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a D
January
1843 - Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts by Dorothea L. Dix
Danvers. November. Visited the almshouse. A large building, much out of repair. Understand a new one is in contemplation. Here are from fifty-six to sixty inmates, one idiotic, three insane; one of the latter in close confinement at all times. Long before reaching the house, wild shouts, snatches of rude songs, imprecations and obscene language, fell upon the ears, proceeding from the occupant of a low building, rather remote from the principal building to which my course was directed. Found the mistress, and was conducted to the place which was called “the home” of the forlorn maniac, a young woman, exhibiting a condition of neglect and misery blotting out the faintest idea of comfort, and outraging every sentiment of decency. She had been, I learnt, “a respectable person, industrious and worthy. Disappointments and trials shook her mind, and finally, laid prostrate reasons and self-control. She became a maniac for life. She had been at Worcester Hospital for a considerable time, and had been returned as incurable.” The mistress told me she understood that, “while there, she was comfortable and decent.” Alas, what a change was here exhibited! She had passed from one degree of violence to another, in swift progress. There she stood, clinging to or beating upon the bars of her caged apartment, the contracted size of which afforded space only for increasing accumulations of filth, a foul spectacle. There she stood with naked arms and disheveled hair, the unwashed frame invested with fragments of unclean garments, the air so extremely offensive, though ventilation was afforded on all sides save one, that it was not possible to remain beyond a few moments without retreating for recovery to the outward air. Irritation of body, produced by utter filth and exposure, incited her to the horrid process of tearing off her skin by inches. Her face, neck; and person were thus disfigured to hideousness. She held up a fragment just rent off. To my exclamation of horror, the mistress replied: “Oh, we can't help it. Half the skin is off sometimes. We can do nothing with her; and it makes no difference what she eats, for she consumes her own filth as readily as the food which is brought her.” It is now January. A fortnight since two visitors reported that most wretched outcast was “wallowing in dirty straw in a place yet more dirty, and without clothing, without fire. Worse cared for than the brutes, and wholly lost to consciousness of decency.” Is the whole story told? What was seen is: what is reported is not. These gross exposures are not for the pained sight of one alone. All, all, coarse, brutal men, wondering, neglected children, old and young, each and all, witness this lowest, foulest state of miserable humanity. And who protects her, that worse than Pariah outcast, from other wrongs and blacker outrages? I do not know that such have been. I do know that they are to be dreaded, and that they are not guarded against.
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