One of the physicians in allusion to this topic, calls attention to the fact that “much of the mortality is composed of prisoners, who, first go deranged, and then, like Bajazet, literally dash out their brains against the bars of their cage.”[3]
When will this terrible cruelty end? he asks. I had hoped that the remedy was at hand, but I regret to learn that the prospect of transferring our insane to the Stale Asylum seems as yet far distant. In their behalf, however, I shall make a last appeal. In the name of justice and mercy, let it be no longer necessary for the friends of the institution to deplore, or in the power of its opponents to boast that a number of helpless lunatics are immured within the cells of the Eastern Penitentiary.
And the other dilates upon the subject in the following terms:
For many years past, I find representations have been made to the Board by my predecessors, urging the propriety and the necessity almost, of removing the insane confined in this institution. I must record my testimony also.—The evil is unabated, and I cannot consistently with my duty as physician, nor with my own personal feelings, pass by this matter without at least doing the little I may be able to have it remedied. Heretofore there have been difficulties in the way, which happily exist no longer. The completion of a State Lunatic Asylum, it is to be hoped, has removed the last obstacle to a course already long approved of by every one, and urgently demanded by all the material and moral circumstances concerned in the case. For the object of prisons, if I understand it, is the punishment and prevention of crime, and, possibly the reformation of criminals. But the mischief that irresponsibles may do, is not crime, nor are they criminals: they may be restrained, but not punished. We punish and endeavor to reform the criminal, the imbecile and insane, we confine sometimes, but at all times, should endeavor to protect, to foster, to cure. It may often be very proper, in regard to these, to turn their hospital into a temporary prison, but it can hardly be deemed compatible with the objects and discipline, or the material arrangements and accommodations of penitentiaries, to make them serve the double purpose of prison and hospital—confounding in a common receptacle those that society ought to protect, and those it is obliged to punish.
At the present time, we have a number of these unfortunates in a truly pitiable condition; and it is not only with a painful, but also with a mortifying and humiliating feeling, that we are continually obliged to reflect, that it is not in our power to improve it.
Turning from the State Penitentiary to the State Hospital, we are met with the following passage in the first annual report of the trustees:
“There are at the present time in the State penitentiaries, and in the different jails of the commonwealth, a considerable number of insane,—alleged criminals—who ought to be transferred to the State hospital as soon as its buildings are completed. There are also in these institutions a few, who, from their peculiarly dangerous character, and the utter hopelessness of benefiting them by treatment, can never with propriety become inmates of the hospital. To protect the community and the ordinary insane from the dangerous propensities of these individuals, it would be necessary to introduce into our wards, intended for the treatment of disease, all the most repulsive features of a prison, or that a separate building, having strictly a prison character, should be erected upon the grounds. Some legislation will be required before any of these cases can be admitted, and some mode of proceeding should be adopted which will prevent any but proper cases being received from these sources.”
It is obvious that different constructions are put upon the language of the report of the trustees, by the different officers of the penitentiary. The inspectors evidently regard the State Lunatic Asylum as the proper place to which insane prisoners should be removed, whether for safe keeping or for treatment. The warden apprehends, that one class of the insane convicts would be received at the State Hospital, though the other may be excluded. Dr. Given regards the prospect of transferring any of them as far distant, while Dr. Lassiter thinks the completion of the hospital has disposed of the last obstacle to the removal of all.
If we understand the language of the trustees, it admits that a considerable number of “ordinarily” insane persons now in our State Penitentiary and in the different jails, ought to be transferred to the hospital as soon as it is so far completed as to secure them; while they maintain that there is another class of insane prisoners of “dangerous propensities,” who ought not to be received into any hospital, but for whom a separate building should be provided, on the grounds belonging to the State institution, entirely distinct from it, though doubtless under the same supervision and attendance with the main hospital.
In giving this construction to the passage, we assume that the phrase “any of these cases” in the last clause, is limited to the dangerous and hopeless class, who can never with propriety become inmates of a general hospital.
An insane man, whether a convict or not, must always be an object of deep sympathy. Whatever guilt attaches to him, we lose sight of it in the terrible calamity by which he is overwhelmed. The moment it becomes manifest that he has, through the visitation of God, lost the control of his intellectual faculties, so as to be exempt from the ordinary responsibilities of a reasonable being, all his relations to society are changed. The government which stood ready to charge home his guilt and demand his punishment as an offender, offers him protection and sympathy as a sufferer. The sword of justice is converted into a sceptre of mercy, and so long as this dark cloud overshadows him, the voice of the accuser is silent.