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CHAPTER XLIII.
Passage of the Bill in Iowa Legislature, to Protect the Inmates of Insane Asylums by Law.

During the Session of the Iowa Legislature of 1872, I sent to Mr. J. Vanderventer, a member of the House, a "Bill to Protect the Insane," with a request that he see that it be presented, and report to me its progress; and if in his judgment any effort of mine could facilitate its passage, I stood ready to meet such an emergency.

On the 13th of March Mr. Vanderventer thus replied:

"The Bill sent to me was presented by Mr. Morrill on the 16th of February and referred to the Committee on Insane Asylums. No report has been made by the Committee, and I am informed the bill is not favorably regarded.

Without wishing to influence your action in any way, I deem it no more than right to say that I do not believe the bill would be considered favorably by the General Assembly, and the expense you could have to incur, while waiting action on the bill, would necessarily be large.

Very truly yours,
J. VANDERVENTER."

"Rather dubious prospect!" thought I. "Nevertheless Mr. Vanderventer is only one, and possibly represents the minority in his private opinion; therefore I will write to the Chairman of the Committee to whom my bill is referred and test his opinion on this subject."

I accordingly did so, and received the following reply:

"Yours of the 17th is received and considered, and in answer I would say that the bill to which you refer is reported back to the House with the unanimous recommendation that it be indefinitely postponed!

Respectfully yours,
J. M. HOVEY."

"Worse and worse!" thought I, "'Tis even now past redemption, I fear, since the Legislature seldom acts contrary to the recommendation of their Committee."

"But shall the claims of this defenseless class be thus summarily ignored, with none to plead for them?"

"Nay, verily, I will do what I can to bring their claims to the notice of the Legislature, the only power that can help them."

I therefore sent to Mr. Hovey the following "brief" in defense of the bill, and asked him to show it to the other members of the Committee, viz.:

Defense of a bill to protect the rights of the Insane.

The main feature of this bill is to remove the censorship from the correspondence of the patients, as one means of protecting them in their right to be treated kindly and justly by their keepers. My reasons are these:

1st. A free and unrestricted correspondence will be a re-restraint -sic- upon the exercise of tyranny.

2d. It will afford them an innocent gratification.

3d. It will cultivate their affection for their relatives, which under the present censorship, is most cruelly shaken, if not destroyed.

4th. It will mitigate their mental torture by allowing it a natural vent or expression.

5th. As this censorship is regarded by them as an outrage upon their rights, its removal will help to reinstate in their minds the principle of justice.

6th. It will give their friends a test of their mental condition.

7th. They now have no opportunity for self-defense, and this would afford them this reasonable right.

8th. It might prevent the culmination of evils developed by the Investigating Committee of Illinois State Asylum, by affording each case a chance for settlement when the charges were reported.

9th. It the complaints of abuse are delusive it could hurt no one -- if true, they could be corrected without public exposure.

I followed this effort with editorials which I got written upon this subject, one of which I give my readers as a type of the others. This was written by the able editor and proprietor of the Davenport Gazette of Iowa. It was published March 19,1872.

Rights of the Insane.

"Experience proves that the best instrumentalities are liable to abuse, and that institutions based upon philanthropy and having their sanction in the noblest promptings of the popular heart, are oftentimes turned into engines of oppression and cruelty.

Lunatic Asylums were founded in the interest of humanity for the purpose of relieving the victims of mental delusion from the barbarities to which they had been formerly subjected by confinement in barns and sheds, jails and poor-houses, and bringing them under such restraint as should be necessary, while giving them the benefit of enlightened medical treatment.

Yet, exposures which have been made within a few years, have developed the fact that these palatial structures, built and supported at the public expense, have been converted into prison houses of persons not insane, especially married women, that oftentimes great cruelties and outrages were practiced within their walls, and that owing to the internal regulations adopted, concerning correspondence and intercourse with the outside world, these practices have been for a long time covered from the public eye.

In these cases the Superintendent, possessing powers well nigh autocratic, has been enabled to stifle the voice of complaint, and to defeat any investigation of the most glaring abuses. Judging from the testimony which we have seen and heard on this subject, we have no doubt that some have been made insane, and that the insanity of others has been aggravated by asylum treatment; and that in many institutions there is scarcely a pretence of scientific effort for the cure of the mental malady.