Prisons, Asylums, and the Public: Institutional Visiting in the Nineteenth Century 9781442661639

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Establishment of Custodial Institutions and the Early Practice of Visiting
2. Open Doors: Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums
3. ‘You Must Go!’: Visitors to Prisons and Asylums
4. ‘I Am Even Afraid That She Put Her Tongue Out’: Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors
5. ‘What We Saw with Our Own Eyes’: Visiting and Nineteenth- Century Culture
6. ‘To Avoid Exposure and Publicity’: Opposition to Visiting
7. ‘Behind Closed Doors’: The Changing Relationship between Custodial Institutions and Society
Conclusion
Appendix: The Setting
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

PRISONS, ASYLUMS, AND THE PUBLIC: INSTITUTIONAL VISITING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The prisons and asylums of Canada and the United States were a popular destination for institutional tourists in the nineteenth century. Thousands of visitors entered their walls, recording and describing the interiors, inmates, and therapeutic and reformative practices they encountered in letters, diaries, and articles. Surprisingly, the vast majority of these visitors were not members of the medical or legal elite but were ordinary people. Prisons, Asylums, and the Public argues that, rather than existing in isolation, these institutions were closely connected to the communities beyond their walls. Challenging traditional interpretations of public visiting, Janet Miron examines the implications and imperatives of visiting from the perspectives of officials, the public, and the institutionalized. Finding that institutions could be important centres of civic activity, self-edification, and ‘scientific’ study, Prisons, Asylums, and the Public sheds new light on popular nineteenth-century attitudes towards the insane and the criminal. janet miron is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Trent University.

This page intentionally left blank

JANET MIRON

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public Institutional Visiting in the Nineteenth Century

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2011 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9366-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8020-9513-8 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Miron, Janet Prisons, asylums, and the public : institutional visiting in the nineteenth century / Janet Miron. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9366-0 (bound). – ISBN 978-0-8020-9513-8 (pbk.) 1. Prison visits – Social aspects – Canada – History – 19th century. 2. Prison visits – Social aspects – United States – History – 19th century. 3. Psychiatric hospitals – Social aspects – Canada – History – 19th century. 4. Psychiatric hospitals – Social aspects – United States – History – 19th century. 5. Prisons – Canada – Public opinion. 6. Prisons – United States – Public opinion. 7. Psychiatric hospitals – Canada – Public opinion. 8. Psychiatric hospitals – United States – Public opinion. 9. Canada – Public opinion. 10. United States – Public opinion. I. Title. HV8884.M57 2011

365’.6097109034

C2010-907097-6

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1 The Establishment of Custodial Institutions and the Early Practice of Visiting 17 2 Open Doors: Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums 34 3 ‘You Must Go!’: Visitors to Prisons and Asylums 56 4 ‘I Am Even Afraid That She Put Her Tongue Out’: Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors 87 5 ‘What We Saw with Our Own Eyes’: Visiting and NineteenthCentury Culture 114 6 ‘To Avoid Exposure and Publicity’: Opposition to Visiting 134 7 ‘Behind Closed Doors’: The Changing Relationship between Custodial Institutions and Society 149 Conclusion 172 Appendix: The Setting 177 Notes 185 Bibliography 229 Index

243

This page intentionally left blank

List of Illustrations

1 Eastern Penitentiary, Philadelphia, 1830s. Engraving with watercolour. The Library Company of Philadelphia. 28 2 Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1866, 273. 29 3 Admission ticket for Eastern State Penitentiary (ca 1835). The Library Company of Philadelphia. 39 4 First Athletic Sports advertisement, London Asylum (1888), University of Western Ontario Archives, Richard Maurice Bucke Collection. 53 5 London Asylum, postcard (stamped 1905). Author’s collection. 54 6 South Wing Cells, Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York, postcard [n.d.]. Author’s collection. 71 7 ‘Kingston. Recreation of the Inmates of Rockwood Asylum,’ Canadian Illustrated News, 5 October 1872, 217. National Library of Canada C 58821. 74 8 Floorplan, ‘Brief Description of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, N.Y.,’ Journal of Insanity 3, no. 1 (July 1846). 82 9 Etching of Editor, The Opal 2, no. 4 (1862): 121. 91 10 Etching of ‘Black Jimmy,’ ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1866, 294. 112 11 Kingston, Ontario, postcard [n.d.]. Montreal and Toronto. Author’s collection. 167 12 Entrance to Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York, postcard. New York City: Rotograph Co. (stamped 1905). 168 13 Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, postcard [n.d.]. Montreal and Toronto: The Valentine and Sons Publishing Co., Ltd. Author’s collection. 169

viii

List of Illustrations

14 Rockwood Hospital for the Insane, Kingston, postcard (stamped 1910). Author’s collection. 169 15 Rockwood Asylum, souvenir teacup (date and creator unknown). Author’s collection. 170

Acknowledgments

In the early 1950s, my grandparents, Gladys and Garnett Long, bought a derelict mid-nineteenth-century jail in Ontario and turned it into a summer camp. Every year I visit the jail, looking out through the rusted barred windows, sleeping in the gaoler’s room, and exploring the cells in the hope of finding a hidden message from an inmate. Aside from sharing her summer home and being one of the most wonderful people in my life, my late grandmother instilled in me a love for history and artefacts, and indirectly made me aware of people’s fascination with confinement. Every year, tourists knock on the door hoping to see the jail’s cells and imagine what it would have been like to have been shut up in the narrow and dark space in the nineteenth century. Although the jail was a small holding facility with only five cells and was isolated from the hub of the nearest town, I wonder if 150 years ago any visitors called on the gaoler for a tour. I have accrued many debts over the course of this project to friends, family, colleagues, and mentors, and it is my pleasure to acknowledge them. This book first began as a doctoral dissertation at York University, and I am thankful for the insight and supervision offered by Marlene Shore. Nicholas Rogers and the late Peter Oliver, members of my committee, Bettina Bradbury, and Gordon Darroch were helpful as well. David Wright, my external examiner, further provided me with important critiques and feedback. During my PhD, I received a scholarship from the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine and funding from York University, which greatly facilitated research at the New York State Library and Archives, the New York City Public Library, Library and Archives Canada, the library and archives at the University of Western Ontario, and the

x Acknowledgments

Archives of Ontario. The staff at all of these institutions provided much assistance. As it made such a difference to me in my ability to pursue my degree, I hope that the Hannah Institute will continue to fund graduate students in the history of medicine. Trent University provided funding for new research, and the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies helped me to complete the book. In addition, a number of audiences offered thought-provoking discussions, including those at the Institute of the History of Medicine, Science, and Technology at Johns Hopkins and the Social Science History Association Conference in 2004. I am also grateful to everyone at the University of Toronto Press. Len Husband has been a wonderful editor. Wayne Herrington saw the book through the editorial and production process, and Jim Leahy did excellent work as copy-editor. During the review process, I received very helpful reviews from three anonymous assessors whose comments encouraged me to think critically about a number of key issues. A few parts of the book appeared in modified form in James E. Moran and David Wright’s Mental Health and Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006) and in Graham Mooney and Johnathan Reinarz’s Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting (Rodopi, 2009). As well, I owe thanks to John Court for suggesting the cover image for the book and to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Archives for permission to reproduce it. Many friends and colleagues have provided advice, respite, distraction, and entertainment over the duration of the project and helped to make life enjoyable when frustration loomed large. Janis Alexander, Dimitry Anastakis, Damien-Claude Bélanger, Melanie Buddle, Stephanie Cook, Alison Falby, Julie Gottlieb, Robin Ganev, Jeet Heer, Stephen Henderson, Audrey Pyée, Joan Sangster, Keith Walden, and Sharon Wall have been especially important. Furthermore, I owe enormous debt and gratitude to my family for their patience, support, and friendship. This book would not have been possible without my mom, dad, and sisters, who have provided me with encouragement, friendship, humour, empathy, and love; they are all an inspiration to me and I treasure them dearly. I cannot express how fortunate I feel to have such wonderful parents, and it is to them that I dedicate this book. Finally, I want to thank Hernan Bravo, for always bringing me back into the realities of the twenty-first century, and Sarah Annalia, for the beauty and wonder she brings into my life every day.

PRISONS, ASYLUMS, AND THE PUBLIC: INSTITUTIONAL VISITING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

In 1835, John Armour Jr. left the comfortable confines of his home in Montreal, Quebec, to brave bumpy roads and flea-ridden hostels during a month-long tour of Ontario (then called Upper Canada). Accompanied by his father, Armour Jr. was drawn to many of the region’s newly established public institutions. In Kingston, he not only marvelled at the view of Lake Ontario, but spent many hours touring the recently opened provincial penitentiary, built just a short distance from the growing urban centre. He recorded in minute detail the sights of his visit to the penitentiary, remarking on the rows of cells, the methods devised to monitor and discipline inmates, and the appearances of inmates themselves. A few years later, Jane Ellice, while on vacation in the United States, toured the famous Auburn State Prison in New York. Here she watched the prisoners marching in uniform fashion, observed them toiling in the various workshops of the institution, and also befriended a ‘Yankee gentleman.’ Decades later in the 1880s, E. Katharine Bates embarked on a grand trans-Atlantic tour of North America, visiting such cities as Montreal, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington. In Toronto, for a few days, Bates’s sightseeing itinerary included the law courts of Osgoode Hall, the University of Toronto, Rosedale Park, and the insane asylum as well, of which she was ‘chiefly impressed.’1 The voyages of Armour Jr., Ellice, and Bates differed in many ways, especially in regard to the modes of transportation available to each traveller. Nevertheless, they still shared much in common. Indeed, the interest these three individuals showed in North America’s custodial institutions was part of a widespread and popular phenomenon that swept Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century, as large numbers of people poured into the prisons and asylums both

4

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

connected to and outside of their immediate communities, hoping to inspect the buildings and the people confined within them.2 Armour Jr., Ellice, and Bates were merely three of the thousands of ‘casual’ visitors who felt compelled to tour one of the growing number of prisons and asylums across Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century. For early reformers concerned with the treatment of the criminal and the insane, prisons and asylums represented optimism, ‘scientific’ progress, and a solution to many of the social problems that seemed to accompany industrialization. The newly designed institutions heralded an era of humanitarianism for their proponents, the opportunity to cure the insane and reform the criminal, and symbolized modernization, improvement, and the forward march of individual communities and broader society. The excitement that surrounded the establishment of prisons and asylums was contagious, spreading throughout society and inspiring fascination among people from a variety of economic and cultural backgrounds. Newspapers and magazines frequently reported on events and issues connected to prisons and asylums, but, even more commonly, people from all walks of life voluntarily descended upon these institutions. Not content to simply read about the reformative practices, disciplinary regimes, and, of course, the individuals found inside prisons and asylums, members of the general populace – people who were neither officially nor intimately connected to penal or medical reform – also inspected in great numbers these institutions for themselves. Visitors watched inmates and patients at work, spoke with them about their lives and views of confinement, and occasionally insisted on experiencing, albeit temporarily, solitary confinement and physical restraint. The majority of these visitors were not professionally or intimately connected to the institutions they toured. They were not members of the medical or legal elite, nor were they visiting friends or relatives inside the institution. Rather, they were members of the general populace who, for various reasons, were drawn to and eagerly entered into the physical boundaries of lunatic asylums and prisons in the nineteenth century. This book is concerned with the interest of people such as Armour Jr., Ellice, and Bates in North America’s prisons and asylums, the experiences they had while touring them, the attitudes of institutional employees towards public visitors, and the interactions that took place between visitors and the confined. Through the prism of visiting, it questions and seeks to complicate conventional representations of the experience of confinement and the relationship between prisons, asy-

Introduction

5

lums, and broader society. Traditionally, penitentiaries and asylums have been portrayed by scholars as existing on the margins of society, their inmates secluded and cut off from all contact with the outside world. In particular, pioneering scholars such as Michel Foucault and David J. Rothman tended to depict asylums or penitentiaries as dumping grounds for undesirables and as physically isolated from the rest of society. In his foundational study, The Discovery of the Asylum, Rothman emphasized segregation and argued, ‘the new institutions were in every sense apart from society, bounded by sturdy walls and by administrative regulations that self-consciously and successfully separated inmate from outsider.’3 Ellen Dwyer also claimed that the nineteenthcentury asylum ‘remained as aloof as possible’ from greater society and that there was ‘relatively little public interest in readily available but mundane information about asylum[s].’4 Over recent decades historians have been revising these interpretations by situating cultural and penal practices within their broader cultural context and revealing the role played by the laity in penal and medical discourses. That the visiting public was a common presence in daily prison and asylum life suggests another and very important way in which the notion of unilateral institutional segregation is a chimera. Rather than existing in isolation where inmates and patients were hidden from the outside world, nineteenth-century prisons and asylums were in some ways porous and permeable institutions characterized by complex and multilayered social interactions. Moreover, the interactions and exchanges that took place between these institutions and society had implications for employees, the public, and the institutionalized themselves. Although lay visiting has occasionally been mentioned in the histories of crime and madness, it has not yet been studied as a phenomenon in its own right.5 When the topic does surface, writers have often dismissed institutional tourism as a trite, prurient practice that reveals the vulgarity of an earlier era. Considering the sensibilities of our own time surrounding the exhibition of humans, such an interpretation is difficult to resist. At first glance, the practice does appear to be purely voyeuristic, and, certainly, many visitors did treat custodial institutions as circuses where inmates and patients were spectacles to be gawked at. However, when the multiple meanings of this controversial Victorian pastime are unpacked and examined within the context of their own time, the practice of admitting the public to prisons and asylums becomes something more than mere gratuitous spectatorship. Similar to the audiences of murder accounts described by Karen Halttunen, visi-

6

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

tors were not simply motivated by a ‘degraded pursuit of the thrill of sensation for its own sake,’ but, instead, often used institutional tours as a means of understanding the world around them.6 As such, the history of public visiting elucidates not only the widespread fascination of the general populace with mental illness and crime, but the place prisons and asylums held within the nineteenth-century cultural landscape as well. As will be argued in this book, visiting had complex motivations, economic imperatives, and, in a way, moral implications (for the observer and the observed). Perhaps most important, visiting prevented the complete isolation of the insane and the criminal from greater society. Although some resented the presence of strangers, the fact that many citizens were not entirely ignorant of the conditions inside these institutions and were excited about examining them in person is significant and undermines the notion that only ‘experts’ were concerned with the treatment of the criminal or the insane. Institutional tourism provided the masses with a means to engage in debates surrounding the asylum and the penitentiary and to educate themselves, in a society that exalted first-hand observation and self-improvement, on the topics of insanity and criminality. Some ‘experts’ may have dismissed the public as uneducated and meddlesome, yet many visitors believed they performed an important role in the care and treatment of the institutionalized. The practice further helped to foster community pride in these institutions, as citizens flocked to their grounds on holidays and insisted on showing them to tourists. For many, prisons and asylums were conceived not as shameful or abhorrent institutions, but as emblematic of the modern, progressive status of society. Furthermore, although it often created problems, for many prison wardens and asylum superintendents inviting tourists into their institutions represented one way to foster greater support among the populace, to demonstrate the efficacy of their methods, and to increase the revenue of their institutions through admission fees, donations, or the selling of items manufactured by the confined. In regard to the institutionalized themselves, the implications of visiting were much more complex than earlier scholars had assumed. Riddled with tensions, contradictions, and power imbalances, visiting nevertheless could provide a diversion from the monotony of institutional routine and an opportunity to subvert official rules and regulations in fleeting yet symbolic ways. As the actions of many prisoners and patients suggest, visitors were not necessarily unwanted intruders,

Introduction

7

and some inmates endeavoured to use their presence as a means to improve the conditions of their confinement. At the heart of this book is the argument that prisons and asylums were not simply sites of confinement, but, within the context of the Victorian period, were also sites that fostered popular understandings of and insight into criminal behaviour and mental illness. Visits by ordinary people – local residents and tourists from other communities – were an important part of the nineteenth-century cultural economy and helped to mould medical, penal, and popular strains of thought. Both prisons and asylums are analysed in this study, as this approach offered the opportunity to examine more fully society’s views of confinement. Most visitors included inspections of both of these institutions on their excursions and, in many crucial ways, asylum and prison ‘tourism’ were part of the same phenomenon. Prisons and asylums shared similarities in regard to the experience of confinement, the motivations and reactions of visitors, and administrators’ attitudes towards the touring public. Moreover, these institutions emerged during the same period and were based on similar principles of reforming deviant behaviour. As Daniel Francis and C. James Taylor have argued, ‘Both were intended to be therapeutic, as opposed to simply custodial, institutions. Both served as “laboratories” for new techniques of behavioural management. Both attempted to use architecture as a force for moral development. Both were created in a burst of reformist optimism, and both deteriorated, partly through mismanagement.’7 Exploring both types of institution therefore offered critical insight into a popular activity that attracted tens of thousands of people throughout the nineteenth century and influenced the public’s understanding of crime and mental illness, as well as notions of community identity and social progress. In spite of their similarities, there are important distinctions between prisons and asylums, which will be addressed throughout the book. Inmates’ and patients’ access to freedom, their interactions with outsiders and each other, and the institutions in which they were housed differed in significant ways. Just as those confined in custodial institutions did not represent a homogeneous mass, so too did visitors’ experiences and reasons for entering into a prison or an asylum differ as well. Although references are made to some of the ‘professional’ visitors or prominent reformers who toured custodial institutions and the family members or friends who came to visit relatives or acquaintances, it is the thousands of casual observers with which I am concerned. I use the term ‘insti-

8

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

tutional tourism’ to refer to prison and asylum visiting by the general public, regardless of whether their motives stemmed from voyeurism, education, curiosity, or a desire to reform the treatment of the confined and the institutions that housed them. By focusing on how the practice was represented in the nineteenth century, it becomes clear that lay visiting held multiple, overlapping, and often contradictory meanings and significance for society at the time. Incorporating both types of institutions does pose a number of potential problems, especially considering the attitudes of some wardens, superintendents, patients, inmates, and reformers in the nineteenth century. Many associated with one type of institution, whether it be correctional or psychiatric, sought to distinguish it from the other and abhorred any attempt to treat them as one. This book does not seek to erase the important distinctions between prisons and asylums or collapse the experience of penal incarceration with asylum institutionalization, but instead hopes to retain sensitivity to their similarities and differences and to use visiting as a means of exploring popular views of institutional care. Moreover, other types of institutions often appeared in the touring public’s accounts and could have been included as well, such as orphanages, schools, hospitals, and ‘deaf and dumb’ asylums as they were then called. However, none captured the attention and fascination of the public (or inspired criticism or optimism) more than prisons and asylums. Prisons and asylums were truly part of the public discourse in the nineteenth century, engaging the interest of society and regularly appearing as topics for discussion in magazines, newspapers, and travel accounts. Overall, the tendency of the public to treat prisons and asylums together as symbols of social improvement, enlightenment, and national pride and the compulsion to seek entry into both of them were too great to overlook. This book aims to expand our comprehension of the culture of prisons and asylums by examining their functioning and dynamics on a level that looks beyond the rhetoric and practices of officials and prominent reformers. Emphasizing the importance of locating prisons and asylums, crime and madness, within their broader cultural context, I concentrate on the moments of collusion between the ‘free’ world and the institutionalized in order to illuminate the place of the insane and the criminal in greater society and to examine the impact the general public had upon the daily life and long-term development of prisons and asylums. By exploring the application and interpretation of medical/scientific discourses at the popular level and the ways in which the

Introduction

9

laity engaged itself in reform-oriented debates (such as those surrounding moral treatment and the congregate versus solitary systems), this book attempts to show that prisons and asylums were more than mere physical structures: they were important sites of civic activity, public participation, and enlightenment. Not only does the study of visiting help us to understand popular views of crime and madness, but it also sheds light on the experiences of the confined. Institutional tourism undermines linear theories of power and reveals the struggles that arose as numerous officials attempted to dictate the terms of contact between those in their care and those who visited their institutions. What becomes clear in the process is that, while profoundly constrained and restricted, inmates and patients did not passively allow themselves to be treated as exhibits and, instead, often used the presence of visitors as an opportunity to assert their independence. Often unbeknown to attendants and guards, the institutionalized exchanged contraband items with visitors, used the public’s interest in them to gain early release from prison, communicated with the outside world, and played tricks on gullible visitors. In fact, some critics of visiting were concerned not with the treatment of the institutionalized as spectacles, but, rather, with the exposure of the public to the supposedly demoralizing gaze of the confined. Although references to institutions in other regions of Canada and the United States are occasionally made, this study concentrates on the prisons and public asylums found in Ontario, New York, and Pennsylvania. An examination of particular areas in both central Canada and the northeastern United States was decided upon as both regions were included in tourists’ itineraries and Canadians and Americans alike often toured their neighbour’s institutions. To have isolated visits to Canadian institutions from American ones would have created a division that did not exist for visitors at the time and would have inhibited insight into society’s fascination with and perceptions of medical and penal institutions. Moreover, there are other factors that justify such an approach. The growing middle class in both regions was engaged in a broader urban reform movement that swept the western world in the nineteenth century and focused on a number of social issues, especially the treatment of the criminal and the insane. A shared body of literature existed among those interested in social reform, which further mirrored the relationship among institutional authorities. Prison wardens and asylum superintendents on both sides of the border exchanged annual reports, gathered at annual meetings, conversed through private

10

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

correspondence, and inspected institutions across the continent. The intellectual foundations behind the establishment of penitentiaries and asylums and their physical features, the issues that confronted administrators and the ideologies they embraced or rejected, the incentives that lay behind visits by the public, and the experience of confinement itself were remarkably similar in Canada and the United States. As a result, it was deemed more fruitful to explore the commonalities that existed among these institutions and to employ a cross-border, comparative approach than to dissect differences and adhere to conventional geopolitical boundaries. The institutions concentrated upon in this book include: the asylums located in Kingston, Toronto, and London, Ontario; the asylums found in Utica and on Blackwell’s Island in New York State; the prisons in New York City and Toronto; and the penitentiaries found in Kingston, Auburn, and Philadelphia (the Pennsylvania Eastern State Penitentiary). Massive architectural structures designed to impress, custodial institutions often were located on the outskirts of urban centres and, in the case of psychiatric institutions, were surrounded by extensive grounds and cultivated gardens – features which in themselves attracted many sightseers. In contrast, many city prisons, such as New York City’s Prison and Toronto’s Central Prison, were in the heart of the metropolis and very accessible to the public. However, even institutions that were on the geographic margins of cities still managed to attract hundreds, often thousands, of casual visitors every year. Ferries were taken to see the institutions on Blackwell’s Island near New York City, steamboats were taken along the Hudson River from New York City to see Auburn Penitentiary, and carriages or sleighs were used to visit the Utica Asylum. The improvement of transportation systems, especially the introduction of steamboats and the railway-building frenzy of the mid-nineteenth century, also helped facilitate tours by visitors who did not live in the immediate vicinity of the institution. The communities that housed the institutions focused on in this book ranged in both size and socio-economic character and were at varying stages of urban development. New York City’s population had grown to roughly 813,000 by the end of the 1850s owing to a large influx of immigrants. Toronto, the largest city in what would become the province of Ontario in 1867, also had a growing population, yet it numbered only about 30,000 in 1851. Utica contained a population of approximately 18,000 people in the early 1850s and would grow steadily in the following decades, particularly as a result of the textile industry

Introduction

11

that developed after the completion of the Erie Canal. Kingston was smaller than Utica at mid-century with its population of 11,585 in 1851, but in its vicinity were a penitentiary and an asylum. By mid-century, it housed six churches, was producing three newspapers, and had established significant milling and quarrying industries. From Toronto, it was a steamboat voyage of approximately eighteen hours or, in winter, a sleigh-drive of a day and a night’s duration.8 The Provincial Penitentiary in Ontario, officially opened in 1835, lay about one mile west of the city in Portsmouth. Located nearby was the Rockwood Asylum, which opened in 1859 and initially was intended for the criminally insane. New York City’s Prison, the Tombs, was situated in the heart of this bustling metropolis at Centre and Franklin Streets. A short distance from the city was Blackwell’s Island, upon which was situated a penitentiary and an asylum (as well as a charity almshouse and a workhouse). Regardless of their population size, location, or degree of industrial development, all of the institutions located in these cities and towns attracted swarms of tourists and visitors year-round. The early history of these communities and the process of institutional building are discussed in the first chapter. Many of the institutional records and government documents pertaining to the institutions located in Ontario, New York, and Pennsylvania were consulted to examine issues such as the debates surrounding visiting, the problems prison wardens and asylum superintendents encountered and the benefits they experienced as a result of this practice, the attitudes of officials towards the confined, and the relationships they tried to forge with greater society – topics that form the focus of the second chapter. The annual reports of prisons and insane asylums constituted key areas of research, as did other government documents that dealt with visiting (including commissions, correspondence, journals, and reports of grand juries). Sources such as the warden’s correspondence for Kingston Penitentiary, the rules and regulations for Auburn Penitentiary, and the daily journals of Dr R.M. Bucke of the London Asylum discussed institutional tourism in detail and helped to elucidate ‘official’ responses to the public’s presence. The opposition of officials to institutional tourism is discussed in the sixth chapter, which serves as a segue to the final chapter on the decline of popular visiting. In order to investigate the interaction between visitors and the institutionalized and to look beyond institutional records and official practices and theories, I consulted a wide range of primary sources. In particular, tour books, newspapers, and magazines revealed pub-

12

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

lic reactions towards prisons and asylums and the practice of visiting more generally. Perhaps most critical to this study, however, were the travel narratives and diaries that documented the experiences of people who toured prisons and asylums. These sources were employed to illuminate the attitudes of the laity towards prisons and asylums and their motives for visiting, matters that are discussed in detail in the third chapter. The fifth chapter returns to the topic of the public’s perspective of visiting by situating visiting within the broader cultural context of the nineteenth century; it examines the multiple meanings of institutional tourism within a society that emphasized first-hand observation and upheld the importance of the spectacle for many purposes, including self-education. The fourth chapter deals with visiting from the perspective of the confined through travel narratives, diaries, newspapers, and institutional reports. Inevitably, the experiences and perceptions of inmates and patients were the most difficult to retrieve. While a few documents have been left to us that were written by the institutionalized – such as the periodical The Opal (1851–60), written and edited by patients at Utica Asylum – it is the words of others that often must be relied upon. By reading these sources carefully, a few parts of the puzzle concerning the meaning of confinement and the impact the presence of visitors had upon those who were institutionalized can be revealed. The fifth chapter examines the views of officials who were opposed to visiting in the nineteenth century, individuals who tended to constitute a minority. Their desire to create more closed institutions and redefine the public’s involvement in prison and asylum affairs would be realized only at the turn of the century. This change, specifically the decline of visiting and the diminished interaction between prisons and asylums and the outside world, are the focus of the final chapter. In addition to institutional records and other published literature, cultural artefacts, specifically mass-produced postcards of asylums and jails, serve to examine the promotion of institutions as virtual ‘civic monuments,’ or as tourists sites within the popular imagination, and to explore the transformation that took place in the relationship between custodial institutions and greater society. The meaning and significance of visiting would be redefined gradually at the turn of the century and with this would come a shift in attitudes towards prisons and asylums. Through a variety of historical documents, this book questions traditional portrayals of the relationship between asylums, prisons, and their greater communities, and seeks to uncover both popular attitudes

