1891 - Madge Merton Visits the Asylum

     The Toronto Globe had sent Madge Merton to Hamilton to write, from a woman's perspective, about the proceedings at the Heslop murder trial. 

    While here, the famous woman columnist was given the opportunity to visit the Hamilton Asylum for the Insane.

   On March 24, 1891, the following column appeared in the Toronto Globe of March 21, 1891.

“Every visitor to Hamilton, who lifts eyes to the mountain, asks what those red brick buildings are that cluster near the brow and overlook the western part of the city. The questioned one will answer “ ‘Oh, that is the Asylum for the Insane.; a splendid institution, and there is a drive through the grounds.’

Yes, it is the asylum – the great tomb of happiness, and hopes, and ambition: the hiding place for failure and defeat. Wandering about the corridors are those whose vacant chairs stand at many Ontario firesides, left vacant by a sadder visitation than death – the loss of reason.

“People look up to the red pile and sigh a little. In summer, they drive through the grounds, and curious children play about the steps. At night, the lights twinkle like stars through a dark-riven cloud, and sometime the night wind carries down cries that are not the voices of night birds, nor the breeze in the pines. Wild, weird cries they are, they freeze the marrow in one’s bones, and deepen the well of thankfulness in the heart.

That is a worthy Scottish superstition which whispers of God’s especial care of the wandering half-witted and the crazed. The erection and maintenance of our asylums is the merciful outcome of Christianity. There science works for the weal of the helpless ones, and hearts and heads and hands are every year bettering the system of treatment.

“It was snowing as we drove up the mountain, and a grey, snow-mist dimmed our view of the city beneath. An empty cab passed us, and one of the doctors said  ‘Some fresh admissions probably.’

“The thought chilled me, and I tried to imagine as we entered the grounds, the feeling of those who came in with their burden of disease of mind and body, the weight of imaginary cruelty from those who best loved them, and the knowledge that this was to be their home – that the light to awaken them would fall through barred windows, and the great world below was almost entirely shut off. It could only come imperfectly – the feeling of despair and injustice, yet the reaching towards the real awfulness blanches the cheek and labors the breathing.

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“The Orchard House was last built and is a model of convenience, comfort, order and beauty. The private apartments of the assistant matron, her daughter and the resident physician are handsomely finished and furnished, and very home-like. The domestic arrangements seem perfect, and the scientific labor-saving contrivances in the huge kitchen are startling in their completeness. The long corridors are used for day-rooms. They are wide, bright and beautified by a profusion of growing plants. In the alcoves, formed by the great bay windows, most beautiful palms and ferns are arranged, vines hang, mosses cling and blooms brighten. A pretty vista effect is produced by draperies arranged at intervals along the hall, and the ingenious handiwork of the patients ornaments the walls. Pretty little tables are contrived in the carpenter shops and decorated with rope-work , cones are wrought into baskets, grasses and mosses are gathered and preserved, and clever fingers have fashioned wall-pockets and frames from squares of brown paper. One old woman had asked for silk to weave some of her hair into a bracelet, and when the kindly, low-voiced matron asked her the color she wanted, she said ‘brown.’

“I wondered if she did not remember that the hair that was above her wandering eyes was white as the snow outside, and if it was really brown that would best suit the work.

“A constant effort of made to beautify the interior, for refined surroundings, Dr. Russell the superintendent tells me, are of great importance. It was observed that while the Christmas decorations ornamented the building that there was an unusual quietness among the patients. They are encouraged to be busy, and materials for all fancy work are supplied, for what interests them is an enemy to their disease.

“Was it true, I asked, that there was a larger proportion of farmers’ wives in the asylum than women in other stations in life?

“The doctor smiled a little as he said yes, but there were more farmers than other men, and the large area of the rural districts was the reason for it. I am glad. I would credit the pressure of city life and the wickedness and sin that come with crowded communities with a tendency to disease the mind than the simple naturalness of even the most monotonous of farmhouse lives.

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“Each flat has its dining room. Neat tables are set in them, the food is sent up from the kitchen in dumb waiters, pretty white draperies are at the windows, and plants and flowers make them cheerful. Some of the dormitories contain five cots, some ten, and there are also single ones. These are all open from the corridors and are scrupulously neat with their dainty white spreads and prettily-draped windows. There is a handsome music room in the main building. Service is held there on Sundays, and an orchestra, of which the attendants and physicians are member, greatly increases the interest of the patients. The city clergymen supply the pulpit, coming early and preaching before their own morning service.

“The afternoon I was at the asylum a man stole behind the scenery, lowered a window and jumped down four stories to the ground. It was thought that he was not hurt beyond bruises, unless internal injuries developed later on. I stood at the window – it, and its mate across, are the only ones unguarded, patients not being allowed near them, and looked down. The snow was crushed and scattered where he had fallen, two lines of footprints showed where those who carried him away had stepped.

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“ ‘Do you like it here?’ I asked one of the women.

“ ‘Yes,’ she said.

“ ‘ I think it is very pleasant.” I went on, and she answered quickly. ‘This place is nice enough, it is the people.’  The last word was loaded with a meaning emphasis which seemed to imply that she could not be happy in company of the insane.

“Some of the women sewed, some stitched carpet rags together, others worked in various ways about the building. Many were knitting, a number read, some sat listlessly in their arm chairs, some lay upon couches, many jabbered unmeaningfully, some laughed, others drowsed, or were silent, gazing with their pitifully vacant eyes into space.

“ She tries to make believe her weddin’ clothes cost mor’n mine,’ said one who followed me. ‘and mine cost $34,’ she went on, claiming my attention by a touch on my arm

“Another ran to meet me, and then, with a disappointed look, said to the doctor, ‘Have you seen my daughter? I thought perhaps it was her’ An old woman told me of her illness and the little white spirits that nestled beside her to keep her from being lonely, and the black ones that hovered above her head were not apt to touch her.

“What were they like? Why black, like little darkies, and all crisped, as if they had been burnt.’ Then she told me how Satan appeared. He had ‘white hair and beard,’ she said, ‘and looked just like a respectable old gentleman dressed up to go to church.’

“A little black dog accompanied us through one building. I asked his owner what family of canines he belonged to, for I couldn’t reconcile his head and tail with the lack of curl in his coat. He called him, ‘just a little black dog.’ In one of the corridors a man called out to the little fellow and fondled him.

“ ‘Is he as good as yours?’ asked the dog’s owner.

“ ‘Mine took second prize,’ replied the young fellow.

“ ‘What do you think he’d get?’

“ ‘I wouldn’t show him if I were you,’ said the man with so much apparent good judgment behind his remark that the whole party laughed at the little black dog’s expense.

“It is a strange place, peopled with kings and queens and other personages of rank. Some are wonderfully happy in their delusion; some are miserable among the creatures of their disoriented imaginations, and the days come and the days go, and the still blank eyes look forward to joyless futures, and friends come with just one eager question on their lips: ‘Is he any better?’ and ‘Will she ever be able to come home?’

“There is something pitiable in that cry, but something dastardly in the kinship which an asylum can cut in two. One cannot quite forgive the husband or mother or son or sister ‘who never comes to see her now.’

“It is not a horrible place. It is well to think of those cared for there, as the little lady at my side said she did now, having grown accustomed to them. She called them ‘safely housed children.’