The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1903-08-21
ASYLUM FOR INSANE SCORED BY
FORMER INMATE.
PATIENTS BADLY TREATED
Contractors Warn the Few Who Are
Discharged to Keep What They
Know to Themselves.

With each attempt to spread a coat
OF Whitewash Over the management
of the state asylum for the insane
at Warm Springs, on the part of the
friends OF the management and con-
tractors, somewhere in the state there
Immediately appears a former inmate
OF that institution to denounce the
methods employed in the care OF
that establishment.
From all over Montana bitter COM
plants have gone up from the people
against the system in vogue at the
institution maintained for the keep
ing of the state insane. Investiga-
lions by legislative committees have
always resulted in a whitewashed re-
port after the committees had been
wined and dined by the leeches in
whose management the institution has
been for many years past. The men
who own the Warm Springs insane
asylum make a fortune every year
at the expense OF the state and the
unfortunate victims who are c~Onsign-
ed to their keeping from the several
counties of the state. But if the for
tune accumulated every year by the
owners of the Warm Springs property
vas the only wrong feature about
the affair. the people would probably
have less fault to find. 1t is not so
much against the annual graft" that
the people r beginning to complain
so bitterly as it is the reports coming
from those who occasionally manage
to get away from the hell-hole institu-
ton. It is not often that n comes
across a person who has managed to
get away from the contract institution
for the insane when once assigned to
the keeping of that management, but
in a majority of such instances the
victim usually has a tale OF torture
and suffering to relate.
Located in the valley of the West
Fork of the Stillawter river and amid
the most pleasant surroundings this
writer a few days ago was invited to
pay a visit to a former inmate OF
the state insane asylum. 1t was the
home OIL MI. A. H. Gray, a gentle
man who spent but six weeks in the
institution and who made his escape
more through his own efforts to over
Gene a slight arrangement of the
mind than ito anything that "a done
for him by the keepers OF the institu-
ton.
Mr.. Gray stated that language was
not at his command to sufficiently de-
Our the management of the state
asylum and the state officers for per-
hitting affairs to exist as they ex-
listed there up to the first day of the
present month, the time he left the
institution.
49, oiSy VIA ~ W Asylum
six weeks before from Park county.
Within a week from the time he enter
ed the establishment he became as
sane as he is today and he is consid-
cred by his friends and neighbors
g mar above the average in intelli-
gence. Notwithstanding the fact that
Mr.. Gray's mind was considered in a
sane condition by his wife and friends
it was only through threats to bring
about an exposure OF the methods en-
ployed to retain people there who
really ought to be discharged that
the management. consented to his re-
lease.
Once discharged from the institu-
ton by courtesy called an establish
ment for the care and humane treat
in reality is nothing O or less
than a place where brutality is often
practiced IN it's worst form, Mr.. Gray
promised that in the future he would
expose wherever possible the methods
that obtained in the conduct of that
establishment. He stated that it was
a common occurrence for inmates to
be knocked down and beaten by at
PENDANTS on the slightest kind OF
~provocation. Except in a very few
instances the work in and about the
establishment is performed by in
mates and the system Oh driving and
scouting them like slaves is more often
resorted to than the ~outpOuring OF
kindness which one would expect IN
an institution of that character.
Mr. GRAY raIatad in detail MANY Of