“Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts on the
conditions of the prisons.” Teach Us
America. Org. http://www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age-reform/resources/memorial-legislature-massachusetts. 1/11/15.
Lincoln. A woman in a cage.
Medford. One idiotic subject chained, and one in a close stall for seventeen
years. Pepperell. One often doubly chained, hand and foot; another violent;
several peaceable now. Brookfield. One man caged, comfortable. Granville. One
often closely confined; now losing the use of his limbs from want of exercise.
Charlemont. One man caged. Savoy. One man caged. Lenox. Two in the jail,
against whose unfit condition there the jailer protests.
Besides the above, I have
seen many who, part of the year, are chained or caged. The use of cages all but
universal. Hardly a town but can refer to some not distant period of using
them; chains are less common; negligences frequent; willful abuse less frequent
than sufferings proceeding from ignorance, or want of consideration. I
encountered during the last three months many poor creatures wandering reckless
and unprotected through the country. Innumerable accounts have been sent me of
persons who had roved away unwatched and unsearched after; and I have heard
that responsible persons, controlling the almshouses, have not thought
themselves culpable in sending away from their shelter, to cast upon the
chances of remote relief, insane men and women. These, left on the highways,
unfriended and incompetent to control or direct their own movements, sometimes
have found refuge in the hospital, and others have not been traced. But I cannot
particularize. In traversing the State, I have found hundreds of insane persons
in every variety of circumstance and condition, many whose situation could not
and need not be improved; a less number, but that very large, whose lives are
the saddest pictures of human suffering and degradation. I give a few
illustrations; but description fades before reality.
The author of this primary source,
is Dorothea Dix (1802-1887). She
traveled to different prisons in Massachusetts that were keeping mental
patients unjustly and recorded her findings.
She wrote this letter to the Legislature to try to get them to create appropriate
mental institutions for the mentally ill.
She wanted to help the patients heal in a just way and felt that they
will not get better in these torturous prisons, but rather in hospitals and
homes. Dorothea Dix is definitely
believable and trustworthy, as she is a Sunday school teacher and is documented
to have visited prisons in several towns.
When
this document was produced, mentally ill patients were being put into prisons
with criminals. They were put into cages
and chained and extremely ill-treated.
Dorothea Dix visited many of these prisons and witnessed this
abuse. She started the prison reform
which worked to move patients to better suited locations. Reading this document helped me understand
how awfully people were tortured during this time period. I can’t even fathom a woman being kept in a
“closed stall” for seventeen years. The
way the mentally ill were treated in the 19th century was so violent
and scary. Some of the limits of the
document are the views of the patients; it only talks about what Dorothea
saw. However, I feel that this document gives
me a complete overview of the prison reform.
Dix
claims that the mentally ill should not be kept in these conditions. They need to be put into hospitals where they
will be medically treated and helped.
The evidence that Dix uses to support this claim is that the patients
never got better or improved in the prisons, but after being placed in better
suited conditions they greatly improved.
Dorothea is trying to convince the reader, and the legislature, the
necessity to help the patients be relocated out of these prisons and eliminate
the injustice. She is also strongly
urging that if you see something that is severely wrong, you should try your
best to change it.
