May 2, 1887 - Inhumanity to Lunatics

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As published in The Chicago Daily Tribune:

INHUMANITY TO LUNATICS

More Stories of Abuse in the New York State Asylum.

Buffalo, NY, April 30 - [Special] - Interest in the grand jury's investigation of alleged abuses of patients in the State Asylum for the Insane continues. Charles Brandt, a former inmate, who told among other things of cruelty to ex-Assemblyman Frank Sipp, was approached on the steet today by a man, who, with an oath and a bike epithet, said if he didn't shut his mouth about that asylum case they'd shut it for him. One of the most interesting stories told the grand jury is that of Mrs. Ella Cummings of Fredonia, NY, who had been an innate of the asylum. Mrs. Cummings alleged form of insanity was a belief in Spiritualism, which the doctors there consider to be a form of insanity. She says that cruelties were perpetrated at the asylum and cites the case of one patient who was jumped upon by a woman attendant and her hip broken so that she is now a cripple.  It is charged that the injured patient was not attended by a physician until several days after the injury was inflicted. On another occasion Mrs. Cummings says a patient was stripped, put in a bath tub and scrubbed with a mop. One of the attendants threw a handful of soap into her face and eyes and another handful was out on her hair. Patients were frequently roughly handled, and efforts were made to prevent them from writing to their friends. Mrs. Alonso Cottien, she says, was once stripped and locked up in a room in which there was only a bed because written a letter. Mrs. Cummings was also punished in a smiliar way, and at times it was almost impossible to get letters out of the institution. She had to conceal the lead of her pencil in her shoes, and was once sent into a more violent ward because she had written a lettet. Mrs. Cummings says the process of feeding patients with a funnel is extensively carried out. Sometimes, she said, it is necessary and sometimes it's not. During part of the time she was there she was obliged to act as a nurse for an old woman who paid extra for extra attention. The asylum got the benefit of this extra salary. 

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