Ten Days in a Mad-House; or, Nellie Bly's Experience on Blackwell's Island.: Feigning Insanity in Order to Reveal Asylum Horrors. The Trying Ordeal of the New York World's Girl Correspondent.Bly, Nellie
History
Ten Days in a Mad-House; or, Nellie Bly's Experience on Blackwell's Island.: Feigning Insanity in Order to Reveal Asylum Horrors. The Trying Ordeal of the New York World's Girl Correspondent.
Bly, Nellie
Bly, Nellie, 1864-1922; Mentally ill -- Commitment and detention -- New York (State) -- History -- 19th century; N.Y. City Lunatic Asylum; Psychiatric hospital care -- New York (State) -- History -- 19th century; Psychiatric hospitals -- New York (State) -- History -- 19th century; Women -- Mental h
Miss Tillie Mayard suffered more than any of us from the cold, and yet
she tried to follow my advice to be cheerful and try to keep up for a
short time. Superintendent Dent brought in a man to see me. He felt my
pulse and my head and examined my tongue. I told them how cold it was,
and assured them that I did not need medical aid, but that Miss Mayard
did, and they should transfer their attentions to her. They did not
answer me, and I was pleased to see Miss Mayard leave her place and come
forward to them. She spoke to the doctors and told them she was ill, but
they paid no attention to her. The nurses came and dragged her back to
the bench, and after the doctors left they said, “After awhile, when you
see that the doctors will not notice you, you will quit running up to
them.” Before the doctors left me I heard one say—I cannot give it in
his exact words—that my pulse and eyes were not that of an insane girl,
but Superintendent Dent assured him that in cases such as mine such
tests failed. After watching me for awhile he said my face was the
brightest he had ever seen for a lunatic. The nurses had on heavy
undergarments and coats, but they refused to give us shawls.
Nearly all night long I listened to a woman cry about the cold and beg
for God to let her die. Another one yelled “Murder!” at frequent
intervals and “Police!” at others until my flesh felt creepy.
The second morning, after we had begun our endless “set” for the day,
two of the nurses, assisted by some patients, brought the woman in who
had begged the night previous for God to take her home. I was not
surprised at her prayer. She appeared easily seventy years old, and she
was blind. Although the halls were freezing-cold, that old woman had no
more clothing on than the rest of us, which I have described. When she
was brought into the sitting-room and placed on the hard bench, she
cried:
“Oh, what are you doing with me? I am cold, so cold. Why can’t I stay in
bed or have a shawl?” and then she would get up and endeavor to feel her
way to leave the room. Sometimes the attendants would jerk her back to
the bench, and again they would let her walk and heartlessly laugh when
she bumped against the table or the edge of the benches. At one time she
said the heavy shoes which charity provides hurt her feet, and she took
them off. The nurses made two patients put them on her again, and when
she did it several times, and fought against having them on, I counted
seven people at her at once trying to put the shoes on her. The old
woman then tried to lie down on the bench, but they pulled her up again.
It sounded so pitiful to hear her cry:
“Oh, give me a pillow and pull the covers over me, I am so cold.”
At this I saw Miss Grupe sit down on her and run her cold hands over the
old woman’s face and down inside the neck of her dress. At the old
woman’s cries she laughed savagely, as did the other nurses, and
repeated her cruel action. That day the old woman was carried away to
another ward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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