are nine out of ten of the men who had served
as much time in prison as I. I suppose I was not sent to the criminal
insane asylum because of a perverted conscience. The stir, I believe,
is supposed to cure that. Why did they send me to the mad-house? I
don't know, any more than my reader, unless it was because I caused
the keepers and doctors too much trouble, or because for some reason or
other they wanted to do me.
But whether I had a delusion or not--and I am convinced myself that
I have always been right above the ears--there certainly are many
perfectly sane men confined in our state asylums for the criminal
insane. Indeed, if all the fake lunatics were sent back to prison, it
would save the state the expense of building so many hospitals. But I
suppose the politicians who want patronage to distribute would object.
Many men in prison fake insanity, as I have already explained. Many
of them desire to be sent to Matteawan or Dannemora insane asylums,
thinking they will not need to work there, will have better food and
can more easily escape. They imagine that there are no stool-pigeons in
the pipe-house, and that they can therefore easily make their elegant
(escape). When they get to the mad-house they find themselves sadly
mistaken. They find many sane stool-pigeons there, and their plans for
escape are piped off as well there as in stir. And in other ways, as
I shall explain, they are disappointed. The reason the "cons" don't
get on to the situation in the mad-house through friends who have been
there is that they think those who have been in the insane asylum are
really pipes. When I got out of the mad-house and told my friends about
it, they were apt to remark, laconically, "He's in a terrible state."
When they get there themselves, God help them. I will narrate what
happened to me, and some of the horrible things I saw there.
After my pedigree was taken I was given the regulation clothes, which,
in the mad-house, consist of a blue coat, a pair of grey trousers, a
calico shirt, socks and a pair of slippers. I was then taken to the
worst violent ward in the institution, where I had a good chance to
observe the real and the fake lunatics. No man or woman, not even an
habitual criminal, can conceive, unless he has been there himself,
what our state asylums are. My very first experience was a jar. A big
lunatic, six feet high and a giant in physique, came up to me in the
ward, and said: "I'll kick your head off, you ijit (idiot). What the
---- did you come here for? Why didn't you stop off at Buffalo?" I
thought that if all the loons were the size of this one I wasn't going
to have much show in that violent ward; for I weighed only one hundred
and fifteen pounds at the time. But the big lunatic changed his note,
smiled and said: "Say, Charley, have you got any marbles?" I said,
"No," and then, quick as a flash, he exclaimed: "Be Japes, you don't
look as if you had enough brains to play them."
I had been in this ward, which was under the Head Attendant, nick-named
"King" Kelly, for two days, when I was taken away to a dark room in
which a demented, scrofulous negro had been kept. For me not even
a change of bed-clothing was made. In rooms on each side of me were
epileptics and I could hear, especially when I was in the ward, raving
maniacs shouting all about me. I was taken back to the first ward,
where I stayed for some time. I began to think that prison was heaven
in comparison with the pipe house. The food was poor, we were not
supposed to do any work, and we were allowed only an hour in the yard.
We stayed in our ward from half past five in the morning until six
o'clock at night, when we went to bed. It was then I suffered most,
for there was no light and I could not read. In stir I could lie on
my cot and read, and soothe my nerves. But in the mad-house I was not
allowed to read, and lay awake continually at night listening to the
idiots bleating and the maniacs raving about me. The din was horrible,
and I am convinced that in the course of time even a sane man kept in
an insane asylum will be mad; those who are a little delusional will go
violently insane. My three years in an insane asylum convinced me that,
beyond doubt, a man contracts a mental ailment just as he contracts
a physical disease on the outside. I believe in mental as well as
physical contagion, for I have seen man after man, a short time after
arriving at the hospital, become a raving maniac.
For weeks and months I had a terrible fight with myself to keep my
sanity. As I had no books to take up my thoughts I got into the habit
of solving an arithmetical problem every day. If it had not been for
my persistence in this mental occupation I have no doubt I should have
gone violently insane.
It is only the sensitive and intelligent man who, when placed in such
a predicament, really knows what torture is. The cries of the poor
demented wretches about me were a terrible lesson. They showed me more
than any other experience I ever passed through the error of a crooked
life.
I met many a man in the violent ward who had been a friend of mine
and good fellow on the outside. Now the brains of all of them were
gone, they had the most horrible and the most grotesque delusions. But
horrible or grotesque they were always piteous. If I were to point out
the greatest achievement that man has accomplished to distinguish him
from the brute, it would be the taking care of the insane. A child is
so helpless that when alms is asked for his maintenance it is given
willingly, for every man and woman pities and loves a child. A lunatic
is as helpless as a child, and often not any more dangerous. The maniac
is misrepresented, for in Matteawan and Dannemora taken together there
are very few who are really violent.
