Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1914-02-27
MEMORIES OF life
IN A MADH0USE
RecoIIections of an Attendant
Who Was Twenty Years in
an English Asylum.

From Pearson's Weekly.
Twenty years in a lunatic asylum.
Twenty years attending to the wants
OF madmen.
What scenes. What happenings.
Strange memories all.
They creep into my dreams sometimes
and L wake up with a Shrek. and
imagine that a lunatic has got me by
the throat.
II has been life OF many thrills,
and if i live to be a hundred I shall
ncN er forget it.
My first impression of the asylum is
still vivid.
The morning when began my duties
l was sympathized with by quite a
score of the inmates. They thought I
was mad the same as themselves.
They were sitting in the common
room. some playing draushts, some
donlinoes.
One elderly man. who had been a
dancing master. was teaching several
lunaticS to waltz.
Polishing Up His Buttons.
Another. an ex-soidier. who had seen
active service. was polishing the buttons
of his jacket. just as soldiers polish
the buttons of their tunics.
=
at one another. and one man kept burst
ing into d little laugh and muttcring.
Poor devils. They are as mad as hat
ters."
suddenly, few of them caught sight
OF me. and, seeing that l was stranger.
they left their games and came and
gripped my hand. They were very
sorry. they said, to see me there; but
they would do their best to help me
/ a
TO murder the governor of the inst!tu-
tion and burn down the place, and
promptly agreed. thinking it best not to
diSrleaSe them.
But. later. when they saw me in the
uniform of an attendant, l realized that
] would have to be careful.
They Kissed 'Traitori" after me. and
an inmate who had been lawyer S
clerk drew up what he called my death
warrant and it was signed by a good
many other lunatics.
You would laugh if you saw the docu-
ment. 1t is couched in pompous legal
by the neck till l am dead. and that
my body must be buried in quicklime.
But not a sing SIGNATURE can be read ,
they are all ugly scraw.s and crosses.
Attempt at Killing.
I was advised by my colleagues to be
always on the lookout after this.
FOT d. IdppeHeu, anu l
began to think that the hatred of the
inmates had died away: but late one
afternoon I had a severe shock.
The patients had been exercising in
the grounds. and one of them, burly,
middle-aged man. failed to respond to
the call. l went in search of him in a
little wooden Enclosure close by. Sud-
denly, he appeared as if by magic from
behind big tree, and pounced upon me
like 4 panther.
l had no time to shout: the man was
At my throat and in an instant had flung
me into a hollow. Why he did not
finish me off properly | cannot say, but
he must have imagined that he had
strangled me. because he promptly began
to cover up my body with collection
OF tree branches and earth.
l lay quite STILL and after few min
utes the man ran of.
When I heard his footsteps die away In
the distance l manased, after Il good
deal Of trouble, to free myself.
The lunatic must have thrown several
hundr edweights of earth over ME, but
for some extraordinary reason he had
left my head free. From what ! found
out afterward l concluded that II was
his intention after few hours to bring
my colleagues along 10 the spot and po.nt
proudly TO my dead face peeping ont of
the grave. Nadmen are astoniShingly
proud when their plots succeed.
! struggled 10 my feet after e time,
and. half choked with dirt, returned TO