Anderson is a man about six feet high, well proportioned, of uncommon
muscular power. He told me with his own mouth, in 1870, he had been
in the Troy lunatic asylum sixteen years and had not slept out of the
institution one night. (Think you he entered as a patient? I do.) He
has been kept as attendant and bully fighter many years. He was married
to Isabella, the magdalen attendant, and when united it seemed as
though there was nothing so daring or cruel at times that they could
not do. And yet, when my wife came, they seemed so nice and talked so
soft it seemed that butter would not melt in their mouths, as the old
saying is.
The devil says many fine things to bring about his designs and
purposes, so do his children. The Lord keep me from such a government
as the incurable house of the Troy lunatic asylum, and all others that
I know any thing about.
But to my revelation. Bacon's sufferings under Wm. Anderson's cruel
hand.
As I have stated, Bacon lodged within three feet of me, and that for
more than three years, bound every night but one, some times one way,
and sometimes another, with the asylum harness.
Bacon was required to work like a slave under a cruel master, at almost
all kinds of work, from the wheelbarrow to the dirty work of the
chambers, and one winter, night after night and week after week, at
a late hour, he came to the room so wet his shirt would have frozen
if exposed to frost. What now? Anderson puts on his wrists cuffs, AA,
and muff, E, then runs strap, B, through staples that are in A and A,
locking it around his body, as seen in the engraving, then binds him in
bed.
LATER. ANDERSON AGAIN. HABIT A STRONG POWER.
I have seen Bacon at bed-time place on his own wrists cuffs A and A and
stand by his bed waiting for Anderson to come and put on the remainder
of the harness and bind him in bed.
Again, I have seen Anderson many a time whip him upon his naked
flesh, with strap B, till his flesh was red as a piece of raw beef,
and harnessed and put him to bed as heretofore. But, says one, as did
another to me, perhaps he needed whipping. God forbid! No more ought a
lunatic to be whipped, or abused, than the fond mother's infant child
that creeps to and paddles in the water-pail, carelessly left by her
upon her nice carpet.
When I last visited the kitchen of the incurable house in 1874 Bacon
was eating breakfast from off a coal-bin. He is no more luny, but kept
as a slave to do drudgery for the benefit of the stockholders of the
institution at the expense of tax payers in the county of Rensselaer,
if I am rightly informed.
ONE OF THE MANY SUFFERINGS OF GENERAL SCHUYLER, OF WEST TROY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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