Library Collections: Document: Full Text

"If the examination about to be made by the lawyers of J. T. Van Vleck, the gentleman who has been for a long time confined in Bloomingdale Asylum, upon what he asserts is a false charge, shall bring about so easy and still so important a reform as the letter-box system, it will have done one good thing by directing public attention to an important and ever increasing question."

Since this important feature of reform has now become already inaugurated in substance in Iowa, and regarding the Belgium mode of collecting the mail as superior to any plan our Committee had devised for this purpose, I cut out the above articles, and enclosed them in the following letter to the chairman of this Committee recommending its immediate adoption.

CHICAGO, August 12,1872.

JUDGE LOWE -- I am preparing a full and detailed account of my effort in Iowa Legislature and Mount Pleasant, to be published in my forthcoming book, and part of which is my last two letters I wrote to you, thus giving Judge Lowe, Ex-Governor of Iowa, and Chairman of the Visiting Committee, a very prominent place in this narrative.

Now, it is my desire to immortalize your name as the great pioneer, of this now well inaugurated humanitarian reform. For this purpose I send you the enclosed practice of the Belgium government for you to adopt as the best devised mode of collecting the mail from the inmates of your insane asylums, and then report to me that it is done, or, how you do secure the enforcement of the legislative will of Iowa, so I can add this most commendable act as a new laurel to your crown of honor, in thus establishing a precedent worthy of imitation by every State in the United States.

Oh! how I should delight to say to other Legislators and Committees:

"Judge Lowe, of Iowa, the worthy chairman of the first Committee of the kind ever created in America, has established the best and most invulnerable system of communication with the outside world ever before adopted in America."

And this I could honestly say, by your adopting the Belgium practice of collecting the mail, free from any possibility of interference from interested parties. None but an authorized agent of the U. S. Mail should be allowed to hold the key to these mail-boxes.

Oh! Sir, do give to these unfortunates a sure guarantee, that their mail matter shall never again be interfered with by the asylum officials, and your passport to the gratitude of appreciative Republic will be complete and unquestioned.

The good leaven is working in other States, since Iowa has taken her invincible stand to defend, by law, their unfortunate. I am now in correspondence with Governor Hoffman of New York on this subject, and he is looking to the operation of this humane law in Iowa for light to guide his actions.

Yes, Judge Lowe, "Your light is now set upon a hill where it cannot be hid." Oh, Let it shine! as the morning star heralding the millennial sun.

As ever, yours for the oppressed,
E. P. W. PACKARD.

In reply to the above, Judge Lowe wrote that, he saw no objection to adopting the Belgium mode of collecting the mail from the inmates of Insane Asylums in Iowa, and would recommend this course to the Committee at their next meeting, about the middle of September.

If the Committee do adopt this course, and secure the faithful enforcement of the law to "protect the Insane," Iowa can then make her boast of being the pioneer State in America in protecting the unfortunate inmates of Insane Asylums by the same laws by which other citizens of their State are protected.

CHAPTER XLIX.
Life in Bloomingdale Asylum, New York.

At a meeting of the Commissioners appointed, by Governor Hoffman, convened Oct. 21st, 1872, at 118 East Thirtieth Street, New York, I listened to the following testimony, taken under oath before these commissioners, from a lady who had recently been confined three months at Bloomingdale Asylum, wherein she details the treatment there to be of the same barbarous character as the Committee of Illinois found it to be at their Asylum at Jacksonville.

She said she went of her own accord for treatment for epileptic fits, which she had been informed could be cured there. She was not insane, and did not go as an insane person, but as a boarder. She paid three hundred dollars upon entering, the sum required for three months, with a special contract that she should have all the medical care, treatment and attention her case required. The physician under whose care she had placed herself saw her only three times during the whole time. She took something four times a day, which she thinks was nothing but calomel, as she feels to this day such evil effects in her system as calomel produces.

The first night her attendant ordered her early to bed, without her supper.

She declined going so early, and without a light, and asked for her supper.

They refused her a mouthful of food and told her if she did not go immediately they should send her to the "Lodge."