A Sketch of the Life of Elizabeth T. Stone and of Her Persecutions: With an Appendix of Her Treatment and Sufferings While in the Charlestown McLean Assylum, Where She Was Confined Under the Pretence of InsanityStone, Elizabeth T.
Religion
A Sketch of the Life of Elizabeth T. Stone and of Her Persecutions: With an Appendix of Her Treatment and Sufferings While in the Charlestown McLean Assylum, Where She Was Confined Under the Pretence of Insanity
Stone, Elizabeth T.
McLean Hospital; Mental illness -- Personal narratives; Stone, Elizabeth T., 1811-
About the last of March I
was carried back from the dungeon to the gallery I left. Miss Emerson
was my attendant. The day I was carried back was very cold, and Miss
Barber ordered me to be locked up in my room, to exercise her authority
over me. Miss Emerson was a good nurse. She said it was too cold for
me to be there, coming out of such a warm room as the dungeon was. She
went and asked Miss Barber to let me come out; but no, she must keep
me locked up. Miss Emerson came in and told me I had better lay down,
for she knew the change of air was too much for me, even if I sat out
in the gallery, by the furnace, for this gallery is a cold comfortless
place. Towards night my distress increased, till it seemed as though
every bone in me would fall apart. It seemed as though my breath would
leave my body. Miss Emerson said she has told Miss Barber how cold I
was, but she did not regard it. But I was not the only sufferer on
account of their cruel treatment. Others were suffering the like in
different ways. I stayed in this gallery till about the last of July,
weeping and rolling on the floor, in pain, not allowed to lay on my
bed, and often stripped and showered, as I was told I should be, as a
punishment for weeping, because I was in distress, and lost to eternal
happiness, and deprived of my liberty, in the hands of tyrants. One
day, while I was laying on the floor in agony, Dr. Bell came in and
said that brother James had been there. I asked him what was the reason
he did not let me see him, and he said he did not wish to see me; he
was glad I was there, and wished I had been two years before. This
added double grief, and Dr. Bell seemed delighted to tell me of it, to
tantalize me, and that he was so completely held up in his cruelty. I
told him that this brother did not know the agony that I was in, for I
did not think he could have the heart to rejoice in my misery, and to
wish I had this brutal act done to me two years before. This brother I
had done for more or less from a child; he being the youngest, I had
helped pay his board, his tuition, bought him books and clothes, and
all the money that I had, I let him have to help him along; and could
this be the way he was rewarding me for it? In this land of liberty
where every one has a right to worship God as they please, must he rise
against me and worse than murder me, because I worshipped God contrary
to his views. He believes all will go to heaven whether they have in
them the hope of glory or not. But he has a right to his belief. My
religion would not have led me to be accessory to his imprisonment, and
more especially to have medicine given him to rack and torture him.
One day when the trustees were there, I addressed Mr Lowell about my
situation; he gave a listening ear, when Dr. Bell stepped forward and
said my physician said that I was a fit subject for the house. I told
him I had no physician, for I never was sick but once in my life, and
that was two years ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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