Lunatic Ball

As part of their treatment, patients in insane asylums were sometimes allowed recreational opportunities. The New York Times (1874) described an annual ball at the New-Haven, Connecticut lunatic asylum with typical 19th century  indifference to patients’ feelings:

“Twenty couples entered the hall, ranged in two lines facing each other, and stood still in profound silence, waiting the music. In this party the strangeness of the performers was most apparent. […]The music burst forth and a simultaneous movement followed; all sorts of movements, some cultivated steps, but for the most part a mere violent shuffling exercise. Directly they all seemed to have forgotten that they had partners, and settled down into dancing. There was some peculiarity about every individual, but in every one was observable a sort of ecstacy [sic].”

A description of a fire at Blackwell’s Island City Lunatic Asylum in 1879 also referenced lunatic dancing. When an alarm sounded and patients were released from their cells:

Dance at a Madhouse, 1907 by George Wesley Bellows

“To allay their fears, and to quiet the excitement which many of them began to exhibit owing to their being disturbed at an unusual time, the lunatics were told were told that there was to be a dance in the Amusement Hall. […]A merry air was played on the piano, and in a few minutes the lunatics were dancing and capering about in high glee.”