And now I come to the most terrible part of my narrative, which many
people will not believe--and that is the cruelty of the doctors and
attendants, cruelty practiced upon these poor, deluded wretches.
With my own eyes I saw scores of instances of abuse while I was at
Matteawan and later at Dannemora. It is, I believe, against the law to
strike an insane man, but any man who has ever been in these asylums
knows how habitual the practice is. I have often seen idiots in the
same ward with myself violently attacked and beaten by several keepers
at once. Indeed, some of us used to regard a beating as our daily
medicine. Patients are not supposed to do any work; but those who
refused to clean up the wards and do other work for the attendants were
the ones most likely to receive little mercy.
I know how difficult it is for the public to believe that some of their
institutions are as rotten as those of the Middle Ages; and when a
man who has been both in prison and in the pipe house is the one who
makes the accusation, who will believe him? Of course, his testimony
on the witness stand is worthless. I will merely call attention,
however, to the fact that the great majority of the insane are so
only in one way. They have some delusion, but are otherwise capable of
observation and of telling the truth. I will also add that the editor
of this book collected an immense number of instances of brutality from
several men, besides myself, who had spent years there, and that those
instances also pointed to the situation that I describe. Moreover, I
can quote the opinion of the writer on criminology--Josiah Flynt--as
corroborative of my statements. He has said in my presence and in that
of the editor of this book, Mr. Hapgood, that his researches have led
him to believe that the situation in our state asylums for the criminal
insane is horrible in the extreme.
Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be brutal? In the first place,
there is very little chance of a come-back, for who will believe men
who have ever been shut up in an insane asylum? And very often these
attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin with, they are
men of low intelligence, as is shown by the fact that they will work
for eighteen dollars a month, and after they have associated with
insane men for years they are apt to become delusional themselves.
Taking care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the intelligence
of the best men. Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant often
becomes nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor idiot who won't
do dirty work or whose silly noises get on his nerves? I have noticed
attendants who, after they had been in the asylum a few months,
acquired certain insane characteristics, such as a jerking of the
head from one side to the other, looking up at the sky, cursing some
imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost double.
Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something that made me realize I
was up against a hard joint. An attendant in the isolation ward had an
incurable patient under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to
do his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning cuspidors. The
attendants had two birds in his room, and he used to make Mickey, the
incurable idiot, clean out the cage for him. One day Mickey put the
cages under the boiling water, to clean them as usual. The attendant
had forgot to remove the birds, and they were killed by the hot water.
Another crank, who was in the bath room with Mickey, spied the dead
pets, and he and Mickey began to eat them. They were picking the bones
when the attendant and two others discovered them--and treated them as
a golfer treats his golf-balls.
Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try to prevent four
attendants from playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He was delusional
on religious subjects and thought the attendants were doing wrong. The
reward he received for caring for the religious welfare of his keepers
was a kick in the stomach by one of the attendants, while another hit
him in the solar plexus, knocking him down, and a third jammed his head
on the floor until the blood flowed. After he was unconscious a doctor
gave him a hyperdermic injection and he was put to bed. How often,
indeed, have I seen men knocked out by strong arm work, or strung up
to the ceiling with a pair of suspenders! How often have I seen them
knocked unconscious for a time or for eternity--yes--for eternity, for
insane men sometimes do die, if they are treated too brutally. In that
case, the doctor reports the patient as having died of consumption, or
some other disease. I have seen insane men turned into incurable idiots
by the beatings they have received from the attendants. I saw an idiot
boy knocked down with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping out
his delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four attendants
cry out: "My God, you won't murder me?" and the answer was, "Why not?
The Coroner would say you died of dysentery." The attendants tried
often to force fear into me by making me look at the work they had done
on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances of this kind. I
could give scores of them, with names of attendants and patients, and
sometimes even the dates on which these horrors occurred. But I must
cut short this part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I
have a poor old mother, is true, but it is too terrible to dwell upon,
and will probably not be believed. It will be put down as one of my
delusions, or as a lie inspired by the desire of vengeance.
Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the authorities in the insane
asylum, for I objected vigorously to the treatment of men really
insane. It is as dangerous to object to the curriculum of a mad-house
in the State of New York as it is to find fault with the running of
the government in Russia. In stir I never saw such brutality as takes
place almost every day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw, and
though I was plainly told to mind my own business, I continued to
object every time I saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the
attendants was turned against me. I was reported continually for things
I had not done, I had no privileges, not even opium or books, and was
so miserable that I repeatedly tried to be transferred back to prison.
