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Modern Persecution, or Insane Asylums Unveiled

From: Modern Persecution
Creator: Elizabeth P. W. Packard (author)
Date: 1873
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 1  Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16

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2429  

As she lay, day after day, on her bed of suffering, surrounded by the noisy and filthy, of whose annoyances I never knew her to complain, I had never beheld a more perfect example of patience.

2430  

But I burned with indignation at the ignorance of a com-munity, in the very country her husband had fought and died to protect, that his beloved young wife could not herself be protected from such shameful abuses as those she suffered here.

2431  

A few weeks after her recovery, she went home. Could she have gone at the time she had started, or previously, instead of being punished in prison for thus braving danger for the love of her children, she might have escaped the fever.

2432  

Our reign of terror augmented to such a degree, that I did not deem it safe to enter the dining-hall, even when the door was left open, for a glass of water for the suffering Mrs. Davis, without humbly asking liberty of Lizzy to do so!

2433  

At last one of our number, a very intelligent married lady, made the following proposition, namely: That we should make a general onslaught or campaign against, the State's property, and in various ways, destroy all we possibly could without discovery. Thus we should make apparent to our persecutor, that this most desperate movement was but the natural and legitimate result of Ins own extreme severity to his victims -- that it was the complete desperation of our circumstances which evolved this "military necessity."

2434  

Let those who may blame us for acting upon this, remember that we were fighting for our lives. Compelled as we were to inhale the poisonous gases from so many diseased bodies while sleeping so near each other, and the still deadlier exhalations arising from typhoid and other fevers, ulcerated lungs, and fetid sores, all confined in one hall; we felt, that between the above influences, and the sudden blows and violence which all the time menaced, us, by the fierce maniacs and their fiercer keeper, that our lives were most essentially imperilled.

2435  

Our liberty, even the liberty of speech and writing had all been taken away, and we wished for emancipation from this inexorable thraldom with an agony of desire that none but the victims of such a bondage can ever appreciate.

2436  

We all felt ourselves hotly pursued by the enemy. Only the wild and reckless scarcely dared to breathe. They indeed, like the mad Saul of Tarsus, in his fruitless attempts to destroy Christianity, dared to "breathe out threatenings and slaughter," not against Christ, or any of his followers, but against our asylum prison-keepers, and their abettors in the unjust embodiment of State Legislation.

2437  

CHAPTER XLIX.
"Wives and Husbands There Must Part."

2438  

"Returning from a walk one day with others, I observed, on coming up the long flight of stairs, a scene which gave my feelings a severe shook. The attendant evidently did not wish us to see this, for she kept hurrying us along to our hall, but the circumstances were such we could not help it.

2439  

A husband who that morning had made a brief visit to his wife, was then taking leave of her. She failed to recognize the propriety of being left, and wished to return to her home with her husband. she entreated him, with tears that ceased not flowing, to let her go home and see her children.

2440  

"Oh husband dear, do let me go home; I don't want to stay here any longer, it don't do me any good, I must go! Oh, 1 must live at home with you and my children. Dear, dear husband! Do not leave me here! "

2441  

The husband hesitated, looked at her streaming tears, then at the door -- he lingered -- there was an evident struggle in his mind.

2442  

The agitated wife perceiving his indecision, seizing the advantage, took his arm within her own, and embracing him, exclaimed again, in tones of agony:

2443  

"Oh husband, I must go home with you! Do not, do not leave me here! "

2444  

Several of the officials of the asylum were standing near, the husband had evidently been receiving instruction from them instead of his own conscience.

2445  

Then with one violent effort, he disengaged himself from the trembling grasp of the pleading wife, left her and walked hastily down the stairs.

2446  

In her anguish she sank down powerless upon the floor, and was dragged, by two men, still gazing after her husband's receding form, to all the horrors of locks, keys, and imprison-ments!

2447  

We all returned to our hall in sadness and silence, the at-tendant left. When we found ourselves unwatched, one said:

2448  

"Oh, how could that man have the heart to leave her, when she so begged to go with him?"

2449  

Another replied, that "he had been befooled by the Doctor, who had told him it would not be safe to take her home."

2450  

Said a third, "What a fool a man must be, to let another man judge between himself and his wife! he ought to have known himself whether she should have gone home. If he wanted to go and attend to his affairs, he ought to have con-sidered that she had the same right, for his home duties and her own were the same."

2451  

Another spoke with apparent disgust, in her turn, to the last speaker.

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