Memorial soliciting a state hospital for the insane : submitted to the Legislature of New Jersey, January 23, 1845 / [signed: D. L. Dix] ; printed by order of the Legislature of New Jersey.

  • Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 1802-1887.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorial soliciting a state hospital for the insane : submitted to the Legislature of New Jersey, January 23, 1845 / [signed: D. L. Dix] ; printed by order of the Legislature of New Jersey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    At Shrewsbury Poor-house, at the present time, are no cases of violently excited insane, and no accommodations for any such, if the superintendent should again be charged with the care of them. At one period they had great trouble with the unmanageable patients. A portion of the poor belonging to this township are boarded with one of the overseers, preferring that residence, to the regularly appointed poor-house. I understood one dollar per week was paid for their board, and am not sure if this charge included the cost of clothing ; I think it did not. A crazy man had lived there; but, to employ the words of the mistress of the house, he took worse in August, and would wander into the woods, absenting himself till hunger forced his return;—hastily appeasing his appetite, he would again depart, and finally, he did not come back at all. He was worse, wonder- fully worse, said an old man sitting by, who listened to my inquiries with curiosity. Perhaps, resumed the mistress, he has gone home to his friends—we lay out to write; we have talked of it for sometime. How long has he been gone, do you say? He went off in August. It was now November ;—a feeble insane man gone three months from the watch of those who had, officially, the rare of him, and no diligent inquiry yet made ; no search instituted, if perchance the perishing remains might be found in the forest, or the swollen disfigured corse given up by the returning tide in the Shark- river : no letter yet written to relations at home, to learn if, in sickness and pain, he had reached the familiar fireside, and the few he had loved; or to acquaint those poor kindred that he was missing, and they knew nothing of his fate. Fancy may busy itself concern- ing the probabilities of protracted suffering through pining debility, and the slow, painful approach of death ; or it may picture the sudden, and almost unfelt termination of a miserable life : it may follow the, perhaps, yet living wanderer through difficult paths, and on weary journeys, now hungry, and cold, and confused, half comprehending evil, but not competent to combat with, or avoid it ;—all this may fancy do; but one of these conditions must have been realized—one teas the sad true history. Middlesex County Jail, in New Brunswick, is in decent order, contains two apartments on the first floor, and a dungeon below. I found here but one prisoner ; he occupied the same room with an idiotic or demented man, who had been committed here, either for his own safety, or the safety of others. Of his history, I could learn only this :