A doctor once wrote a book called _Ten Years in a Mad-House_, in which
he says "God help the man who has the attendants against him; for these
demented brutes will make his life a living hell." Try as I might,
however, I was not transferred back to stir, partly because of the
sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry favor with the attendants,
invented lies about attempts on my part to escape. If I had not had
such a poor opinion of the powers that be and had stopped finding fault
I should no doubt have been transferred back to what was beginning to
seem to me, by contrast, a delightful place--state's prison.
The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house was paresis. I thought
a great deal about it, and observed the cranks about me continually. I
noticed that almost all insane persons are musical, that they can hum a
tune after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty in the
human brain is that of memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen
learn music so easily because that part of the brain which is the
seat of memory is the only one that is active; the other intellectual
qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled by thought.
I was often saddened at the sight of poor George, who had been a good
dip and an old pal of mine. When he first saw me in the pipe house he
asked me about his girl. I told him she was still waiting, and he said:
"Why doesn't she visit me then?" When I replied: "Wait awhile," he
smiled sadly, and said: "I know." He then put his finger to his head,
and, hanging his head, his face suddenly became a blank. I was helpless
to do anything for him. I was so sorry for him sometimes that I wanted
to kill him and myself and end our misery.
Another friend of mine thought he had a number of white blackbirds and
used to talk to them excitedly about gold. This man had a finely shaped
head. I have read in a book of phrenology that a man's intelligence
can be estimated by the shape of his head. I don't think this theory
amounts to anything, for most of the insane men I knew had good heads.
I have formed a little theory of my own (I am as good a quack as
anybody else) about insanity. I used to compare a well shaped lunatic's
head to a lady's beautiful jewel box from which my lady's maid had
stolen the precious stones. The crank's head contained both quantity
and quality of brains, but the grey matter was lacking. The jewel box
and the lunatic's head were both beautiful receptacles, but the value
had flown.
Another lunatic, a man named Hogan, thought that girls were continually
bothering him. "Now go away, Liz, and leave me alone," he would
say. One day a lady about fifty years old visited the hospital with
Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent ward where Hogan
and I were. She was not a bit afraid, and went right up to Hogan
and questioned him. He exclaimed, excitedly, "Go away, Meg. You're
disfigured enough without my giving you another sockdolager." She
stayed in the ward a long while and asked many questions. She had as
much nerve as any lady I ever saw. As she and Allison were leaving
the ward, Hogan said: "Allison, chain her up. She is a bad egg." The
next day I learned that this refined, delicate and courageous woman
had once gone to war with her husband, a German prince, who had been
with General Sherman on his memorable march to the sea. She was born
an American, and belonged to the Jay family, but was now the Princess
Salm-Salm.
The most amusing crank (if the word amusing can be used of an insane
man) in the ward was an Englishman named Alec. He was incurably insane,
but a good musician and mathematician. One of his delusions was that
he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo. His mortal enemy was a
lunatic named Jimmy White, who thought he was a mule. Jimmy often came
to me and said: "You didn't give your mule any oats this morning." He
would not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him. Alec had great
resentment for Jimmy because when Alec was a camel in the London
Zoo Jimmy used to prevent the ladies and the kids from giving him
sweets. When Jimmy said: "I never saw the man before," Alec replied
indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel, and I won't be interfered
with by an ordinary, common mule, like you."
There are divers sorts of insanity. I had an interview with a doctor,
a high officer in the institution, which convinced me, perhaps without
reason, that insanity was not limited to the patients and attendants.
One day an insane man was struck by an attendant in the solar plexus.
He threw his hands up in the air, and cried: "My God, I'm killed." I
said to another man in the ward: "There's murder." He said: "How do
you know?" I replied: "I have seen death a few times." In an hour, sure
enough, the report came that the insane man was dead. A few days later
I was talking with the doctor referred to and I said:
"I was an eye-witness of the assault on D----." And I described the
affair.
"You have been reported to me repeatedly," he replied.
"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or patients?"
"By patients," he replied.
"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe half what insane men tell you,
do you? Doctor, these same patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons)
that have been reporting me, have accused you of every crime in the
calendar."
"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and the father of a family."
"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe that a man can be a respectable
physician and still be insane?"
"What do you mean?" he said.
"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent of an insane
asylum has been accused of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This
man, too, was more than fifty, had a mother, a wife and children, and
belonged to a profession which ought to be more sympathetic with a
patient than the church with its communicants. When a man will stoop to
such crimes, is it not possible that there is a form of mental disease
called partial, periodical paralysis of the faculty humane, and was not
Robert Louis Stevenson right when he wrote _Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde_?"
The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and shouted: "Don't you dare to tell
anybody about this interview." I looked into his eyes and smiled, for
I am positive that at that moment I looked into the eyes of a madman.
