USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the end of the century : a history, Volume 3 > Part 45
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In January, 1844, the bequest was formally accepted, and the Rhode Island Hospital for the Insane was incorporated by act of the general assembly. The following named gentlemen constituted the corpora- tion : Amasa Manton, George W. Hallett, John Carter Brown, Moses B. Ives, Robert H. Ives, Amory Chapin, Thomas Burgess, Benjamin Hoppin, Elisha Dyer, Seth Adams, jr., Shubael Hutchins, Samuel F. Mann, Joseph Carpenter, Royal Chapin, Frances Wayland, William S. Goddard, Thomas R. Hazard, George S. King, J. Smith, Byron Diman, Gideon Spencer, Edward W. Lawton, W. Updike, J. P. Hazard, and Stephen Branch.
At the first meeting of the corporation held March 20, 1844, a com- mittee was raised to prepare and circulate subscription papers for the additional funds necessary to erect and furnish the required buildings. Six months later this committee reported that a letter had been received from the Hon. Cyrus Butler in which he tendered to the corporation the sum of $40,000, upon condition that an equal sum should be by others subscribed for the same purpose during the next six months, and provided also that a sum equal to at least $50,000 be set aside as a per- manent fund the income of which alone should be used in defraying the current expenses of the hospital. It was also reported at the same time that this generous gift would be at once available, since more than $50,000 was already promised by responsible parties.
As a recognition of Mr. Butler's munificence the name of the pro- jected institution was changed to Butler Hospital for the Insane, and
11st Annual Report of Butler Hospital.
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
a farm in the northeastern part of the city of Providenee containing one hundred and fourteen acres was purchased for . a location at a eost of $6,000. Two years later the aggre- gate subseriptions amounted to the sum of $128,000, and it was judged that the time to proceed about building had arrived. Dr. Isaac Ray, a physician of large experience in the care of the mentally diseased, was elected superintendent, his term of office to begin May 1st, 1846, and he with Dr. Bell of the Me- Lean Hospital in Somerville, Mass., were made a committee to prepare plans. The wide information of these eminent specialists made it certain that any plans which they might present would be of the most approved character. As a further preparation for the duties assigned him Dr. Bell visited Europe and carefully inspeeted the best hospitals there existing, the peeuliar exeellences of these being noted and made a part of the contemplated institution. The contract was given to Messrs Tallman and Bucklin, at that time the leading arehitects and builders in the state, for the sum of $70,000, by whom the work of construction was pushed rapidly forward. The Hospital was opened for the reception of patients on the first day of December, 1847, with forty patients; the number increased to sixty-seven during the suc- eeeding month.
Through no fault of the management, but owing to eonditions inei- dent to the establishment of all institutions of this kind, and unavoid- ably, the Hospital was early involved in embarrassing debt. Relief eame in the very generous donation of $20,000 by Mr. Alexander Dunean, a sum sufficient to eaneel all outstanding obligations, and yet leave a balanee in the treasury. The same large hearted gentleman some years later added another $10,000 to his former benefactions.
In the year 1850 an act was passed by the general assembly forbid- ding to keep insane persons in the jails of the state, a eustom which even at that late period to some extent obtained, by which the misfor- tune of mental disease was treated as a erime against society or at the very least as a misdemeanor. It was provided that one who should thereafter be adjudged by competent authority insane should be sent directly to Butler Hospital.
It was in the same year (1850) that the general assembly first made an appropriation, in amount $1,000, for the partial support of indigent insane persons in this institution ; to be dispensed by the Governor of the state in sums not exeeeding $50 to each beneficiary. On the 17th of Deeember in this year the whole number of patients was one hun- dred and fifteen, of whom one hundred had been residents of the state till the date of their commitment, the remainder having been received from other states. Of the Rhode Island patients sixty-one were sup- ported by the several towns in which they had settlement, twenty-six by their friends, twelve by the state appropriation and their friends
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unitedly, and one by the town which had been his home joined with such contributions as his friends were able to make; fifty-two were men and sixty-three were women; seventy-four were born in the state and three in other states, while twenty-three were of foreign birth.
During many years the state has been accustomed to appropriate $10,000 annually for the support and the partial support of persons at the Butler Hospital. Of such there are two classes. One hundred dollars each is allowed to the first class of beneficiaries upon order from the Governor of the state. These have friends who though unable to mect the full expense of their treatment are yet The num- desirous of doing all that they can in this direction.
ber of these is by law limited to twenty, and not more than $2,000 of the annual appropriation can be used for their benefit. A second class includes insane poor persons who are committed by the courts, whose number is not by law limited, and for the support of each of whom the sum of $280 per annum may be expended. At the present date the number of these last seems to be declining. There is a ten- dency on the part of the courts to send fewer such to Butler Hospital, and many who are sent there are afterwards transferred to the State Hospital for the Insane.
