"BEHIND THE SHUT DOOR."
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sne,—Reading your comments in this week's issue I am de- sirous of bringing to your notice my own experience. In November, 1888, I got inflammation of the lungs. This developed into inflammation of the brain, and I became delirious. • My recovery was slow and my doctor recommended that I should be sent to my father's residence. I was still recovering from brain-fever, and was " dotty " on some points, thinking that I was a millionaire and insisting on writing to my friends to come as my guests on a trip round the world. I was a stockbroker and my friends were advised by the local doctor to place me under the care of a doctor who kept a private asylum.
I was brought there without being told that it was an asylum, and naturally wanted to get back to my father's. I was promised to be taken back, but as time passed I insisted on being allowed to go back. Then restraint was used ; fighting to get away, and the attendants fighting to keep me. I was treated with the utmost barbarity, kicked, and my arms twisted. I was strapped in a chair, with straps round my wrist cutting into the flesh, and then beaten on the head with a broad strap. We got baths once a week at night, and they used to hold my head down under the water till I was at the point of drowning. This weekly bath was a nightmare to look forward to, and I was reduced to a state of terror. I don't think two consecutive days passed by without some
maltreatment. I have been dragged upstairs to bed by the heels with my head bumping against the stairs all the way up.
All this time my Mends never saw me. They were told that to do so would excite me and retard my recovery. They were paying 1250 a year, and of course the doctor did not want me to get better. I soon ceased to complain to him, as I got no redress, and complaints only brought fierce cruelty on me from the attendants when they got me alone in my bedroom. At the end of six months an inspector found me strapped in the punishment chair in a faint—all the .keepers and other patients being out for exercise. He communicated with my friends and told them to get me away from that asylum. I was removed to an asylum in another part of the United Kingdom, where I was treated kindly. I fell into a state of stupor there, from the effects of the previous six months' ill-treatment, and this stupor lasted for three years. At the end of that time my memory and power of speech came back gradually, and in 1895 I was released as cured to be under two years' surveillance. I have been perfectly well ever since.
My family begged me not to take action against the keeper of the private asylum, as it would interfere with the prospects of my sister's marriage, and I must ask you not to publish my name as my own sons are not aware that their father was in an asylum. I can assure you that I have told you only the simple truth without exaggeration. If you can do anything to put down private asylums you will have done humanity a service.—I am, Sir, &c., [We have received, but naturally withhold, the full details of this distressing case, which, we fear, is typical rather than exceptional.—En. Spectator.]
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