Introduction

13

towards the insane and the criminal and the experiences of the inmates themselves. It is these moments of interaction that allow us to understand better the treatment of the insane and the criminal in nineteenthcentury society and the pressures institutional authorities faced in their efforts to foster public support and to develop programs of reform or systems of discipline. The book is influenced by earlier studies of institutions, particularly those by David J. Rothman, Michel Foucault, Andrew Scull, and David Garland, which challenged teleological interpretations of medical and penal practices and sought to elucidate the social, political, and economic implications of institutionalization. Although the books of these authors stretch back over several decades, they still remain some of the most influential and seminal works in the field. In regard to more recent research, this book draws on the works of historians of crime and madness who have examined prisons and asylums within their broader social milieux, as well as the cultures that developed within them. Scholars have been exploring the many dimensions of the history of incarceration beyond the perspective of the medical or penal profession for many years now, often documenting employee and inmate subcultures that could be subversive and defiant, coercive or violent, dehumanizing or oppressed, tragic or vibrant.9 Furthermore, many have moved outside the asylum’s walls to situate mental illness within the broader nexus of nineteenth-century society and reveal the ways in which the institutional experience tells only a very small part of the story. For example, Akihito Suzuki’s Madness at Home highlights the importance of families in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in England and reveals the role played by the public in defining and constructing psychiatric discourses. Moreover, an emerging body of literature has challenged the idea that the asylum eclipsed other methods of dealing with the mentally ill and, instead, argues that community or familial care remained the primary response. In particular, Peter Bartlett and David Wright, editors of the book Outside the Walls of the Asylum, criticize historians for their narrow focus on the asylum and institutionalization, claiming that this approach has obfuscated other responses to mental illness even though ‘mental hospitals never replaced community care.’10 While still concentrating on institutional responses to deviance, I continue in this vein by situating prisons and asylums within their broader communities and emphasizing the interchanges that took place between the ‘free’ and the confined. Certainly, visits by the public add another dimension to the older narrative that these institutions isolated the criminal and the insane from society,

14

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

hid them within their walls, and cut them off from all outside contact. Although the presence of people entering the institution on business or to visit a relative and the high turnover rate of patients in asylums further helped to diminish the isolation of prisons and asylums from the surrounding community, the widespread interest and curiosity these institutions generated among the general populace and the laity’s efforts to study, for a variety of reasons, the confined ensured that prisons and asylums would be prominent, and at times very dynamic, places of social involvement. Consequently, at least in this one regard, punishment did not become privatized and insanity did not become hidden simply with the construction of edifices to house those labelled deviant. Instead, the public would play an important role in determining the shape these institutions would take and the place they would hold within the nineteenth-century social and cultural landscape. A wide array of secondary sources outside of medical and criminal history is employed in this book to analyse the many themes and theoretical aspects connected to visiting, sources that proved to be particularly helpful in situating the practice within the context of nineteenth-century culture as explored in chapter 5. Literature that deals with transgression and turn-of-the-century middle-class slumming helped me to address and problematize the power dynamics that existed between visitors and inmates. The works of Judith Walkowitz, Vanessa R. Schwartz, and Keith Gandal, all of which focus on the spectacularization of city life in the nineteenth century, were especially influential and indirectly highlighted important parallels between visiting and broader Victorian culture.11 Similarly, the large number of studies that examine either nineteenth-century freak shows or the theme of the exhibition, such as the monographs by Robert Bogdan, Keith Walden, and Steven Conn, demonstrate the importance of studying perceptions as culturally constructed and rooted in a specific time and place.12 John C. Burnham’s How Superstition Won and Science Lost argues that the Victorian emphasis on self-education and self-improvement inspired popular interest in science, a trend that, like institutional tourism, reflected widespread social optimism.13 As well, Daniel Pick’s work on Victorian society’s interest in the science of crime and the physiognomy of degeneration and Jonathan Crary’s and Martin Jay’s studies of visual culture help to clarify the symbolism of visiting and popular perceptions of prisons and asylums.14 By drawing on such sources, this work has developed around the notion that visiting can be seen as part of the repertoire of Victorian pursuits, many of which were rooted in

Introduction

15

a fascination with the bizarre and legitimized by scientific discourse. However, as the literature on custodial institutions and popular science helped to clarify, visiting did not represent mere voyeurism, but was rationalized at the time as part of the nineteenth-century impulse towards self-improvement and the study of human nature. While exploring the phenomenon of visiting from the perspective of institutional officials, the public, and the institutionalized, this book grapples not only with the cultural meaning and roles ascribed to the activity, but with its deeper implications concerning power and authority, coercion and consent. When analysed with the theories of Antonio Gramsci and Ian McKay in mind, visiting can be seen as connected to issues surrounding the broader process of state formation and conformity. Was visiting simply a means of creating and entrenching identity and consensus among a socio-economic elite? Visiting may have been part of a hegemonic enterprise to regulate behaviour and may have allowed the governing elite to exercise control while fostering the impression of social involvement; yet many factors also point to the possibility that visitors undermined disciplinary regimes and thwarted the state’s autonomy in some ways. In his article ‘The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,’ McKay refers to penal and criminal codes, schools and legislation as ‘grids of power … through which a given hegemonic “social” was constructed and centred, and the forces of resistance capable, at certain times, of effecting far-reaching changes of the project itself.’15 Prisons and asylums were part of the state’s ‘grid of power,’ but, as will be discussed throughout this book, visiting in some ways complicated rather than contributed to the process of creating hegemony and could represent one form of resistance to authority. The implications of visiting were never straightforward: the interactions involved were based on profoundly unequal yet fluctuating power relations that embodied negotiation, performance, and contested meanings among the public, inmates, and institutional authorities. Attending to nuances of power and multiple perspectives is pivotal to understanding the significance of institutional visiting and the implications of its disappearance. Many scholars who have referred to institutional tourism have criticized nineteenth-century visitors, judging their curiosity in negative terms and perceiving the practice as nothing less than a pesky, outdated vestige of earlier centuries. The demise of visiting has been portrayed as an advancement, as the victory of humanitarianism over spectatorship, and little importance has been granted to the fact that this practice

16

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

generated exchanges between the confined and greater society. With regard to the eventual exclusion of visitors to the St Louis Asylum, Jennifer A. Crets claimed, ‘one of the more shameful Gilded Age St. Louis attractions closed its doors to tourists.’16 Was this practice really shameful? Were tourists merely interested in exploiting the miseries of others, and can the confined simply be seen as victims of voyeuristic visitors or opportunistic prison wardens and asylum superintendents? Of course, there was a wide range of factors that encouraged people to tour North America’s institutions and a variety of reactions both the stranger and the confined would experience as a result of these interactions. However, this book suggests that, while nevertheless problematic, the fact that society was not oblivious to the interiors of prisons and asylums and those housed within them is extremely important, and the exchanges that took place between outsiders and the institutionalized must not be neglected. By dismissing institutional visitors as simply barbaric voyeurs, we risk succumbing to a teleological interpretation of the past that is based on assumption. More specifically, we fail to appreciate the optimism, engagement, and excitement that surrounded the issue of social reform and the widespread interest in mental illness, crime, and the treatment of the confined that resonated throughout nineteenth-century society. Unfortunately, today the conditions inside prisons and psychiatric hospitals attract only sporadic attention in Canada and the United States: the public has distanced itself from these institutions, and the nineteenth-century fascination with penal and medical practices and the desire for innovation has arguably been replaced by a lack of awareness, concern, or curiosity. To be clear, this book certainly does not advocate a resumption of the practice of visiting. Nevertheless, I argue that in many ways the decline of visiting cannot be assumed to constitute a simple victory of progress or humanitarianism, and we must critically reflect on what has been both gained and lost over time.

1 The Establishment of Custodial Institutions and the Early Practice of Visiting

In 1835, the Penitentiary for the Province of Canada in Kingston received its first inmates. In the institution’s earliest annual report, the rules and regulations for such issues as the management of the prison, the responsibilities of employees, and the punishment that recalcitrant convicts would face were defined. Included in the report was a section entitled, ‘Visitors.’ It established: Free admission at the gate, between the hours of ten and twelve o’clock in the afternoon, each day, except Sunday, when visitors are not admitted, shall be granted to such persons only as are privileged by law to enter, and that all other persons (except under circumstances hereafter specified) shall be liable to the payments of admission fees, as follows: Male adults 1s 3d each Females and children 7½ d each1

As was the case for many prisons and public asylums in nineteenthcentury North America, administrators of the penitentiary expected the public to be a frequent presence in their institution. Consequently, policies were devised in an attempt to govern the terms of their admission, thereby ensuring that the penitentiary would not be isolated from the greater community beyond its walls. Prison wardens and asylum superintendents were not mistaken in their estimation of public interest. Throughout the century, tens of thousands of tourists passed through some of the continent’s most reputable, or perhaps most notorious, prisons and asylums. Whereas Auburn Penitentiary purportedly attracted 12,916 visitors in one year ‘from curiosity alone,’2 the superintendent of the New York State Asy-

18

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

lum at Utica boasted, ‘the institution is so open to the public, that more than 10,000 people visit and go through the wards yearly.’3 With so many people interested in seeing the interiors of prisons and asylums, institutional officials addressed the issue of visiting in a range of forums, including newspapers, annual reports, and government inquiries, and endeavoured to demonstrate the effectiveness of their therapeutic or reformative measures to both government authorities and the general populace. Newly erected prisons and asylums stood as testaments to emerging attitudes regarding crime, mental illness, punishment, reform, and the management of social problems. These new institutions symbolized the economic prosperity of the communities in which they were established and heralded for many a new era of state involvement, civic participation, and humanitarian care. In this chapter, the historical background of both institutional tourism and prison and asylum reform will be discussed, followed by an overview of the official regulations governing Canadian and American prisons and asylums. Understanding this broader history helps to highlight the significant changes that took place in the nineteenth century, changes that transformed prisons and asylums into symbols of modernization and exciting destinations for the inquisitive and enthralled public. Governments financially funded these institutions and sought to monitor them through legislation, inspections, and governing bodies. Furthermore, state regulation often supported a system of formally organized associations of private citizens eager to watch over institutional operations. Nevertheless, this web of government control coexisted with the informal public surveillance of lay visitors. The Early History of Institutional Tourism A growing number of prisons and asylums that espoused modern principles of reform began to dot the landscape of many North American communities in the early nineteenth century. These prisons and asylums departed significantly from earlier institutions of confinement in many ways, but the visits from the general populace that they attracted were not unique to the nineteenth century. Indeed, institutional visiting existed for centuries prior to the nineteenth century in many western countries. However, although the phenomenon of visiting in the context of the nineteenth century has been largely neglected by historians, the history of this practice in earlier periods has generated a certain

The Early Practice of Visiting 19

degree of attention and has been traced by historians as far back as the second century, when Judaeo-Christian theology represented visiting the confined as an act of benevolence. According to Matthew 25:36, Jesus predicted that those who had visited prisons would be counted among the righteous, and stated, ‘I was in prison, and ye came unto me.’4 The tradition of public visits to prisons flourished in eighteenthcentury Europe, when the relationship between the outside world and the carceral institution was especially porous. In many ways, eighteenth-century prisons were thriving social centres owing to the constant flow of visitors in and out of their walls. Facilitated by the laxity of regulations and entrenched social customs, free members of the public faced few restrictions if they wished to visit a jail.5 Historian Randall McGowen has highlighted the permeability of English carceral institutions, explaining that ‘the prison wall scarcely separated the community created among the prisoners from the wider world.’6 Although few institutions designed specifically for the mentally ill existed during this period and many were incarcerated alongside convicts in prisons, those asylums that had been established were also sites of spectacle frequented by the curious. Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, England, commonly referred to as ‘Bedlam,’ is perhaps the best-known asylum where the tradition of visiting had been established and has been traced back to 1632.7 In this asylum, institutional tourism was so popular that a significant number of people paid the ‘penny entrance fee for the entertainment provided by the antics of the mad in this human zoo’ during Augustan England.8 Whether the practice of institutional tourism was driven by mere voyeurism during this time remains to be critically examined, yet it is clear that not all were pleased with this state of affairs. Seeking to redefine the objective and experience of confinement, prison reform advocate John Howard was deeply concerned in the late eighteenth century with the ‘unregulated boundary between the prison and the community.’9 Nevertheless, such opposition seems to have been voiced by only a minority of critics. Consequently, the practice continued in many European institutions, especially in France and England. Public visiting began to burgeon in North America in the nineteenth century and, just as the perceived purpose of prisons and asylums was being redefined, institutional tourism also would be dramatically transformed. In spite of occasionally expressed fears that public visitors would undermine prison and asylum regimes, most institutional officials would encourage, while simultaneously attempting to manage, a close relationship with the outside world.

20

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Many scholars have assumed visiting either ceased in the nineteenth century or became a marginal pastime engaged in by few. The ‘theatre’ of madness and punishment and the exhibition of the mentally insane or the criminal was supposedly declining, as sensibilities surrounding the confined changed. Michel Foucault and Pieter Spierenburg both highlighted the trend towards the privatization of mental hospitals and carceral institutions, arguing that the physical body was no longer the site of punishment and coercion.10 More recently, Peter Okun described the removal of punishment from public visibility and the neutralization of criminal danger through spatial containment, invisibility, and the control of ‘private knowledge.’11 However, some studies in this vein overlook the continuity of connections between institutions and their broader communities and, instead, tend to treat nineteenth-century prisons and asylums as impenetrable micro-worlds that did not extend beyond the walls around them. Focusing on certain elements of the discourse surrounding asylums and prisons, some have assumed that the occasional comment made by superintendents and wardens regarding the need to remove the mentally ill or the criminal from all contact with the outside world automatically materialized into practice. In contrast to the depiction of custodial institutions as increasingly isolated from society, the tradition of visiting not only continued in North America, but flourished well into the late 1800s. In fact, in spite of the reforms taking place in prisons and asylums, there was not an abrupt rupture with past practices of institutional tourism. While significant elements of the discourse surrounding the practice were transformed and its meaning theorized to be congruent with contemporary society, visits to institutions were remarkably commonplace and the public would constitute a prominent presence in North American prisons and asylums alike. Nineteenth-century North American institutional tourism had its roots in earlier centuries, but three important features changed during the Victorian period: the way in which visiting was actively either promoted or discouraged by administrators, the enthusiasm with which the public responded, and the language used by the public and officials in order to justify the practice. Previously, there was no explicit rationale behind the toleration of lay visiting, and it appears to have existed more as an informal custom than as an official policy that was discussed and debated at great length. Owing to a number of factors, such as limited modes of transportation and distribution of printed materials, the activity was not as prevalent as it would become in the nineteenth century with the rise of middle-class tourism, the growth of mass culture, and

The Early Practice of Visiting 21

the slow expansion of leisure time that could be spent away from the rigours of daily survival. The simple fact that these institutions were not very numerous in the eighteenth century further ensured that visiting would not reach its pinnacle in North America until the nineteenth century, when institution-building truly began to burgeon. As prisons and asylums grew in number across the continent, many officials began to argue that there were important reasons to support public tours of their institutions and tried to organize or control this practice more formally than their predecessors had. In addition, printed material and the improvement of transportation systems helped to popularize it to an unprecedented degree. Prisons and Asylums in the Nineteenth Century The spread of asylum and prison visiting was linked to a number economic, political, demographic, and cultural factors, not least of which was the idea of ‘modern’ society. In both Canada and the United States, the nineteenth century was a period of state formation and institution-building and was distinguished by the notion that society and individuals could be reformed. Although their economic and political development differed significantly, the scope of government in both Canada and the United States was expanding: ‘new departments were created, functionaries became more numerous and more professional, and budgets grew’ accordingly.12 Greater amounts of money were being invested in social institutions designed to aid, protect, or ‘improve’ citizenry, and philanthropic and reform organizations helped to foster new approaches to social issues and problems.13 As social reform movements gathered momentum and numbers in both Canada and the United States, an array of issues, including abolition, temperance, educational reform, and women’s rights, captured the attention of those agitating for a better society. Evangelicalism in the first half of the nineteenth century also contributed to the idea that society and individuals could be reformed, rehabilitated, and transformed into productive citizens (especially through institutional care). This sense of optimism and reform helped to generate widespread interest in the treatment of the criminal and the insane. Prior to the nineteenth century, mental illness was perceived as primarily a family problem. If it was not possible for the family to care for an ill relative at home, he or she might be boarded out to another family at the public’s expense. There was no state response to mental

22

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

illness, and the topic itself generated little social concern. However, as communities expanded and populations grew, other methods would be employed as well. If violent, the ‘lunatic’ might be confined in a local jail or almshouse or, if ties to the community were weak, he or she might be forced to leave the community.14 Historians have tended to argue that traditional methods of community care disappeared with the rise of the asylum in the nineteenth century, but recent research has shown that community care persisted and, in fact, remained the primary means for dealing with insanity.15 Nevertheless, while traditional systems of familial and community care arguably remained paramount, institutionalization would become increasingly common in the 1800s and a growing number of those labelled insane and dangerous would be incarcerated as tolerance of their presence diminished. One nineteenth-century commentator explained: The larger the community the greater the difficulty of keeping the insane at home with comfort to themselves and safety to society. As a place grows, this unfortunate class is of necessity gathered more and more into institutions. In the great, crowded, rushing city of to-day there is no place for the mentally unsound. Then, too, an increasing knowledge of morbid mental conditions constantly swells the ranks of the recognized insane by adding to them one and another of those hitherto regarded as merely queer, or morally depraved, or even criminally vicious.16

The growth of asylums was remarkable. In the United States alone, ‘by 1859, almost every northeastern and midwestern legislature supported an asylum; by 1860 twenty-eight of the thirty-three states had public institutions for the insane.’17 The treatment of the criminal prior to the nineteenth century was similar to that of the insane in that institutionalization was not the primary response. In the early colonial period, community banishment was common, an economically expedient way to deal with social outlaws, and fees were also often levied against offenders.18 Those who were sent to local jails were usually accused persons awaiting trial or convicted felons awaiting some form of physical punishment or execution.19 In both Canada and the United States, punishment was bloody, spectacular, and punitive, consisting of whipping, stocks, branding, and public hangings. As punishment was corporal and exemplary, incarceration was usually of a short-term nature and the conditions inside penal institutions did not generate much public concern or interest.

The Early Practice of Visiting 23

By the early nineteenth century, traditional methods of dealing with the insane and the criminal were perceived as inadequate by a growing segment in society and many began to see institutionalization as the preferred solution. As cultural, political, and economic changes took place, the treatment of the insane and criminal was reimagined and a new topography of madness and crime emerged that focused on the promise of institutional treatment. For proponents of incarceration, these institutions would do more than merely serve a custodial or punitive function: they would reform criminals, cure the insane, and ultimately transform deviant individuals into productive members of society. The rise of the social reform movement and the efforts of prominent figures, such as Dorothea L. Dix, helped to popularize the idea that more humane and effective methods of treating the criminal and the insane should be practised in society.20 The idea that penitentiaries and asylums, if properly designed and managed, could be a sign of enlightened humanity and ‘scientific’ progress began to take hold among members of the emerging middle class, and many embarked on careers in an effort to improve the conditions inside prisons and asylums and the treatment of the criminal and mentally ill. Historians have debated the factors that stimulated this new thinking about managing aberrant behaviour and the changes in ideological outlooks that gave rise to the view of institutions as a solution to crime and insanity. In the American context, David J. Rothman argued that these institutions were established as a means of managing and controlling deviant behaviour, while Andrew Scull correlated the changes in capitalist production and the market economy with the need for such institutions in England.21 Concentrating on Upper Canada, Peter Oliver interpreted the rise of the penitentiary as the response of a political elite that shared little in common with the rest of society. A close analysis of the factors that propelled institution-building in Canada and the United States lies beyond the parameters of this study, but what is important for our purposes is the fact that, while other responses persisted, few publicly critiqued the principle of incarceration. Conversely, these new institutions provoked widespread curiosity, excitement, and intrigue among the general populace. So powerful was the acceptance of these institutions in the nineteenth century that exinmates or patients who advocated institutional or legislative reform, such as Elizabeth Packard, usually did not question their supposed need to exist. Fascination with custodial institutions swept both Canadian and

24

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

American society in the nineteenth century and sparked a steady and constant surge in prison and asylum tourism. Although geopolitical boundaries separated the British colony from the recently independent republic, an increasing focus on and preoccupation with the issues of crime, madness, and incarceration transcended their differences. Both regions participated in a frenzy of institution-building in the nineteenth century as a means of dealing with crime and insanity, supposedly growing problems that were clumsily linked in the minds of the middle class to industrialization, modernization, urbanization, immigration, and the progress of ‘civilization.’ Reflecting shifts that were occurring elsewhere in society, architects and managers of prisons and asylums were instilled with a sense of optimism and mission. In particular, they believed they could define new ways to not simply punish criminals and confine the insane but reform them, thereby transforming character and preventing recidivism by means of ‘progressive’ theories and practices. As one writer for the New York Daily Times proclaimed, ‘it has come now to be universally acknowledged that one great object of punishment is Reform. The prisoner must be made not merely to eat the bitter fruits of his doings, and to be a warning to others, but the fruit must be of some good to himself – otherwise Society loses.’22 An annual report for the New York Prison Association further heralded recent changes in society’s approach to crime: ‘Fortunately with the spread of intelligence, juster views are obtaining in regard to the ends and purpose as well as the effects of penal inflictions … The reign of cruelty seems to have passed away.’23 Through measures that were labelled more humane and enlightened than those of preceding generations, criminals could be rehabilitated in a carefully constructed and controlled environment that fostered regular work habits, religious observation, and personal reflection. Of course, at the same time, prison reformers hoped the spectre of incarceration – physically represented in the architectural design of the penitentiary – would serve as a deterrent to individuals teetering on the brink of dissolution. For those labelled mentally ill, the asylum promised a cure by providing a tranquil environment free from the strains of modern life and a healthy regime that included physical exercise and carefully constructed daily schedules. Such were the ideals of early prison and asylum promoters. Generally these new institutions were located on the outskirts of cities, yet segregation from greater society was not a fait accompli as soon as modern prisons and asylums were established. As institutions designed to deal with and incarcerate people labelled deviant, nine-

The Early Practice of Visiting 25

teenth-century prison and asylum buildings have been portrayed by scholars as emblematic of the privatization of punishment and mental illness and the shift in focus from punishing the body to reforming the soul.24 However, while public spectacles of whippings, pillories, and hangings declined as elements of punishment became hidden, change was uneven, compelling some to document the ways in which older penal practices were maintained in spite of their incongruence with nascent notions of liberalism and democracy. Exploring the continuity of physical punishment into mid-twentieth-century Canada, Carolyn Strange highlights the fact that ‘the state continued to inflict physical forms of punishment in the twentieth century even though cultural certainties about the difficult use of pain and death had eroded.’25 In some ways, the practice of institutional tourism – albeit rationalized in ways different from earlier times – is also indicative of how unevenly the privatization of punishment, and by extension the removal of madness from the public realm, occurred in the nineteenth century. While punishment and the treatment for mental illness increasingly became equated with confinement, the public nevertheless retained a presence in both prisons and asylums and remained a witness to institutionalization, punishment, and mental illness, even as notions of humanitarian care moved to the forefront of reform discussions. Unravelling this apparent paradox rests on an understanding of the socially constructed nature of ideas surrounding reform and modernity, and seeing them as products of a specific cultural milieu. The fact that incarceration was not privately controlled by the state with inmates and patients hidden away was not incompatible with the nineteenth-century mentality but instead was fundamental to burgeoning views of modernity, civic responsibility, and democracy. The rationale behind visiting for the public and officials asserted that the practice was more than a mere vestige of earlier centuries; in the nineteenth century, visiting was represented not at odds with but as a fundamental part of the endeavour to improve the treatment of the criminal and the insane and as connected to democratic, civic participation. In History of Madness, Michel Foucault interpreted the persistence of visiting in the age of the great confinement as contradictory to the emerging paradigm of institutionalization and isolation. For Foucault, visiting undermined the ‘process of locking evil away from public view.’ In contrast to the Middle Ages, visiting took on an institutional nature and ‘madness became pure spectacle … offered as an amusement for a self-assured reason.’ As a result, asylums, and prisons as well,

26

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

created physical and spatial distinctions between those constructed as deviant and the rest of society, an isolation and objectification that was reinforced by visiting. Foucault, like many others after him, chose not to address the implications of visiting within the context of the nineteenth century or from the perspectives of the public, but rather used it as a rhetorical foil against which to show the inhumanity of the asylum.26 Doing so obscured not only the tenuous existence of these institutions, but also their inability to operate independently of public scrutiny, their symbolism and significance to the general populace, and the agency of both the public and the confined to inscribe their own set of meanings upon the practice of visiting. As will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter, visiting was neither simply part of the process of containment nor incompatible with emerging ideals of ‘progressive’ treatment and humanitarian care. Rather, it was inextricably tied to nineteenthcentury views of penal, medical, scientific, and social progress. The Establishment and Management of Prisons and Asylums As buildings were constructed and new ideas spread throughout society, people began to see prisons and asylums as important civic institutions that needed to be viewed in person to be understood, appreciated, and monitored. Specific institutions in the United States and Canada would attract great attention from the public, often owing to their location in major urban centres, ‘modern’ or controversial reformative practices, or their tendency to be visited and popularized by literary figures, such as Charles Dickens and Susanna Moodie. In particular, Auburn Penitentiary in New York State attracted significant numbers of visitors throughout the nineteenth century. The penitentiary opened in 1816 and was best known for implementing the congregate system, whereby prisoners slept in separate cells but worked and ate together in silence. In New York City, the local prison also drew large crowds. Construction of this jail began in 1835 on the grounds of the old Fresh Water Pond located on Centre Street between White and Leonard. Modelled along the lines of an Egyptian tomb, the jail was completed three years later and was commonly referred to as ‘the Tombs’ by the wide range of visitors who strolled through its corridors and spoke with its male and female inmates.27 As well, a penitentiary was established in 1832 on an island off of Manhattan, where additional institutions ranging from a workhouse to an asylum were opened. The institutions located here were such popular destinations for visitors that ferry staff often

The Early Practice of Visiting 27

had trouble managing the number of passengers; they even had orders to search passengers for any contraband materials that they might be trying to smuggle to inmates. Also in the United States was the notorious Eastern State Penitentiary, which opened in 1829 in Philadelphia (figure 1). Built on Cherry Hill, the penitentiary was famous for its system of solitary confinement, whereby prisoners worked, slept, and ate alone. It attracted fascination both in the United States and abroad. In Ontario (also called either Upper Canada or Canada West at various points in the nineteenth century), the provincial penitentiary near Kingston opened in 1835 and would be taken over by the federal government after Confederation in 1867. Throughout the century it drew widespread attention from local inhabitants and tourists passing through the region. In 1874, the Central Prison for men located in the growing city of Toronto received its first inmates and served as an intermediary correctional institution. Like the other institutions identified above, the Central Prison was characterized by a steady flow of visitors in and out of its halls. These visitors shaped in indirect and direct ways the management of the institution and the experiences of those found within its walls. Asylums demonstrated similar growth in number and attraction from the public in the nineteenth century. New York State was a pioneer in the establishment of institutions designed not only for the criminal but for those labelled mentally ill. It first established the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in 1839 (figure 2) and, a few years later, the New York State Asylum in 1843. The latter was one of the first large state-funded hospitals in the United States and was situated in the textile city of Utica, which had a growing population who took great pride in its public institutions. Officials of New York’s asylums were engaged with devising new therapeutic practices to cure mental illness and struggled to establish the legitimacy of the emerging field of psychiatry. Their activities, theories, and practices were followed with great interest by members of the general populace, who sought to both read about and view first-hand asylums and their patients. Superintendents shared ideas and results with one another, endeavoured to inform the general populace, and also interacted with their colleagues overseas and across the border. In Canada, alienists (as psychiatrists were then called) were equally excited about new methods being practised in England, France, and the United States, and tried to implement and refine them in the newly established asylums. The earliest asylums for the care of the mentally ill were established in New Brunswick and

Figure 1. Eastern Penitentiary, Philadelphia, 1830s. Engraving with water-colour. The Library Company of Philadelphia.

