Ten Days in a Mad-House, Nellie Bly [children's ebooks online .txt] 📗
- Author: Nellie Bly
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The wagon stopped, and the nurse and officer in charge told us to get out. The nurse added: “Thank God! they came quietly.” We obeyed orders to go ahead up a flight of narrow, stone steps, which had evidently been built for the accommodation of people who climb stairs three at a time. I wondered if my companions knew where we were, so I said to Miss Tillie Mayard:
“Where are we?”
“At the Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,” she answered, sadly.
“Are you crazy?” I asked.
“No,” she replied; “but as we have been sent here we will have to be quiet until we find some means of escape. They will be few, though, if all the doctors, as Dr. Field, refuse to listen to me or give me a chance to prove my sanity.” We were ushered into a narrow vestibule, and the door was locked behind us.
In spite of the knowledge of my sanity and the assurance that I would be released in a few days, my heart gave a sharp twinge. Pronounced insane by four expert doctors and shut up behind the unmerciful bolts and bars of a madhouse! Not to be confined alone, but to be a companion, day and night, of senseless, chattering lunatics; to sleep with them, to eat with them, to be considered one of them, was an uncomfortable position. Timidly we followed the nurse up the long uncarpeted hall to a room filled by so-called crazy women. We were told to sit down, and some of the patients kindly made room for us. They looked at us curiously, and one came up to me and asked:
“Who sent you here?”
“The doctors,” I answered.
“What for?” she persisted.
“Well, they say I am insane,” I admitted.
“Insane!” she repeated, incredulously. “It cannot be seen in your face.”
This woman was too clever, I concluded, and was glad to answer the roughly given orders to follow the nurse to see the doctor. This nurse, Miss Grupe, by the way, had a nice German face, and if I had not detected certain hard lines about the mouth I might have expected, as did my companions, to receive but kindness from her. She left us in a small waiting-room at the end of the hall, and left us alone while she went into a small office opening into the sitting or receiving-room.
“I like to go down in the wagon,” she said to the invisible party on the inside. “It helps to break up the day.” He answered her that the open air improved her looks, and she again appeared before us all smiles and simpers.
“Come here, Tillie Mayard,” she said. Miss Mayard obeyed, and, though I could not see into the office, I could hear her gently but firmly pleading her case. All her remarks were as rational as any I ever heard, and I thought no good physician could help but be impressed with her story. She told of her recent illness, that she was suffering from nervous debility. She begged that they try all their tests for insanity, if they had any, and give her justice. Poor girl, how my heart ached for her! I determined then and there that I would try by every means to make my mission of benefit to my suffering sisters; that I would show how they are committed without ample trial. Without one word of sympathy or encouragement she was brought back to where we sat.
Mrs. Louise Schanz was taken into the presence of Dr. Kinier, the medical man.
“Your name?” he asked, loudly. She answered in German, saying she did not speak English nor could she understand it. However, when he said Mrs. Louise Schanz, she said “Yah, yah.” Then he tried other questions, and when he found she could not understand one world of English, he said to Miss Grupe:
“You are German; speak to her for me.”
Miss Grupe proved to be one of those people who are ashamed of their nationality, and she refused, saying she could understand but few worlds of her mother tongue.
“You know you speak German. Ask this woman what her husband does,” and they both laughed as if they were enjoying a joke.
“I can’t speak but a few words,” she protested, but at last she managed to ascertain the occupation of Mr. Schanz.
“Now, what was the use of lying to me?” asked the doctor, with a laugh which dispelled the rudeness.
“I can’t speak any more,” she said, and she did not.
Thus was Mrs. Louise Schanz consigned to the asylum without a chance of making herself understood. Can such carelessness be excused, I wonder, when it is so easy to get an interpreter? If the confinement was but for a few days one might question the necessity. But here was a woman taken without her own consent from the free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity. Confined most probably for life behind asylum bars, without even being told in her language the why and wherefore. Compare this with a criminal, who is given every chance to prove his innocence. Who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane, without hope of escape? Mrs. Schanz begged in German to know where she was, and pleaded for liberty. Her voice broken by sobs, she was led unheard out to us.
Mrs. Fox was then put through this weak, trifling examination and brought from the office, convicted. Miss Annie Neville took her turn, and I was again left to the last. I had by this time determined to act as I do when free, except that I would refuse to tell who I was or where my home was.
AN EXPERT(?) AT WORK.
