XXII
Like fires and railroad disasters, assaults seemed to come in groups.
Days would pass without a single outbreak. Then would come a veritable
carnival of abuse—due almost invariably to the attendants' state of
mind, not to an unwonted aggressiveness on the part of the patients. I
can recall as especially noteworthy several instances of atrocious
abuse. Five patients were chronic victims. Three of them, peculiarly
irresponsible, suffered with especial regularity, scarcely a day
passing without bringing to them its quota of punishment. One of these,
almost an idiot, and quite too inarticulate to tell a convincing story
even under the most favorable conditions, became so cowed that,
whenever an attendant passed, he would circle his oppressor as a
whipped cur circles a cruel master. If this avoidance became too
marked, the attendant would then and there chastise him for the
implied, but unconscious insult.
There was a young man, occupying a cell next to mine in the Bull Pen,
who was so far out of his mind as to be absolutely irresponsible. His
offence was that he could not comprehend and obey. Day after day I
could hear the blows and kicks as they fell upon his body, and his
incoherent cries for mercy were as painful to hear as they are
impossible to forget. That he survived is surprising. What wonder that
this man, who was "violent," or who was made violent, would not permit
the attendants to dress him! But he had a half-witted friend, a
ward-mate, who could coax him into his clothes when his oppressors
found him most intractable.
Of all the patients known to me, the one who was assaulted with the
greatest frequency was an incoherent and irresponsible man of sixty
years. This patient was restless and forever talking or shouting, as
any man might if oppressed by such delusions as his. He was profoundly
convinced that one of the patients had stolen his stomach—an idea
inspired perhaps by the remarkable corpulency of the person he accused.
His loss he would woefully voice even while eating. Of course, argument
to the contrary had no effect; and his monotonous recital of his
imaginary troubles made him unpopular with those whose business it was
to care for him. They showed him no mercy. Each day—including the
hours of the night, when the night watch took a hand—he was belabored
with fists, broom handles, and frequently with the heavy bunch of keys
which attendants usually carry on a long chain. He was also kicked and
choked, and his suffering was aggravated by his almost continuous
confinement in the Bull Pen. An exception to the general rule (for such
continued abuse often causes death), this man lived a long time—five
years, as I learned later.
Another victim, forty-five years of age, was one who had formerly been
a successful man of affairs. His was a forceful personality, and the
traits of his sane days influenced his conduct when he broke down
mentally. He was in the expansive phase of paresis, a phase
distinguished by an exaggerated sense of well-being, and by delusions
of grandeur which are symptoms of this form as well as of several other
forms of mental disease. Paresis, as everyone knows, is considered
incurable and victims of it seldom live more than three or four years.
In this instance, instead of trying to make the patient's last days
comfortable, the attendants subjected him to a course of treatment
severe enough to have sent even a sound man to an early grave. I
endured privations and severe abuse for one month at the State
Hospital. This man suffered in all ways worse treatment for many
months.
I became well acquainted with two jovial and witty Irishmen. They were
common laborers. One was a hodcarrier, and a strapping fellow. When he
arrived at the institution, he was at once placed in the violent ward,
though his "violence" consisted of nothing more than an annoying sort
of irresponsibility. He irritated the attendants by persistently doing
certain trivial things after they had been forbidden. The attendants
made no allowance for his condition of mind. His repetition of a
forbidden act was interpreted as deliberate disobedience. He was
physically powerful, and they determined to cow him. Of the master
assault by which they attempted to do this I was not an eyewitness. But
I was an ear witness. It was committed behind a closed door; and I
heard the dull thuds of the blows, and I heard the cries for mercy
until there was no breath left in the man with which he could beg even
for his life. For days, that wrecked Hercules dragged himself about the
ward moaning pitifully. He complained of pain in his side and had
difficulty in breathing, which would seem to indicate that some of his
ribs had been fractured. This man was often punished, frequently for
complaining of the torture already inflicted. But later, when he began
to return to the normal, his good-humor and native wit won for him an
increasing degree of good treatment.
The other patient's arch offence—a symptom of his disease—was that he
gabbled incessantly. He could no more stop talking than he could right
his reason on command. Yet his failure to become silent at a word was
the signal for punishment. On one occasion an attendant ordered him to
stop talking and take a seat at the further end of the corridor, about
forty feet distant. He was doing his best to obey, even running to keep
ahead of the attendant at his heels. As they passed the spot where I
was sitting, the attendant felled him with a blow behind the ear; and,
in falling, the patient's head barely missed the wall.
Addressing me, the attendant said, "Did you see that?"
"Yes," I replied, "and I'll not forget it."
"Be sure to report it to the doctor," he said, which remark showed his
contempt, not only for me, but for those in authority.
The man who had so terribly beaten me was particularly flagrant in
ignoring the claims of age. On more than one occasion he viciously
attacked a man of over fifty, who, however, seemed much older. He was a
Yankee sailing-master, who in his prime could have thrashed his
tormentor with ease. But now he was helpless and could only submit.
