Library Collections: Document: Full Text


Memorial Of Miss D. L. Dix To the Senate And House Of Representatives Of The United States

Creator: Dorothea L. Dix (author)
Date: August 8, 1850
Source: Available at selected libraries

Previous Page   Next Page   All Pages 


Page 15:

136  

North Carolina has more than twelve hundred insane and idiots. I do not know by personal observation what is their condition; but within a few months sad details have been communicated from respectable and reliable sources.

137  

South Carolina records the same deplorable abuses and necessities as New York. I have found there the insane in pens, and bound with cords and chains, and suffering no less than the same class in States already referred to at the north, except through exposure to the cold in winter, the climate in the southern States sparing that aggravated misery. One patient was removed to the hospital after being confined in a jail more than twenty years. Another had for years been chained to a log: another had been confined in a hut ten feet square, and was destitute of clothing and of every comfort of life. A young girl was confined in a dismal cabin, filthy and totally neglected. Her hair was matted into a solid foul mass; her person emaciated, and uncleansed; nothing human could be imagined more entirely miserable, and more cruelly abandoned to want.

138  

Georgia has, so far as I have been able to ascertain, fewer insane, in proportion to population, than either North or South Carolina, but there is not less injudicious or cruel management of the violent cases throughout the State; chains and ropes are employed to increase security from escapes, in addition to closed doors and the bolts and bars which shut the dreary cells and dungeons of jails and other receptacles. I have seen the deep scars of former wounds produced by chains and blows; and those who have received patients, transported to the State hospitals, are as much at a loss for any decent language for describing the condition of these unfortunate beings as myself. Their condition is indeed indescribable. Patients have not seldom been transported to the hospital in open carts, chained and bound with heavy cords.

139  

Alabama reveals in her jails, and in many poor dwellings, corresponding scenes. In 1846 and 1848, I traced there poor creatures in situations truly revolting and horrible. To record cases is but to repeat sad histories differing only in time and place, not in degrees of misery. So also in Louisiana and Mississippi, in the same years. There are not, at the lowest estimate, less than fourteen hundred in these three last named States.

140  

In Texas, it is said, insanity is increasing. I have seen several patients brought hence for hospital treatment, bound with cords and sorely bruised.

141  

In Arkansas the insane and idiots are scattered in remote districts. I found it often exceedingly difficult to ascertain precisely their circumstances; these were no better-and worse they could not be -- than were the indigent, and not seldom the affluent, in other States.

142  

In Tennessee the insane and idiotic population, as in Kentucky, is numerous and increasing. The same methods of confinement to cabins, pens, cells, dungeons, and the same abandonment to filth, to cold, and exposure, as in other States.

143  

In Kentucky I found one epileptic girl subject to the most brutal treatment, and many insane in perpetual confinement. Of the idiots alone, supported by the State at a cost of $17,500 62, in indigent private families, and of which class there were, in 1845, four hundred and fifty, many were exposed to severest treatment and heavy blows from day to day and from year to year. In a dreary blockhouse was confined, for many years, a man whose insanity took the form of mania. Often the most furious paroxysms prevented rest for several days and nights in succession. No alleviation reached this unhappy being; without clothes, without fire, without care or kindness, his existence was protracted amidst every horror incident to such circumstances. Chains in common use.

144  

In Ohio the insane population, including idiots, has been greatly underated, as I am fully satisfied by repeated hut interrupted inquiries in different sections of the State. The sufferings of a great number here are very distressing, corresponding with those referred to in New York and in Kentucky, Cells and dungeons, unventilated and unwashed apartments, severe restraints, and multiplied neglects, abound.

145  

Michigan, it was stated, had sixty-three insane in 1840. I think it a moderate estimate, judging from my investigations, reaching no further north than Jackson and Detroit, that the number in 1847 exceeded two hundred and fifty. I saw some truly afflicted and lamentable cases.

146  

Indiana, traversed through its whole length and breadth in 1846, exbits -sic- the usual forms of misery wherever the insane are found; and of this class there cannot be, including idiots and epileptics, less than nine hundred. I found one poor woman in a smoke-house, in which size had been confined more than twenty years. In several poorhouses the insane, both men and women, were chained to the floors, sometimes all in the same apartment. Several were confined in mere pens, without clothing or shelter; some furious, others for a time comparatively tranquil. The hospital now about to be opened, when finished, will not receive to its care one patient in ten of existing cases.

Previous Page   Next Page

Pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20    All Pages