“NELLIE BROWN, the doctor wants you,” said Miss Grupe. I went in and was told to sit down opposite Dr. Kinier at the desk.
“What is your name?” he asked, without looking up.
“Nellie Brown,” I replied easily.
“Where is your home?” writing what I had said down in a large book.
“In Cuba.”
“Oh!” he ejaculated, with sudden understanding—then, addressing the nurse:
“Did you see anything in the papers about her?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I saw a long account of this girl in the Sun on Sunday.” Then the doctor said:
“Keep her here until I go to the office and see the notice again.”
He left us, and I was relieved of my hat and shawl. On his return, he said he had been unable to find the paper, but he related the story of my debut, as he had read it, to the nurse.
“What’s the color of her eyes?”
Miss Grupe looked, and answered “gray,” although everybody had always said my eyes were brown or hazel.
“What’s your age?” he asked; and as I answered, “Nineteen last May,” he turned to the nurse, and said, “When do you get your next pass?” This I ascertained was a leave of absence, or “a day off.”
“Next Saturday,” she said, with a laugh.
“You will go to town?” and they both laughed as she answered in the affirmative, and he said:
“Measure her.” I was stood under a measure, and it was brought down tightly on my head.
“What is it?” asked the doctor.
“Now you know I can’t tell,” she said.
“Yes, you can; go ahead. What height?”
“I don’t know; there are some figures there, but I can’t tell.”
“Yes, you can. Now look and tell me.”
“I can’t; do it yourself,” and they laughed again as the doctor left his place at the desk and came forward to see for himself.
“Five feet five inches; don’t you see?” he said, taking her hand and touching the figures.
By her voice I knew she did not understand yet, but that was no concern of mine, as the doctor seemed to find a pleasure in aiding her. Then I was put on the scales, and she worked around until she got them to balance.
“How much?” asked the doctor, having resumed his position at the desk.
“I don’t know. You will have to see for yourself,” she replied, calling him by his Christian name, which I have forgotten. He turned and also addressing her by her baptismal name, he said:
“You are getting too fresh!” and they both laughed. I then told the weight—112 pounds—to the nurse, and she in turn told the doctor.
“What time are you going to supper?” he asked, and she told him. He gave the nurse more attention than he did me, and asked her six questions to every one of me. Then he wrote my fate in the book before him. I said, “I am not sick and I do not want to stay here. No one has a right to shut me up in this manner.” He took no notice of my remarks, and having completed his writings, as well as his talk with the nurse for the moment, he said that would do, and with my companions, I went back to the sitting-room.
“You play the piano?” they asked.
“Oh, yes; ever since I was a child,” I replied.
Then they insisted that I should play, and they seated me on a wooden chair before an old-fashioned square. I struck a few notes, and the untuned response sent a grinding chill through me.
“How horrible,” I exclaimed, turning to a nurse, Miss McCarten, who stood at my side. “I never touched a piano as much out of tune.”
“It’s a pity of you,” she said, spitefully; “we’ll have to get one made to order for you.”
I began to play the variations of “Home Sweet Home.” The talking ceased and every patient sat silent, while my cold fingers moved slowly and stiffly over the keyboard. I finished in an aimless fashion and refused all requests to play more. Not seeing an available place to sit, I still occupied the chair in the front of the piano while I “sized up” my surroundings.
It was a long, bare room, with bare yellow benches encircling it. These benches, which were perfectly straight, and just as uncomfortable, would hold five people, although in almost every instance six were crowded on them. Barred windows, built about five feet from the floor, faced the two double doors which led into the hall. The bare white walls were somewhat relieved by three lithographs, one of Fritz Emmet and the others of negro minstrels. In the center of the room was a large table covered with a white bed-spread, and around it sat the nurses. Everything was spotlessly clean and I thought what good workers the nurses must be to keep such order. In a few days after how I laughed at my own stupidity to think the nurses would work. When they found I would not play any more, Miss McCarten came up to me saying, roughly:
“Get away from here,” and closed the piano with a bang.
“Brown, come here,” was the next order I got from a rough, red-faced woman at the table. “What have you on?”
“My clothing,” I replied.
She lifted my dress and skirts and wrote down one pair shoes, one pair stockings, one cloth dress, one straw sailor hat, and so on.
MY FIRST SUPPER.
THIS examination over, we heard some one yell, “Go out into the hall.” One of the patients kindly explained that this was an invitation to supper. We late comers tried to keep together, so we entered the hall and stood
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