King Kelly, an attendant who had been on duty in insane asylums for
many years, was very energetic in trying to get information from the
stool-pigeons. The patients used to pass notes around among themselves,
and the attendants were always eager to get hold of those notes,
expecting to find news of beats (escapes) about to be attempted. I knew
that King Kelly was eager to discover "beats" and as I, not being a
stool-pigeon, was in bad odor with him, I determined to give him a jar.
So one day I wrote him the following note:
"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital for years. The socks and
suspenders which should go to the patients are divided impartially
between you and the other attendants. Of the four razors, which lately
arrived for patients, two are in your trunk, one you sent to your
brother in Ireland, and the fourth you keep in the ward for show, in
case the doctor should be coming around."
That night when I was going to bed I slipped the note into the Kings
hand and whispered: "There's going to be a beat tonight." The King
turned pale, and hurriedly ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that
he could read the note. Before reading it he handed it to a doctor, to
be sure to get the credit of stopping the beat as soon as possible.
The doctor read it and gave the King the laugh. In the morning, when
the doctor made his rounds, Mr. Kelly said to him: "We have one or two
funny men in the ward who, instead of robbing decent people, could
have made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The result was that the
doctor put me down for three or four new delusions. Knowing the Celtic
character thoroughly I used to crack many a joke on the King. I would
say to another patient, as the King passed: "If it hadn't been for
Kelly we should have escaped that time sure." That would make him wild.
My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable to me in the mad-house.
But I must say that the King was pretty kind when a patient was ill.
When I was so ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died or not,
the old King used to give me extras,--milk, eggs and puddings. And
in his heart the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature he was a
dynamiter and believed in physical force and not mental treachery.
The last few months I served in the insane asylum was at Dannemora,
where I was transferred from Matteawan. The conditions at the two
asylums are much the same. While at Dannemora I continued my efforts
to be sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and used to talk to the
doctors about it as often as I had an opportunity. A few months before
I was released I had an interview with a Commissioner--the first one in
three years, although I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.
"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent back to stir?"
He turned to the ward doctor and asked: "What is this mans condition?"
"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.
That made me angry, and I remarked, sarcastically: "It is curious
that when a man tries to make a success at little things he is a dead
failure."
"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent, trying to feel me out for
a new delusion.
I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only a few years ago this man was
interlocutor in an amateur minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer he was a
failure. Since he has risen to the height of being a mad-house doctor
he is a success."
Then I turned to the Commissioner and said: "Do you know what
constitutes a cure in this place and in Matteawan?"
"I'd like to know," he replied.
"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to carrying tales on other patients
and starts in to work cleaning cuspidors, then, and not till then, he
is cured. Everybody knows that, in the eyes of attendants and doctors,
the worst delusions in the asylum are wanting to go home, demanding
more food, and disliking to do dirty work and bear tales."
I don't know whether my talk with the Commissioner had any effect
or not, but a little while after that, when my term expired, I was
released. I had been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is
kept in the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is no
more insane than I was. When the stool-pigeons heard that I was to be
released they thought I must have been a rat under cover, and applied
every vile name to me.
I had been in hell for several years; but even hell has its uses. When
I was sent up for my third term, I thought I should not live my bit
out, and that, as long as I did live, I should remain a grafter at
heart. But the pipe house cured me, or helped to cure me, of a vice
which, if it had continued, would have made me incapable of reform,
even if I had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I went to the
mad-house there had been periods when I had little opium, either
because I could not obtain it, or because I was trying to knock it
off. My sufferings in consequence had been violent, but the worst moral
and physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot came to me after I
had entered the pipe house; for I could practically get no opium. That
deprivation, added to the horrors I saw every day, was enough to make
any man crazy. At least, I thought so at the time. I must have had a
good nervous system to have passed through it all.
Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at all. During my first
months in the madhouse, the doctor occasionally took pity on me and
gave me a little of the drug, but taken in such small quantities it
was worse than useless. He used to give me sedatives, however, which
calmed me for a time. Occasionally, too, I would get a little hop from
a trusty, who was a friend of mine, and I had smuggled in some tablets
of morphine from stir; but the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw
that the only thing to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did,
and made no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last two years in
the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can not describe the agonies
I went through. Every nerve and muscle in my body was in pain most of
the time, my stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth exuded
water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of suicide were constant with
me. Of course, I could never have given up this baleful habit through
my own efforts alone. The pipe house forced me to make the attempt, and
after I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to continue
in the right path, although even now the longing for it returns to
me. It does not seem possible that I can ever go back to it, for that
terrible experience in the mad-house made an indelible impression. I
shall never be able to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind.
When under the influence of opium I used frequently to imagine I
smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I never smell certain sweet
perfumes now without the whole horrible experience rushing before my
mind. Life in a mad-house taught me a lesson I shall never forget.