The Early Practice of Visiting 29

Figure 2. Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1866, 273.

in Quebec, but Ontario quickly embarked on an institution-building enterprise and boasted numerous publicly funded asylums by the end of the century. The first permanent asylum in the province opened in Toronto in 1850. In Kingston, Rockwood Asylum opened in 1858 to house the criminally insane and eventually would serve non-criminal patients. Other cities in the province would follow with the construction of their own asylums, including London in 1870. As was the case for prisons, asylums quickly became popular tourist attractions and generated widespread fascination throughout society. Along with the reformation of practices and the establishment of new institutions came a system of supervision that grew increasingly elaborate as the century progressed. In both Ontario and the United States, wardens and superintendents generally exerted great power within their institutions and experienced little daily intervention in their practices. Nevertheless, they were subject to government inspections and, at least in theory, to the dictates of provincial or state legislation. The institutional structure of asylums and prisons were similar and remained relatively unchanged throughout the nineteenth century. Typically,

30

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

a governing board oversaw the institution. A warden or superintendent was responsible for the daily operations and for the reformative, punitive, or therapeutic practices, while keepers, guards, or attendants ‘managed’ the inmates. As well, in both prisons and asylums, daily schedules were strictly regulated and the labour of inmates and patients was often used to subsidize the cost of running the institution.28 Legislation governing institutional care in New York State followed a pattern which, while not replicated exactly, paralleled that of many other regions as well. In 1836 the legislature of New York passed ‘An Act to Authorize the Establishment of the New York State Lunatic Asylum.’ The construction of the asylum would be presided over by three commissioners appointed by the government. In 1842 another act was passed by which nine managers were appointed and the principal officers chosen. Amariah Brigham was selected as superintendent, H.A. Butolph as assistant physician, E.A. Wetmore as treasurer, Cyrus Chatfield as steward, and Mrs Chatfield as matron.29 The structure was intended to mirror traditional family relations with the superintendent as the patriarchal head. Shortly after the establishment of Utica, another asylum was opened on Blackwell’s Island and would fall under the same legislation. Supervision of New York’s asylums was modified again in 1867, when the governor appointed eight commissioners of public charities to oversee state-funded social welfare institutions, thereby creating the Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities. This arrangement was further changed in 1872, when the legislature authorized the appointment of a special state commissioner in lunacy, who would supervise the internal affairs of both state and local asylums. The first commissioner was John Ordronaux. In 1889, the legislature would replace the solitary commissioner with a commission of three people.30 Like New York’s asylums, the Auburn Penitentiary also experienced growing government supervision in the nineteenth century. Auburn briefly experimented with isolation cells from 1821 to 1823, but the penitentiary was best known for instituting a system of silence with associated labour. The system became known as the congregate system and influenced other prisons such as Ossining (Sing Sing) in New York and the Massachusetts State Prison. Flogging was authorized in 1819, but was banned, in theory, as a form of punishment by an 1847 legislative act. Under this act, inspectors were to visit each state prison in New York at least four times a year, the warden was to keep a punishment register, the chaplain was to visit inmates regularly, a teacher

The Early Practice of Visiting 31

was to be employed to improve the English skills of inmates, and a physician was to be hired to examine the daily provisions of inmates. An asylum for insane convicts was erected on the prison grounds in 1859 and, throughout the nineteenth century, women were confined in the institution as well. The Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadelphia was managed in a similar manner, although its internal disciplinary structure differed. Designed by John Haviland, who was also responsible for New York’s Tombs, Eastern combined solitary confinement with labour as mandated by an 1829 legislative act. Prisoners would sleep, eat, and work in solitude in the confines of their own cell and were not to communicate with anyone other than institutional officials. The first warden of the penitentiary was Samuel R. Wood, who, like other institutional employees of the time, was required to live on the premises. He was overseen by a Board of Inspectors that met regularly, was appointed, and visited the institution periodically. The average sentences were short, although in the 1830s and 1840s some prisoners were jailed for up to twenty-one years.31 Like other penitentiaries and asylums found in both Canada and the United States, the institution faced a number of legislative investigations, the first one of which took place from 1834 to 1835. In spite of consistent criticism, the institution remained committed to the ideals of the solitary system, and only by the end of the century, when employee and space limitations were undeniable, did it begin to gradually change.32 In Ontario, the state was also involved in monitoring the internal workings of prisons and asylums. Initially, the province’s institutions were administered by appointed boards or committees who, while receiving little or no remuneration, were responsible for their building and operation and for establishing standards and policies. However, the arrangements at Kingston Penitentiary appear to have been under government surveillance to a slightly higher degree than was the case at institutions in the United States. The penitentiary was presided over by a board of five appointed inspectors, who were empowered to make the necessary disciplinary rules for the penitentiary and expected to periodically inquire into all matters connected with the government of the institution, including its financial management and the treatment of prisoners. The warden and other officers were required to admit the inspectors to the penitentiary at all times and submit to them all records upon request.33 In 1851, the management of the institution was modified by ‘An Act for the better Management of the Provincial Peni-

32

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

tentiary,’ which replaced the unpaid board of five inspectors with two salaried inspectors.34 These two paid inspectors were responsible only for the penitentiary and were later replaced by the appointment of a permanent Board of Inspectors in 1859. After Confederation, the board would be replaced by a single inspector.35 The provincial asylum in Toronto was governed through similar arrangements as the penitentiary, but it was initially overseen by a board of twelve appointed directors whose powers were even more extensive than the penitentiary inspectors’. The asylum board determined all staff appointments (which were then subject to the approval of the government), salaries, and rules and regulations for the management of the institution.36 Supervision and inspectoral control of Ontario’s institutions increased in 1859 when the Board of Inspectors of Prisons, Asylums, and Public Charities was established, which functioned until Confederation (a similar body was established in New York a few years later). The Rockwood and London asylums would be subject to the same legislation.37 In addition to official government administration of social welfare institutions, associations composed of middle-class citizens who visited prisons and asylums were formed in both the United States and Canada. In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Prison Society had been visiting prisons since 1787. In 1846, the Prison Association of New York obtained an act of incorporation. Although it did not receive state funding, the act gave the association the power to ‘visit, inspect, and examine, all the prisons in the State, and annually report to the legislature their state and condition.’38 In Ontario, the Prisoners Aid Association was formed during the late 1870s. Privately organized, it was nevertheless funded by the government.39 Governments and private organizations aimed to monitor finances, guard against corruption and abuse, and prevent the institution from operating outside of external oversight. Another part of this growing web of regulation would be lay visiting, which was fostered by widespread social interest and new attitudes towards institutional care and treatment. As will be discussed in the following chapter, governments and institutional authorities in the nineteenth century sought to gain widespread support for publicly funded prisons and asylums and allay social fears of corruption and abuse. They would promote the practice of visiting as a means of establishing the legitimacy and reputation of their institutions and to diminish the social and spatial distance between prisons and asylums and greater society. For members of the public, not only would visiting stimulate social engagement with

The Early Practice of Visiting 33

penal and medical reform, but it also would be connected to emerging notions of democracy and civic participation. Important changes were taking place in both Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century that profoundly influenced the treatment of the mentally ill and those convicted of crimes; these changes manifested in the enduring experiment of confinement. As perceptions were transformed and past practices reconsidered, buildings designed for specific purposes were constructed in growing numbers and quickly would become the focus of discussions surrounding crime and mental illness. The social and ideological landscape was changing in the nineteenth century, and these new institutions would speak to a reconceptualization of mental illness, crime, reform, community responsibility, and the role of both the state and its citizens. As the state expanded, more money was directed towards establishing and maintaining prisons and asylums, and these institutions would take on significance that reached far beyond their walls. All aspects of these new institutions, from architecture to programs of reform, were carefully planned and formulated and represented new thinking about individuals, the potential of reform, and the management of social problems. However, these institutions constituted more than just a response to perceived social problems or the desire to shut away deviancy. Instead, they represented to people not merely a solution to crime and madness, but a means to improve society and humanity more broadly and, as such, would garner attention from across society. As a result of the widespread interest prisons and asylums sparked throughout society, not only did legislation, government inspections, and internal policies have to be devised, but the accessibility of these institutions to the public would also have to be carefully considered.

2 Open Doors: Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

As new institutions were constructed and hopes for their potential spread throughout society, legislatures and government officers sought to foster the impression that prisons and asylums were being closely monitored by the state. In addition, private organizations were formed to further assist with efforts to reform inmates and patients. Nevertheless, in spite of these systems of regulation and surveillance (which generally did not interfere with the authority vested in the superintendent or warden), many officials saw visiting by the general populace as serving an essential role in the legitimization of prisons and asylums. Indeed, rather than working outside the parameters of public opinion, officials tended to be very concerned with how their institutions were perceived by society and vigorously sought to implement measures that would bolster popular support. Although a few individuals in the nineteenth century believed public tours were simply an anachronistic and barbaric pastime left over from earlier times, North American authorities responsible for the management or supervision of prisons and asylums (including officers, governors of states, inspectors, wardens, superintendents, physicians, and chaplains) regularly addressed the practice of visiting. For some of those who were intimately or professionally connected to nineteenth-century prisons and asylums, lay tourism represented an ideological conundrum: should inmates and patients be exposed to the public gaze or should they be completely isolated from the outside world? The question was not easily resolved, and, as a result, the popular pastime led to lengthy and often heated discussions over whether or not the public should have access to these institutions at all. As the number of prisons and asylums across North America grew

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

35

in the nineteenth century and many preoccupied themselves with reforming the treatment of the insane and the criminal, the practice of visiting continued to expand well into the late 1800s. In greater and greater numbers, crowds flocked to see the grounds of the London Asylum, opened in 1870, or to observe the workings of the solitary system in Philadelphia’s Eastern Penitentiary, established in 1829. Although many visitors’ incentives transcended the simple desire to catch a ‘peep show’ of inmates and patients, a growing number of officials began to discuss the issue of institutional tourism and to evaluate its positive and negative ramifications on inmates, patients, and the institutions that housed them. While articulating and attempting to enforce policies regarding visitors, they struggled to control and define the relationship prisons and asylums would have with broader society, discovering in the process that the will of the populace could not be easily circumvented. In their discussions of the role of the public and the purpose of prison and asylum tours, many officials concurred that unilateral segregation from society was neither desirable nor beneficial for their institutions. Views varied among individual authorities, but all officials were cognizant of the fact that prison or asylum affairs were not merely a concern for elite circles in society. Until the late nineteenth century, most supported open institutions and welcomed the presence of visitors; those who were opposed to visiting and managed to exclude the public constituted a very small minority. While there were significant differences between prisons and asylums, the debates over the presence of visitors in these institutions and the regulations regarding the ‘government of spectators’1 were strikingly similar and illuminate administrators’ perceptions of their institutions and those under their care, the intellectual currents informing their practices, and the pressures they faced in their efforts to develop effectively managed institutions. In particular, discussions surrounding visiting highlight the social, political, and economic factors that influenced institutional policies. Penal and medical considerations were not the only variables behind institutional programs of reform, but, as the issue of visiting demonstrates, officials also had to consider the desire of the public to play a role in the affairs of prisons and asylums. In this chapter, visiting is analysed from the viewpoint of prison wardens, asylum superintendents, and other officials and reformers connected to prisons and asylums in order to explore the relationships that institutional employees endeavoured to forge with greater society. The

36

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

focus here is on why officials supported the opening of institutions to the public. Institutional records are employed to shed light on asylum and prison policies regarding visitors, as well as the attitudes of those professionally connected to them. Of course, official policies did not always reflect what was actually being practised, and many at the time identified their inconsistencies and inaccuracies.2 Nevertheless, institutional documents help to illuminate the place employees envisioned for their institutions within nineteenth-century society. The annual reports of the London Asylum, the warden’s letter books of the Kingston Penitentiary, and the reports of the Boston Prison Discipline Society (founded by the American reformer and silent system advocate Louis Dwight in 1825) are merely a few of the forums that reveal ‘strangers’ were not a peripheral matter to those professionally connected to custodial institutions. Defences of visiting were articulated, the annual number of visitors and the revenue derived from them were recorded (albeit usually unsystematically), and the reactions of visitors and inmates were often commented upon as well.3 There was no unanimity as to whether the tradition of visiting should continue or be encouraged, and a later chapter will focus on opposition to the practice. However, all agreed upon the fact that members of the public were interested in seeing the interiors of prisons and asylums and that they had the potential to influence the workings of these institutions and the lives of those within them. Welcoming Visitors Most prison wardens, asylum superintendents, and government officials did not believe that custodial institutions could be easily isolated from greater society, nor did many of them actually desire complete segregation. Instead, a number of administrators strove to foster close ties with the communities beyond their walls, believing such relationships to be beneficial for a number of reasons. Moreover, many recognized that the public was crucial to these institutions, and perceptions of and attitudes towards prisons and asylums were as dependent on ‘official’ discourse as they were on the laity’s experiences while passing through them. Regardless of the specific incentives that lay behind the establishment of prisons and asylums or the reformation of those already in existence, great faith was instilled in these ‘modern’ institutions and their potential to ameliorate many problems associated with urban, industrial life. However, the administrators to whom these re-

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

37

sponsibilities fell quickly discovered that attaining the ideals of prison and asylum founders was, to say the least, an arduous task. As new or reformed institutions, there were many issues to be grappled with and resolved and many social and economic factors to be considered. In particular, state-run institutions relied on government funding, and, thus, many authorities felt it was essential for them to have public approval. Inevitably, this led many wardens, superintendents, and government officials to devise strategies and embark on a campaign to galvanize popular support. Obtaining public confidence was no simple feat for prison wardens and asylum superintendents, especially since some of the printed information available to the general populace painted a grim picture of custodial institutions. In the nineteenth century, shocking tales of conditions inside prisons and asylums appeared periodically in newspapers, sparking concern over the treatment of the institutionalized and fostering suspicion towards the buildings that housed them. One commentator noted, ‘The press is teeming with records of crime,’4 and the frequent appearance of articles with such headlines as ‘Rumored Barbarities in the Utica Insane Asylum’ generated fear and mistrust among the population.5 Doubts lingered that modern prisons and asylums remained dungeons where abuse and misery abounded, even while proponents exalted their supposed efficacy and humanitarian practices. Nevertheless, the public’s fascination was not restricted to the scandalous. While scepticism surfaced periodically in journals and charges of corruption occasionally were raised, people endeavoured to be acquainted with all facets of institutional practices, ranging from heating systems to cell size, and from committal rates to holiday fairs. The interest of greater society in the conditions inside prisons and asylums and the treatment of inmates and patients remained constant over the nineteenth century, evinced by the frequency with which articles on these matters appeared in newspapers in the United States and Canada and the fact that the reports of legislators, commissioners, government inspectors, and grand juries were regularly reprinted in the popular press. Annual reports for penitentiaries and asylums were written in a language accessible for general consumption and widely disseminated, and reflected the desire of institutional officials to broaden the public’s awareness as well as the receptivity of lay society to the topics of crime and insanity. Amariah Brigham, the first superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, was well aware of the fact that society was captivated by the topics of mental illness and the asylum,

38

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

and ‘labored to diffuse a more extended knowledge of the subject of insanity.’ His means for this were public lectures, the publication of annual reports in newspapers, and the Journal of Insanity, which he established in 1844 with the objective of ‘populariz[ing] the study of insanity.’6 For Brigham and many other wardens and superintendents, social interest was palpable and needed to be not just satiated but nourished owing to the many advantages it offered. Widespread interest in these institutions is further reflected by the fact that the recommendations, criticisms, and impressions of ‘professional’ visitors or prominent reformers commonly appeared in the popular press, and many Canadians and Americans would have been familiar with names such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Dorothea L. Dix, Mary Carpenter, and Charles Dickens. However, while the public could acquire much information from newspapers and other printed media, authorities hoped to dispel negative publicity and persistent stereotypes by advocating people view their institutions in person and see for themselves the great progress that had been made in them. Owing in part to the proliferation of scandalous exposés and government inquiries, many administrators and reformers felt that the only way to alleviate social scepticism and bolster public support was to open their doors to the greater populace. Consequently, superintendents and wardens alike encouraged the practice of visiting in newspapers and annual reports, hoping to stimulate social engagement and redefine views of prisons and asylums. John Gray, warden of New York’s City Prison, wrote in the institution’s annual report for 1854: ‘I invite the inspection of every well disposed person inclined to examine it during visiting hours.’ Similarly, Richard Maurice Bucke, superintendent of the London Asylum from 1877 to 1902, wrote a letter to the London Free Press in 1880, emphasizing that ‘the Asylum is always open to inspection by the whole public.’7 The nineteenth century may have been an era of increasing professionalization and monopoly, yet public participation was not simply resisted or dismissed by alienists and penologists seeking to assert their role and authority in society. Officials went to great lengths to encourage and manage public visits, establishing visiting hours and setting parameters in an attempt to control the practice while still maintaining the institution’s accessibility. Charming souvenir-like admission tickets were even distributed at some institutions to regulate the flow of traffic (figure 3) and guidelines for the entry of visitors were usually established in the rules and regulations for both prisons and asylums. Emphasis was often

Figure 3. Admission ticket for Eastern State Penitentiary (ca 1835). The Library Company of Philadelphia.

40

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

placed on the need for employees to be polite and accommodating to strangers, thereby highlighting the importance officials placed on society’s views and their desire to foster favourable impressions. While the rules and regulations for the Albany Penitentiary demanded that the deputy keeper ‘shall see that persons visiting the prison, are treated with attention and politeness,’ all employees of the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica were ‘expected to show marked respect and attention to strangers and visitors.’8 As was the case at many other institutions, officials at Utica were aware of the ‘interest generally felt in its [the asylum’s] prosperity.’ Regulations were devised to establish clear rules for tours as a means of ‘affording [to the public] suitable opportunities for visiting it and inspecting its internal arrangements.’ According to its regulations: 1 The Asylum will be open to visitors from two to five o’clock, p.m., except on Sundays, Saturday afternoons and holidays. 2 All visitors, except persons having business at the Asylum, will be required to provide themselves with tickets of admission from the managers, either of whom will grant the same, unless their knowledge of circumstances makes it, in their judgment, necessary to refuse. 3 No visitors will be permitted to enter the wards or the grounds in the rear of the buildings, unless accompanied by a manager, or one of the resident officers, or some one delegated by the superintendent. 4 Persons wishing to see patients or learn their condition will inquire for the superintendent or for one of the assistant physicians, and no information concerning patients will be given except to relatives or family friends, and to public officers; and such information will be given only to the medical officers. 5 The person or persons directed to accompany visitors through the wards will not be permitted to point out or mention the names or peculiarities or conduct of patients.9 Like other institutions, Utica carefully laid out its policies in detail and sought to place restrictions on the movement and activities of visitors. However, these rules were intended to manage but not prevent the entry of visitors. So great was the willingness to accommodate visitors at another institution, the Bloomingdale Asylum, that in 1879 over $3,000 was used to construct a ‘tasteful and substantial’ porter’s lodge, a costly

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

41

addition ‘expected to be a great convenience to proper visitors at proper hours.’10 The need to overcome public prejudice was an especially important matter for asylums, and superintendents faced particular challenges in promoting the view of their institutions as curative. Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, medical practitioners affiliated with both hospitals and asylums were treated with scepticism by a populace that was not oblivious to the highly publicized grave-robbings committed by some of their peers or the autopsies performed on unwilling subjects.11 In the mid-1850s, for example, the Toronto Asylum was plagued with many charges of abuse and corruption. A number of employees claimed that the steward had impregnated a female patient, while one ex-attendant, James Magar, stated that he had ‘known the bodies of the dead to be dissected for the information of Doctors not connected with the Asylum, and their brains kept after the body was interred.’12 Such scandals easily led to the image of the doctor who sacrificed patients in the pursuit of medical knowledge and helped to foster suspicion of all medical establishments. Moreover, there were other, more practical, reasons as to why people feared institutionalization in a medical establishment. Because of their unsanitary conditions and the fact that few people left them healed, hospitals were perceived not as curative institutions, but as places where the most unfortunate went to die, and thus were avoided by all except for the very poor.13 Even as late as the 1860s, Wolfred Nelson, Inspector of Asylums and Prisons for the Province of Canada, remarked that ‘very erroneous views are generally entertained in regard to Asylums’ and that they were often viewed with ‘distrust and alarm.’14 The situation of asylums was further precarious as, unlike prisons, they were dependent in part on a clientele willing to commit relatives and loved ones. Consequently, medical superintendents were more inclined than wardens to address the debate over visiting and appear to have been very conscious of the important role the public played in determining the fate of their institutions. As a means of demonstrating the efficacy of their methods and overcoming lingering distrust or fear of hospitals, asylum superintendents frequently relied on tourism. While occasionally condemning the practice on the one hand, many continued to recommend public tours for this very purpose on the other. Thomas Kirkbride, who was appointed superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane when it opened in 1841, complained of visitors and recommended that asylums be enclosed so that patients

42

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

could be protected from the ‘gaze and impertinent curiosity of visitors.’ Nevertheless, he often suggested that the public tour his institution in order to witness its therapeutic program.15 Some superintendents were without reserve in their support of public visitors. In the early annual reports of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto repeatedly emphasized was the fact that the institution was open to visitors from 12 o’clock till 3 and that it was ‘as open to the public as is compatible with the welfare of the patients and the duties of their attendants.’16 Such promotion was apparently effective as in 1850 1,400 visitors reportedly passed through the institution.17 Three decades later, in 1880, institutional officials in Ontario could still be found encouraging the practice in newspapers. As will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter, the efforts of some American and Canadian superintendents to improve their relations with the wider population in the nineteenth century were not without great success, and repeatedly visitors expressed satisfaction with the management of the respective institution. One visitor to the asylum in Utica admitted: ‘My mind had been prejudiced against the Institution, by a former preceptor, who was in no way friendly to its management; but my visit has very happily removed every doubt.’18 As a way of alleviating social stigma, many saw institutional tourism as a critical opportunity to educate the public on the causes and contemporary treatment of insanity. The chairman for the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Toronto reported in 1852: It has been the desire of Directors to have the Asylum as open to the public as is compatible with the welfare of the patients and the duties of their attendants. Large numbers of visitors have therefore, from time to time, been attended through the building, and these have witnessed the condition of the apartments, the appearance and happiness of the patients, the kindly, but effective discipline, which prevails amongst the afflicted and their attendants. The result has been, so far as is known, a universal satisfaction to visitors, many of whom had been acquainted with similar Institutions in Europe, or the United States.19

Moreover, many believed that the successful treatment of insanity was dependent upon early committal to an asylum and that the longer loved ones waited, the less likelihood of a cure being achieved. This problem was explained in the Journal of Insanity: ‘The prejudice against such institutions is great … They are regarded by a large part of the unenlightened portion of the community, as prisons and dungeons,

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

43

where men and women are confined in cells, chained and abused. It is this prejudice that has caused the large number of incurable cases of insanity in the country.’20 As Wolfred Nelson also asserted, the ‘attainment of successful results’ was contingent upon the community’s ‘countenance and good opinion.’21 Officials hoped that, rather than existing outside the purview and scrutiny of the public, asylums would be sites where social attitudes and views could be moulded and where psychiatric techniques could be demonstrated. The need for public support and legitimacy did not abate with time. Rather, as the nineteenth century progressed, asylum expenditure grew and superintendents were consistently pressured to justify their efficacy in treating insanity. According to historian S.E.D. Shortt, asylums in Ontario consumed almost 16.5 per cent of the provincial budget in the 1870s, an amount that stabilized at more than 19 per cent in the late 1880s. In 1893, this was twice the combined expenditure on penal institutions, general hospitals, houses of refuge, and orphanages.22 Government officials and ordinary citizens alike expressed concern over the cost of institutions. The sentiment expressed by one commissioner to New York’s State Board of Charities that ‘one cannot visit the Asylum buildings without being impressed with the idea of enormous and unnecessary expenditure’ was commonly voiced, stimulating unease among asylum officials and increasing wariness among the general population.23 In their responsibility for these costly institutions, not only were superintendents pressured to highlight their success rates in order to portray the therapeutic treatments of their institutions as effective, but they also remained acutely aware of their need for public support. The dependence of institutions on public funds made many administrators feel particularly vulnerable and pressured to appease taxpayers. Asylum superintendents especially found themselves in a difficult situation: at what cost did their efforts to win public support through the practice of visiting endanger the mental improvement of patients? While refusing (at least in theory) to open the doors of the Toronto Asylum to the masses, superintendent Daniel Clark admitted, much to his chagrin, that many people felt they had a right to tour asylums. ‘It is a public Institution,’ he lamented, ‘and it is the privilege of the British subject, if he should happen to be “a free and independent elector” to look upon an Asylum to the support of which he has contributed his mite of taxes, as a huge menagerie, erected for the purpose of gratifying his morbid curiosity.’24 Although some may have been op-

44

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

posed to the practice, few institutions could afford – or had the power – to keep the public entirely out of their establishments. According to one report of the Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, ‘to do the greatest amount of good to the insane, the mind of the tax-paying community must be trained to understand and admit the necessity of expensive arrangements.’25 Similarly, as Henry Landor, the superintendent of the Malden Lunatic Asylum in Ontario, explained in 1869: ‘Public opinion is all powerful; and by its help only we can carry into practice the most enlightened principles of management; and by the spread of enlightened principles, only, can we hope for that liberal pecuniary support from the Parliament, which is absolutely essential to the welfare of our asylums.’26 While prisons and asylums served to inhibit and restrict the rights of incarcerated individuals, their managers acknowledged society’s right to monitor the treatment of the institutionalized and the activities of state-supported institutions. Reflecting the importance that was placed on public opinion, those who promoted the practice of visiting repeatedly alluded to its legitimating function. Wardens and superintendents encouraged members of the public to inspect their institutions, believing that society’s approval could be acquired only if they were as accessible as possible. Although an example from Quebec, the warden for the juvenile reformatory prison at Isle-Aux-Noix stressed the necessity of visiting in one annual report and claimed: ‘The community cannot evince a too deep curiosity in prying into the working of all public institutions. Each individual has a close interest in the well-being of the whole, and should, therefore, be anxious in inquiring into the management of establishments to whose maintenance he contributes; and whose successful government benefits himself in various ways, and is besides, an honour to his country.’27 Rather than simply tolerating the public, institutional authorities presented visiting as an important civic duty, a critical vehicle for educating the laity, and a means of forging what were constructed as essential relations with greater society. As acknowledged by authorities, the general populace had an important role to play in penal and medical matters, and needed to be encouraged to act upon notions of civic responsibility and participation. During periods of controversy, openness and accessibility were extremely important to officials and could be employed as a way of vindicating themselves and restoring public confidence. In the midst of an investigation into the management of Kingston Penitentiary during the years 1848–9, Henry Smith, who served as warden from 1834 to

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

45

1848, referred to visitors’ impressions as a means of implicitly refuting charges of corruption. If visitors viewed the institution favourably, then how could abuse have occurred? In his defence Smith argued, ‘no concealment has ever been practised in carrying on the affairs of the Penitentiary, to which admission is freely given to all strangers desirous of witnessing its internal economy, nearly sixteen hundred of whom have visited the Establishment during the past year.’28 At the same time, many affiliated to prisons felt that institutional tourism revealed the inaccuracy behind the oft-heard criticism of penal establishments as comfortable or ‘too soft’ on convicts. According to one commentator, many people were under the impression that ‘the State prisons are not a sufficient punishment, that criminals do not dread being sent there, and that many commit crimes expressly to enjoy the comforts of being confined in them.’ He thus advised, ‘if the absurdity of the supposition is not apparent to every man, let him visit one of these prisons.’29 That nineteenth-century prisons and asylums, defined by some historians as institutions of social control that exerted power not only over the institutionalized but over society at large, were dependent on the public for their legitimacy is significant in this early period of state formation. Custodial institutions were not detached and independent, operating without any consideration for the views of the populace, and most officials perceived visiting as an important part of the process of legitimization. They wanted and actively encouraged the public to be acquainted with the interiors of these institutions and felt that visiting was the best means by which public confidence, trust, and support could be gained. How much power visiting actually gave to the general public and how much of an impact ordinary people had on the shape of institutions are debatable, of course; yet it is nevertheless important that government or institutional officials did not attempt to function entirely outside the parameters of popular opinion. Authorities kept a careful eye on public reaction and rarely criticized the public’s presence – let alone their opinions – as intrusive or irrelevant. Instead, they frequently deferred to visitors and, during most of the nineteenth century, did not demarcate between ‘experts’ and the laity. While this perspective complicates the portrayal of prisons and asylums as institutions of social control, the social control paradigm is applicable to a certain degree, in the sense that many proponents of visiting believed the practice could help foster law-abiding citizens. For many penologists, visiting served an important function in deterring potential criminals, as, when free members of society were exposed to