Starting in the fore front of institutions of its class more than a half a century ago, Butler Hospital for the Insane has kept step with every advance made in subsequent years, and still continues a model in point of equipment, enlightened and generous administration, and facilities for the successful treatment of the unfortunate persons for whose well being and comfort it is designed.
Still a large majority of the insane in Rhode Island remained in the care of their friends or in the town almshouses, and all the abuses inci- dent to such a system continued with little abatement. This appears in the valuable report made by the Hon. Thomas R. Hazard, elsewhere mentioned. He did not confine his attention exclusively to the insane who were cared for in the town poor houses, but also sought out and learned so far as he was able the condition and treatment of those who lived in the homes of their relatives: The whole number in poor houses he discovered to be eighty- five, while one hundred and forty were otherwise provided for-exclusive of those at Butler Hospital. Abuses more flagrant than he saw and reported would be difficult to conceive. At the same time examples of humanity and kind treatment were not wanting. Especially the asylum at Newport was accorded high praise. The result of his investigations was a recommendation that all recent cases of insanity should be at once placed under hospital treatment, with all others who could not be elsewhere controlled without resort to chains, close confinement, or personal violence of any sort. He strong- ly expressed his conviction that for such methods there could be no
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real necessity in the treatment of insane persons. Butler Hospital, the only institution of the kind in the state, was already full to over- flowing, and there still remained the large number named above for whom it seemed impossible to make immediate suitable provision. A few might be and were boarded at hospitals located outside the limits of the state, but the large majority must continue in their present unfavorable circumstances for twenty years longer.
In the year 1867 there were as many as one hundred and thirteen insane poor persons in different hospitals at the expense of the state and the several towns. There were at the Butler Hospital, seventy- six ; at the Brattleboro, Vermont, Hospital, twenty-four; at the Wor- cester, Mass., Hospital, eight ; at the Taunton, Mass., Hospital, three; and in private families, two. Twenty-seven towns were united with the state to furnish their insane poor with treatment in hospitals for the insane. Seven towns had no persons in such an institution. In one of these towns there were at the same time ten insane persons in the poor house, nearly all natives of the town and all having a legal settle- ment in the town ; two of whom, middle aged men, were fastened to the floor with iron chains, one having been held thus for eleven years ; two others, women, had been chained about half the time for several years; while five others had been held in confinement for periods ranging from four years to ten years. The wrong and the disgrace of such things were felt, and there were those who expressed their eonvic- tion that society must be held responsible for the continued insanity of those to whom it denied all opportunity to receive a treatment calcu- lated to restore to them the right use of their minds.
When about this time the proposition to purchase a State Farm began to be discussed, it was chiefly to provide accommodations for the pauper incurable insane. And when at last such a farm had been secured steps were at once taken toward the erection of the neces- sary buildings. Two one story wooden cottages were built after the general plan of buildings which had been for some years used for a similar class of patients at Blackwell's Island, in New York city, but with changes and improvements. Besides these a stronger building was erected for such as might be of a violent and dangerous character.
The first patients were admitted on the first of November, 1870, from which date to the first day of the following January one hundred and eighteen were received-sixty-five from Butler Hospital, twenty- two from Vermont Hospital, four from Worcester, two from Taunton, and twenty-five from the town poor honses of the state. One year later the number of immates had grown to one hundred and forty-two from which date till the time of this writing the increase has been constant and rapid, so that on December 31st, 1900, the whole number was not less than seven hundred and forty, while the original two small buildings, hardly more than wooden barracks, have become
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nineteen substantial structures of stone and brick, furnished with all the most approved apparatus and appliances for the scientific and successful treatment of mental disease of every form.
Two features in this institution have always commanded the ap- proval of intelligent visitors; the first of these being the use of one story buildings, as many as may be needed, rather than lofty and elaborate structures such as are common elsewhere ; and the second of these being the large measure of liberty accorded the patients both within the several wards and out of doors in spacious and well turfed yards connected therewith.
At the first and until a comparatively recent period this institution was what its name implied, an asylum for the incurable insane, in other words a place for the custodial care of hopeless cases, or an alms- house for pauper lunatics who had passed beyond the reach of the physician's art. For such only was provision made and only such were committed to its keeping. There was no attempt at curative treatment. This was provided for cases of not long standing at Butler Hospital and in others of like character, legal authority being given to place such in these at the expense in part at least of the state. When application was made for their admission to the State Asy- lum, they were refused. It was rightly judged that common humanity as well as the public interest required that no one should be received till he had enjoyed the opportunities of a good hospital and had been pronounced incurable by competent medical authority. So is explained the otherwise seemingly strange fact that from the first and for eleven years the institution was in charge of a deputy super- intendent who was not a physician. Rightly or wrongly during all this period it did not appear to the authorities that medical knowledge and skill were necessary in the one who should fill this position.
