CHAPTER VII.
JOHN P. BACON, OF LANSINGBURGH.
Bacon is wronged, being held a slave to hard labor.
First saw Bacon in Ida Hill Lunatic Asylum, March 29, 1860, bound to a chair in the hall near the dead-house; heard visitors say to him, "how old are you Johnny?" "Eighteen," says he.
I was removed from the main house to the incurable one July 3, 1862. Soon after this he was brought to the same, where he now is, in 1874.
JOHN P. BACON'S TREATMENT AND SUFFERINGS BY WILLIAM ANDERSON.
After Anderson came to the incurable house as attendant, Bacon roomed with me most of the time, until I left in 1870, and lodged within three feet of my bed. Here I became intimately acquainted with him. In his childhood he had the advantages of the sabbath school; could say the Lord's prayer, and repeat many passages of Scripture correctly, and, in all probability, was a mild-tempered, well-disposed boy, until he was led away and tempted by the opposite sex, as many of the young and rising generation are before they are aware of the danger. Bacon was a great sufferer from self-abuse. Behold, what a great fire a little matter kindleth! He became ferocious, uneasy and discontented, unable to govern his mind and person. He was sent to Utica Asylum; from thence to where he suffered under the hands of William Anderson and others in the incurable house of the Troy Asylum.
ANDERSON.
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.