However, he was not utterly abandoned by his old world. His wife called
often to see him; and, because of his condition, she was permitted to
visit him in his room. Once she arrived a few hours after he had been
cruelly beaten. Naturally she asked the attendants how he had come by
the hurts—the blackened eye and bruised head. True to the code, they
lied. The good wife, perhaps herself a Yankee, was not thus to be
fooled; and her growing belief that her husband had been assaulted was
confirmed by a sight she saw before her visit was ended. Another
patient, a foreigner who was a target for abuse, was knocked flat two
or three times as he was roughly forced along the corridor. I saw this
little affair and I saw that the good wife saw it. The next day she
called again and took her husband home. The result was that after a few
(probably sleepless) nights, she had to return him to the hospital and
trust to God rather than the State to protect him.
Another victim was a man sixty years of age. He was quite inoffensive,
and no patient in the ward seemed to attend more strictly to his own
business. Shortly after my transfer from the violent ward this man was
so viciously attacked that his arm was broken. The attendant (the man
who had so viciously assaulted me) was summarily discharged.
Unfortunately, however, the relief afforded the insane was slight and
brief, for this same brute, like another whom I have mentioned, soon
secured a position in another institution—this one, however, a
thousand miles distant.
Death by violence in a violent ward is after all not an unnatural
death—for a violent ward. The patient of whom I am about to speak was
also an old man—over sixty. Both physically and mentally he was a
wreck. On being brought to the institution he was at once placed in a
cell in the Bull Pen, probably because of his previous history for
violence while at his own home. But his violence (if it ever existed)
had already spent itself, and had come to be nothing more than an utter
incapacity to obey. His offence was that he was too weak to attend to
his common wants. The day after his arrival, shortly before noon, he
lay stark naked and helpless upon the bed in his cell. This I know, for
I went to investigate immediately after a ward-mate had informed me of
the vicious way in which the head attendant had assaulted the sick man.
My informant was a man whose word regarding an incident of this
character I would take as readily as that of any man I know. He came to
me, knowing that I had taken upon myself the duty of reporting such
abominations. My informant feared to take the initiative, for, like
many other patients who believe themselves doomed to continued
confinement, he feared to invite abuse at the hands of vengeful
attendants. I therefore promised him that I would report the case as
soon as I had an opportunity.
All day long this victim of an attendant's unmanly passion lay in his
cell in what seemed to be a semi-conscious condition. I took particular
pains to observe his condition, for I felt that the assault of the
morning might result in death. That night, after the doctor's regular
tour of inspection, the patient in question was transferred to a room
next my own. The mode of transfer impressed itself upon my memory. Two
attendants—one of them being he who had so brutally beaten the
patient—placed the man in a sheet and, each taking an end, carried the
hammock-like contrivance, with its inert contents, to what proved to be
its last resting-place above ground. The bearers seemed as much
concerned about their burden as one might be about a dead dog, weighted
and ready for the river.
That night the patient died. Whether he was murdered none can ever
know. But it is my honest opinion that he was. Though he might never
have recovered, it is plain that he would have lived days, perhaps
months. And had he been humanely, nay, scientifically, treated, who can
say that he might not have been restored to health and home?
The young man who had been my companion in mischief in the violent ward
was also terribly abused. I am sure I do not exaggerate when I say that
on ten occasions, within a period of two months, this man was cruelly
assaulted, and I do not know how many times he suffered assaults of
less severity. After one of these chastisements, I asked him why he
persisted in his petty transgressions when he knew that he thereby
invited such body-racking abuse.
"Oh," he said, laconically, "I need the exercise."
To my mind, the man who, with such gracious humor, could refer to what
was in reality torture deserved to live a century. But an unkind fate
decreed that he should die young. Ten months after his commitment to
the State Hospital he was discharged as improved—but not cured. This
was not an unusual procedure; nor was it in his case apparently an
unwise one, for he seemed fit for freedom. During the first month of
regained liberty, he hanged himself. He left no message of excuse. In
my opinion, none was necessary. For aught any man knows, the memories
of the abuse, torture, and injustice which were so long his portion may
have proved to be the last straw which overbalanced the desire to live.
Patients with less stamina than mine often submitted with meekness; and
none so aroused my sympathy as those whose submission was due to the
consciousness that they had no relatives or friends to support them in
a fight for their rights. On behalf of these, with my usual piece of
smuggled lead pencil, I soon began to indite and submit to the officers
of the institution, letters in which I described the cruel practices
which came under my notice. My reports were perfunctorily accepted and
at once forgotten or ignored. Yet these letters, so far as they related
to overt acts witnessed, were lucid and should have been convincing.
Furthermore, my allegations were frequently corroborated by bruises on
the bodies of the patients. My usual custom was to write an account of
each assault and hand it to the doctor in authority. Frequently I would
submit these reports to the attendants with instructions first to read
and then deliver them to the superintendent or the assistant physician.
The men whose cruelty I thus laid bare read with evident but perverted
pleasure my accounts of assaults, and laughed and joked about my
ineffectual attempts to bring them to book.
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