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Shameful Outrages the Buie at theIndiana Hospital for the Insane!Albert Thayer Interviewed.IndtanipolU Newt, June 29,1826.Now and then telegraphic reports are received from distant part of the union giving details of outrages that have been practiced upon inmates of insane hospitals and jails. A complacent public shivers as it reads and is pacified with the conclusion that these things are not occurring at home. If witnesses are to be believed, abuses exist in the Indiana jails and hospitals that deserve the attention of this public, and leave precious little room for congratulation after comparison with obnoxious institutions elsewhere.Recently the Ncwb published a card from one “Williams,” describing cruelties practiced upon the inmates of the insane hospital. If he speaks the truth (no one has desputed it), brutal, incompetent attendants have full sway in the back wards, and testimony is here submitted showing that the superintendent and other superiors are seldom seen in some of the wards. Something could be effectively said of a personal nature, but it is enough here to speak only of the institution and its methods—particularly the system which turns over the state’s unfortunates to the mercy of men whose certificate of character is party affiliation, and whose only training has been in ward politics. The inmates of these institutions cannot plead successfully their own cause, and so long as their maniacal cries, or the blows that beat them into submission are not heard, the public seems to be content to point to the millions that have been spent for the insane and rest satisfied in the thought that they have been nobly provided for by a great commonwealth. Two years ago Mr. Albert Thayer, of this city, detailed in the News his experience and observations as an inmate of the hospital. Superintendent Fletcher discredited Mr. Thayer’s damaging, charges by telling the public that he bad been twice an inmate of the asylum and was given to hallucinations and delirious. Mr. Thayer, in reply, gave the nameB of patients who had been cruelly treated and the names of the attendants who committed the outrages. In a private letter to Mr. Thayer the superintendent admitted that reform was necessary, but that the disinclination of the state to furnish money enough to give the patients the best of food and skilled, educated and moral attendants, prevented the reform from being executed. If Mr. Thayer is given to hallucinations now, his daily life furnishes no evidence of it. With great patience and persistence he is endeavoring to educate the public up to the recognition of existing evils. When asked for a statement'of facts relating to the hospital, Mr. Thayer said to the News to-day:“I repeat all my former statements, and say that many of the inmates of the Indiana hospital for the insane, the largest institution of the kind, I believe in the world, are treated with an ignorance and cruelty that is a damning disgrace to the intelligent and Christian people of Indiana. The mere preaching of one thousand Sam Joneses and Smalls will not cure such evils. It will require energetic action on the part of our influential citizens to reform such abuses. Year after year, it matters not who is in power, those unfortunate beings, afflicted with the awfullest of maladies, are left iqy care of those who practice, at their own sweet will, any kind of cruelties they deem necessary to enforce order. The apathy of the people to me is remarkable. With Dr. Fletcher’s letter as a voucher for the truthfulness of my statements, I described to Governor Porter the disgraceful condition of affairs at the hospital, but he did not see fit to mention the matter in his message to the legislature. I sent a printed statement of the facts to nearly every member of the legislature, and entered into a correspondence on the subject with Senator Foulke. Nothing came of my efforts. I wrote to one member, I think it was Folks, offering to go with a committee to de hospital, and, in Dr. Fletcher’s presence, point out the abuses of which I complained* I received no answer. I still stand ready to do this. I have sent a printed statement of these charges, with a copy of Dr. Fletoher’s letter to every prominent minister, lawyer and humanitarian in Indianapolis, but never, in a single instance, has one of them oome to me or written to me to express an interest in the matter. Hund?$ds ,of the commqnpeople, however, have come to me to thank me for my efforts in the cause.“I say now, and no one will contradict me, that beating the patients, slapping them, pulling their hair and whiskers is an every-day occurrence. Many of the patients, driven to desperation by such treatment, have to be constantly watched to prevent them from committing suicide to escape such treatment. This can be prevented only by employing as attendants a sufficient number of sensible, educated men and women of the highest moral character, with kind hearts under the control of strong, firm judgement.”“How often does the superintendent visit the various wards?”“When last a patient there I one day remarked to my attendant that I had been there three weeks without seeing Dr. Fletcher making his inspection round. He answered that I ’ waB likely to remain there three more weeks without Beeing him. ' Another attendant said that the attendants, and not the doctors, were running the institution. That did seem to be about the size of it. The boldness and wantoness with which many of the attendants mistreated patients showed the absence of the strong hand of discipline and mercy.”“What kind of food is furnished the patients?”