Wet Sheet Pack, 1902, Used to Calm Patients

No one could be pleased to find him or herself unexpectedly in an insane asylum (see last post) and it is remarkable that so many patients (who later wrote about their experiences) managed to stay calm enough to protect themselves. Patients able to keep their cool and observe the situation quickly saw that protests did them no good, nor did stubbornness or resistance in any form. Those who learned the rules and complied with them generally got along much better with doctors and attendants, and convinced these authority figures of their “progress” toward a cure. Asylums were one place where defiance got a person absolutely nowhere.

Attendants and Employees, Detached Building No. 4, Willard Hospital for the Insane

Attendants from both early and late periods were undoubtedly overworked and beset by unruly patients, but just as assuredly, many attendants were unkind and sometimes brutal to patients. Attendants frequently showed indifference toward their patients’ misery, confusion, and unhappiness. Attendants beat patients with their hands or with any handy object, tied them up, poured water over them and refused to let the freezing patient change into dry clothes, and forcibly restrained them for disobedience.

Attendants, Detached Building No. 1, Willard Hospital for the Insane

Patients often referred to asylums as prisons, and their attendants as jailers. Unfortunately, an insane person had an open-ended sentence rather than the definite, limited one given to most criminals.