The Autobiography of a Thief

by Hutchins Hapgood

It is only the sensitive and intelligent man who, when placed in such a predicament, really knows what torture is. The cries of the poor demented wretches about me were a terrible lesson. They showed me more than any other experience I ever passed through the error of a crooked life.

I met many a man in the violent ward who had been a friend of mine and good fellow on the outside. Now the brains of all of them were gone, they had the most horrible and the most grotesque delusions. But horrible or grotesque they were always piteous. If I were to point out the greatest achievement that man has accomplished to distinguish him from the brute, it would be the taking care of the insane. A child is so helpless that when alms is asked for his maintenance it is given willingly, for every man and woman pities and loves a child. A lunatic is as helpless as a child, and often not any more dangerous. The maniac is misrepresented, for in Matteawan and Dannemora taken together there are very few who are really violent.

And now I come to the most terrible part of my narrative, which many people will not believe—and that is the cruelty of the doctors and attendants, cruelty practiced upon these poor, deluded wretches.

With my own eyes I saw scores of instances of abuse while I was at Matteawan and later at Dannemora. It is, I believe, against the law to strike an insane man, but any man who has ever been in these asylums knows how habitual the practice is. I have often seen idiots in the same ward with myself violently attacked and beaten by several keepers at once. Indeed, some of us used to regard a beating as our daily medicine. Patients are not supposed to do any work; but those who refused to clean up the wards and do other work for the attendants were the ones most likely to receive little mercy.

I know how difficult it is for the public to believe that some of their institutions are as rotten as those of the Middle Ages; and when a man who has been both in prison and in the pipe house is the one who makes the accusation, who will believe him? Of course, his testimony on the witness stand is worthless. I will merely call attention, however, to the fact that the great majority of the insane are so only in one way. They have some delusion, but are otherwise capable of observation and of telling the truth. I will also add that the editor of this book collected an immense number of instances of brutality from several men, besides myself, who had spent years there, and that those instances also pointed to the situation that I describe. Moreover, I can quote the opinion of the writer on criminology—Josiah Flynt—as corroborative of my statements. He has said in my presence and in that of the editor of this book, Mr. Hapgood, that his researches have led him to believe that the situation in our state asylums for the criminal insane is horrible in the extreme.

Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be brutal? In the first place, there is very little chance of a come-back, for who will believe men who have ever been shut up in an insane asylum? And very often these attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin with, they are men of low intelligence, as is shown by the fact that they will work for eighteen dollars a month, and after they have associated with insane men for years they are apt to become delusional themselves. Taking care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the intelligence of the best men. Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant often becomes nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor idiot who won't do dirty work or whose silly noises get on his nerves? I have noticed attendants who, after they had been in the asylum a few months, acquired certain insane characteristics, such as a jerking of the head from one side to the other, looking up at the sky, cursing some imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost double.

Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something that made me realize I was up against a hard joint. An attendant in the isolation ward had an incurable patient under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to do his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning cuspidors. The attendants had two birds in his room, and he used to make Mickey, the incurable idiot, clean out the cage for him. One day Mickey put the cages under the boiling water, to clean them as usual. The attendant had forgot to remove the birds, and they were killed by the hot water. Another crank, who was in the bath room with Mickey, spied the dead pets, and he and Mickey began to eat them. They were picking the bones when the attendant and two others discovered them—and treated them as a golfer treats his golf-balls.

Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try to prevent four attendants from playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He was delusional on religious subjects and thought the attendants were doing wrong. The reward he received for caring for the religious welfare of his keepers was a kick in the stomach by one of the attendants, while another hit him in the solar plexus, knocking him down, and a third jammed his head on the floor until the blood flowed. After he was unconscious a doctor gave him a hyperdermic injection and he was put to bed. How often, indeed, have I seen men knocked out by strong arm work, or strung up to the ceiling with a pair of suspenders! How often have I seen them knocked unconscious for a time or for eternity—yes—for eternity, for insane men sometimes do die, if they are treated too brutally. In that case, the doctor reports the patient as having died of consumption, or some other disease. I have seen insane men turned into incurable idiots by the beatings they have received from the attendants. I saw an idiot boy knocked down with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping out his delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four attendants cry out: "My God, you won't murder me?" and the answer was, "Why not? The Coroner would say you died of dysentery." The attendants tried often to force fear into me by making me look at the work they had done on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances of this kind. I could give scores of them, with names of attendants and patients, and sometimes even the dates on which these horrors occurred. But I must cut short this part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I have a poor old mother, is true, but it is too terrible to dwell upon, and will probably not be believed. It will be put down as one of my delusions, or as a lie inspired by the desire of vengeance.

Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the authorities in the insane asylum, for I objected vigorously to the treatment of men really insane. It is as dangerous to object to the curriculum of a mad-house in the State of New York as it is to find fault with the running of the government in Russia. In stir I never saw such brutality as takes place almost every day in the pipe house. I reported what I saw, and though I was plainly told to mind my own business, I continued to object every time I saw a chance, until soon the petty spite of the attendants was turned against me. I was reported continually for things I had not done, I had no privileges, not even opium or books, and was so miserable that I repeatedly tried to be transferred back to prison. A doctor once wrote a book called Ten Years in a Mad-House, in which he says "God help the man who has the attendants against him; for these demented brutes will make his life a living hell." Try as I might, however, I was not transferred back to stir, partly because of the sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry favor with the attendants, invented lies about attempts on my part to escape. If I had not had such a poor opinion of the powers that be and had stopped finding fault I should no doubt have been transferred back to what was beginning to seem to me, by contrast, a delightful place—state's prison.

The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house was paresis. I thought a great deal about it, and observed the cranks about me continually. I noticed that almost all insane persons are musical, that they can hum a tune after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty in the human brain is that of memory, and that idiots, lunatics and madmen learn music so easily because that part of the brain which is the seat of memory is the only one that is active; the other intellectual qualities being dead, so that the memory is untroubled by thought.