Authors:
  • I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within the commonwealth; in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.

    Dorothea Lynde Dix (1843). “Memorial: To the Legislature of Massachusetts [protesting Against the Confinement of Insane Persons and Idiots in Almshouses and Prisons]”, p.4