My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum Part 3

If the readers of this true history will imagine for themselves a number of hospitals for typhus fever, where any one of them, man or woman, may be shut up among the worst cases upon the first symptoms of a cold in the head--with moral, social, and physical consequences beyond man's power of description--they will know something of the meaning of private lunatic asylums, and our 'lunacy-law.' If they will further reflect upon the chances which they would then have of escaping the infection, they will not wonder that private lunatic asylums are not famous for cures. The matter concerns them more than it does me; for forewarned is forearmed, and I am not afraid of falling into the trap again. But I am not going to shrink, on any comfortable theory of 'letting things alone,' of 'bygones being bygones,' &c., from setting down what I think and what I know. I will be of some help to others if I can. If everybody thumb-twiddled under injuries we should not advance much. I need not to apologise for the directly personal character of the account which I have written; for it is only as a directly personal account that it can be of any value. The imputation of insanity will not trouble me much longer. To those who know me, it is absurd; with those who do not, or who, knowing me, care to repeat it, I am in nowise concerned. If I write this short postscript at all, it is because I have heard, to my great amus.e.m.e.nt, that since the publication of this history some of my critics have done me the honour to speak of it as in itself a proof of insanity! I can only say with Theodore Hook, if it was he who said it--'Sir, if you can believe that, you'll believe anything.' But they do not believe it. It is the old question of honesty and dishonesty, and concerns me not. I suppose that I am either mad not to hold my tongue, or mad to think they can believe me--anything for a sneer, from time immemorial the safety-valve of dulness or of ill-nature. It is difficult for anyone to believe in such wanton wrong.

That is the defence of those who, without the shadow of excuse, have branded me with the most cruel brand that can be stamped on any man. The thing was done. _Magna est veritas_, in the end: though I think it is growing much more uncommon.

The remedy for having been shut up in an asylum, as a nuisance, is an action for false imprisonment. Thank you. Going to law in England is neither more or less than an amus.e.m.e.nt for a rich man, who may like to have all his corns hurt, or for a 'company,' who are cornless. You must be prepared to submit to many varieties of insult, with contempt of court if you resent them. I have been a lawyer myself, and of the value of the Law's methods, cross-examination included, as a guide to truth and as a means to justice, I hold my own opinion. I did consult a solicitor, with a view to an action; but from him learned that the first step required of me would be to prove exactly how the thing was done, and exactly who did it, when the whole essence of the wrong was that I was too weak from a common illness to know of what was being done. (If I had been well and strong, I should at least have tried to knock everybody down.) If I made a mistake, I should be 'nonsuited,' or otherwise time-honouredly swindled of my rights: so being sane and having been a lawyer, I let it alone; and was fain to console myself as best I might with b.u.mble's forcible apothegm--never so forcible as in this case--'The law's a ha.s.s.'

The whole confusion worse confounded, which surrounds everything concerning the most palpable, if the most terrible, form of human sickness, had its origin, probably, in the anxiety of kind-hearted people to evade the law of capital punishment on any pretext whatsoever. They called people 'mad' to save them from being hung, when they knew them to be nothing of the kind. Many a sound conscience has been driven into evasion or falsehood as a lesser sin, or a n.o.bler right, than 'abiding'

evil laws. This particular form of evasion having been established for good, the Law was prompt enough to take advantage of it for ill, to introduce fresh wrong. For the rest, let my story speak for itself. I have not concealed in any way the extent of the nervous illness into which I fell, aggravated tenfold by this unutterable cruelty. I repeat that it is the most cruel thing that can be done to a nervous sufferer: and it is, or may be, done every day by the Law, which scarcely knows, I think, a wrong it does not favour. This is like finding a man on the brink of a precipice, and, instead of holding him back, giving him a friendly push, with a 'Go over and be d.a.m.ned to you!' The Law will not move in the matter; but for her own honour Medicine may; and I am glad to see that the 'Lancet' has taken the cancer well in hand. I believe that the knell of private asylums will soon be knolled. As soon as we find a Home Secretary honest and brave enough to take the question unflinchingly up, the whole tissue of humbug and deceit will melt like wax in the fire. Amen. For it is time.

_He brought me also out of the horrible pit, out of the mire and clay: and set my feet upon the rock, and ordered my goings._--Ps. xl. 2.