46

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

the misery of imprisonment, they would be dissuaded from committing criminal acts. In order to achieve this, many reasoned that the conditions inside penitentiaries should not be too comfortable and that ‘the law breaker should not be placed in such a position as to cause a feeling of envy in the breast of the poor and innocent man.’30 Without undermining the view of the institution as ‘humane,’ officials hoped visitors would leave the prison feeling repelled by the idea of incarceration, a perspective that has parallels with contemporary society today in the form of ‘scared straight’ programs.31 Discussions regarding the impact of the practice on society and the incidence of crime were frequently linked to debates over the separate versus congregate prison systems. Although in retrospect they seem very similar, fervour arose over the merits of each system, often pitting reformers against one another, even when most prisons had adopted the Auburn system.32 The solitary system, exemplified by the Philadelphia Penitentiary established in 1829, was designed to keep prisoners separate: each inmate had his own cell and exercise yard and, in theory, was to see no one except the warden and the chaplain. The New York, Auburn, or congregate system as it was known, which was implemented at the Auburn State Prison and at Ossining Penitentiary (Sing Sing), also tried to prevent prisoners from communicating with each other, but, during the day, inmates worked and ate together in silence.33 Unlike the separate system, the profit from inmates’ work helped to support the institution. Although slight modifications would be made at times, the Auburn system dominated prison administration in the United States until the early twentieth century.34 According to David J. Rothman, ‘As both schemes placed maximum emphasis on preventing the prisoners from communicating with anyone else, the point of dispute was whether convicts should work silently in large groups or individually within solitary cells.’35 Eager to find evidence to substantiate their views on prisons, reformers often assessed the influence each system had on visitors as a means of justifying the superiority of one penitentiary model over the other. In An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline, the well-known reformer and solitary system advocate Samuel Gridley Howe compared the experiences of visitors to the Charlestown prison with those to the Philadelphia prison and concluded that the latter was superior as it was more likely to deter potential criminals. The ‘mysterious fate’ of the convict committed to a separate-system prison was more effective in preventing crime, as visitors to the congregate system could be assured that, if incarcerated,

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

47

they would receive a proper diet, comfortable accommodations, and work in ‘cleanly and healthy occupations.’ The visitor would leave the congregate prison thinking, ‘Well! after all, this is not so very dreadful!’ Conversely, the eerie silence and isolation entailed by the separate system would supposedly intimidate visitors into remaining law-abiding citizens, thereby rendering institutional tourism a deterrent to crime.36 Visiting and Financial Gain Superintendents and wardens alike could cite tradition as a means of legitimating and therefore continuing the practice of visiting, or could highlight the effects it had on the public. However, there was also a very practical reason behind institutional tourism: revenue. Most public institutions across North America faced perennial financial difficulties and were persistently struggling with inadequate budgets. As the century unfolded, prisons and asylums became increasingly overcrowded, thereby further exacerbating monetary pressures and institutional conditions. From its very inception, Kingston Penitentiary was plagued with financial problems, and the wardens’ letter books throughout the nineteenth century attest to its limited economic resources. Likewise, as James Moran has noted, the ‘difficulty in raising funds to construct and maintain [Ontario’s] public asylums’ was a persistent problem37 and was not unique to this province alone. Consequently, administrators frequently had to devise creative solutions in order to ensure the maintenance of their institutions, and, in an era in which tourism was expanding, many undoubtedly saw visiting as a lucrative way to take advantage of a growing consumer culture. The Massachusetts State Prison, opened under the Auburn system in 1828, could serve as a model for those hoping to benefit from visitors: with over six thousand visitors in just one year and an admission fee of twenty-five cents per person, the prison increased its revenue by $1,500.38 One of the problems associated with inadequate funding was the inability to pay employees anything more than meagre wages. Prisons and asylums often had difficulty attracting and keeping staff, and many wardens and superintendents were concerned with retaining a body of dedicated and high-quality personnel.39 However, without decent wages this was virtually impossible, thereby leading many administrators to devise strategies to bolster revenue. In light of the eagerness of the public to see prisons and asylums, admission fees represented for many an attractive way to alleviate financial pressures. The penitentiary

48

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

at Albany, for instance, benefited substantially from its admission fee of twelve and a half cents.40 In some institutions, income from visitors was enough to pay for the salaries of particular staff members. At the State Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, the salary of the chaplain was derived exclusively from visitor admission fees.41 The existing facilities of prisons and asylums could also be improved by charging strangers who wished to tour the respective institution. At Kingston Penitentiary, the musical instruments used in the chapels were purchased with visitors’ admission fees.42 The Toronto Central Prison hoped to benefit from this practice as well, and it was proposed that revenue from visitors be used to expand the library collection for inmates. As warden James Massie reasoned in the mid 1880s, A fee for admission is collected from visitors in many of the prisons in the States, and at the Kingston Penitentiary, and were it generally known that at certain hours on week days, visitors would be welcomed and admitted by ticket, the number, I believe would be largely increased, and attending on them now, occupies a very considerable portion of the officers’ time. When all the works are in operation the prison, the shops and grounds, well repay the time spent in visiting them, and few would grudge the fee, if the object for which it was collected were known.43

While the Pennsylvania Hospital, which contained a ward for patients suffering from mental illness, charged visitors twenty-five cents upon admission, asylums generally did not charge admittance fees.44 Nevertheless, there were other ways in which asylums benefited materially from visitors. Usually this was achieved through donations from visitors or through the sale of items made at the asylum by patients. In the early 1850s, M.H. Ranney, the resident physician for the asylum on Blackwell’s Island, hoped to establish a museum for patients, and felt that the experiences of visitors to this institution would stimulate feelings of benevolence and encourage the public to donate items for their use. Ranney wrote: Who would not be willing to contribute something if fully conscious of its beneficial tendency? Let any one visit the Asylum from pure motives of benevolence instead of mere curiosity and view this wreck of reason: it will teach a lesson that will be likely not only to improve the heart but give a practical direction in contributing substantial aid for alleviating the sufferings of humanity. Perhaps there is no more laudable field for be-

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

49

nevolence, and certainly there can be no fears of having bestowed gifts upon unworthy objects.45

Ranney’s approach was apparently successful, as three years later he could report with satisfaction: There is evidently a growing interest in the welfare of the insane, and during the year this has been more strongly exhibited than at any previous time since my connection with the Asylum. The visitors have not seemed to be actuated by mere motives of curiosity, but have manifested a lively interest in contributing to the promotion of their comfort and happiness. Several valuable presents have been received.46

Social interest would be further harnessed through organized festivals at the asylum on Blackwell’s Island, and, in 1859, the asylum held a fair that generated $181.57 from the sale of women’s fancywork. The money was used to buy a magic lantern, chessmen, musical instruments (including a piano), and a display case for the museum.47 If some members of the public resented government expenditure on asylums, their direct involvement with asylum events seemed to inspire token gestures of spending and exchange. The New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica established itself as a pioneer in the use of annual fairs to generate revenue. The first fair was held in January 1844, where articles manufactured by the patients were sold to the public. An array of handicrafts was available, and purportedly the fair was very popular among local residents. The editor of the Utica Gazette wrote: Everyone was surprised at the beauty of the fabrics, and the skill and ingenuity displayed in their manufacture. There were dolls, ranging in size from the Lilliputian up to the dimensions of some of their purchasers, and decked like fairies or witches; pincushions, in shapes that would have puzzled Proteus; baskets, fit for the grotto of a sea nymph; all manner of sewing accoutrements, done into leaves and fruit, that would have tempted Eve to learn; caps, stockings, gloves, aprons, collars, bags, purses, &c. &c., for the utilitarian.

According to superintendent Brigham, this inaugural fair generated approximately $200, which was used to expand the library collection, purchase musical instruments, provide every patient with entry to the

50

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

museum in Utica for one year, and erect a greenhouse. In spite of a winter storm, the second fair proved to be equally successful, drawing in hundreds of eager shoppers and, again, substantially bolstering the institution’s revenue.48 Such activities served a number of purposes for the institution, ranging from economic to social, and, as discussed in a later chapter, had manifold implications for patients as well. Indeed, the selling of patients’ manufactures represents another example of the use of unpaid inmates’ labour by institutional officials to offset institutional costs.49 The London Asylum and Richard Maurice Bucke While it could be argued that prison wardens had fewer incentives to treat their wards with kindness and did not have the same paternal desire to protect them from unscrupulous visitors, it is perhaps harder to understand why a number of asylum doctors would promote public tours aside from the hope for material gain. For this purpose, it is helpful to turn to the example of Dr Richard Maurice Bucke. Superintendent of the asylum in London, Ontario, from 1877 to his death in 1902, Bucke was one of North America’s most outspoken proponents of visiting, and the efforts he made during his career to promote it illuminate why many thought it was such an important custom.50 As an alienist and superintendent, Bucke believed part of his role was to rectify social misconceptions of mental hospitals and to dissolve the stigma that was so frequently attached to them. Consequently, in public forums such as newspapers, he endeavoured to redefine popular views of asylums and the tendency to perceive them as little more than dungeons of terror, using for this end the practice of visiting. Hoping to educate the public, Bucke explained in one annual report that was reprinted in a local newspaper: We have a large number of visitors in the course of the year, both those who come to see friends and relations who are inmates of the Asylum, and those who, having no friends resident in it, come to see the Asylum itself. I always admit these people freely, and I think it is a good thing that they should come and see what sort of a place a Lunatic Asylum is. The people of average education throughout the country have most of them grown up with the idea that a Lunatic Asylum is an immense prison, full of all sorts of horrors. They must consequently, many of them, suffer severely in mind when they have to send a relation to one of these institutions, and I

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

51

have no doubt that is one cause of the reluctance to send, and the delay in sending patients.51

Although he had a professional interest behind encouraging favourable views of asylums, Bucke represented visiting as a means of enlightening the public on the conditions inside insane asylums, and ultimately allaying fears of committing loved ones. He even went so far as to argue that it was ‘about the only way that unfortunate prejudice can be removed,’52 and would have been pleased with one newspaper account which claimed that, owing to the ‘hundreds of visitors to the Asylum each year,’ ‘the general public is becoming better acquainted … with the internal management of asylums.’53 In the same way as Dr Telfer of the temporary Toronto Asylum, who, in the 1840s, felt that meetings between visitors and those afflicted with mental illness were conducive to the welfare of the latter, Bucke rationalized that institutional tourism also had positive therapeutic implications for the patients themselves.54 Throughout his years at the asylum, Bucke struggled to alleviate the social alienation that institutional life, or even mental illness, entailed and, like that of many of his contemporaries, fought against the isolation of those labelled insane from outside social interaction. Chastising those who felt the insane should be segregated, he argued: Any one who would wish to shut out from the wards of an asylum the little healthy mental atmosphere from the outside world that there might be a chance of admitting for fear the contact should wound the diseased susceptibilities of patients, it seems to me would be on a par with the ignorant practitioner of ordinary medicine, who, when his patient has a fever, causes all the doors and windows to be shut, and cautions the sick man’s friends against giving him a glass of cold water.55

Patients themselves may have had a different perspective, but for Bucke interaction between them and the greater populace aided the ill by providing them with ‘healthy’ activities and by distracting them from their confinement. While recognizing that the worst feature of asylum life was its ‘insufferable sameness and dulness’ [sic], Bucke stipulated that the ‘slight change and excitement of the passage of visitors through the halls is, on the whole, both agreeable to, and good for, the patients.’ Indeed, Bucke claimed that, while his policies would not be dictated by those under his medical supervision, patients at the London Asylum

52

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

never complained of visitors, and that they ‘never seem to think that they are treated as wild beasts, or made a show of because their fellow creatures … come to see them.’56 Such proclamations were likely disingenuous, yet Bucke was determined to present visiting as a beneficial element of institutional care. Not only did Bucke promote public tours of the London Asylum, but he also organized a number of social and educational events as a means of fostering relations with the outside world, a tactic employed by many other superintendents as well. These activities ranged from cricket matches to theatrical plays, and from educational lectures to musical entertainment, most of which were advertised in newspapers (figure 4). Members of asylum staff participated in these amusements, which, according to Bucke, kept them ‘in good heart and in good health, so that [they] may be able to take better care’ of patients.57 These events drew entertainers and educators from the outside, and included during his superintendency minstrel troupes, magicians, and one hundred local children, who not only performed the operetta the ‘Fairy Grotto’ for patients, but were treated with a dinner and ‘went home highly delighted with [their] visit to the Asylum.’58 People from the surrounding community frequently attended these events, which were advertised through newspapers and posters and attracted much attention; in 1899, for example, the annual athletic sports for employees and patients drew an estimated four to five hundred citizens, a typical number for the event.59 Like many other asylums, the London Asylum was situated on the periphery of an urban centre, yet it nevertheless was accessible to the surrounding population. As one newspaper article argued, the institution was ‘regarded as practically part and parcel of the … metropolis.’ Seeking to draw these people to his institution, Bucke strove to render the grounds of the asylum perfect for leisurely strolls by cultivating vast gardens, pathways, and scenic lookouts for visitors wanting a panoramic vista of the surrounding area (figure 5). The visitor to the London Asylum quoted above was struck by the institution’s grandeur, remarking that ‘the flowers and ornamental grounds at this Asylum are a special feature; the grounds are very extensive, covering from forty to fifty acres, and are filled with choice trees, shrubs, and flowers tastefully combined.’60 This writer was not only one of hundreds of visitors, but was one of many who were enthusiastic about and engaged with the affairs and management of the institution. Ultimately, Bucke’s efforts to beautify the grounds of the institution and his encouragement of entertaining and educational activities helped to make the London

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

53

Figure 4. First Athletic Sports advertisement, London Asylum (1888), University of Western Ontario Archives, Richard Maurice Bucke Collection.

54

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Figure 5. London Asylum, postcard (stamped 1905). Author’s collection.

Asylum an important hub of social activity. His campaign to foster social engagement and the receptivity of the general population rendered the London Asylum a public building that was firmly entrenched within the broader community beyond its walls. The London Asylum generated great excitement and curiosity and attracted a significant number of visitors in the nineteenth century. Superintendent Bucke favoured the presence of the public in the institution for a number of reasons, most of which revolved around the reputation of the asylum and the field of psychiatry, the perceived well-being of his patients, and the desire to educate members of the general public. The policies employed by Bucke at this asylum reflected the attitudes of many other prison and asylum officials in Canada and the United States. These institutions were portrayed by their supporters as emblematic of scientific progress, humanitarian treatment, and modernization. However much authorities tried though, they were also aware that the public’s interest had to be fuelled or satisfied with more than just words and that their direct involvement and presence were needed if a number of goals were to be realized. Many authorities believed that relationships

Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums

55

with the outside world had to be forged to ensure the legitimacy, continuity, and success of the institution. Consequently, public visitors were depicted as both witness to and inspectors of the experiment in reform, and, owing to the permeability of these institutions, prisons and asylums would serve a function greater than mere confinement.

3 ‘You Must Go!’: Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

Throughout the nineteenth century, prison wardens and asylum superintendents discussed the issue of visiting, assessing its merits and considering its drawbacks. Most authorities encouraged visiting, and the public responded with enthusiasm, rendering institutional tourism an extremely popular activity. Indeed, in spite of the condemnation expressed by a minority of opponents to visiting, the general populace would not have been easily dissuaded from touring prisons and asylums and likely would have protested their closure to the public. Even by the mid-nineteenth century, visiting was far from an uncommon or marginal pastime: thousands of urban and rural dwellers alike flocked to prisons and asylums annually. The annual number of visitors to the Massachusetts State Prison alone was reportedly more than 6,000 in 1846,1 and, in fact, the activity became so popular that institutions were frequently overwhelmed on holidays by the ‘crush and confusion resulting from so many persons being admitted.’2 Institutional authorities sought to control, rationalize, or justify lay visiting, but the public was equally determined to inscribe their own meanings on the practice. Whether individual motives were shaped by humanitarian concerns or by the desire to catch a glimpse of the underworld encaged, the impulses of these visitors constitute a fascinating phenomenon in which a vast array of themes can be explored. Analogous to many other nineteenth-century pursuits, visiting was rooted in a fascination with the bizarre and related to the desire to observe or witness the unfamiliar. For some, it was part of the broader ‘spectacularization’ of modern life in the nineteenth century, where ‘reality seemed to be experienced as a show – an object to be looked at rather than experienced in an unmediated form.’3 Some visitors did treat prisons and asylums as human

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

57

menageries where inmates and patients were spectacles to be gawked at and regarded these institutions as entertainment venues that differed little from the circuses and ‘freak’ shows that frequently appeared in their towns and cities. However, the practice represented something much more significant to many people at the time. Although institutional tourism was for some an opportunity to engage in sheer voyeurism (either overtly or covertly), the incentives behind this practice were complex and illuminate the ideological currents and contradictions pervading nineteenth-century culture. Voyeurism was certainly inherent in visiting, yet for a large number of people institutional tours were seen as a source of self-improvement, ‘scientific’ education, and community pride. Furthermore, not only did the phenomenon of visiting reflect the broad social interest in deviancy and human nature, but it also represented one way in which people could negotiate or mediate the changing social and cultural landscape of the nineteenth century. As aspects of society were being redefined with industrialization, custodial institutions reassured many people that ‘civilization’ was moving forward in a controlled and linear manner. While its ramifications are problematic to say the least from today’s perspective, visiting nevertheless fostered greater exchange and dialogue between the public and the institutionalized and served as an important means through which notions regarding the criminal and the insane were constructed and defined at the lay level.4 Consequently, this chapter discusses who these visitors were and what their motives were for visiting. It highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century Americans, Canadians, and tourists from abroad sought to be more than mere passive receptacles of ideologies espoused by those in the medical and penal professions and, instead, be active participants in the effort to understand and study what was deemed to be aberrant behaviour. Sources A great wealth of primary sources exist that allow one to look beyond institutional records and official practices and to investigate the interaction between visitors and the institutionalized. In particular, tour guides, newspapers, and magazines reveal public reactions towards prisons and asylums and the practice of visiting more generally.5 Even more illuminating are the hundreds of travel narratives, diaries, and letters that document the experiences of people who toured custodial institutions. Many of these personal accounts either were published as

58

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

books or appeared in serial form in newspapers and periodicals, offering a record of ‘the actual, the educational, and the imagined journey.’6 Although personal accounts were often written for public consumption and thus do not necessarily offer a ‘candid’ account of visitors’ impressions, they represent an essential means through which the relationship between custodial institutions and their greater communities may be revealed. In their narratives, visitors provided literary and often visual sketches of prisons and asylums, reminisced about their exchanges with the people found inside of them, wrote authoritatively about reform practices, and asserted for themselves a space in the development and histories of these institutions. In many ways, travel narratives reveal more about the people writing them than about the subject itself. Authors carefully selected what they recorded of their visits, and one might speculate that it was often the ‘mundane’ or the ‘dull’ that was omitted and the titillating that was emphasized. For example, contemporaries of Charles Dickens criticized his tendency to embellish in his work American Notes. In a study of prisons, one British author argued that Dickens not only exaggerated, but even fabricated the story of one prisoner.7 Newspapers also attended to the scandalous; the headline for one newspaper article reads like a circus playbill: ‘The Unsound of Mind. How They are Kept at the London Asylum. A Trip through the Corridors and Rooms. The Eccentricities of the Patients. Exciting Experiences, Sad Scenes and Amusing Incidents.’8 To complicate matters further for the historian, the newspapers in which tourists’ tales were printed were invariably of a specific political orientation, which may have influenced whether they supported or criticized particular institutions.9 However, while sensational incidents or eccentric characters captured the attention of some visitors, the majority of accounts were in fact filled with details that were rather unexciting and dull, including features such as heating and sewage systems, bedding, diets, and daily schedules. Moreover, that visitor narratives were imbued with specific agendas does not discredit these valuable sources. Instead, it encourages a shift from trying to discern how things ‘really were’ inside the institution to the perceptions of the writers and how they represented their visits. Those who engaged in institutional tourism were from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds that transcended the lines of gender, ethnicity, class, and age. Local farmers visited insane asylums, female leisure travellers and male bankers toured prisons, and children of all ages were exposed to the interiors of North America’s custodial insti-

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

59

tutions. As one man remarked on his tour through the Toronto Asylum, ‘There was a party consisting of a Lady, Gentleman, and a little Girl going over the establishment, and, as I entered I enjoined them.’10 As well, although they unfortunately did not leave behind any of their own records of their visits, many First Nations peoples toured Canadian and American institutions. In particular, a number of aboriginal men and women toured the Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadelphia in the 1830s. In 1830, Colonel Stumbaugh signed the visitors’ book as ‘Indian agent, Green Bay [Wisconsin] with 14 Menomia Indians,’ and in 1833 the warden of the penitentiary recorded in his journal: ‘Had a visit today from Indian Chief Black Hawk and his company.’ A few years later, three Ottawa chiefs from Michigan came to the institution, all of whom signed their own names but left no other recorded impression of their visit.11 Most visitors lived in the communities connected to these institutions, yet many also travelled from other regions and countries, some as far away as Mexico, England, and Germany. In terms of sheer numbers alone, the visitors who recorded their experiences were predominantly of a privileged social stature. Reflecting the cultural and political context of the nineteenth century, the majority of records that exist today were written by white, middle-class males, but, while particular voices dominate the written sources, such individuals did not possess a complete monopoly over institutional tourism. Official rules and regulations, for example, demonstrate that – at least in theory – entry was not contingent upon the age, class, ethnicity, or gender of the visitor. This heterogeneity of visitors is apparent in the rules of Kingston Penitentiary for 1836, which, in common with other institutions, simply charged male adults one shilling three pence for admittance, and females and children seven and a half pence each.12 The fact that many accounts were written by a range of people who did not fit a particular socio-economic profile is significant and provides a more nuanced understanding of community attitudes towards prisons and asylums. Furthermore, while the predominant voice in travel narratives might be middle-class and male, as it was not uncommon for visitors to comment upon members of their tour group, their observations could at times shed light on the activities and experiences of others.13 Nevertheless, no traces of black visitors were found in the historical record. Whether they were not interested in or unable to engage with institutional tourism, did not record their visits, or were prevented from entering into prisons and asylums as free citizens is unclear. When op-

60

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

position to institutional tourism was voiced, issues related to race and ethnicity – such as the idea of free blacks gazing at incarcerated whites – were never addressed, whereas matters of gender and ‘decency’ often arose. In general, in spite of a few exceptional examples, the ‘public’ in lay visiting seemed to be implicitly constructed as ‘white.’ The Popularization of Visiting How were people aware of the fact that entry could be gained to custodial institutions by the general public, and who encouraged them to embark on such avenues of leisurely activity? As literacy increased and both the mass-circulated press and middle-class tourism burgeoned during the nineteenth century, printed material often piqued the interests of potential visitors. For many, guidebooks served as a source of inspiration for custodial tours, an increasing number of which were being published and served, as Jennifer A. Crets has argued, ‘the same purpose for middle-class travelers as letters of introduction and wellplaced family and friends did for wealthier visitors.’14 North American guidebooks throughout the nineteenth century frequently advocated the touring of prisons and asylums, and repeatedly stipulated that certain institutions had to be seen by the visitor. Visits to institutions were normalized by the writers of these guides, who portrayed them as a fashionable and essential part of the tourist’s itinerary. Museums, government buildings, churches, historic sites, and universities were commonly presented as areas of interest, and, invariably, asylums and prisons were promoted as ‘must sees’ as well. Information such as physical appearance, location, visiting hours, and admission fees were generally provided to readers, as was means of transportation to the less accessible institutions, such as Sing Sing, located thirty-three miles or three hours by steamer from New York City on the Hudson River and referred to by one tour guide as ‘the celebrated State Prison, an object of great interest for visiting.’15 The Canadian Handbook and Tourist’s Guide, published in the year of Canada’s Confederation, was another source that helped to popularize the practice of visiting. Encouraging travellers to examine the interiors of local institutions, it described the workings of the Kingston Penitentiary and stated: ‘To those who have never been through a place of convict confinement, we would by all means recommend a visit.’ The guide also informed its readers that the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Toronto ‘is well worthy of a visit by the curious in such matters,’ reassuring them that there ‘is no difficulty in

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

61

obtaining permission to view it.’16 Analogous to tour guides, the mass of travel narratives published during the century further promoted the sightseeing of prisons and asylums and described these institutions as almost quaint, unthreatening, and far from the carceral regimes described by Foucault. J.C. Myers advised his readers to tour Auburn Penitentiary, as ‘a small fee will procure admittance, and the scenes presented to view return a rich equivalent for the pittance required,’ while Alexander Marjoribanks claimed, ‘by far the finest thing however, to be seen, is the penitentiary … and no one who visits Kingston should omit seeing it.’17 In order to profit from society’s interest in custodial institutions, transportation companies also advertised prisons and asylums as sites of tourism. With the opening of the Victoria Bridge in Montreal, which was dedicated to the Prince of Wales in 1860, the Grand Trunk Railway issued a souvenir note highlighting the Toronto Insane Asylum as one of the ‘places of interest’ along its route. Enabling railway trains to cross the St Lawrence River at Montreal, the bridge epitomized the potential of the industrial era to British North Americans. The fact that the asylum was advertised alongside of it suggests that this institution also represented progress, modernization, and development. More common than souvenir notes, steamship and railway companies advertised in newspapers and other printed mediums, listing the institutions that could be seen along their routes as a means of attracting potential customers. A number of other venues rendered institutional tourism desirable. Images of prisons and asylums were frequently found in nineteenthcentury fiction, and popular authors often made reference to institutional tours. Agnes Maule Machar, in her novel Down the River to the Sea [ca 1894], wrote of tourists in Toronto who were shown such sights as the Central Prison, the Mercer Reformatory for Women, and the Lunatic Asylum. 18 The works of Charles Dickens, which were pirated with astounding frequency in the United States, also provoked interest in custodial institutions because of his tendency to focus on the themes of insanity, criminal behaviour, and confinement. Furthermore, newspapers ran stories on institutional tours, many of which were presented in a diary-style format that chronicled tourists’ trips. Frequently reiterated was the sentiment that ‘all news, particularly of a pleasing character, which relates to any of our public institutions (more especially the benevolent ones), ought to form an interesting and acceptable news item in any public journal.’19 Newspapers not only encouraged interest in

62

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

custodial institutions, but also provided details about the regulations governing public visits. While the London Advertiser informed its readers that the asylum ‘is always open to visitors between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., save on Sundays and holidays,’ it also reassured those hesitant about touring the institution that ‘not only are [visitors] admitted – they are invited.’20 Similarly, one New York Times article encouraged readers ‘who have so often hearkened [sic] to a “voice from the tombs,”’ to ‘not hesitate to accept ocular demonstration of its mysterious appointments.’21 Through such mediums, visits to asylums and prisons became entrenched as a leisure activity for the inhabitants in their vicinities and as part of the North American ‘Grand Tour,’ commonplace excursions that were socially acceptable and highly recommended. Even the patient-edited magazine of the Utica Asylum, The Opal, informed its readers that ‘visitors occasionally take Asylumia in their route.’22 Moreover, as discussed in the previous chapter, administrators of institutions promoted visiting through annual reports and newspapers, welcoming tourists and encouraging public inspections of their institutions. Aside from the printed matter available to the general public, word of mouth and a simple curiosity in one’s community institutions likely compelled many to pursue a tour. While in Toronto for the National Exhibition in 1878, one young farmer, Thomas Dick, spent an afternoon at the Toronto Asylum and the Central Prison, and another farmer, Sarah Hallen Drinkwater, toured the grounds where the new juvenile reformatory was to be built in the town of Penetanguishene.23 Many people, like Dick, had not necessarily read about the phenomenon of visiting, but merely assumed that prisons and asylums were open to the public for their inspection. Indeed, that institutional tourism was a common practice familiar to the public is evinced by the fact that references – ranging from the political to satirical – were commonly made in newspapers without fear of confusion.24 Whether encouragement came from a neighbour, newspaper, or tourist guide, promoters of prison and asylum tours were clearly successful, as even those who had very little time to see all of the sights of a particular city often made time for the custodial institutions. Ishbel Gordon, the Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, found herself in Kingston for just two hours, yet, under the guidance of a cabman, she still managed to see both the penitentiary and the asylum.25 Informed of regulations from an array of sources, members of society were presented with a picture of prisons and asylums as open and accessible, public institutions that awaited their viewing.

