Memorial : to the Legislature of Massachusetts [protesting against the confinement of insane persons and idiots in almshouses and prisons] / [signed] D. L. Dix.
- Dorothea Dix
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memorial : to the Legislature of Massachusetts [protesting against the confinement of insane persons and idiots in almshouses and prisons] / [signed] D. L. Dix. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![wholly incapaple of doing harm, and none manifesting any disposition either to injure others or to exercise mischievous propensities. I ask an investigation into this subject for the sake of many whose association with prisoners and criminals, and also with persons in almost every stage of insanity, is as useless and unnecessary, as it is cruel and ill-judged. ]f it were proper, I might place in your hands a volume, rather than give a page, illustrating these premises. Sudbury. First week in September last I directed my way to the poor-farm there. Approaching, as I supposed, that place, all uncertainty vanished, as to which, of several dwellings in view, the course should be directed. The terrible screams and imprecations, impure language and amazing blasphemies, of a maniac, now, as often heretofore, indicated the place sought after. I know not how to proceed! the English language affords no combinations fit for describing the condition of the un- happy wretch there confined. In a stall, built under a woodshed on the road, was a naked man, defiled with filth, furiously tossing through the bars and about the cage, portions of straw (the only furnishing of his prison) already trampled to chaff. The mass of filth within, diffused wide abroad the most noisome stench. I have never witnessed paroxysms of madness so appalling ; it seemed as if the ancient doctrine of the possession of demons was here illustrated. I hastened to the house over- whelmed with horror. The mistress informed me that ten days since he had been brought from Worcester Hospital, where the town did not choose any longer to meet the expenses of maintaining him ; that he had been dreadful noisy and dangerous to go near, ever since; it was hard work to give him food at any rate, for what was not immediately dashed at those who carried it, was cast down upon the festering mass within. He's a dreadful care ; worse than all the people and work on the farm beside. Have you any other insane persons? Yes ; this man's sister has been crazy here for several years ; she does nothing but take on about him ; and may-be she'll grow as bad as he. I went into the adjoining room to see this unhappy creature ; in a low chair, wearing an air of deepest despondence, sat a female no longer young; her hair fell un- combed upon her shoulders; her whole air revealed woe, un- mitigated woe ! She regarded me coldly and uneasily ; I spoke a few words of sympathy and kindness ; she fixed her gaze for a few moments steadily upon me, then grasping my hand, and bursting into a passionate flood of tears, repeatedly kissed it, exclaiming in a voice broken by sobs, O, my poor brother, my poor brother; hark, hear him ! hear him ! then relapsing into apathetic calmness, she neither spoke nor moved, but the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2102716x_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
