The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1882-04-29

Rich Man Was Trapped-HOw they Catch
| Lunatics in Brooklyn-Troubles In tile
| Labor Market-The Latest Sensations
City Improvements-The Bulls Masters
of Wall Street, Etc.
NEW YORK, April !, 1882.
EDITOR CHIEF:
It is a good thing to be startled once
in awhile. People who go along in the
good old hum drum way, whose lives
are unruf1led aud smooth as mill pond,
can scarcely estimate the delight Of a
new sensation. To an ordinary reader
it would seen, as though there was no
lack Of sensation in this goodly city
but, we are like old topers, who some
times have to put little aquafortis in
their whiskey to give it the proper tone.
The Constitution Of the United States
guarantees to every citizen under its
broad Rgis, that no one shall be deprived
of his liberty without due process of
law; and recently couple of cases have
come to light which have produced
something like an electric shock, where
two people have been seized and held for
months without due process oflaw /; and,
whatever law there was (and there was
not much of it), was prostituted by the
Judge on the bench and the officers who
were called on to administer it.
A gentleman in Westchester county
had the misfortune, few years ago, to
inherit nearly q half million of dollars.
Most people consider themselves in luck
when the devil gives them such wind
| fall; but, what seemed to be the very
dawn of prosperity, was really the
threshold of his misfortunes; for our
friend, who was regarded as a irst-rate
fellow, when he was poor, very capable
of padding his own canoe, was suddenly
finally, a crank and luuatic, and his
| sisters, his cousins and his aunts, includ-
ing his affectionate v ife, and her sisters,
and cousins and aunts, petitioned the
court to lave him shut up in a lunatic
asylum, all his property placed in the
hands of a guardian, and that his wife
should he that guardian. One after
noon. while he was quietly walking
down Broadway, he was seized by a
couple of stout men, pair of handouts
slipped on him, forcibly thrust into a
carriage, and whirled off to the lunatic
asylum. As matter Of course, he resis-
ted. He fought for his liberty like any
other man would, and, as a consequence,
he arrived at the asylum in a very
demoralized condition-his clothes torn,
his nose bleeding, his eyes b!ackened-
and tho first thing they did on arriving
! at the asylu,a was to thrust him into the
pa,.ded cell. This is an ingenious dun
to keepers. The walls are padded with
straw on every side, SO that the unfortu-
nate lunatic can not dash his brains out
though it would be a mercy to do it
rather than keep him twenty-four hours
in such a horrible place. The night was
hot when our friend was put in this
dungeon, into which: no ray Of light
came, nor scarcely breath of air, the
only aperature from without being a
little iron grating not bigger than a
mans hand. He cried and begged for a
drink of water, but was answered by his
keeper with mocking laugh; and,
driven almost to madness, he succeeded
in living till morning. The doctor, in
his rounds, peeped through the grating,
and this miserable wretch, with his
clothes in shreds and his matted hair,
and his bleared and bloody face, Of
course, was termed lunatic, the widest
kind of lunatie, and the padded cell
was considered the easiest place to KEEP
him. There he gave no one any trouble
and, if he grew noisy, it was an easy jot
to 90 in aud club him into silence. So
the doctor passed on, smoking his fine
Havana and thinking to himself what 6
pleasant place lunatic asylum was
when person had his house and persona
expenses, and salary Of 5000 a year
besides private fees from the wealthie
patients. That our friend was not
hopeless maniac before the next mornin:
was miracle but, on reflection, h
began to sec that his only chance o
getting out was to be calm 80 samnin!
all his will he resolved to bear his tria
with the fortitude Of a martyr. He wa
released from his dungeon at last, ant
washed and dressed in a sort Of prisOl
uniform, and requested the privilege G
:, writing to his lawyer, but the docto
was afraid it might excite him, and so h
was put off; days, weeks, months role
away, and, in the meantime, his affet
> tionate wife had applied for a commissio
. of lunacy. In the meantime our frien
escaped, and, going down to the sal
deposit, he took out of his strong bo
eighty-fve thousand dollars i'll Cover
ment bonds and carried them off r
was soon rearrcsted and the bonds take
away from him; and finally after
. prolonged struggle, he retained b
" liberty, and it now transpires that it W:
all plot on the part of his wife and h.
relations to get possession of his none
" Two of the principal allegations of lnnas
. being that he refused her a set Of di
monds for which Tiffany asked t.
y AN ,,