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

63

The popularization of visiting was facilitated not only by printed matter, but by changing social attitudes, technological advancements, improved transportation systems, and broadening geopolitical horizons. As roads were built and improved, railroads constructed, and inns and hotels established, travel became not only more comfortable and convenient, but more accessible to the non-elite. Daily survival remained a struggle for most, of course, but with the end of the pioneer stage of settlement some did have more time to spend on activities that were unrelated to the rigours of subsistence. For the middle class, leisure time was expanding, albeit often still rationalized as ‘purposeful’ or enriching rather than merely relaxing, restful, or entertaining. For most of society, hours of paid and unpaid work were arduous and poverty hovered overhead; yet holidays could still occasionally be spent examining the new public buildings established in their communities. Reasons for Visiting While custodial institutions were presented as common sites of interest in numerous sources and the practice would evolve into a popular social custom, some officials of prisons and asylums nevertheless had great concerns over visiting, fearing that it encouraged voyeurism and opened the doors to those in search of cheap thrills and entertainment. D.H. Trezevant, visiting physician at the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum, criticized the custom in a letter to Governor Manning in 1854, claiming that ‘the wish for a little novelty and sensation is the real cause why persons indulge in this thoughtless, yet cruel curiosity.’26 In Canada, one witness before the inquiry into the Kingston Penitentiary in the mid-nineteenth century also condemned institutional tourism, arguing, ‘no revenue can alleviate the disgust which every feeling mind must experience at the exhibition of so many fellow beings, as in a menagerie, to the brutal or idle gaze of spectators.’27 However, most institutional officials recognized that the attitudes and motives of ‘the masses’ could not be so definitively dismissed as trite or prurient. Some people were spurred by a voyeuristic desire to walk among convicted felons and to mingle with the mentally ill, yet for others these institutions embodied much more than mere venues for cheap thrills and titillation. Before addressing motives, it is important to note that visitors cannot simply be divided between voyeurs and the well-intentioned, as all who entered into these institutions were voyeurs in a sense. Visitors often presented themselves as urban reformers investigating the condi-

64

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

tions of institutions. Yet, as Judith Walkowitz has argued, ‘the “zeal for reform” was often accompanied by “a prolonged, fascinated gaze” from the bourgeoisie.’28 In order to comment upon the approaches employed by prisons and asylums, visitors had to study the institutionalized, but, as the power dynamic between these two groups was unequal in that the institutionalized had not made an active ‘choice’ to be viewed by the public, patients and inmates were spectacles owing to the very nature of such interactions.29 At the same time, in spite of the fact that there was always a certain power imbalance inherent in these interactions, some visitors were much more inclined than others to view institutional tours as pure amusement and folly. For such individuals, visiting seems to have represented an alluring form of transgression, an opportunity to cross over into the netherworld of ‘normal’ society and to be risqué by watching, and in many cases ridiculing, the confined. In spite of middle-class ideologies surrounding female propriety in the nineteenth century, voyeurism was not the reserve of the male gender. Academics such as Judith Walkowitz have portrayed Victorian spectatorship as a privileged male pleasure, yet throughout the nineteenth century women did not refrain from exploring the interiors of custodial institutions. In fact, women freely indulged themselves during their tours of prisons and asylums, and generally were not ostracized by institutional employees or by society for doing so. Susanna Moodie, for example, did not face any discouragement or resistance as she pursued her desire to tour Kingston Penitentiary (significantly, without being accompanied by her husband). Although her work overflows with rhetorical flourish, hyperbole, and didacticism, it is clear that her primary motive was to watch the inmates and not just benignly tour the institution. Moodie confessed: ‘I must own that I felt a greater curiosity to see the convicts than the prison which contained them, and my wishes were completely gratified.’30 While in Toronto, she also visited the city asylum with her daughter and son-in-law, entering areas where ‘strangers have seldom nerve enough to visit’ and proudly relaying her impressions and experiences to an undoubtedly entertained audience.31 Like Moodie, many women felt they had the right to engage in such activities and were neither self-conscious nor hesitant about revealing their curiosity and desire for adventure. Albeit a privileged position related to family background and socio-economic status, visiting did not threaten the respectability or ‘feminine virtue’ of these women, and the number who apparently engaged in visiting for nonbenevolent purposes undermines the notion that this pleasure-activity

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

65

belonged to men alone. With limited political rights and restricted social roles, women would have found visiting permitted them with the opportunity to participate in the discussions surrounding crime and mental illness. As all historians who enjoy peeking into the lives of earlier generations are professional voyeurs in a sense, it is not surprising that the basest of visitors’ motives have captured the attention of scholars. The theme of spectatorship from a historical standpoint has a lurid appeal, and perhaps the parallels between visiting and contemporary society’s obsession with ‘reality’ television shows and human misfortune make the past seem much less foreign and the present less incomprehensible. However, a number of factors stimulated institutional tourism, and, while all forms of visiting involved spectatorship, it would be inaccurate to portray all visitors as mere voyeurs. Whereas many experienced visiting as a curious side-show attraction, others passed through the corridors of custodial institutions claiming more benevolent or altruistic intentions, and as abhorrent as the practice may appear in retrospect, its implications cannot be viewed as simply one-dimensional. In many ways, the growing number of people who flocked to prisons and asylums in the nineteenth century was related to the broader socio-economic context. Urbanization, immigration, and industrialization are traditionally seen as the benchmarks of the nineteenth century, and along with these broader changes arose an increased anxiety among many. Social ills and vices appeared to be on the rise, and as many propounded, crime was becoming rampant and mental illness was spreading. While the annual reports of institutions did not always agree with the notion that social problems, particularly crime, were increasing, articles written in the popular press usually held this view. For example, one author wrote: ‘The circle of vice has been continually extending itself, and new modes of depravity have been constantly added to the old.’ Many also believed that modern life was inducing insanity. One article in a popular magazine read: ‘The more complicated conditions of life resulting from … [city] growth, together with the intense civilization of modern times, have had not a little to do with it.’32 Industrial life was changing traditional ways of regulating behaviour; populations were expanding and community ties were diminishing; the pressure of life in the modern city was supposedly leading to new forms of insanity, such as neurasthenia; and the greater concentration of people in cities was making poverty more visible to the burgeoning middle class.

66

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

As a sense of instability gripped many sectors in society, people sought ways of dealing with the seemingly expanding number of urban problems. Responses varied, but, as John F. Sears has argued, ‘some tourists appear to have found reassurance in the institutions that sprang up in and around urban areas and displayed new methods of coping with social problems.’33 The new institutions that were being established across the continent represented order, progress, and efficiency, and demonstrated to many that social problems were not being neglected, but, rather, were being managed if not eradicated. Consequently, those who toured prisons and asylums often did so in search of a sense of stability and security and as a means of dealing with a changing urban landscape. Visiting and the act of ‘seeing’ rendered criminal behaviour and mental illness more understandable or coherent and, in the minds of many, less threatening and more likely to be ameliorated. The nineteenth century was also an era of reform, a period in which approaches to criminality and insanity were transformed. Moral therapy, as advocated by Philippe Pinel of the Bicêtre and Salpêtrière in France in the late eighteenth century and by William Tuke of the Quaker York Retreat for the Insane in the nineteenth, infiltrated the programs of most North American asylums by the mid-nineteenth century. Similarly, punitive measures and the emphasis on punishment diminished in prisons, and faith in the ability to reform criminals began to take hold. People wanted to see first-hand these new approaches and the ‘progress’ that had been made in the sphere of penal and health-care reform. They wanted to participate in the debate over the Auburn versus silent systems, to judge whether or not asylums were really curative, and to feel that North American cities were improving and becoming more humane and civilized. Many wanted to know that the problems supposedly plaguing society were being remedied and sought this confirmation within the walls of the newly established institutions. They also wanted to ensure that the institutions were being run effectively and that the institutionalized were being treated ‘humanely.’ By visiting prisons and asylums, people could gain knowledge about their workings, and, as many believed, they could observe the ways in which aberrant behaviour was being treated and controlled. One journalist in an Ontario newspaper, the Sarnia Canadian, highlighted this tendency and the importance of visiting to readers when he wrote, ‘Knowing that a great moral and social problem was being worked out at the Asylum, in the success of which humanity’s best instincts are interested, to visit it was part of our programme.’34 Discussions of mental

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

67

illness and prisons permeated newspapers, journals, and other printed materials and public lectures, forming a central part of the nineteenthcentury popular discourse, and visiting became a pivotal means of participating in broader social debates. In the accounts written by the public, there is a strong sense that they believed themselves to be conducting inspections on their tours. The majority of visitors critiqued the cleanliness and efficiency of institutions, the appearances of inmates, and the approaches of the wardens and superintendents, and expressed their approval or disappointment with the institution. Their judgments resonate throughout their writings: ‘We saw nothing to complain of, but on the contrary, plenty to admire’ and ‘beautifully clean and well kept’ were typical evaluations of institutions made by visitors.35 One visitor to the London Asylum noted: ‘A look through the building is always instructive and while the demented state of the inmates cannot but excite pity, the visitor will be pleased to see the manner in which the unfortunates are cared for.’36 Another tourist to the New York State Prison at Ossining remarked, ‘A visitor to the State Prison at Sing Sing, if only a visitor, not urged to make a long tarry, is very noticeably impressed. The premises are scrupulously clean, destitute of the minutest speck of dirt. The floors are scoured to a wonderful degree of whiteness.’37 Officials of institutions themselves encouraged people to play a role as unofficial or informal inspectors, and annual reports frequently referred to the impressions of casual visitors, thereby granting legitimacy to the efforts made by the public.38 In asylums, many superintendents believed the public could gain a better understanding of both insanity and contemporary therapeutic practices merely through custodial tourism and observation. One official expressed such faith in the people’s potential to be astute visitors: The public, generally, have wrong impressions in relation to the inmates of a Lunatic Asylum. They suppose them to be either idiots, or completely mad, and in both cases incapable of appreciating kindness. If this was true, moral treatment certainly would prove of little avail. But one visit to a well conducted Institution of this kind would be sufficient to correct this error.39

Moreover, at the end of the century, if any lay visitor was an ‘untrained observer’ unsure of how to evaluate custodial institutions, he or she could always consult John S. Billings and Henry M. Hurd’s Suggestions

68

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

to Hospital and Asylum Visitors (1895), in order to ‘learn how to critically inspect [asylums] with a reasonable chance of seeing what is wrong and learning how to value what is praiseworthy.’40 Nevertheless, most visitors did not feel they needed such guidance when making assessments of prisons or asylums. In their writings, the public implicitly asserted their right both to be present and to evaluate these institutions. Their often lengthy accounts detailed the therapeutic practices, the buildings, and the people they saw on their tours. Anecdotes were often included to entertain audiences, but many authors aimed to educate those who had not viewed the institutions for themselves. Visitors did not differentiate between their perspectives and those of medical or penal experts; instead, they presented themselves as contributing towards a broader discussion on crime, mental illness, and institutionalization. Combined with a sense of civic duty and community pride, the public’s involvement in medical and penal reform through visiting speaks of a broader democratic impulse: people felt a responsibility for the public institutions in their midst and believed they had a duty to see them in person and evaluate their efficacy. Even though many Canadians and Americans feared crime and insanity were increasing, most looked upon the institutions established to deal with these problems not as shameful or demonstrative of social degeneration but, instead, as symbols of progress and sources of civic pride.41 Fairs, exhibitions, and holidays – events that are often associated with enhanced expressions of community pride – were particularly popular days for visiting. The London Asylum, for example, drew over 1,700 visitors in just three days during the fall fair in 1877,42 while at the Utica Asylum in 1860, Independence Day was celebrated with a magnificent fireworks display that was ‘witnessed by thousands of citizens and strangers.’43 This sense of civic pride is further evinced by the fact that residents frequently drew the attention of visitors to their prisons and asylums, seeing them as important sites of interest and as community landmarks. Hosts and guides often insisted that travellers tour their institutions (occasionally to the chagrin of the tourist), a phenomenon that was common in both Canada and the United States. George Augustus Sala, for example, stated in the account of his American tour that prisons were not included in his itinerary. He claimed, ‘I have a rooted aversion from sight-seeing, so far as gaols … are concerned,’ and thus endeavoured to avoid entering into them. However, pressured by an ‘obliging gentleman,’ Sala was forced to make a tour through the New York prisons: ‘For a while I feebly resisted these invitations; but when

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

69

an American has made up his mind to “put” a stranger “through,” he means business.’ As a professional journalist, Sala’s efforts to resist seeing prisons and the pressure he faced from North Americans may have been a product of his desire to entertain his audience. In any case, it is clear that many citizens were adamant about ‘foreigners’ seeing their custodial institutions.44 Alexander Graham Dunlop also found himself compelled to go through the Penitentiary while in Kingston. Eager to leave a city that he clearly was not fond of, Dunlop was forced to remain for two unscheduled days and was dragged across Kingston by an acquaintance who ‘insisted upon driving’ him to ‘fifty places which it turns out must be seen by every stranger,’ landmarks which included, of course, the Provincial Penitentiary.45 Similarly, one reporter noted, ‘the average Londoner never fails to ask you with a conscious pride, “Have you been out to the Asylum yet?” And if you reply in the negative,’ the author further noted, ‘you are told, with no little empressment, “You must go!”’46 Repeatedly, citizens who lived in the vicinity of such institutions seemed to view them not with horror, but with pride and an eagerness to inspect them and to show them off to others. These were not simply stigmatized institutions in the public mind. Instead, they symbolized to many modernization and advancement and, as one writer enthused, gave humanity ‘great reason to rejoice.’47 Even during times of administrative scandal, custodial institutions could inspire confidence within the broader community. Amid the controversy surrounding Warden Henry Smith and his management of the Kingston Penitentiary in the 1840s,48 the British Whig nevertheless reassured its readers that ‘it is impossible for any person, however prejudiced he may be against the Institution, to visit it during the hours of labour, without being struck with the perfect order and regularity, attended with utter silence, which prevail in every department.’49 Consequently, even if employees were accused of corruption and incompetence, the institution itself – and the principle of institutionalization – was not necessarily questioned. In addition to civic boosterism, prison and asylum tourism represented an educational opportunity for many visitors, and, in this regard, the incentives behind institutional tourism were inextricably tied to the nineteenth-century impulse towards self-education and self-improvement. John C. Burnham has examined nineteenth-century popular interest in science in relation to the rise of the commercial museum and has made a number of arguments that are relevant to the phenomenon of institutional tourism as well. In many ways, prisons

70

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

and asylums constituted living museums that encouraged the diffusion of knowledge through tourism and observation. Even Superintendent Clark, a vocal opponent of visitors to the Toronto Asylum, supported tours by ‘professional men having scientific objects in view.’50 Visiting encouraged the public to examine the institutionalized and reason with the ‘experts’ about the causes of crime and mental disease. As one visitor to the Kingston Penitentiary remarked, information was obtained ‘with the evidence of our own eyes,’51 while another visitor to Sing Sing Penitentiary emphasized that it ‘must be witnessed in person to be duly understood.’52 Since education in the nineteenth century was guided by faith in empiricism and the belief that knowledge could be acquired through observation, many people viewed prisons and asylums as sites where ‘scientific’ knowledge could be acquired.53 Similar to the design of museums and other nineteenth-century sites dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge, the visual display of inmates embodied the principles of order and classification (figure 6). Although such organization in prisons was intended for the benefit of wardens and guards and functioned as a system of governance, it also objectified inmates for the educational benefit of visitors as well.54 By simply touring the Toronto Asylum, one writer felt that the sight of patients gave visitors ‘an idea of the peculiar but lamentable circumstances that conspired to create insanity,’55 and many did feel their tours had enhanced their knowledge of medical practices. A visitor to the Utica Asylum commented that ‘to a sensitive and reflecting person it [visiting] can be a privilege only in view of the knowledge to be acquired,’ thereby echoing the assumption that seeing fostered understanding. After visiting asylums, people often remarked on how the experience contrasted to prevalent assumptions or popular belief. For example, one visitor to the Toronto Asylum wrote: The terrors associated with lunatic asylums made many conceive of them only as abodes of unmitigated wretchedness. The cell, the whip, the straitjacket, the filth, the food flung to the poor creatures as if they were dogs, are the prevalent notions connected with them; but here we found an Elysium in comparison with those we have read of, and those we have known. The insane were wont to be governed by the law of brutality; now it is the law of kindness.56

As will be discussed in greater detail in a later chapter, a variety of media served to popularize ‘science’ in the nineteenth century, such

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

71

Figure 6. South Wing Cells, Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York, postcard [n.d.]. Author’s collection.

72

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

as the medical exhibitions that travelled through North American cities, and the idea that knowledge could be acquired through first-hand observation was implicitly and explicitly expressed in visitor narratives. That scientific knowledge was not the reserve of an elite is further illustrated by the proliferation of popular scientific societies, the impulse to create collections of artefacts, and the fact that many did not believe special training was required to make scientific observations. Even a teacher from a small Ontario town, Peterborough, felt that if he so desired he could easily become a phrenologist, a theory that relied on reading physical markers.57 Embedded in the nineteenth-century culture of looking or visual display, it is clear that when many visitors described different forms of insanity or the impact incarceration had on humans, they were expressing a belief in their right to participate alongside other ‘experts’ in current debates and discussions. For those interested in contemporary approaches to deviant behaviour, visiting represented a ‘safe’ opportunity that allowed for the study of the insane and criminal in person. C.D. Arfwedson embodied this confidence. Commenting on the Pennsylvania Hospital, he wrote: ‘I could no where discover the appearance of chains; and yet it was contended that no danger was to be apprehended from the raving of those labouring under what is called mania a potu, or delirium tremens, the highest stage of insanity.’58 A visitor to the Toronto Asylum reassured his readers that safety and control prevailed, remarking that the patients were ‘under such good management … even a stranger or a child would be unmolested by the worst of them.’59 On his tour through Sing Sing, Basil Hall also noted: ‘There was an air of confident authority about all the arrangements of this place, which gave us a feeling of perfect security.’60 Visitors often spoke directly to inmates and patients, inquiring into the conditions of the respective institution, and frequently recorded their conversations with them.61 Nevertheless, although the desire to better comprehend the mentally ill and the criminal permeated many literary, political, and social circles in the nineteenth century, this was not necessarily accompanied by a desire to freely mix with them. Through the practice of visiting, the public could get close to those deemed mad or deviant, yet still maintain a clear boundary between ‘normal’ and ‘other.’ Consequently, many who would have felt threatened had they met the institutionalized in the public realm felt comforted by the fact that institutional tours were not without certain restrictions and parameters. While many sought to understand the plight of the mentally ill and the causes of criminality,

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

73

‘sane’ or ‘free’ citizens could feel unthreatened in the controlled context of visiting and could be assured that employees would intervene if the institutionalized became unruly. Prison guards and asylum attendants stepped in when necessary, barred windows and doors often separated the institutionalized from visitors, and violent cases were frequently restrained or removed from their presence altogether. The lines could become somewhat blurred at asylum social events, such as dances, lectures, or athletic games, but, as many illustrations reassured potential visitors (figure 7), there was always a clear demarcation between the institutionalized and the visitor.62 Quoting William Cowper in their monthly magazine, patients at the Utica Asylum were conscious of the public’s desire to maintain a ‘safe’ distance from the insane: ’Tis pleasant, through the loop-holes of retreat, To peep at such a world; to see the stir Of the great babel, and not feel the crowd.63

Inside the prison or asylum, visitors could see that the once unruly were being tamed and taught to adhere to social conventions and mores, a sign for the public of the effectiveness of institutional management and treatment. Although he explored a context very different from prisons and asylums, the writings of Edward Said nevertheless help to illuminate the appeal of visiting, the widespread fascination with criminals and the insane, and the contradictions that often riddled the intentions of visitors. In his examination of the myth of the Middle East, Said argued that Orientalism ‘depends for its strategy on [a] flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relations with the Orient without ever losing the upper hand.’64 Analogous to imperialist impulses, visiting represented an opportunity by which the public believed they could broaden their understandings of crime and madness and, in the process, legitimate social standards of healthy behaviour and thinking. The criminal and the insane could be seen as the ‘other’ and, while the aim of visitors may have been to ‘conquer’ madness and criminality or to witness their remedy, the result was often to highlight differences between normal and abnormal and thus to reaffirm dominant conceptions of normalcy. Like the ‘zones of contact’ described by Mary Louise Pratt, prisons and asylums were spaces where disparate cultures or peoples met in ‘asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination,’ and where the dominant (the

Figure 7. ‘Kingston. Recreation of the Inmates of Rockwood Asylum,’ Canadian Illustrated News, 5 October 1872, 217. National Library of Canada C 58821.

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

75

sane or the non-criminal) could affirm their place within society.65 Visiting also provided the space by which to affirm dominant notions and stereotypes of racialized others. In both Canada and the United States, visitors often expressed the view that immigrants were over-represented in asylums, and when Irish or black patients were encountered in asylums, their speech and language were caricaturized. One visitor to Blackwell’s Island asylum (who had also been a patient), referred to an Irish patient as ‘Paddy’ and claimed another ‘Black Jimmy’ had ‘all the negro fondness for high-sounding words.’66 Contemporary theories help illuminate the complexities of the past and the often insidious nature of power and oppression. However, it is still critical to understand the meaning of cultural practices within the context of their own time. While the interactions that occurred between inmates and visitors were inherently unequal, many believed at the time that visiting was not a selfish endeavour for the benefit of the visitor alone, but was actually beneficial to the institutionalized. For many advocates of institutional tourism, the practice represented one way in which the often dreadful conditions inside prisons and asylums could be publicized and subsequently ameliorated. As a frequent chronicler of the incarcerated’s plight, Charles Dickens criticized people who were ignorant of their community’s institutions and who left the institutionalized unprotected and vulnerable to abuse by corrupt employees. Writing of the situation in England, he chastised those who were ‘utterly unmindful of the throng of wretched creatures’ pent up in Newgate and advocated a closer relationship between society and the confined.67 Like Dickens, many felt that they had a civic and humanitarian duty to visit their community’s custodial institutions as a means of improving the health and stability of society. Simply embarking on such a tour was often seen as a commendable and charitable activity, and many citizens felt they had a social responsibility to be familiar with their community’s prisons and asylums. One ‘respectable citizen’ of Richmond, Virginia, attested to this sense of duty when he stated, ‘I must confess with shame, that though I have lived in this city more than 20 years, I have never entered our Jail.’68 Visiting was often interpreted as an act of beneficence, and the idea that it could help alleviate the physical and social marginalization of inmates and patients was emphasized in many travel narratives as well. Joseph John Gurney, brother of prison reform advocate Elizabeth Fry, presented visiting as ‘obligatory’ for ‘responsible citizen[s],’69 and warned: ‘let the Christian visitor neglect his calls of charity … and no one can answer for the consequences.’70

76

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

For some visitors, the emphasis on humanitarianism was closely related to religious beliefs. The idea of visiting as part of the ‘Christian duty’ may have had particular resonance in communities experiencing religious revivals, such as Utica in the antebellum period.71 Moreover, this philanthropic impulse was often piqued at specific times of the year. Special events and festivities, including Christmas, at asylums often attracted members of the public, and the writings surrounding such occasions as concerts, fairs, or dances suggest that citizens were expected to attend as part of their civic duty. The annual fair at the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, for example, was advertised in local papers and attracted ‘numerous and generous’ guests. The institution’s patient magazine, The Opal, commended those who attended, including ‘wives,’ ‘children,’ and ‘lovers,’ and wrote: The interest the society of Utica has ever taken in the welfare of the Asylum is manifest, and it has been so constant, so true hearted, so respectable and so intelligent, that the city as such must ere this have learned what a reliable position in the world a lunatic asylum is, and what charming, and funny, and ingenious people lunatics are. The [visitors to the fair] are of the prompt and best kind.72

Although the writer was perhaps sarcastically critiquing the curiosity of the public, he nevertheless drew attention to the great appeal of the asylum to society. Furthermore, his status as patient-writer and object of study for visitors brings into relief an inherent contradiction in visiting: while visiting was represented as a civic or religious duty tied to broadening notions of democracy and humanitarianism, both the prison and asylum entailed for the institutionalized the suspension of basic democratic rights. Events such as fairs were open to all visitors, but other events such as dances or holiday parties could be more exclusive affairs in which the invited guests were usually of a certain socio-economic profile (generally prominent members of the middle class), and a sense of moral obligation in attending such social functions was even more prominent in writings of the time. At the Toronto Asylum in 1847, the medical superintendent Dr Telfer secured by invitation ‘the attendance of some of the citizens and their families, whom it was reasonable to conceive, would, each and all, be anxious, so far as in them lie, to aid in a work which promised a wide field, not only for “the good Samaritan,” but for many good Samaritans.’73 However, as one newspaper reported of the

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

77

London Asylum Ball, these were charitable events that were nevertheless enjoyable to all: One of the most pleasant events in connection with the routine of Asylum life is the annual ball. For years it has been looked forward to with pleasant anticipation by not only the members of the staff and attendants but many in the city, who have either participated in its festivities, and they desired to be present again, or, having heard of its usually pleasant character, were anxious to be among the fortunate invited.74

Furthermore, at least one visitor speculated that such social events had salutary effects on all participants by revealing the efficacy of kind, gentle treatment and could even transform those who had been drawn to asylums out of ‘morbid curiosity.’75 Indeed, whereas many initially thought the lunatic ball to be held in Toronto in 1847 was a ‘strange and cruel hoax,’ they found that not only was the evening enjoyed by patients and visitors alike, but that they themselves had broadened their knowledge of insanity and its treatment by interacting with the confined.76 Social mingling with the institutionalized for benevolent purposes occurred in insane asylums, but the barriers between convicts and visitors were usually very pronounced. Annual balls, Christmas parties, sporting events, and theatrical plays were held only in insane asylums and convicts in most penitentiaries generally were not permitted to interact with one another, let alone with visitors from the outside. At the same time, though, social interaction was controlled even in asylums. Strict rules governed the annual balls at the London Asylum, dictating who could be danced with and when. Moreover, not all supported the idea of such mixed entertainment and found the blurring of boundaries to be repugnant. Although Susanna Moodie was unopposed to the presence of strangers in custodial institutions, actually socializing with inmates was unacceptable to her. Upon seeing the ballroom used for inmate amusement at the Toronto Asylum, Moodie claimed that ‘such a spectacle’ would be revolting and that ‘the delirium of their frightful disease would be less shocking in my eyes than the madness of their mirth.’77 Whereas many believed such events were an important part of therapeutic programs, Moodie’s attitude alludes to the demarcations others felt the need to maintain between the ‘sick’ or socially aberrant and the healthy or ‘normal,’ as well as a desire to remain at a safe social distance from them.78 However, such views were rarely expressed