“If the inmates were criminals and prisoners the food would be about what they would expect. Dr. Fletcher’s report for 1885 will show that for supper the diet is, usually, bread, butter tea and some kind of dried fruit. This looks well on paper. If the food was always of the best quality, and if all the fifteen hundred patients were, in common, fond of just these four articles of plain food as a steady diet, year in and year out, then it might be satisfactory. But the tea iB of a kind not relished by many of the patients; the butter is frequently queer; the dried fruit often suspicious. It is not complained that any of the patients suffer from absolute hunger yet how long can a sane, well person subsist upon this never-changing diet and not become ‘cracked’ or a dyspeptic? The most of the patients have been honest, hardworking people, and are of respectable, tax-paying families; many of them are members of families of wealth and high stand-idg; they are dot shut up in that place for crime committed, c.“Now, in the name of god, what reason can be given why these patients, suffering from BUch awful afflictions, should not have any kind and all kinds of wholesome food Tor the mere asking—eggs, milk, roast beef, or boiled steak? I never once knew of one of the physicians being present at mealtime to see what was actually put upon the table. If the patients were fed horse meat, or not at all, the doctors would not know it, if the attendants chose to keep them in ignorance.“The rules of the place are enforced against the patients exactly as if they were sane. For instance it would happen sometimes of a morning that a patient would complain of being too ill to get up He would be compelled to get up any way, the attendant excusing himself by saying that IJie doctor must be obeyed and that he had no option in the matter. It is true that some are so hopelessly and helplessly insane or idiotic that it is impossible to choke or pound them into submission. Now and then such a patient requires the same attention as an infant. When such a one falls into the hands of a brutal, ignorant attendant then may god have mercy on him.”“What can be done to remedy the existing evils, besides eradicating the spoils system?“The politicians are obliged, or feel that they are, to show a low rate of capital, and you will see it set forth in the annual reports that the inmates are fed on a few cents a day. Now the thing for the state to do is to vote enough money to feed and care for these. There are shut up in our penal and benevolent institutions, and running at large, not to exceed 20,000 in the aggregate, of cranks, paupers, theives and others unfortunates who are morally, mentally and by reason of bad health unable to take care of or support themselves. The population of our state is over 2,000,000. That gives us one helpless unfortunate for every one-hundred inhabitants. This is no burden. Our wheat crop alone would Borne years amouDt to $50,000,000. At $200 per head per annum, these insane unfortunates could be famishedwith all the comforts and many of the luxuries of life, including large libraries, reading-rooms ana congenial companionship—for $4,000-000 per annum, all of our 20,000 unfortunates could be fitly cared for. This sum as compared with the annual wealth produced in our state is simply nothing.*****How we do complain’ and grumble under this light load, how determined we are to shun it. Let us calculate the cost and burden of sin. There are in the state over 5,000 saloons, to say nothing of brothels and gambling hells. In these saloons is spent every year over $15,000,000, nearly four times the cost of supporting in luxury our brethren who fail and fall by the wayside.“A visiting commitee, appointed by the state, and made up of intelligent and wealthy Christian people, who can afford to do god’s work without charge, whose duty it shall be to visit the hospital frequently and at unexpected times to go through it from top to bottom, talk to the patients, and see to it that they receive such treatment as comports with our dignity as a wealthy state and a professing Christian people, could do great good. The kind of Christians that visit such places with posies in one hand and religious tracts in the other, as a cure for all evils, are not the kind wanted. Most men, when in good health and in prosperous circumstances, never read religious tracts or carry boquets around with them. But when the tide turns against them and they become the unfortunate inmates of our benevolent or penal institutions then comes a class of well-meaning persons who seem to think that these poor unfortunates are now just perishing for flowers and religious tracts. The sentiment is a very pretty one but it is too often out of place. What such people want is plenty of such wholesome food as they ask for, such work as they have a taste for, the society of congenial friends, and liberty to do pretty much as they please. As it is, our insane are left wholly to the mercy of paid servants, persons whose only inBentive to duty, like all who have something to sell, is to give the least possible for the amount received. Men of ambition, intelligence and a heartily sympathetic nature that never degenerates into maudling gush are the kind needed to take care of the afflicted. But such men are too few, and in two good demand, to be hired at $20 a month to do all the drudgery work, and the kind of work now required of the attendants in the insane hospital.In the above interview Brother Thayer, whom we know to be a humane, a good and a sensible man, puts considerable reliance upon “god.” But it is encouraging to observe that he wants “man” to do his part too.—Ed. Ironclad.
Newspaper Details
Indianapolis Monroes Iron Clad Age
Indianapolis, Indiana, US
Sat, Jul 17, 1886
Page 4
Full Page
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Indiana S.
IN, USA 29 Oct 2024
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