Central State Hospital, the Former Indiana Hospital for the Insane, courtesy Indianapolis Recorder

Though patients did not enjoy life in an asylum, many did manage to retain a sense of humor and find humor where they could. Attendants often joined in the fun and helped patients pull off a joke–usually on the public.

One practice patients universally detested was that of allowing the public to come into asylums and “view” patients for amusement. Many felt shamed at being stared at like zoo exhibits, or were pained by the mocking comments they overheard. Far too often, visitors didn’t even pretend to feel compassion or mask their visits with a “show” of sympathy or desire for knowledge–they simply laughed and felt superior to the “poor creatures” they had come to see.

Patients sometimes had the last laugh, though. Anna Agnew, a former patient at the Indiana Hospital for the Insane, describes the push-back from the asylum’s inhabitants:

“Our attendants, too, all over the house, frequently play patient, generally hanging lovingly over some dudish sort of a chap, whom they profess to recognize as some former lover, and several times quite touching scenes have been described by imaginative gushing reporters from some of our most reputable papers . . .

Anna Agnew

“Such as,” Agnew continued as she described one of these reports: “When I entered the door [wrote the reporter] I was immediately approached by a lovely young girl, with large mournful, soulful, blue eyes, in which smouldered the gloom of insanity, and with her wreath of golden hair disheveled and flowing . . . she said, oh, so mournfully, sinking on her knees, ‘Please, kind sir, take me home with you?'”

Agnew writes wryly, “Dramatic, wasn’t it?” But in reality, “that lovely creature was one of the attendants, up to that sort of thing, and her patients enjoyed seeing the reporter fooled quite as well as she.”

Dr. Sarah Stockton Was Appointed Physician at the Indiana Hospital For the Insane During Anna Agnew’s Stay, courtesy Indiana Archives and Records Administration

It was a small victory, certainly, but an uplifting one that bonded patients and attendants against a common enemy: an ignorant, sneering public.