But in the year 1885 a change was made in the law, the evident purpose and actual effect of which was that since that date practically all insane paupers have been sent at once to the State Asylum, recent and presumably curable as well as chronic and incurable cases. This change made imperative the immediate introduction of curative methods, and also that the head of the institution should be a medical man having special gifts and qualifications as well as eminent skill in the practice of his profession, both of which requirements have been met in the years that have since elapsed.
Up to about the same date the insane poor having settlements within the borders of the state were supported at the expense of the various cities and towns : now the state assumed the whole expense of caring for all the insane paupers, those having and those not having legal settlements. Naturally officers having in charge the towns' poor at once became less reluctant than formerly to place insane persons in the State Asylum, and there followed in consequence a sudden and
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
large increase of those who while they were certainly insane according to the terms of the law yet needed only such care as might be given them in a well ordered almshouse, had it not been made less expensive to the town to surrender them to the custody of the state. The in- crease at the State Asylum for the last six years preceding this change of method had been but seventy-one ; the increase for the six years next following was two hundred and one.
At the January session of the general assembly in 1897, and on recommendation of the Board of State Charities and Corrections, the name of the State Asylum for the Insane was changed to State Hospi- tal for the Insane.
At the same time an important change was made for the better in the administration of this institution, by which it was dissociated from the other institutions located on the State Farm, with which it had been connected from the beginning under a single superintendent. When it with these was established no one could foresee the magnitude which all would attain in a period of less than thirty years, and the form of organization then adopted was doubtless well suited to a num- ber of small institutions contiguous to each other ; but a period had at last arrived when the interests of the Hospital for the Insane, now be- come the most prominent as well as the largest of them all, plainly de- manded that it should be wholly separated from its life-long compan- ions, and particularly from the Work-house and House of Correction. This view had long been entertained by members of the Board of State Charities and Corrections, and to it the legislature now gave expression in an act authorizing the change and the election of a Superintendent of the State Hospital for the Insane.
On the twenty-first day of May, 1897, George F. Keene, M. D., who had shown singular fitness and ability during a connection with the institution extending over a period of fifteen years, for more than ten of which he was its deputy superintendent, was unanimously chosen the first superintendent under the new order; and the State Hospital for the Insane now at last assumed its proper name and true position among similar institutions wherever located.
The early New England colonists were saints and sinners. The saints were few, the sinners were many. These statements might not be needed were it not that there exists a very common notion that only people of exalted, intellectual and moral quality migrated to these shores during the first half of the seventeenth century.
It is true that the ruling element in each of the New England colonies was pre-eminent for character and respectability, consisting mainly of country squires and sturdy yeoman from the eastern coun- ties of the Mother Country. Each of the forty English shires was here represented, but those bordering on the North Sea contributed to this better element more numerously than all others. It has been
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THE POOR, THE DEFECTIVE AND THE CRIMINAL.
estimated that of all the Americans now living and able to traee their deseent from the original New England stock, at least two-thirds might follow the line baek to one or another of the East Angliean eounties, one-sixth of all to the County of Devon, Dorset or Somerset, and one- sixth to all beside of England.
The men who eame with Governor Bradford to Plymouth, and with Governor Winthrop to Boston, were thrifty and prosperous household- ers in their old homes. These made of themselves voluntary exiles beeause of their devotion to an idea. Their ideals were high and they attempted to realize these in their lives as Christian men and eitizens of the new commonwealth. Religion before all else elaimed and received their attention. They would have education to be the inseparable attendant upon religion. Industry, economy, deeorous behavior and reverence for superiors were regarded as of paramount obligation. The moralities were in any ease to be serupulously observed and rigidly enforeed upon men of all ranks in society.
They were the aristoerats of the new world, and the term is used in its best sense. As must ever be true of an aristoeraey, whether of birth, of wealth, or of personal merit, they were but a small minority of the whole people. Social distinetions were earefully noted and were not under any eireumstances to be overlooked or ignored. Of all the immigrants who eame to New England previous to the year 1649, not more than one in fourteen would be permitted to write Mr. before his name; each of the remaining thirteen being merely Good Man So-an-so. This was as might have been expected. There could be nothing like soeial equality between men whose recent ancestors were serfs, and upon whom the marks of serfdom were still many and manifest, and those who had been free men and landholders for un- eounted generations. The man who had been a peasant and whose grandfather had been a serf in Old England, eould not expeet to be treated, and was not treated as other than he was, in New England. From such men of low degree eame many of the eriminals of the early days.
