Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1890 — Trouble in a French Mad-House. [ARTICLE]

Trouble in a French Mad-House.

An extraordinary scene in a lunatic asylum is thus described by the Paris correspondent of the Daily News. There is nothing, mad doctors say, more unusual than for lunatics who are together to act on a common impulse. Last Sunday, however, six inmates of the Bicetre Asylum were so irritated and oppressed by the sultry weather preceding the hail - storm as to take an identical course in letting off their nervous excitement. The outbreak took place in the refectory, where a lunatic who has often had to be kept in a padded rcom complained that a new keeper had deprived him of a portion of the food to which he was entitled. The complaint was well founded. As the dish was being fetched the madman lost patience and dashed the plate before him against the wall opposite. Five others followed his example, and- then ran to pitch everything they could lay their hands upon out of - the windows. M. Pinon, the Governor, was called, compulsion of a violent kind rever being suffered unless by his order. As he entered the refectory a dish was broken on his head, and he and a keeper who was with him had difficulty in escaping with their lives. The mad people tore down the iron bars which formed a partition between their part of the hall and a section where other patients were dining. They then got to the keepers’ rooms, and, seizing knives and razors, went to cut the throats of those who denied them their liberty. Troops summoned from the fort, arrived as the mutineers had got possession of the kitchens and the court-yard. When twenty Soldiers with fixed bayonets entered the latter there was a sudden collapse. The six ringleaders dropped their knives and razors, begged pardon, and submitted quietly to be taken to their cells. Nearly all the keepers were seriously injured. One, Fournier, was beaten with a chair and his arm broken in two places. A madman named Jolly rifled a desk of bank notes, all of which he ate.— Public Opinion.