Ten Days in a Mad-House and Other Stories by Nellie Bly

all the
    women, those with eruptions as well as those without. The healthy
    patients fight for a change of water, but they are compelled to submit
    to the dictates of the lazy, tyrannical nurses. The dresses are seldom
    changed oftener than once a month. If the patient has a visitor, I have
    seen the nurses hurry her out and change her dress before the visitor
    comes in. This keeps up the appearance of careful and good
    management.

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Ten Days in a Mad-House
    The patients who are not able to take care of themselves get into
    beastly conditions, and the nurses never look after them, but order
    some of the patients to do so.
    For five days we were compelled to sit in the room all day. I never
    put in such a long time. Every patient was stiff and sore and tired.
    We would get in little groups on benches and torture our stomachs
    by conjuring up thoughts of what we would eat first when we got
    out. If I had not known how hungry they were and the pitiful side of
    it, the conversation would have been very amusing. As it was it only
    made me sad. When the subject of eating, which seemed to be the
    favorite one, was worn out, they used to give their opinions of the
    institution and its management. The condemnation of the nurses and
    the eatables was unanimous.
    As the days passed Miss Tillie Mayard’s condition grew worse. She
    was continually cold and unable to eat of the food provided. Day
    after day she sang in order to try to maintain her memory, but at last
    the nurse made her stop it. I talked with her daily, and I grieved to
    find her grow worse so rapidly. At last she got a delusion. She
    thought that I was trying to pass myself off for her, and that all the
    people who called to see Nellie Brown were friends in search of her,
    but that I, by some means, was trying to deceive them into the belief
    that I was the girl. I tried to reason with her, but found it impossible,
    so I kept away from her as much as possible, lest my presence
    should make her worse and feed the fancy.
    One of the patients, Mrs. Cotter, a pretty, delicate woman, one day
    thought she saw her husband coming up the walk. She left the line in
    which she was marching and ran to meet him. For this act she was
    sent to the Retreat. She afterward said:
    “The remembrance of that is enough to make me mad. For crying the
    nurses beat me with a broom-handle and jumped on me, injuring me
    internally, so that I shall never get over it. Then they tied my hands
    and feet, and, throwing a sheet over my head, twisted it tightly
    around my throat, so I could not scream, and thus put me in a
    bathtub filled with cold water. They held me under until I gave up

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    every hope and became senseless. At other times they took hold of
    my ears and beat my head on the floor and against the wall. Then
    they pulled out my hair by the roots, so that it will never grow in
    again.”
    Mrs. Cotter here showed me proofs of her story, the dent in the back
    of her head and the bare spots where the hair had been taken out by
    the handful. I give her story as plainly as possible: “My treatment
    was not as bad as I have seen others get in there, but it has ruined
    my health, and even if I do get out of here I will be a wreck. When
    my husband heard of the treatment given me he threatened to
    expose the place if I was not removed, so I was brought here. I am
    well mentally now. All that old fear has left me, and the doctor has
    promised to allow my husband to take me home.”
    I made the acquaintance of Bridget McGuinness, who seems to be
    sane at the present time. She said she was sent to Retreat 4, and put
    on the “rope gang.” “The beating I got there were something
    dreadful. I was pulled around by the hair, held under the water until
    I strangled, and I was choked and kicked. The nurses would always
    keep a quiet patient stationed at the window to tell them when any
    of the doctors were approaching. It was hopeless to complain to the
    doctors, for they