78

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

in visitor narratives, and instead most accounts refer to a widespread desire to attend such events and to be present for special institutional affairs. Aside from supposedly helping the institutionalized, many believed visiting also served an essential legitimating function in a society that was highly suspicious of secrecy. In the United States, the ideologies of liberalism and democracy pervaded society and encouraged citizens to feel that they had a right to inspect every institution in their midst. They distrusted anything hidden from public purview and felt corruption would prevail if society did not serve as watchdog. Responding to the criticisms of Harriet Martineau regarding the practice of visiting, one warden explained that ‘the free Americans would not be debarred from witnessing the operation of any thing which they have decreed.’79 Likewise, Isaac Ray noted that asylums have an ‘air of mystery which stimulates the imagination and excites the apprehensions of the ignorant and credulous. Any appearance of concealment very naturally gives rise to the suspicion of something wrong.’80 Consequently, wardens and superintendents could learn from a highly publicized riot near Boston in which a convent was torn apart by citizens claiming to resent its inaccessibility and closed doors. Marryat’s discussion of this incident helps to explain the willingness of superintendents and wardens to allow visitors into their institutions and the compulsion the public felt to enter into them: ‘The Americans are excessively curious, especially the mob: they cannot bear anything like a secret, – that’s unconstitutional.’81 Some were critical of society’s curiosity in custodial institutions, a tendency that surfaced most frequently among British travellers to the United States, as well as those who constructed the working class as ‘mobs.’ The gathering of crowds to intrude upon what might be seen as ‘private’ or morbid matters was often used to discredit republicanism and popular culture, and to highlight the danger or vulgarity of ‘too much’ democracy. For these commentators, the activities of the general public were devoid of abstract meaning or purpose and were a sign of moral decay and social disorder. For most superintendents and wardens, however, the desires of the laity had to be tolerated. Criticism of visiting and public involvement was not regularly expressed in the nineteenth century. For most, visiting was an emblem of progressive cultural change, an important means of social involvement with contemporary problems and an opportunity to strengthen social cohesion, communal ties, and national identity. With the increasing rates of literacy in both British North America and the United States

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

79

and the explosion of print culture, the reading public became part of what Benedict Anderson has termed an ‘imagined community,’ which investigated, discussed, debated, and redefined what were seen as pressing social issues of the day. The discourses of prison and asylum reform were central to this endeavour to explain the increasingly industrial and urban landscape, to foster a sense of both local and national identity, and to define both the role and jurisdiction of the state and the responsibilities of the citizen. Institutional tours enabled individual citizens to feel involved in the process of determining standards of care, principles of reform, and the significance of asylums and prisons both to their immediate localities and to society. One journal propounded, ‘Nothing illustrates our age and country more than the lively interest manifested in human institutions,’ while others depicted them as ‘noble’ and ‘testifying to the greatness’ of their communities.82 Another writer advocated visiting by citizens ‘who seek to be informed on subjects of vital interest to humanity, and who have no desire to gratify idle curiosity.’83 Repeatedly, notions of nationalism, citizenship, and humanitarianism were intertwined with visions of prisons and asylums. The desire to become acquainted with contemporary approaches to crime and madness or to contribute towards their application was a frequently expressed motive behind visiting, yet people sought entry into prisons and asylums for a variety of reasons. For many individuals, touring institutions had a deeply personal dimension, and the experience of observing the incarcerated affected them profoundly. Catharine Parr Traill’s incentives for visiting Kingston Penitentiary were connected to her attempt to deal with the death of her son, who had been employed as a guard and was murdered by two inmates.84 While his experiences were perhaps less cathartic than distressing, Michael Bernard Buckley, a priest visiting from Ireland, toured many of the prisons and asylums throughout the United States and felt moved by the people he saw. On a visit to the public institutions on Blackwell’s Island with a group of friends, he commented on the penitentiary, asylum, almshouse, and the hospital for incurables. After passing through the ‘Horror Ward’ for females in the insane asylum (a frightening experience for him which he equates with Bedlam), Buckley toured the men’s department, and, according to his record, the sight inspired profound feelings: A very good looking, intellectual faced man, with a merry twinkle in his eye, put a piece of wood into his mouth saying, ‘do not be afraid, I’ll not

80

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public bite you,’ as if he put the wood there to prevent the possibility of his biting us. He then asked if we would wish to hear him sing. We signified our desire, and he sang a plaintive ditty, in which there was mention of flowers, and rivers, and sunshine, and happy days gone by. A tear stole to my eye, and I could not restrain it. He sang beautifully and with fresh pathos as if he felt the full charm of the sentiment … He then prepared for another performance, when a lunatic stepped forward and whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t mind that poor fellow, he is mad.’ This was too ludicrous. We left the asylum with a strange feeling of sadness, not easily chased away.85

Buckley did not leave the asylum a mere objective commentator, as his moving description suggests a certain degree of empathy for the institutionalized.86 Likewise, Jane Ellice was not a neutral observer during her visit to the Auburn State Prison. Of her experience she wrote: ‘We arrived there just as the prisoners were marching in order … They all looked so ghastly & wretched … It was a sad, sad sight & the silence of the Tailors most oppressive.’87 For many individuals, visits to asylums and prisons were constructed as an experience that transcended mere voyeurism for the sake of entertainment.88 Their tours, while serving an educational purpose, were portrayed as personal and emotional. Even seventy years after his visit to Auburn Penitentiary, penologist Harry Elmer Barnes recalled the impression the prisoners and the ‘grim silence’ that pervaded the institution had on him.89 At least on the surface, institutional tours for many visitors enhanced their understanding of confinement and provided them with the opportunity to empathize with the suffering of mental illness or the misery of imprisonment. The authors of visitor accounts and their audiences were captivated by prisons and asylums and, especially, the people confined within them. While institutional practices formed an important place in these narratives, it was the prisoners and patients who drew the most attention and could evoke – at least in print – feelings of compassion. The incentives of some visitors defy generalization and were as farranging as the desire to obtain a cheap glass of whisky made by resourceful inmates at the Tombs who had set up their own distillery or the need to escape the heat on a scorching afternoon inside the cool, dark halls of the New York State Prison.90 Visitors represented a broad spectrum of nineteenth-century men and women whose motives were just as varied as they were. Their shared trait was their fascination with prisons and asylums: collectively they represented a society that was actively engaged with institutional practices, crime, and mental ill-

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

81

ness. Their choice to spend their free time touring prisons and asylums constituted part of a mass movement that had social, political, and cultural implications and served to inform broader discussions about crime and mental illness. At the same time, visiting coexisted with and shared some similarities with other political and social movements. In the nineteenth century, as communities were transformed by urbanization, population growth, and economic capitalism, people began to be involved with activities that transcended the interests of their immediate vicinities. In both Canada and the United States mass movements developed that were composed of individuals seeking to create what they believed would be a better world. The temperance movement swept both Canada and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and attracted thousands of supporters, who petitioned government, attended lectures, formed societies, and challenged the place of alcohol in daily life. Some of these movements in the nineteenth century, especially abolitionism, redefined social relations, popular views, and legislation. Although altruism was only one of many motivating factors among their participants, these movements embodied a sense of duty, community involvement, and civic identity. The interconnections between these movements are further confirmed by the fact that those who advocated social change often drew parallels between oppressed groups; for instance, black Americans or married women were often compared to the wrongly accused or the unjustly committed. Reform rather than revolution was usually seen as the solution by reformers, including those seeking the emancipation of women. Problems with prisons or asylums were usually linked to corrupt overseers or inadequate funding; but, while laws might be criticized or abuses highlighted, the abolition of prisons or asylums was not contemplated. Visitors might highlight sombre sights or identify abuse, but, fundamentally, they accepted the principle of institutionalization. When managed properly, prisons and asylums were seen as exemplifying liberal humanitarianism and the modern age. Limitations of What Could Be Seen Although the public visited prisons and asylums for a variety of reasons, there were limitations as to what they could and did see on their institutional tours. Circumstances differed among institutions and the majority of visitors were not simply given free rein by administrators to explore the interiors of prisons and asylums. Rather, most tours were

82

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Figure 8. Floorplan, ‘Brief Description of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, N.Y.,’ Journal of Insanity 3, no. 1 (July 1846).

carefully conducted affairs in which the visitor was shown over only certain parts of the institution. Although some visitors such as W.H. Withrow and Joseph John Gurney purported to have been given the power to freely inspect a number of different North American prisons and Walt Whitman was even provided with his own set of keys to the London Asylum, tours were much more circumscribed affairs for those who did not have political connections or social clout. Certain parts of the institution could be excluded from the tourist’s purview, and particularly troublesome inmates could be hidden as well. At Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, for example, ‘the Lodge and the Retreat are, as a rule, closed from public curiosity, the indecencies in both word and action of many of the inmates rendering them unfit for scrutiny.’91 Similarly, at the Utica Asylum (figure 8), ‘visitors are shown only the conva-

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

83

lescent wards of the two sexes, where but few evidences of insanity are apparent … To the wards where the excited, demented, and wretched patients are confined they will not be admitted.’92 While certain occasions, such as official inspections, allowed the public greater access to restricted parts of prisons and asylums,93 most visitors who hoped to determine the well-being of the institutionalized were not necessarily seeing inmates and patients in their normal, everyday state.94 The limitations visitors faced on their tours were related not only to administrators’ efforts to shape popular views of their institutions, but also to political and cultural attitudes. Although many women confined in institutions were of particular fascination to visitors, a growing number of administrators became concerned with the need to ‘protect’ women in the latter half of the nineteenth century, even if they were convicted criminals. The Reverend R.V. Rogers of Kingston Penitentiary argued that women were degraded by visitors and needed to be shielded from their gaze, and was grateful when inspectors claimed his wish would be granted.95 As a result, when Isabella Strange Trotter toured Kingston Penitentiary with her father in 1858, they were not allowed to see the female prisoners. According to Trotter, ‘one lady is permitted to visit them, in order to give them religious instruction, but they do not otherwise see the visitors of the prison.’96 However, two female visitors were conducted by the warden’s daughter through the female ward a few years after Trotter, thus highlighting the often inconsistent application of institutional rules governing visitors.97 Women were not restricted to visiting for benevolent purposes alone and were generally not criticized for touring custodial institutions, yet a minority of institutional employees did feel that it was inappropriate for women to see the incarcerated. There is no evidence that institutions officially discriminated against female visitors, but, at times, gender influenced what visitors were exposed to on their tours. Anne Newport Royall experienced such discrimination first-hand when she was refused admittance by the keeper into many parts of the Philadelphia prison, including the men’s ward.98 Nevertheless, the visitors’ book for Eastern State Penitentiary documents the presence of many women, generally listed as unnamed ‘ladies’ accompanying men. In an era in which women’s rights were profoundly restrained, this form of civic participation in the public sphere, in public institutions, was significant regardless of the limitations they may have occasionally experienced inside the prison or asylum and the erasure of their names from the written record. Some institutional employees felt it inappro-

84

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

priate for women to see the institutionalized, especially male prisoners, and probably worried about their effects on those under their watch. Clearly, many women rejected this characterization, believing that they instead had a right to be involved in the discussions surrounding crime and mental illness and witness for themselves modern institutional practices. At least one woman even took offence at being unnamed in the visitors’ register at the Philadelphia Penitentiary and insisted on signing her own name rather than be recorded as ‘lady.’ Access to institutional grounds could furthermore be constrained by notions surrounding class. The interest of the public in asylums and prisons as sites of reform or self-improvement was often interpreted as a specifically middle-class endeavour. Members of the middle class were generally perceived as ‘respectable’ or ‘professional’ visitors by institutional employees and were commonly disassociated from cruel or voyeuristic visitors who were supposedly drawn solely from the lower orders. Indeed, discussions surrounding visiting often insinuated that the incentives behind institutional tours were class-based. Some middle-class visitors may have been mere voyeurs, but they were more capable of hiding their interests behind a shroud of respectability: they could justify their fascination with the institutionalized under the guise of education or philanthropy. Conversely, the lower classes were less likely to be seen as motivated by humanitarian concerns, which is apparent in the efforts of many administrators to devise restrictive policies on particular occasions. For example, in preparation for the Provincial Exhibition in 1863, the warden of Kingston Penitentiary recommended that admission fees be increased so as to inhibit the entry of dissolute visitors. In a letter to the Inspector of Prisons and Asylums, Donald Aeneas Macdonell wrote: As the Provincial Exhibition for Canada West will take place in a few days, I beg to call your attention to the vast concourse of people who will call for admission with the view of seeing this great Institution. It is important that the admission should as much as possible be confined to respectable parties. I have considered that if Tickets were issued at half a Dollar a piece, it would be the best course which can be adopted.99

Such an approach, the warden no doubt realized, would make the institution less accessible to the working class and, hence, ‘unrespectable’ members of the public. Family visitors faced perhaps the greatest constraints, as they were

Visitors to Prisons and Asylums

85

generally limited in terms of how often they could visit relatives in prisons and asylums. Superintendents frequently found such visits detrimental to the well-being of their patients, believing it hampered progress, and thus discouraged interaction until the patient was ‘cured.’ Wardens likewise restricted family visitors and dictated the terms of communication between them and inmates, but they often permitted annual visits between relatives. Such visits, however, were not private affairs and were generally under the purview of tourists.100 Furthermore, family members not only had to endure the scrutiny of visitors, but were often poorly treated by institutional employees. Robina and Kathleen Lizars, for example, visited the leader of the Upper Canadian rebellion, William Lyon Mackenzie, in a New York prison and commented on the problems he faced when trying to see his family. Whereas ‘the iron doors were freely opened to those who wished to see a real live Canadian rebel,’ Mackenzie’s family found it extremely difficult to obtain permission to see him.101 Ultimately, not only were the motivations of visitors diverse, but their actual experiences in custodial institutions varied as well. The phenomenon of visiting demonstrates that a substantial number of people in nineteenth-century North America sought a close relationship to the custodial institutions around them and actively endeavoured to better understand the people housed within them. The fact that people took such great interest in prisons and asylums suggests that these institutions were once important and familiar sights in the nineteenth century and were much more than mere physical edifices. Entrenched in popular discourse, both a familiar sight and a topic of discussion for Canadians, Americans, and tourists from abroad, prisons and asylums epitomized many cultural, political, and ideological currents of the day and represented an essential means by which people conceived of their immediate communities, broader society, and the future of a changing society. As a result, the constant interaction between the institution and the public symbolized not simply society’s engagement with the topics of crime and mental illness, but a broader impulse to understand, reform, and improve the world around them. Certainly, it is difficult to determine the degree to which public tours were controlled by institutional employees. Institutional rules and regulations were usually devised by authorities, yet those responsible for guiding visitors practised a great deal of discretion in their dealings with the public. However, even more significant when considering the

86

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

restrictions of institutional tourism is the ratio of visitors to attendants or guards. If admission numbers provide any indication, then employees would have been greatly outnumbered by visitors, thereby allowing the latter to defy regulations without being noticed. Most rules specified that visitors had to be accompanied by a staff member, but it is impossible to determine if this was respected. Nevertheless, in spite of the swarms of visitors that descended on some institutions, order generally prevailed during visiting hours. Riots, major disturbances, and escapes by inmates did not ensue with the entry of the public into institutions, although a handful of such incidents did occur. Furthermore, outside of administrative objectives and employees’ attitudes, there was another important variable that greatly influenced visitors’ experiences in prisons and asylums: the people who were confined within them. The ability of inmates and patients to perform for or react to strangers prevented institutional tours from being completely controlled, orchestrated events and ensured that these institutions would not be passively experienced tourist sites. As will be discussed in the following chapter, strangers were spoken to, stared at, physically attacked, and even pickpocketed by inmates and patients who refused to be controlled completely by their keepers and who, in various and often creative ways, attempted to circumvent official rules and regulations.

4 ‘I Am Even Afraid That She Put Her Tongue Out’: Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

Visits to custodial institutions were propelled by a variety of factors, and the experiences of tourists and the sights they saw within prisons and asylums were influenced by a number of variables as well. However, as tourists strolled through the gardens of insane asylums or admired the architectural design of penitentiaries, it was the people confined within these institutions who generated the most interest and excitement. Many visitors hoped to observe the incarcerated, converse with them about their experiences, and evaluate the efficacy of institutional programs through the opinions of the confined. On the surface, institutional tours may have appeared to be orchestrated affairs, but institutional employees could not always control what was seen or experienced by people from the outside world. While the policies of institutions and the agendas of visitors defined to a large degree the terms of contact between prisons, asylums, and their broader communities, inmates and patients also played a significant role in determining the dynamic of these interactions and moulding public perceptions of the ‘deviant’ and confinement. Officials sought to promote particular images of their institutions and visitors may have wanted to be in control of the gaze, yet the independence of those who were institutionalized and the subcultures that developed among them demonstrate that while people could be physically confined, their actions could not be completely contained. Indeed, the ‘spectacle’ of the prison or the asylum could be entirely unpredictable at times. The power that existed between institutional employees, visitors, and inmates was unequal in manifold ways: inmates and patients could not dictate the terms of contact with the outside world (such as if and when visitors were to be seen) and their behaviour was inhibited by

88

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

institutional rules and by informal practices of punishment and abuse. At the same time, although their freedom of movement was limited by the walls that surrounded them and the regulations that were imposed on them, patients and inmates frequently refused to be treated as mere objects on display for the gratification of the visitor’s gaze. Whereas some have portrayed the institutionalized as entirely silenced, as ‘so completely removed from view that their presence could not speak for them,’1 these individuals actively responded to visitors and demanded to be heard by adopting various strategies. Rather than allowing themselves to be controlled by those around them, the institutionalized used the presence of visitors for their own purposes, often as a means to improve the condition of their confinement and to distract themselves from the tedium of institutional life. Although the most dehumanizing aspects of incarceration may not have been significantly tempered, convicts and patients would not simply become hidden from the public upon committal and, moreover, would refuse to submit to the power of institutional regimes. The Historiography Surrounding the Experience of Institutionalization While visiting represented an important civic, cultural, and educational activity for nineteenth-century society with important symbolism for citizens, the state, and institutional authorities, the institutionalized challenged and influenced interpretations of the practice and their interactions with visitors helped to shape the psychological and material experience of institutionalization. Traditionally, the inmates and patients confined within prisons and asylums attracted only minimal attention from historians. In Rothman’s The Discovery of the Asylum, the institutionalized remained hidden from view, while the theories and aims of administrators and the programs of reform they implemented took centre stage. Foucault provided many examples of the oppressive nature of institutions, which included physical abuse and psychological torment, but the complexities of inmate life were not of concern to him. Instead, his focus was on the insipid methods and theories designed to confine, control, and constrain those defined as deviant. His analysis of the implications of the movement from physical punishment to institutionalization and from restraining the body to reforming the mind concentrated on the social construction of the mad and the bad, and rejected the idea that experience or agency could be discerned. Among

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

89

the early academics of institutionalization, sociologist Erving Goffman was the most interested in the perspective of inmates and patients. The world he portrayed was bleak, brutal, and profoundly dehumanizing. Uncovering the psychological ramifications of the ‘total institution’ in the mid-twentieth century, Goffman argued that the ‘self’ was annihilated by a deliberately devised plan to regulate and control all aspects of individual lives.2 This chapter does not challenge the notion that institutions sought to control individuals and alter their behaviour and thinking; that was, after all, the basic premise behind their establishment. Nor does it reject the portrayal of institutional life as dehumanizing. Rather, it focuses on a few of the ways in which inmates and patients attempted to defy institutional rules and regulations through their interactions with the outside world and also the manner in which visitors influenced the experience of confinement. Increasingly, historians have sought to uncover the histories of the institutionalized. Once a neglected subject of study, academics have shown that the voices of those confined in correctional and psychiatric institutions are retrievable and that institutional histories need not be told exclusively from the perspective of wardens, superintendents, or other officials. While Goffman demonstrated the importance of understanding the psychological dimensions of institutionalization, historian Geoffrey Reaume pushed this approach further by illuminating the complexities and varieties of inmate experiences. His monograph, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940, is a detailed examination of mental illness and institutionalization from the perspective of patients. Reaume argues that their voices and experiences ‘show later generations that psychiatric patients have a great deal to teach us about what it was like to be confined in a mental institution and to live with the psychological troubles that brought them to 999 Queen Street West.’3 Outlining the abuses, violence, and exploitation many patients faced, Reaume also highlights the ways in which patients interacted with others and sought to improve their lives and the conditions of institutionalization. A number of other recent works, including many doctoral dissertations, further attest to the possibilities offered by histories of those labelled mentally ill or criminal,4 and reveal how patients and inmates were not mere recipients of reformative, punitive, or curative efforts by reformers. This chapter continues in this vein, and demonstrates that the confined found ways to adapt to their environment, influence their surroundings, and subvert institutional policies. This analysis of visiting from

90

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

the perspective of the confined does not negate the duress under which they existed in the institution, but instead recognizes the humanity of inmates and patients and the importance of seeing them as active agents. Sources The institutionalized had a significant impact on the perceptions and experiences of visitors and, in turn, were greatly affected by the practice of institutional tourism. Unfortunately, like most marginalized people throughout history, their voices are the most difficult to retrieve. The institutionalized found many ways to express their individual histories: they wrote on the backs of mirrors, behind stamps on envelopes, or on sheets of paper secreted away from attendants and guards. Unless published or confiscated by authorities, few of these sources remain. A few did publish accounts of their incarceration, often as a means of drawing attention to the need for legal, penal, or medical reform. Elizabeth Packard, for example, both wrote and spoke publicly about being institutionalized in the Illinois State Hospital by her husband, who disagreed with her religious, political, and social views. After spending three years in the asylum, Packard was released and dedicated herself to changing both the conditions and admission procedures of asylums in the United States. As well, a small number of patients wrote magazine articles or memoirs that are today available to the historian.5 Periodicals written by patients included the Retreat Gazette, which was affiliated with the Lunatic Asylum at Hartford, Connecticut, and published during the year 1837. However, it ceased when the patient editing the paper was released. In addition, the Asylum Journal connected to the Vermont Asylum at Brattleboro was established in 1842 as a weekly periodical and then became a monthly in 1845.6 One of the periodicals relied on in this chapter is The Opal. The Opal was a magazine edited, written, and printed by patients at the Utica Asylum from 1851 to 1860, the profits from which were ‘devoted to the promotion of the happiness of the patients.’7 Its contents ranged from poetry and prose to discussions of contemporary politics and the treatment of the mentally ill. A monthly journal for most of its existence, The Opal garnered a respectable number of paying subscribers; in 1851 it had 900 paying subscribers and, in addition, was exchanged for ‘two hundred and twenty-seven weeklies, four semi-weeklies, eight dailies and thirtythree monthlies.’8 Aside from the direct references to visitors, The Opal

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

91

Figure 9. Etching of Editor, The Opal 2, no. 4 (1862): 121.

constituted one way in which the institutionalized attempted to mediate or forge relations with the outside world. The editor for most of its existence was A.M. (figure 9), who also wrote many articles in the journal, including a regular column titled ‘The Editor’s Table.’9 The journal strove to establish itself as much more than a simple window onto asylum life and mental illness. As one writer for the journal asserted, ‘It is absurd to suppose that the intellect is doomed to inactivity and uselessness because within the walls of a public place.’10 Events in the institution were chronicled and the experience of mental illness

92

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

was discussed, but many contributors also addressed pressing social issues beyond the asylum, including abolition, the Civil War, and tobacco usage. No clear image of patient attitudes towards the asylum emerges, but, instead, views were varied and often characterized by ambiguity. In one instance the asylum was equated with the gallows; in another it was presented as an idyllic city full of ‘independent wonderful persons.’11 Furthermore, in spite of patient involvement, The Opal was ‘censored by Physicians and assistants’ and may not be representational of patients’ attitudes and experiences.12 Moreover, those who wrote for the periodical did not necessarily represent a wide range of patients, and many accounts were written for a purpose, often to prove their sanity to their friends, family, or doctors. As Maryrose Eannace’s examination of the journal and patient case files suggests, the majority of contributors were male and female residents in the first halls of the asylum and ‘were of better than average education … and the majority were private patients rather than wards of the country.’13 Like many accounts written by ex-patients, authors in The Opal often remained anonymous, the stigmatization of mental illness compelling many to hide their identities. Writings by inmates incarcerated in prisons analogous to those in The Opal do not seem to exist for the nineteenth century. Convicts of the New York State Reformatory at Elmira began a newspaper in 1883 titled The Summary, which reportedly sparked the establishment of other prison papers. Unfortunately, it does not appear that any copies of these publications have been preserved.14 Consequently, in light of the scarcity of sources written by the institutionalized, it is often the words of others, found primarily in institutional records, popular magazines, and travel narratives, that must be relied upon by the historian. The recollections of visitors are inevitably imbued with biases, and the institutionalized were not always honest with strangers, a fact that many writers on the outside acknowledged. While one visitor admitted, ‘it is impossible as a general rule to arrive at the facts,’ another commentator noted, ‘prisoners are not as a rule willing to confess their sins to an outsider, and lie persistently and even ridiculously.’15 As well, visitors undoubtedly exaggerated or fabricated stories in order to entertain readers. However, if we read the words of visitors carefully and with sensitivity to their biases, they do provide glimpses into inmates’ and patients’ lives and help to generate greater understanding of the experience of confinement and the relationship that existed between the institutionalized and free society.

