An Inmate's Charges: A Clergyman in the Asylum Accuses Its Keepers
A Presbyterian minister confined to the hospital for the insane levels 'painful charges' against its management, and the paper — even doubting his reliability — demands an investigation.
By communication elsewhere appearing, Geo. W. Sloan, a clergyman of the Presbyterian church, but now unfortunately a patient in the hospital for the insane, makes some very positive and painful charges against the management of that institution. Mr. Sloan is not strong in 'the upper story,' and his statements are not, perhaps, wholly reliable. Still there is enough in his charges, considering their character, to justify investigation, which we trust will not be slow in being instituted. Every guard should be thrown around these helpless persons, and their abuse should not be tolerated.
“Every guard should be thrown around these helpless persons, and their abuse should not be tolerated.”
Nineteenth-century asylums were closed worlds where patients had almost no voice; that a clergyman's accusations reached the press at all was rare. The paper's call to protect 'these helpless persons' is an early stirring of patient advocacy — the same questions about institutional oversight and who is believed still dominate care debates today.
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