The wilderness was hungry for laborers. To meet this demand. apprentices or indentured servants were brought out in large numbers from the mother country. These apprentiees or indentured servants were persons who had bound themselves, or who had been bound by others to periods of serviee extending over four, six, or in some eases even ten years. They were recognized as property, and by their masters or owners they were treated as sueh. Fugitive servants escap- ing from one eolony to another were returned, upon proof, to their owners, and at the expense of these. They differed from slaves in but little, save that they were bondsmen by eontraet, and they eould be held in bondage for but a term of years. The Mayflower brought out some sueh servants. Not less than thirty were taken by a single indi-
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vidual, Captain Wollaston, to Quincy.1 Governor Winthrop speaks with regret of the pecuniary loss which the Bay Colony sustained when it became necessary to free three hundred such servants because there was no food to give them. Whether they starved as free men in the woods does not appear. Governor Craddoek and others who re- mained with him in England sent over as many servants as were needed to manage their large estates in Massachusetts. Harvard College is said to have received a donation of one hundred and fifty pounds, being the proceeds of the sale of ehildren who had been kid- mapped in England and sent out to America as indentured appren- tices,? perhaps followed all the way from London to Gravesend by weeping parents who had no power to redeem them, and to whom the law offered no relief." The higher officials of Bristol, chief center of the Colonial trade, were nearly all at one time involved in kidnap- ping.
Among the indentured servants were some of a not ignoble parent- age, some educated men, some Latin seholars, the victims of misfortune or of vice, who had sold themselves as a means of getting away to the new land, in the hope that when their term of service should expire they might there improve their condition. There were honest working men, too, discouraged by the difficulties with which they had all their lives vainly contended, who trusted that they might find on this side of the Atlantic better conditions than they could ever hope to know in the old world. Knaves, also, were numerous. Husbands forsaking their wives and wives forsaking their husbands, runaway sons and daughters, jail birds and bawds, were sent across the ocean by those who coined wealth in the business. All these were weleomed by colonists whose strongest wish was for cheap labor and a plenty of it. It was eommon to pardon thieves on condition that they would eon- sent to be sold to a service of seven years in the colonies. The record exists of a horse thief who, in 1622, very naturally chose this alterna- tive rather than to be hanged for his crime. A little later we find a husband humbly petitioning on behalf of his wife that she might be sold and sent over as a servant, and not be put to death for stealing three shillings and six pence. Petty officers were paid by the mayor and by the aldermen of more than one English eity to persuade men and women who had been eonvieted of erime for which the death penalty would be exaeted, that they should consent to go as inden- tured apprentiees to the colonies. The profits accruing from sueh transactions to the officials named were very large. After the restora- tion it became lawful for justices to send "loose and disorderly per-
1Fiske's Beginnings of New England, 91.
2Mass. Rec. 13, Nov. 1644.
3Eggleston's Transit of Civilization, 295.
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sons" at their discretion to the colonies, and thus at intervals a hun- dred or two of "Newgate Birds" were shipped to America. In Amer- ica such apprentices and indeed all others would be immediately lost to those who were acquainted with their history, lost as completely as if they had migrated to the moon. But neither would the negro change his color, nor the leopard his spots.
It is true that the colonists in Massachusetts endeavored to sift their servants and so to exclude convicts of every grade with all the more vicious and corrupt ones ; but the offenses against good order and against common decency with which the civil authorities, and the ecclesiastical authorities as well, were at once compelled to deal, and the nature of the penalties which they thought it necessary to inflict upon offenders, show conclusively that the sifting process was to a very large extent a dismal failure.1 Notwithstanding that the convict ele- ment may have been to a considerable extent shut out of New England, it remained that servants were for the most part from the dangerous classes of large English cities. They were men who had been sturdy beggars and incorrigible rogues of every sort, idle and debauched persons of both sexes ; of whom an early New England writer said that they would "eat till they sweat and work till they froze to death." Everywhere these indentured apprentices or servants were a distinct and recognizable class, the source of endless discord and disorder, lead- ing astray the "unstaid and the young." And their children are with us till this day.
The statement so often made that in New England no traces are to be found of the "mean white" is an incorrect and unwarranted state- ment.2 The facts are unmistakably against it. The "poor white trash" of the South has its counterpart in every New England state. All over New England are to be found isolated neighborhoods, whose quality is indicated by the epithets applied to them, such as "Hard Scrabble," "Hell Huddle," and "Devil's Hopyard." The dwellers in these localities are not to be regarded as mainly the degenerate off- spring of a sound New England stock; they are of an unmistakable strain to be found in every land where English people dwell. At an early day the riff-raff of England came to these colonies in the persons of apprentices and of others of a not better quality, whose evil ways brought them into perpetual conflict with the better element of society ; and whose immoral and criminal influence did not fail to act injurious- ly upon young people of good family and careful, Christian nurture. In some cases there was intermarriage between the two classes, with the usual result of an honored name reappearing in a line of vicious descent. It was the presence of this base element that made necessary
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