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

93

Profiteering from Visiting There were significant differences between convicts and patients, which influenced the meetings that took place between them and visitors from the outside. The mental illnesses afflicting some patients in mental hospitals could affect their perceptions and hinder their ability to communicate with visitors. In addition, the fact that they were labelled insane by alienists could prevent visitors from accepting the accuracy of their statements.16 (Indeed, this tendency has been perpetuated by many academics, as Geoffrey Reaume has shown elsewhere.)17 Moreover, the movement of the confined and their ability to interact with strangers varied widely among both prison and asylum populations. Though rarely seen by visitors, some patients were restrained through mechanical devices, while others were able to walk through the asylum wards and grounds with greater freedom. Many prisoners were locked in cells when they met strangers, whereas others met visitors in more open settings, such as while transporting them to the respective prison in boats.18 At the same time, there were similarities between the experiences of prisoners and patients in regard to their interactions with visitors. Both patients and inmates were denied certain civil liberties and individual rights – including the ability to vote or to move about and communicate freely – and both were positioned as objects for study in a movement that claimed to be dedicated to humanitarian reform. Nevertheless, as this chapter will discuss, people in both prisons and asylums refused to be treated as compliant exhibits of human deviancy and frequently transformed visiting into something that served their own interests. The restrictions placed on inmates’ and patients’ movements and their limited ability to resist being watched ensured that the institutionalized were subordinate and that the interactions with the public were far from egalitarian. The interior design of prisons and asylums and institutional policies allowed tourists to watch the institutionalized and to treat the criminal and the insane as spectacles. According to Daniel Pick in Faces of Degeneration, ideologies surrounding criminality and penal reform generally involved the exhibition of criminals and were manifest in the edifices constructed to confine them. This aim was epitomized by Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, which embodied ‘the dream of making the criminal into a perfect and literal spectacle: each prisoner exposed at all times as a silhouette to the eyes of the guard, and moreover made available as the edifying object of public visits.’19 Prisons, in

94

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

particular, encouraged constant surveillance, as secret passageways and hallways allowed employees to keep an eye on prisoners’ every move. One visitor, C.D. Arfwedson, described Sing Sing Penitentiary as a ‘system of espionage,’ where an ‘invisible eye watches [the prisoner’s] actions every minute,’ and he did not hesitate to admit, ‘I amused myself for some time in walking through these dark corridors.’20 Analogous to Arfwedson’s experience, visitors were frequently taken through these hidden hallways, where they could spy on convicts without themselves being either heard or seen. In asylums as well, architectural features such as doors with windows stimulated a sense of spying, and many visitors commented on their ability to secretly watch patients. While some superintendents tried to abolish architectural features that rendered the asylum like a zoo and objectified patients as confined animals on display, many of these features persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Until 1890, for example, the Toronto Insane Asylum had verandas with iron bars on them, which were described by Clark as ‘cages for wild animals’ where visitors could taunt patients into performing ‘fantastic tricks.’21 Nevertheless, while both patients and prisoners had little power over whether they were observed and how they would be ‘read,’ they could manipulate those moments when they were subjects of study in small but significant ways.22 With limited resources and few options within their reach, the institutionalized still managed to influence these interactions and use them to their own advantage, thereby revealing the agency that can persist in seemingly powerless situations. Visitors were not always upfront about their identities and may have tricked some inmates or patients into providing them with personal information, such as the reporter from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine who adopted the demeanour of ‘urbanity’ to convey the impression that he was a ‘hail fellow well met’ to the ‘thieving vagabonds’ imprisoned on Blackwell’s Island.23 Even one ex-patient of Blackwell’s Asylum did not refrain from deceiving the institutionalized when he returned for a visit: ‘wishing to be well received’ by one particular patient who had a ‘predilection for distinguished guests,’ he introduced himself ‘as traveling tutor to the Prince of Siam, then visiting the United States.’24 Nonetheless, even if some visitors were not honest with patients and inmates, for many institutionalized people the fact that there was an outsider to tell their story to was used as a means of providing temporary comfort or of obtaining distraction from the hardships of their confinement. Wardens rarely engaged with inmates, superintendents had little time to spend with individual patients on a daily basis,

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

95

and guards and attendants could not be relied upon to even feign interest in discussions with their wards. Institutional routines could be characterized by forced schedules, hostility from staff and other inmates, routine, and a lack of stimulation. Consequently, inmates and patients often related their histories (or stories) to strangers passing through their institutions, ‘buttonholed’ visitors in order to voice their grievances or share their experiences and opinions, or simply distracted themselves in an environment that was bleak and mundane at best.25 In contrast to the views expressed by critics of visiting, tourists were not always treated as unwanted intruders by the institutionalized, and numerous visitors shared the impressions of one who, on his tour of the Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, wrote, ‘They did not seem to be disturbed by our visit; but, with a very few exceptions, they were rather pleased than otherwise.’26 While visitors were perhaps attempting to justify their intrusions into the lives of others, many officials also observed similar responses to strangers. Richard Maurice Bucke believed most patients welcomed visitors and argued, ‘I have never yet known a single patient object to the admission of strangers into the halls.’27 Although such impressions must be treated with caution, it is plausible that patients and convicts alike were willing to hold conversations with visitors, often talking of the events leading up to their institutionalization, and were not unilaterally opposed to their presence. Some visitors claimed to have been surprised at the receptivity some inmates showed towards them. One reporter from the New York Times related to his readers his meeting with one convict in the Tombs and remarked on the man’s welcoming demeanour. He wrote: ‘It is a delicate thing to approach a cell unless one knows the action will not be considered intrusive; but finding the former visits well received, we ventured to approach this cell unannounced, and bade the tenant good day. “Is this Mr. Shepherd’s cell?” “It’s Jim Shepherd’s cell,” is the good-natured but humbly-toned reply.’28 It is impossible for the historian to gauge the accuracy of such impressions, but it is not difficult to understand why some people may have sought interaction with visitors. Institutionalization was usually involuntary and entailed disempowerment for inmates and patients whose autonomy was profoundly restrained by institutional walls, rules and regulations, and programs of reform. While not all had a choice to be viewed, the institutionalized often had a choice as to how they would interact with outsiders, exerting their independence, for example, by hiding or responding with silence. As S.G. Howe commented on inmates in Philadelphia’s East-

96

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

ern Penitentiary, ‘The public are freely admitted, without fee; but they can only walk up and down the corridor between the cells; they see no prisoner, unless they be persons of known character, – nor even then, if the prisoner exercised his right, and objects to receiving the visit.’29 Nevertheless, many did hold lengthy, personal conversations with visitors passing through their institutions, leading Joseph Sturge to remark: ‘Those who wished to do so, were suffered to speak to us through their grated doors, in a low voice. A number embraced this.’30 In insane asylums as well, patients were not uniformly opposed to the presence of visitors, and they could determine to a certain degree the interactions that took place. One visitor who previously had been a patient in the asylum on Blackwell’s Island noted the varying reactions exhibited by patients and the receptivity many of them showed to the public: ‘Some … are loquacious, sociable with their companions, delighted at the presence of visitors; while others sedulously avoid all society, and will not speak even if addressed.’31 If regulations were respected, then the entry of the public into these institutions did not involve for the institutionalized the loss of all privacy, as many institutions forbade employees from speaking to visitors about the conduct or history of patients. The rules for the Utica Asylum, for example, stated: ‘The conduct and conversation of patients must never be spoken of to visitors, nor reported by attendants when abroad.’32 If employees actually followed such rules, patients may have been less inclined to perceive visitors as intruders and, therefore, be more willing to converse with them. Whether in an asylum or prison, institutional life could be boring, tedious, and insufferably lonely. Letters written by patients at the London Asylum resonate with desperate loneliness, as people pleaded with family members or friends to visit them.33 Likewise, inmates in prisons frequently asked if relatives could visit them and seemed to crave communication with the outside world.34 This desire for contact was exacerbated by the fact that wardens and superintendents alike usually prohibited or at least limited visits from family members. Furthermore, mail moving in and out of the institution was intercepted, thereby perpetuating the sense of isolation that plagued the institutionalized. Visitors repeatedly remarked on such policies, claiming them to be the primary complaint of the institutionalized. Of the penitentiaries at Sing Sing and Auburn, one visitor noted that inmates were ‘not permitted to receive letters, nor have any sort of communication with the outside,’ and that prisoners found this to be the ‘greatest penalty of their confinement.’35 While it is impossible to discern whether or not

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

97

strangers alleviated or contributed towards the sense of abandonment and social alienation that accompanied institutionalization, the receptivity of patients and inmates to strangers suggests that some saw their presence as beneficial (or, perhaps more likely, that institutional life was so difficult even the presence of strangers could offer an improvement). One writer in The Opal, the patient magazine of the Utica Asylum, stated, ‘The monotony of our every-day life is broken by receiving company,’36 while another writer for the magazine felt heartened by the interest people had in the asylum and was pleased with the large numbers who attended the annual fair in 1858. Although sarcasm is a strong possibility, he or she described the people of Utica who frequently visited the institution as ‘constant, so true hearted, so respectable, and so intelligent.’37 In penitentiaries that operated on the solitary system, visitors may have been particularly welcome. Unable to communicate (at least in theory) with anyone other than prison officials, visitors helped to alleviate the burden of solitude and silence that plagued inmates at institutions such as the Eastern Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.38 One visitor commented that the prisoners ‘see the keepers, chaplain, and occasional visiters [sic] by which the rigour of their solitude is mitigated.’39 In fact, it appears that many inmates imprisoned in the Eastern Penitentiary became increasingly tolerant of visitors throughout the duration of their sentence owing to the effects of social isolation. On his tour of this institution, Charles Dickens conversed with one man who had been imprisoned for six years and ‘answered freely to every thing that was said to him,’ yet another, who had been there for only a few days, ‘had as yet no relish for visitors.’40 Many visitors to this institution spoke to inmates at great length about their personal histories and perceptions of the silent system. Visitors may have been primarily interested in justifying their own opinions of institutional regimes, but it is also likely that inmates enjoyed being consulted as knowledgeable experts on penal matters.41 Joseph Sturge, for example, based many of his views of Sing Sing State Prison on the information he ‘gathered from the prisoners themselves,’ many of whom conveyed the notion ‘that a great change had been introduced, both in the affairs and in the management of the prison, within the last eighteen months.’42 Similarly, at the Lunatic Ball in Toronto in 1847, ‘citizens and lunatics’ danced and mingled together, and the conversations that took place between them led one participant to write: ‘We are not aware that any bad result followed. Each of the patients when questioned as to the treatment he received,

98

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

expressed himself highly satisfied in that respect.’43 Another person present at the dance claimed that the patients treated the strangers ‘as their guests, – conversed freely on all subjects, especially those relating to the ballroom,’ and that some even spoke of the ‘causes of their stay’ at the asylum.44 In this regard, the important issue is not whether the institutionalized were honestly expressing their opinions, but that they conversed with visitors and saw social involvement as advantageous for one reason or another. Furthermore, these interactions represented one role the institutionalized could play in constructions of crime and mental illness by imparting personal views and experiences to the general populace. It is further plausible that many patients simply associated the presence of outsiders with institutional therapeutic practices that emphasized socialization, entertainment, and healthy distractions as necessary to the restoration of mental health. For example, one patient at the Utica Asylum defended amusements that involved the public by highlighting their enjoyable nature for all participants. While realizing few citizens are ‘aware of the entertainments, which are got up at the Asylum – and none would think of finding amusements there,’ the author argued that on those occasions in which the public interacted with patients amusement ‘abounded.’ He or she described one event in which ‘ladies and gentlemen from the city’ were invited to an evening of entertainment that included ‘a display of mesmerism, which was done to the life, and was a capital burlesque in that science.’ According to the writer, all members of the audience were ‘convulsed with laughter.’45 Accepting the presence of visitors and holding conversations with them may simply have been the best strategy for coping in the minds of many patients and inmates. Not only could visitors help relieve the monotony and loneliness associated with institutional life by holding conversations with inmates and patients and participating in social activities, but they themselves unwittingly provided inmates and patients with a source of entertainment. Officials of institutions may have been concerned that visitors were taunting the confined, yet the latter did not refrain from mocking strangers themselves. Visitors were often aware of this, as the actions of one inmate seen by George Augustus Sala suggests: ‘She “made believe,” when I passed her cot, to cover up her face, for shame, with a corner of a gaudy plaid shawl. But the pretense was a transparent one. She was obviously making fun of us from behind that shawl; and I am even afraid that she put her tongue out.’46 The misconceptions or

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

99

ignorance of people who visited the Utica Asylum also provided contributors and readers of The Opal with much amusement, as stories of bumbling strangers were frequently recounted in its pages. The female visitors who questioned whether patients understood the moves of a checkerboard game led to ‘a pretty sonorous roar of laughter,’ while another visitor was ‘somewhat “taken in”’ by one patient – a ‘youngster with intelligence in one eye, and mischief in the other’ – whose claim that the steam register was actually a mechanical device for steam therapy led to the speedy departure of the anxious visitor and provoked ‘manifest amusement’ among the patients.47 Even visitors motivated by benevolent intentions were not safe from the desire of many for entertainment and distraction. In fact, many found amusement in visitors’ interest in and society’s fascination with them. Anne (Newport) Royall claimed that during her tour of the Baltimore Prison, ‘the keeper happened to say in the presence of the male prisoners, “that I was going to write their history”; one of them (a criminal) spoke out, laughing at the same time, that “he hoped I would say something clever about him.”’48 Similarly, one commentator, Thomas Byrnes, believed the efforts of ‘kind-hearted’ women who visited inmates were wasted, as, in his view, ‘the prisoners like to receive their visits, for they afford diversions to many monotonous lives; but when they go away, they are ridiculed by the very ones on whom they have spent their time and showered their gifts.’ Moreover, according to Byrnes, some of the women visitors were even given nicknames by the prisoners.49 We can only speculate as to how many inmates or patients were secretly making fun of visitors, yet some clearly demonstrated that they were not intimidated by visitors and were determined to challenge their status as subjects of study. One official complained: ‘The throng of visitors is incessant, and becomes to the prisoner a perpetual exhibit to gaze at, to draw them from their labour, and relieve the tediousness of confinement.’50 In a period that has come to be distinguished by its middle-class ideals of womanhood, many female inmates nevertheless enjoyed shocking visitors and making them feel uncomfortable, such as the woman described by Sala. When one visitor went through the New York Bridewell and Jail and saw the female inmates, she recalled: ‘They laughed, they romped, they giggled, and saluted me with the familiarity of an old acquaintance,’ and further asked her, ‘if I came to keep them company?’51 These women did not necessarily feel exploited by visitors, or, if they did, they subverted their presence into an opportu-

100

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

nity to engage in ridicule. Male and female patients and inmates could react to visitors, express their approval or disapproval of their presence, and, as was the case of one female asylum patient who hurled a cup of tea at Lord Dufferin, they could perhaps acquire a certain degree of satisfaction from these meetings as well.52 Predicated on the idea that individuals should be restrained and taught to adhere to social conventions surrounding middle-class ideals of work, routine, social relations, and gender roles, the institution nevertheless provided some with the opportunity or space to reject such dictates. However, once again, the historian’s conclusions on the experiences of the institutionalized must be speculative: these stories of inmates could have been constructed to reinforce perceptions of female criminals as morally depraved or aberrant. The material benefits of visiting did provide an important incentive for the institutionalized to tolerate strangers. Upon telling her history to a visitor, one inmate of the Philadelphia Penitentiary asked for money, likely thinking that this was a fair exchange for her tale, while another in the New York City Prison requested from a visitor either a cigar or money with which to buy one.53 Other inmates and patients manufactured goods to trade for money from visitors. After conversing for some time with an inmate of the New York Tombs, one visitor recalled, ‘He produced from a shelf a skilfully made dressing-case … It is a specimen for great taste and ingenuity – and worth a goodly sum, although he would gladly dispose of it for far less than its value.’54 While many of the institutionalized attempted to sell items that they had produced to visitors for a profit, others depended on visitors for smuggling contraband goods into the institution, a phenomenon that abounded at many prisons and asylums. The ‘Rules and Regulations of Kingston Penitentiary’ clearly stated the consequences such actions would entail for visitors: The Keeper may seize any person bringing in any spirituous or fermented Liquors contrary to the Rules, or carrying into the Penitentiary, or attempting by throwing over the Walls or by any other means to introduce into the Prison any Letters, Tobacco, or other articles not allowed by the Rules, and may take the person so offending before a Justice.55

Similarly, at the Toronto Asylum steps had to be taken to prevent the movement of prohibited items between patients and visitors, and the duties of the porter included ensuring that ‘nothing belonging to the In-

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

101

stitution is carried out and no spirits or anything else brought in without permission.’56 The fact that rules and regulations of institutions usually addressed the movement of material goods between inmates and visitors attests to the pervasiveness of the problem, and, indeed, many superintendents and wardens were greatly vexed by the subcultures and underground trade that developed between visitors and the confined. While the State Prison in New York City regulated that ‘guards are duty-bound to see to it that no stranger brings in strong drink or leaves money, clothes, or other things with the prisoners,’57 the trafficking of goods was particularly prolific in this institution, and the commissioners to the legislature in 1828 were at a loss as to how to control it. Not only were ‘rum, snuff, tobacco, money, tools, letters, and messages’ frequently introduced by outsiders, but sexual relations were also taking place. As the commissioners noted, the ‘female acquaintance[s] of the prisoners are continually admitted, under the name of relations’ and ‘one prisoner was visited by four different women, each claiming to be his wife!’58 Tobacco and liquor were common items that visitors reportedly gave both inmates and patients, and undoubtedly many felt that having to tolerate strangers was well worth such treats in an otherwise bleak environment. One visitor remarked that a woman in the asylum on Blackwell’s Island ‘attacks every man who may happen to be a few yards off with demands for tobacco. If her request is complied with she pockets her treasure, pats the donor on the back or cheek, in token of thanksgiving, and rejoins her companions.’59 Inmates and patients faced pressures to conform to institutional rules and to present to visitors impressions of the institution promoted by authorities, yet they were unwilling to abandon all individuality and autonomy. If prisons and asylums were benefiting financially through visitor admission fees, then inmates and patients seemed equally determined to exact their own fees for the spectacle. Many visitors were aware of this exchange of goods and came prepared on their tours with items for the institutionalized. Although he was visiting the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island, one Harper’s journalist filled his pockets with tobacco for his tour and found that at its appearance ‘woebegone countenances brightened, content drew near, and confidential histories were unfolded.’ This habit was likely followed by many visitors to prisons and asylums60 – a ‘problem’ that infuriated not only administrators but even the ferry department responsible for transporting employees and visitors to the institutions on Blackwell’s Island. The ferry department complained that not only were the increasing number of visitors to the

102

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

institutions on Blackwell’s Island ‘unusually arduous,’ but that their time was further exacerbated by having to search visitors for ‘bottles of spirituous liquors,’ a ‘considerable number’ of which had been confiscated.61 Institutional authorities endeavoured to monitor the behaviour of both inmates and the visiting public, seeking to control the interactions that took place between them and the cultures that developed inside the institution. Nevertheless, the institutionalized forged their own cultures, often unbeknown to officials, and in some ways visitors helped facilitate their autonomy or intransigence. Aside from consensual exchanges between the institutionalized and outsiders, inmates and patients often retrieved their ‘fees’ in other creative ways, and many visitors who ‘lost’ watches and pocketbooks on their tours were the unwilling providers of such goods. In prisons across North America, ‘picking the pockets of strangers’ was not uncommon and represented to the institutionalized an opportunity to practise their trade, improve their material existence, or exert a small degree of power over those around them.62 After mistakenly attributing the attention of one inmate to ‘love at first sight,’ a visitor to the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island realized that it was actually his pocket watch that had captured her eye.63 As institutional life entailed routine, many inmates and patients were determined to devise both imaginative and profitable ways to overcome the monotony of daily life and to defy the rules and regulations that were imposed on them. As well, the large numbers of visitors present in some institutions distracted attendants and guards from the actions of patients and inmates, providing them with greater opportunity to act independently without detection. Institutional tourism has often been portrayed by many historians as invasive, degrading, and exploitative, yet a number of inmates and patients seemed to welcome visitors into their quarters for their own purposes. For one woman at Rockwood Asylum, the arrival of visitors represented a special occasion. According to one writer, ‘She is always on the alert for visitors, and is always dressed to receive them, and when she hears of their approach she retires to her own ward, and sits there in state to receive them.’ Believing herself to be Queen Victoria, this particular patient relished the arrival of visitors and also profiteered from their interest in her as well. She was so well known that female visitors brought her jewellery and trinkets, so many that she ‘was literally overwhelmed with these things.’64 Similarly, one inmate of New York City’s Tombs, who had lavishly decorated his cell with carpets, furniture, and wall hangings, appeared unperturbed by the presence of strangers.65

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

103

Upon meeting this inmate, George Augustus Sala commented: ‘The Epicurean occupant of the Bower of Bliss was smoking a remarkably fragrant Havana cigar when I was introduced to him. He shook hands with me warmly, and remarked that he hoped I should enjoy my visit to America.’ This apparently well-to-do convict benefited from visitors not only socially, but also materially, for, as Sala was leaving, he saw approaching ‘a lady in a sealskin mantle, very deeply veiled, and bearing a pretty little basket, probably containing something nice to eat.’66 Moreover, many inmates and patients took advantage of the celebritylike status society granted them. One visitor remarked that a particular criminal ‘was very proud of the notice which Dickens had bestowed upon him,’67 while another claimed that prisoners, both well known and ‘less notorious,’ daily ‘held quite the levee’ among visitors to the New York Tombs.68 Even when charged with vicious crimes, inmates could attract great attention and admiration among locals. When two of the ‘Daybreak Boys,’ a New York city gang, were condemned to death for shooting a watchman, hundreds of locals from the Bowery district visited the Tombs in January 1853 to shake hands with the men on the scaffold and hail them as heroes.69 Many institutionalized individuals enjoyed being able to play off stereotypes and frighten those passing through their institutions or, instead, preferred to use their presence as an opportunity to perform as storytellers. The incarcerated were determined to use the practice of visiting as a way of lessening – albeit in often fleeting ways – the impact of institutionalization and the hardships that accompanied it. Furthermore, there were other, less apparent ways in which inmates could benefit from the presence of visitors. Occasionally, visitors were willing to contact relatives for inmates, such as the few inmates at Sing Sing who had Joseph Sturge pass on letters to relatives in England for them.70 Visitors could also be used to accomplish more significant feats. One woman who had been sentenced to Kingston Penitentiary for life received a royal pardon after twenty years, and the fact that ‘her case excited the sympathy and interest of visitors to Kingston Penitentiary for many years’ had assured her a great deal of community support and undoubtedly contributed to the exercise of executive clemency.71 Prisoners repeatedly manipulated visitors as a means to improve the conditions of their confinement or even to have their sentences reduced. Consequently, as one contemporary observer noted, many said ‘whatever they suppose to be most agreeable to the visitor,’ believing that ‘if repeated to their officers, [it] may serve some particular purpose.’72

104

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Similarly, patients in asylums could try to use visitors as a way of demonstrating their sanity, and thus increase their chances for liberation. Perhaps thinking that Dr Ranney was observing his ability to socialize with the ‘sane,’ one patient made a grand display of welcoming visitors and conversing with them. According to one visitor, ‘We had just entered, when one of the patients stepped forth from a group of which he was the centre, and in the most courteous style bade us welcome … “How are you, gentlemen?” said he, “This is really pleasant weather. Visiting our institution, eh?”’ After politely chatting with the visitors, the patient then turned to Ranney and demanded his release from the institution.73 Institutional rules and regulations could be subverted in direct ways, but external appearances of conformity could also represent a calculated act for personal gain. Reacting against Visitors In spite of some of the advantages that could be gleaned from visitors, institutional tourism was a source of suffering for many inmates and patients. While some used these interactions for their own benefit, others found them to be extremely painful and degrading affairs, and Daniel Clark of the Toronto Asylum and John P. Gray of Utica both stated that patients complained of the presence of visitors. When Clark followed Gray’s precedent to try to abolish the open-door policy of the asylum, he stated, ‘None were more grateful for this check upon sightseers than a majority of the patients themselves. They know their sad condition, and naturally desire to flee from the presence of the gaping multitude of curiosity hunters.’74 Similarly, one patient-writer in The Opal believed asylums should ‘be retired’ and ‘should be not the gaze of idle curiosity.’75 While some superintendents argued that visitors caused anxiety among patients, visitors’ accounts also demonstrate that these were stressful occasions for many. Susanna Moodie’s depiction of patients’ reactions to her on a tour of the Toronto Asylum inadvertently highlights the strain such interactions could inflict. She wrote: ‘There was one woman in this ward, with raven hair and eyes, and a sallow, unhealthy complexion, whom the sight of us transported into a paroxysm of ungovernable rage.’ She also claimed Grace Marks, who attracted many visitors during her years of incarceration at the Toronto Asylum and at Kingston Penitentiary, ‘fled away shrieking like a phantom into one of the side rooms’ when she perceived ‘that strangers were observ-

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

105

ing her.’76 In prisons as well, the presence of visitors could cause much anguish among the people confined in them. One official at the Massachusetts State Prison noted that ‘rage … shame, or compuncture’ was incited in convicts by the ‘looks of a stranger,’ while a visitor passing through the women’s department of Kingston Penitentiary sensed that ‘the poor unfortunates evidently disliked intrusion.’77 Some enjoyed their notoriety, yet the attention certain ‘celebrity’ inmates garnered was not always welcomed and society’s interest in them made their incarceration even more painful. According to one reporter interested in the ‘remarkable criminals’ at Sing Sing who generated curiosity among the public, Henrietta Robinson, known as the ‘Veiled Murderess’ for wearing a veil during her trial in the early 1850s, was not fond of society’s fascination with her. He wrote: [Robinson] carefully shuns observation. It is her invariable habit, when visitors enter the prison, to avert her head, cover her face with her hand, and remain in this attitude until the visitors retire. It is impossible to obtain the slightest glimpse of her countenance … The sight of a strange face … causes her to hide herself instantly from the gaze of the curious.78

Even prisoners who hoped to use the presence of visitors as a means of gaining empathy, public support, and a reduced sentence or reprieve from execution could be left frustrated by the reactions of strangers to their plight. One New York convict in the 1850s, a physician sentenced to be executed for murder, frequently declared to visitors his ‘entire innocence of the crime which he has been convicted,’ but, according to one interviewer, he complained ‘of visitors coming to see him and expressing sympathy for him, and before their backs were hardly turned upon him calling him all sorts of hard names.’79 Many inmates undoubtedly felt as if they were being treated as spectacles by visitors who were only interesting in observing them for entertainment value alone. If many visitors justified their visits as a safeguard against abuse, not all responded to what was increasingly being defined in the nineteenth century as ill-treatment. Consequently, the presence of the public often did little to ameliorate the conditions that the institutionalized faced. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, reformers were appalled at the mechanical restraints used to control the mentally ill. However, while many visitors commented upon how rarely they were resorted to in asylums, when visitors did witness their use few actually voiced criticism. One of the few cases recorded where

106

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

a patient was restrained suggests that some strangers had not entirely abandoned older stereotypes and were often unwilling to question the authority of institutional officials. One patient of ‘gigantic proportions’ at Blackwell’s Island Asylum was restrained with a leather belt and cuffs when a visitor passed him one day, yet rather than expressing concern for the man in a supposed age of enlightened humanity, the visitor merely saw him as a ‘true personification of those madmen that we sometimes read of, but which we had supposed were long ago extinct.’ ‘There was a mingled expression of wildness and ungovernable passion in his eyes,’ he wrote, ‘and this, combined with large, coarse, brutal features, made him a truly terrible-looking meeting.’ With such an unsympathetic audience, the man, not surprisingly, ‘said nothing, but glared at [the visitor] in a manner that was anything but pleasant.’80 While some of the institutionalized may have ‘appeared much gratified when spoken to by any of the visitors,’ for others the presence of visitors offered little consolation. Aside from emotional strain, there were other drawbacks the practice of visiting could entail for the institutionalized. Although rules were often defied, in many prisons convicts were forbidden from speaking to, and even looking at, visitors. The rules and regulations for the Kingston Penitentiary in 1856 dictated that ‘the Convicts must observe strict silence … they must not stare at any person, nor will they be allowed to speak to a stranger, or receive anything from him.’81 The regulations of the Albany Penitentiary similarly determined that prisoners ‘are not to converse with each other, or to be allowed to hold intercourse with any person not belonging to the Institution, unless by permission and in presence of the Superintendent or his Deputy.’82 Some could remain ‘absorbed in their silent world’ and ignore the presence of strangers, yet others were punished for defying these rules, including one inmate of Kingston Penitentiary who received two meals of bread and water for ‘staring at visitors.’83 However, this punishment was perhaps an improvement over what had preceded it, as, according to the account of one visitor in 1835, ‘the Prison discipline is very severe. If they turn round their head when visitors go past them, they are flogged.’84 Convicts had limited means by which they could react to visitors, and visitors often made it difficult for convicts to obey institutional rules. Some visitors endeavoured to distract the incarcerated, such as C.D. Arfwedson who, during his tour of Sing Sing, found that only with the ‘greatest difficulty’ could he ‘attract the attention’ of one of the inmates.85 If nothing else, visitors could be intrusive in other annoying ways, as

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

107

exemplified by Baron Klinkowstrom, who felt at liberty to sample the food from one inmate’s plate.86 Not only was the presence of visitors temporarily discomfiting for some, but there was also the possibility of long-term consequences to institutional tourism that could haunt inmates even after their release from prison. In particular, visitors could recognize convicts outside of the prison walls and influence their lives in undesirable ways. Without realizing the irony, one visitor implicitly criticized the very practice in which she had engaged: she suggested that public visiting undermined the principle of reform and prevented convicts from ever becoming the productive, law-abiding members of society that penitentiaries supposedly aimed to produce. Highlighting visitors’ ability to stigmatize convicts, L. Maria Child wrote: ‘I have known young girls of sixteen sent to Blackwell’s Island, for stealing property valued at twenty-five cents. Once there, seen by visitors in company with prostitutes and thieves, haunted by a continual sense of degradation, is their future course likely to be other than a downward one?’ She furthermore entreated people who ‘happen to know of some delinquency in a fellow-being, to keep the secret faithfully, so long as his life gives assurance of sincere amendment.’87 Likewise, many patients in asylums undoubtedly feared that their condition would become public knowledge and prevent them from resuming normal lives upon release. As one patient in The Opal pondered: ‘What engages me now? What are my prospects, here and in this view? Where will the mind cling for its future grasp? … Oh the rapid and superficial glances of scrutinizing observers! Oh the monster gaping crowd of the curious!’88 While new prisons and asylums were represented as humanitarian and progressive in the popular discourse, the writings of some inmates depict institutional tourism as a barbaric tradition that made a spectacle of human suffering. The detrimental effects of the public’s presence could be both immediate and long-term, and the ideals of reform and rehabilitation were undermined in part by the social stigma institutionalization could entail when it became public knowledge. Nevertheless, many of those opposed to visitors refused to be complacent and, instead, frequently drew on creative resources to dissuade the public from entering their institutions that ranged from ignoring visitors to discussing their presence through printed works. While some sought to highlight the impact the activity had on patients, others played off the fear of visitors being mistakenly institutionalized and unable to leave the prison or asylum. In particular, tales of unwitting visitors becoming

108

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

patients was a recurring theme in The Opal. One writer warned, ‘I came here a visitor … I am insane now,’ while another was even more direct in highlighting ‘the dangers’ of asylum tours.89 He or she stated: It might be as well, by way of warning, to say that the Superintendent is obliged by every consideration of persons, who, though supposing themselves to be visitors, yet act in such a way as to justify the conclusion that they will derive benefit from the sanative discipline of such an Institution as this. Great circumspection therefore should be maintained by all visitors – especially young men.90

The warnings that appeared in The Opal further highlight patients’ efforts to reinforce the fact that the line between them and the ‘sane’ public was both blurry and tenuous. Reverend Hiram Chase One of the rare accounts written by a person who had been institutionalized in an asylum and refers to the phenomenon of visiting illuminates what many may have felt about the practice. In 1868, Reverend H. Chase published a memoir of his experiences in New York’s State Asylum at Utica, entitled, Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum, from August 20th, 1863, to December 20th, 1865. Like many others who wrote of their experiences, Chase published his account in order to expose and critique the process of committal and the treatment of patients inside state asylums. He began his narrative by condemning the public’s ignorance of the conditions inside asylums, arguing that he wrote his book ‘for the purpose of opening the eyes of the people … that they may enquire more strictly into the nature and workings of these institutions of benevolence, so called.’91 Chase was very critical of the treatment patients received at Utica and hoped that his book would ‘warn the good people of the State of New York to never send their wives, their children, or any of their dependents to a State institution for the cure of any disease of body or mind, where the patient is confined by bolts and bars by legal sanction, and where the sole power over the patient is vested in one man.’92 However, in spite of his strong feelings about the asylum and his hope that the public would become better educated as to the conditions inside of its walls, Chase never explicitly recommended public tours and furthermore expressed great dislike for the practice while a patient there. He did not appear to see any merit to

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

109

institutional tourism, and when superintendent Gray hoped to move him to another ward where visitors were admitted, he recalled: I begged with all my skill to stay on the fourth hall through the winter, but all was in vain. The reasons why I wanted to stay on the fourth hall were, that it was warmer, and I did not wish to become a gazing stock for the multitude of visitors who daily flocked to see the asylum, take a walk through the first hall, gaze on the patients as they would look upon wild animals in a managerie [sic], and then depart.93

Chase wanted the conditions inside asylums to be common knowledge, but he claimed public tours did not accomplish this as visitors were presented with a sanitized version of affairs that did not reflect reality. Employees prepared the asylum for the arrival of visitors, sought to ensure that nothing ‘distasteful’ would be seen during public tours, and often permitted visitors into only those wards where the ‘better behaved’ patients were housed. As Chase wrote: I am fully satisfied that the citizens of Utica know no more about the private workings of that institution than the inhabitants of Clinton and Essex counties; and living near by renders them more liable to be deceived, and in the following manner: It is known by all the inhabitants of that region of country round about Utica, that the asylum is open every day at certain hours, for the reception of visitors. It is also understood by the managers and attendants at the asylum, that visitors are expected every day, more or less; so that all things are put in order before visitors come; every unsightly thing is put out of the way; all is still and clean as a ladies’ parlor on the first halls, on both sides of the house; the time comes; the usher is at the door; the visitors are led through the first halls, look at the pictures and leave. What do they know by this running visit about the asylum?94

Chase’s emphasis on attendants’ preparation for visitors was reinforced by the rules and regulations for the asylum, which dictated that the patients had to be washed and dressed and the wards cleaned and organized before visiting hours began. ‘By ten o’clock in the morning,’ the rules stipulated, ‘morning work should be completed, and the house in order for visitors in every part.’95 Moreover, Chase also referred to the example of D.J. Millard, a prominent businessman of Oneida County who had ‘often visited the asylum, and walked through its halls, and had boasted of the value and utility of such an institution.’

