Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1873 — Horrors in a Lunatic Asylum. [ARTICLE]

Horrors in a Lunatic Asylum.

A most horrible and almost incredible -condition of affairs in tlie Vermont Insane Asylum is described iu the.report of tlie Legislative committeappointed to investigate the management of that institution. The committee’s first discovery was that tho asyluaywliidi. is r-iurtroLlcdijy.a pri---vate corporation,was greatly overcrowded, 485 patients being packed into a space intended to accommodate 300 at the most. This, however, is a trifling matter in comparison with other revelations. Seventyfive of these unfortunates were thrust awap in subterranean dungeons, dark, damp, foul and pervaded by unendurable stenches. Some were confined in apartments nine feet by four in size, w ith air and ventilation only through augerholes bored in the doors. Themctivc as well as the passive inflictions put upon these poor people proved equally inhuman. Among them was tlie punishment of the bath, in which the patient, securely bound, is placed in a bathing tub, and a continuous stream of mold water allowed to fall upon his head. This torture, it may be remarked in passing, was one of the most excruciating known in the dark ages, resulting "usually in insanity or death. To this asylum of horrors the committee also state that sane men have been consigned through fraud and bribery. The picture is as complete as Charles Reade could make it, but without the romance of tictioD. The reality is something for the Legislature' of Vermont to deal with promptly and severely; for it is too disgraceful for belief, except as attested by an official investigation such as has produced this astonishing report. —Boston Post. a [ „■