New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-09-13
CRUELTY TO TIE INSANE.

Our neighbors in Philadelphia and the adj
Joining counties in Pennsylvania have been
engaged in an active squabble for week or
two past which bears too strong resem-
blance to the old fight between the pot and
the pan. A Board of Charities, which appears
to consist of half dozen intelligent and
honest men appointed to inspect all charitable
institutions and see that their management Is
both faithful and discreet, have ventured to
hint at overcrowding and gross neglect and
even cruelty in the Philadelphia Almshouse,
particularly in the Department of the In
sane, whereupOn the press of that city
have set about revealing similar abuses
in neighboring institutions of the same
sort, with the very evident purpose of dodg-
ing suspicion by the cry of stop thief The
developments are by no means pleasant or en-
couragng to the believers in human progress.
To find that in communities of educated and
gently -nurtured men and women, processing
TO be followers of Christ, their miserable
brothers whom God has deprived of reason
are Gagged in a mass like wild beasts-men and
women herding together in filthy dens, left
absolutely without fire and clothes in the
bitterest of wintry weather-is enough to make
us wonder whether the long struggle for hui
man souls going on for thousands of years be-
tween God and the devil is not ending in a
most unsatisfactory way for the world.
We have no wish nor intention to hide our
own shortcomings in this respect. Our prison
system is still, in spite of protested reforms,
subject to the grossest abuses; there Is not
single one of the monster public institutions
in or about New-YOrk for the relief or reform
of the suffering or criminal class from which
some pitiable story has not escaped from time
to time of Encouragement in the working OF
the system which approaches to Intentional
cruelty. The reason is patent. The men to
whose hired judgment and sympathy these poor
wretches are consigned are no worse than other
men, They may be indulgent husbands, faith
full friends, or doting fathers in their own
homes. But they come gradually and not I'M
naturally to look upon whatever special mass
of diseased humanity has been put into their
care as upon body of hostile matter, to be
approached and conquered by some favorite
moral machinery, which is applied to individ-
uals in q mass, with no allowance for their
peculiar character or temptations When 1t
does not prove effectual, the sinner is deemed
incorrigible and a fit subject for whatever rigor
the overseer may think proper to use. This is
the case when the warden or superintendent is
a man of intelligence and humane feeling. In
too many instances noticeably in that of COM
mon jailors and overseers of prisons which
are leased out on contract, they are chosen
on the score of their ability to keep order,
very much for the qualities essential in a
tanner of wild beasts, or for their cleverness
in making the prison remuneratiye or self
supporting.
We have urged this matter often enough to
weary our readers; but the exposures made
last week in Delaware County justify us In
dragging the whole unwhOlesOme subject to
light again. Prison reform has succeeded so
far as its International Convention went; but
it has utterly failed so far in arOusing the
active cooperative interest of the people.
Here and there when fragrant circumstance of
neglect or cruelty is thrust into notice-as in
our Bloomingdale Asylum or the Connecticut
State Prison OF the Philadelphia Almshouse-
some local good is temporarily accomplished.
But let any philanthrOpic man or Chris
tan woman in any part OF the country
visit the nearest county Jail, and in nine cases
out of ten there will be found q state of phys
ical and moral filth and degradation which
would be disgrace to heather country.
Or let any clergyman make the visit and
preach his sermon from that text. There has
been an outcry all over the country of amaze
ment and disgust at the woman in Huntington
who stood to watch man tarred and feath-
cred; but the women who know that herds of
other women are Gagged naked and half frozen
oh nf fhair
idle and Indifferent, are every whit as culpable
and as lacking in true refinement