110

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

After experiencing the asylum as a patient and, according to Chase, being ‘initiated into the secrets of the institution,’ Millard changed his attitude towards Utica dramatically.96 Consequently, while visitors may have felt their tours served an important function, Chase believed ‘running visits’ only served to inflict suffering on patients and were an opportunity for asylum management to present to the public a contrived picture of institutional conditions. While there were no official rules governing the ways in which patients could react to visitors as was the case in most penitentiaries, Chase’s account highlights the fact that the threat of unsanctioned punishment could prevent patients from speaking freely with visitors and that actions and words could be constrained by asylum personnel.97 The fear of reprimand by attendants inhibited his conversations with visitors, and even when he saw a visitor with whom he was acquainted, he felt unable to speak openly with him. ‘Many things rushed upon my mind,’ Chase recalled, ‘which I wanted to say to him, which I could not, for I knew we were watched by an attendant, and every word would be marked and reported.’98 Chase criticized the treatment patients received at Utica, arguing that he had been unjustly committed and was abused by attendants and over-medicalized by doctors, but he did not perceive visiting as a solution or safety guard. He does not explain how exactly he expected people to become familiar with the conditions inside asylums, yet it is clear that he did not think visiting accomplished this owing to the ability of institutional personnel to control what was being seen. Nevertheless, a number of years after being discharged, Chase went on a tour of the asylum himself and thus may not have been entirely opposed to the practice, only to the fact that visitors were not seeing the normal workings of the asylum.99 An array of factors influenced the interactions that took place between the public and the institutionalized. Inmates and patients were bound by physical restrictions and by the threat of retaliation by guards, attendants, and other staff. The public may have believed they were providing the institutionalized with a certain degree of reassurance and surveillance over institutional authority. Perhaps in some ways they did that at times. However, visitors were in the institution for only a few hours of the day. Moreover, if patients and inmates were afraid for their own safety and security, visitors and the feeling of spectatorship may have only reinforced a sense of vulnerability and isolation. When so few accounts such as Chase’s are available to the historian,

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

111

it is difficult to discern the reactions of inmates and patients to visitors. Whereas some clearly disliked their presence, others either paid them no notice or eagerly interacted with them. One ex-patient of Blackwell’s Island Asylum wrote an article about the institution after being released and did not express any hostility towards members of the public who toured asylums. This writer emphasized the variety of reactions to visitors among patients and the toleration of them by physicians and explained to readers of Harper’s how admission as an ‘ordinary pleasure-seeker’ could be gained.100 One visitor encapsulated the responses of the institutionalized when he wrote that some acted ‘when visitors are introduced to them, as if they were intruding,’ yet ‘others will invite you in with all politeness and make a great fuss in showing hospitality.’101 While reactions varied and ambiguity was demonstrated by exinmates who returned as free individuals, there were both material and non-material benefits that could be gleaned from the practice of visiting. Often in defiance of official rules and regulations, the institutionalized were determined to use the interactions that took place with the public in order to improve the conditions of their daily existence and, in small yet symbolic ways, they frequently transcended the parameters of institutional control. Although records are scant, people who were institutionalized in either a prison or an asylum found ways of interacting with the outside world and making their perspective part of the popular discourse. Some wrote exposés, some spoke directly with the public and influenced perceptions, and some wrote pieces that were published in The Opal or in the Journal of Insanity. They also drew visitors to the institutions and ensured that the general populace remained engaged with the treatment of the confined. Whether or not they were willing participants in their interactions with the public, patients and inmates may have fostered greater understanding among the general populace, helped to shed light on crime and mental illness, and presented an important perspective on the effects of institutionalization. They were the main attraction for visitors who both wrote about them and sketched their portraits (figure 10). Ironically, through the denial of their right to privacy, the institutionalized provided a human dimension to popular perceptions of the criminal and the insane and, in doing so, may have even helped to dispel myths and stereotypes among any reflective visitors. Regardless of whether visitors were motivated by voyeurism or remained committed to preconceived notions, the confined served an important purpose: it was they who made the discourse of crime and mental illness

112

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Figure 10. Etching of ‘Black Jimmy,’ ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1866, 294.

Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors

113

dynamic, engaging, meaningful, and seminal to the general populace. Without the interactions that took place between the institutionalized and the broader community, issues of penal and medical reform would not have resonated so strongly with society and probably would have held a minor role in popular discourse. The broader cultural factors that made society so interested in inmate and patient populations is the topic to which we will now turn.

5 ‘What We Saw with Our Own Eyes’: Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture1

In a London Advertiser article dated 1 July 1880, an unnamed writer described his visit to the London Asylum. The piece began with the visitor’s first impressions of the institution. ‘Of all the beautiful spots around London, and there are many of them,’ the author gushed, ‘none present more attractions than the grounds of the Asylum for the insane. Entering from Dundas street, the visitor passes up a broad avenue, which is just now in its leafy glory.’ The writer commenced to inform readers of practical matters regarding the entry of visitors into the institution, as well as the feelings the public should expect to experience once inside the asylum and what they should be sure to notice: The building is always open to visitors between 10 am and 4 pm, save on Sundays and holidays, the reason for the exception being that the large number of unemployed persons on those days would overrun the building and exceed the supply of attendants, one of whom is detailed to go through the wards with visitors. A look through the building is always instructive and while the demented state of the inmates cannot but excite pity, the visitor will be pleased to see the manner in which the unfortunates are cared for. There is so little restraint that there may be said to be none. The arrangement of the building favors classification, and this is a great point. The days are past when the insane were treated as dangerous criminals.

He then remarked on the cleanliness of the institution, the amusements offered to patients, and the successes of the doctors in treating and curing insanity. Finally, the writer closed the piece by highlighting the asylum’s receptivity to visitors and encouraging the public to witness its many impressive features in person: ‘The grounds are open to

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

115

the public, and even if the visitor does not care for a walk through the building, the park-like nature of the surroundings should attract a great many. London may well feel proud of possessing such an institution, which, in the beneficial results it accomplishes, is second to none on the continent.’2 This lengthy and detailed article appeared in a prominent newspaper based in southern Ontario and encapsulates many elements of the visiting phenomenon. The writer focused on the impression the institution made on the visitor, emphasized its accessibility to the general public, and expressed the belief that a tour through an asylum could reveal important information regarding the quality and efficacy of contemporary therapeutic practices. Undoubtedly, the author was influenced by both political considerations and his preconceived notions of the London Asylum – which, at the time, was under significant public and governmental scrutiny – and these factors likely determined the way in which the asylum was presented to newspaper readers. Nevertheless, even if he was driven by a desire to placate criticism of the institution’s management under superintendent Richard Maurice Bucke, the article reflects the importance placed on self-education in the nineteenth century and the idea that, through witnessing in person, the ‘truth’ could be uncovered. As implied in the article, by embarking on an institutional tour and seeing institutional practices, invaluable knowledge could be acquired by the casual visitor. Like this newspaper article, visitors’ accounts in general were distinguished by an emphasis on the importance of first-hand observation. In the records of many who passed through asylums and penitentiaries and outlined their experiences, there is a pronounced sense that they believed they were seeing things as they ‘really were’ and a lack of scepticism in the possibility that what was being presented before their eyes was a contrived portrayal of institutional of institutional regimes. Instead, visitors repeatedly expressed faith in the power of observation and visual study, occasionally to the point where watching and recording became an obsession. One tourist remarked on this tendency and its impact upon sightseers when he wrote, ‘The note-taking traveler is very apt to forget that the mere act of note-taking upsets his normal perceptivity. He becomes feverishly observant.’3 This chapter will explore this ‘feverish’ emphasis on first-hand observation and study expressed in visitors’ accounts, in order to understand the practice of visiting within the broader cultural context of the time and to uncover the many parallels that existed between institu-

116

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

tional tourism and other features of nineteenth-century society. Chapter 3 provided an overview of institution tourism – who visited, how it was advertised, what the motives of visitors were, and what they experienced inside the institution. This chapter will examine more closely visiting as a cultural phenomenon that was linked to broader currents in society. In particular, it will examine the ways in which visiting existing alongside a panoply of other cultural phenomena that emphasized spectacle, such as ‘freak’ shows, exhibitions, and the broader urban reform movement. The activities that took place within these realms were predicated on the idea that visual investigation and individual study could not only unravel the mysteries of life, but shed light on how society might be improved as well. Like visiting, these actions held particular meanings for people in the nineteenth century. Moreover, as will also be discussed, the fascination with seeing the criminal and the insane was fostered by dominant theories surrounding mental illness and criminology, including Jeremy Bentham’s system of surveillance and popular phrenology, which centred on the act of looking. The ways in which visiting was rationalized by the public often hinged on faith in the value of visually based education or study, and it was this very element that helped to render the pastime so popular and instilled it with meaning (at least for the visitor) beyond mere voyeurism. Visiting and Visual Culture The implications of or meanings behind institutional tourism in nineteenth-century society were connected to a broader cultural context that exalted sight and visual demonstration. Certain eras or cultures have been identified as ‘ocularcentric’ or dominated by vision by scholars who have argued that, prior to the mid-seventeenth century, smell and hearing were the primary means by which people’s understandings of and interactions with the world around them was mediated.4 As Lucien Febvre explained in The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, The sixteenth century did not see first: it heard and smelled, it sniffed the air and caught sounds. It was only later, as the seventeenth century was approaching, that it seriously and actively became engaged in geometry, focusing attention on the world of forms with Kepler (1571–1630) and Desargues of Lyon (1593–1662). It was then that vision was unleashed in the world of science as it was in the world of physical sensations, and the world of beauty as well.5

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

117

The development of the printing press, in particular, fostered the move to a visual culture and encouraged the growing importance of sight. In his study on the rise of print culture, Walter Ong has explored the link between science and the visual presentation of knowledge in order to explain why sight became supreme in Western culture. According to Ong, print culture allowed information to be visualized in terms of charts, lists, and diagrams in a way that was not possible in manuscript culture, where each manuscript was different owing to its production by hand. Systematizing space and permitting accurate duplication, print culture increasingly geared knowledge towards the eye and rendered the display of information (or the ‘quantification of knowledge’) essential. These changes would lead to a growing reliance on visuals in many branches of science in the nineteenth century, and many theories, such as Darwin’s evolutionary biology or Cesare Lombroso’s theory of criminology, would not have had the same impact without illustrations.6 As will be discussed in greater detail below, even within the prison system the emphasis on seeing and visual demonstration would manifest in the architectural design of penitentiaries with Bentham’s panopticon in the late eighteenth century and his emphasis on surveillance and the principle of permanent visibility. The theory that sight became increasingly important and supplanted the other senses after the sixteenth century is too definitive and totalizing, and negates the significance of the other senses, including hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. For example, visiting was as much about seeing as it was conversing and hearing. Nevertheless, changes in techniques of representation, such as perspectivalism in painting, and important inventions, such as the photographic camera, do point towards a growing tendency to encapsulate or capture reality or ‘truth’ through visual media. More and more information was derived through visual sources ranging from stained glass to printed broadsheets, thereby allowing for greater dissemination of information through means other than oral communication. In the process, a new world opened up that emphasized the role of the observer and material demonstrations, which influenced not only the realm of science but broader society as well. Furthermore, as society became increasingly interested in visual representations and the act of seeing, the workings of the eyes fostered significant attention as scientists began to conduct explorations into physiological optics and to study retinal afterimages, peripheral and binocular vision, and thresholds of attention.7 While the public sought to observe the inner workings of prisons and asy-

118

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

lums in person, they also read about them in newspapers, journals, and annual reports. Fascination with perceptivity and visual representations during the modern period was galvanized in the nineteenth century. A number of explanations have been put forth as to why sight was ‘unleashed in the world,’ and while it would be futile to try to pinpoint one primary causal factor, most agree that important socio-economic changes beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century helped pave the way for this transformation. According to many scholars, the exaltation of sight reached its pinnacle in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and occurred at the same time that the forces of industrialization first swept Britain and then spread throughout the rest of the Western world. Social, technological, and ideological changes related to industrialization converged to create a society both enthralled with and determined to explore the wonders of visual perception and driven by the attainment of knowledge through observation. Inventions, such as the daguerreotype in 1839, resulted in what Baudelaire has termed the ‘cult of images’ and led to the scopic regime that became dominant during the modern era, infiltrating all spheres of society and changing the relationship between subject and object.8 Owing to such developments, the encapsulation and re-creation of reality became a prominent feature of social, intellectual, and cultural life. As Martin Jay has argued in his book Downcast Eyes, Whether or not one gives greater weight to technical advances or social changes, it is thus evident that the dawn of the modern era was accompanied by the vigorous privileging of vision. From the curious, observant scientist to the exhibitionist, self-displaying courtier, from the private reader of printed books to the painter of perspectival landscapes, from the map-making colonizer of foreign lands to the quantifying businessman guided by instrumental rationality, modern men and women opened their eyes and beheld a world unveiled to their eager gaze.9

Similarly, Jonathan Crary has explained that a ‘renovation of vision’ occurred in the nineteenth century, whereby ‘communication, production, consumption, and rationalization all demanded and shaped a new kind of observer-consumer.’10 When placed within this context, institutional tourism can be seen as tied to a society that was increasingly oriented towards the sense of sight. This is not to imply that the other senses did not influence visitor experiences: institutional visi-

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

119

tors not only saw – they also heard, smelled, and touched. They would have smelled the sweat of labouring prisoners and the foul odours of poor sanitation systems; they would have heard the cries of lonely and frightened patients and the humming of others focused on their work; and they would have felt the drafts coming through the walls and the coarseness of woollen bedding. Moreover, the conversations they held with the confined were often the highlight of their tours and captivated their attention more than any other institutional detail. Nevertheless, in many ways, the growing interest in visual consumption and representation helps to explain why prison and asylum visiting captured the attention of so many people and how it could be perceived as an educational enterprise. The Culture of Exhibition in the Nineteenth Century The ease and ‘normalcy’ by which the writer quoted at the beginning of this chapter wrote of asylum visiting alludes to the fact that as an extension of the fascination with visual representation and displays of ‘reality,’ institutional tourism was embedded within a broader nineteenth-century culture of spectatorship. This spectatorship was not a passive experience; it included not simply the visual, but smelling, touching, and hearing. Much like the men and women described by Martin Jay, those who toured prisons and asylums ‘opened their eyes and beheld a world’ that they felt was, or at least should be, ‘unveiled to their eager gaze.’ The desire to look and observe, however, did not simply serve the purpose of entertainment alone. The spectatorship that visitors to prisons and asylums engaged in was, for many, part of a wider process of education, whereby witnessing was the vehicle through which crime and its punishment and insanity and its treatment could be better understood. The very act of observing those labelled criminal and those deemed to be insane ensured that visitors would be part of an audience, yet this did not render the experience one of mere entertainment value. Visiting, looking, conversing, and observing were neither passive nor frivolous experiences. Along with the interactions that took place between strangers and the confined, these actions combined to create a dynamic context whereby faith was instilled in the notion that greater understanding could be fostered through first-hand observation and experience. When viewed alongside the culture of exhibition that pervaded the nineteenth century, visiting can be seen as part of a larger phenomenon

120

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

in which visual signifiers were relied upon by people seeking comprehension and knowledge. As Marlene Shore has argued, ‘The nineteenth century was one of the most visual periods in Western culture, as ideals of precise observation were exalted in the sciences and were evident in literary and popular fascination with spectacle.’11 Important changes in the nineteenth century that influenced perceptions and the act of seeing, fostered by advancements in anatomy, dissection, and photography, point to a larger cultural and intellectual impulse in which people sought to see the human body in its various states – even in death and in moments of suffering. While some regularly attended funerals to catch glimpses of corpses,12 others perused photographic displays of ‘remarkable surgical cases’ depicting wounded soldiers ‘for public instruction.’13 Enthralled with the spectacle, people were especially drawn to exhibitions involving humans who embodied exceptional physical, mental, or behavioural traits. As crowds clamoured to see the ‘real thing’ in a variety of different settings, prison and asylum visiting became part of a visually based culture that was predicated on verisimilitude and the belief that through representation, exhibition, display, and first-hand experience, insight into society, the natural world, and humanity could be obtained. Although what they saw could be open to interpretation, the exhibition of the criminal and the insane could be viewed and thus shared by all visitors, and, in many ways, seeing, visualizing, and conversing or interacting with the ‘aberrant’ became synonymous with comprehension. It was not simply trained experts, psychiatrists or penologists, who had the ability to understand crime or madness; members of the public could educate themselves as well by touring an institution. While serving punitive, reformative, or therapeutic functions, prisons and asylums were, at the same time, institutions of the visual that coexisted alongside other forms of spectacle and were part of the exhibition culture that pervaded both Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century. Eric Fretz has argued that ‘the nineteenth-century culture of exhibition was wide and varied, involving the public display of natural curiosities, technological advances and demonstrations, and medical/psychological treatments.’14 Many popular pastimes revolved around the exhibition and the act of seeing, whereby phenomena were captured through visually readable displays or exhibitions. Panoramas, dioramas, and museums presented to the public representations of reality and promoted the idea that knowledge lay within the grasp of all visually astute individuals. However, unlike conventional museums

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

121

with their collections of inanimate artifacts, prisons, asylums, and freak shows were even more interesting as their ‘exhibits’ were composed of real flesh and blood. Nevertheless, their perusal could still be justified through the guise of scientific enlightenment or education. Moreover, whereas panoramas, which usually consisted of painted depictions of landscapes or historical events, were fixed and controlled the viewing position of the spectator,15 prison or asylum visitors had greater control over their view. They were not immobile, their view was not fixed, and they could interact with the ‘exhibits’ they were studying through such means as conversation. Many different groups in nineteenth-century society embraced the idea that first-hand observation was essential for comprehension and insight. In particular, fear of urban decay in the latter half of the nineteenth century sparked an array of responses that were based on observing, uncovering, and visually documenting the lives and working conditions of the working class. Styling themselves as investigators of urban pathology, reformers throughout the Western world adopted various techniques or strategies in order to present conditions ‘as they really were,’ often documenting them through anecdotal stories, photographs, statistics, tables, charts, and other illustrative means. They acquired ‘evidence’ by supposedly immersing themselves in the environment of their subject of study, conversing with them, and witnessing the conditions under which they existed. While Charles Booth in London collected statistical information to document hereditary urban degeneration, Jacob Riis took photographs of slum neighbourhoods in New York City, and, under various guises, C.S.G. Clark interviewed and observed adolescent males in Toronto as a means of uncovering sexual deviance.16 Although their techniques and views differed, these urban reformers or commentators were united in their desire to shed light on the ‘dark corners’ of the metropolis and, in the process, create knowledge and devise solutions for social improvement. With their emphasis on first-hand experience, interaction, and uncovering, reformers did not explicitly encourage the idea that the observations they made lay within the grasp of all individuals. Nevertheless, while training within certain disciplines such as the emerging field of social science might have been seen as necessary by some, the general public could be taught ‘what to see … and how to see it’ through the guidance of professionals and experts.17 The emphasis on observation that pervaded the discourse surrounding urban reform in the Victorian period also infiltrated the writings

122

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

of proponents of institutional tourism. Asylum superintendents, prison wardens, and other government employees promoted the idea that citizens had the potential both to understand the workings of institutions by touring them and to uncover corruption. Often echoing the views of many institutional administrators, visitors repeatedly expressed the belief that tours through prisons and asylums were educational and that an understanding of these institutions was contingent upon firsthand inspection of their interiors. One visitor to Sing Sing Penitentiary, Basil Hall, embodied this notion that seeing led to insight when he remarked, ‘this curious establishment must be witnessed in person to be duly understood.’18 In the midst of an investigation into the management of Kingston Penitentiary, a writer for the British Whig also claimed to be evaluating the institution according ‘to what we saw with our own eyes,’ while another for the New York Times encouraged readers ‘to accept ocular demonstrations of [the] mysterious appointments’ of the New York City Prison (the Tombs).19 Consequently, members of the general populace did not defer to the opinions of ‘experts,’ but believed that the capacity to observe, experience, and reflect rendered all astute visitors qualified inspectors and commentators. Visiting was at its peak in North America at a time when notions of self-education resonated in many sectors in society. As evinced by their writings, visitors to institutions believed that their tours of prisons and asylums were educational, even if such inspections took place only within the time span of one afternoon, and that one’s knowledge could be greatly enhanced by witnessing the inner workings of custodial institutions. In this regard, visiting was similar to the world fairs and industrial exhibitions that were held in cities such as New York City, Chicago, and Toronto in the latter half of the nineteenth century, whereby demonstrations and displays allowed spectators the opportunity to marvel at exciting inventions of modern industrial life and to witness ‘exotic’ foreign cultures. As many historians have argued, the nineteenth century’s exaltation of the visual and observation as a means of diffusing knowledge spawned an age of exhibition. According to Keith Walden in his study of the Toronto Industrial Exhibition in late nineteenth-century Toronto, the number of fairs and exhibitions exploded at this time owing to the fact that, ‘increasingly, understanding was rooted in seeing, the most magical, according to Roland Barthes, of all the senses.’20 These exhibitions emphasized display and incorporated (or fostered) society’s growing fascination with viewing people and were predicated on first-hand observation. ‘Gazing curiously at the other,’ the people

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

123

at nineteenth-century world fairs became part of a movement of mass tourism that was based on the ‘visual appropriation of exotic locales’21 and peoples. While they offered educational opportunities to the populace, exhibitions were furthermore a chance to engage with large crowds in the form of organized amusement. Consequently, institutional tourism fit very comfortably within this culture of exhibition and spectacle owing to the displays of human beings that prisons and asylums offered to the public and the fact that the practice fostered knowledge and understanding of contemporary approaches to the problems of crime and insanity (or so it was believed by many visitors). While exhibitions at world fairs often displayed various zoological and ethnographic material and mechanical inventions, the consumption of human bodies was a prominent feature of popular culture in the nineteenth century. This phenomenon has been studied by cultural historians most commonly within the realm of medical exhibitions, freak shows, dime museums, or other popular media that celebrated and displayed extraordinary humans who challenged physical conventions. ‘Missing links’ (humans portrayed as representing stages within the process of evolution), giants, armless men, bearded women, and Siamese twins were merely a few of the human ‘anomalies’ exhibited for their spectacular attributes in the nineteenth century. Many venues, such as the Peale Museum in Philadelphia (while under the management of Rembrandt and Reubens Peale, the sons of founder Charles Willson) and P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City, displayed humans who contravened socially constructed notions of ‘normalcy’ and evolved into important cultural institutions that served a variety of purposes. Such museums offered both education and entertainment, and visiting them was very popular among all socio-economic classes. Indeed, many of the travel narratives and diaries employed in this study were written by people who toured dime museums and attended circuses as well. Marianne Finch, a traveller from England who also saw many custodial institutions on her American tour, witnessed during her visit to Barnum’s museum ‘a play performed, a giant, a Chinese man, woman and child – in their native costume – a number of wax figures … [and] other curiosities stuffed and bottled.’22 Another commentator, J.E. Hilary Skinner, alluded to the notion that Barnum’s museum fulfilled both amusement and educational functions when he remarked, ‘Although a private speculation, the museum was national in its style of catering for everybody’s amusement and instruction.’23

124

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Outside of major urban centres such as New York City, smaller communities such as Kingston also were exposed to the genre of human exhibitions that might be found in Barnum’s, as they were periodically visited by itinerant or travelling circuses and shows. Even the asylum in Utica was on the circuit route of two ‘Aztecs’ accompanied by ‘polite guardians.’ According to the patient magazine of the institution, The Opal, THE AZTECS. – This little gentleman and lady visited the Asylum, and were very happily received there. Monsieur Maximo was very polite, and his partner. The children were highly pleased, and the Medical Staff pronounced them great curiosities. Their health seemed good, and they were remarkably observant and at home. The polite guardians will please accept our acknowledgements for the favour done, in presenting them: – expressions of great gratification were numerous and candid.24

While the medical staff and their employees were perhaps more interested in these ‘great curiosities’ than patients were, the impulse to see and gaze upon humans who transcended social conventions in terms of their ethnicity, physical attributes, or mental state permeated much of nineteenth-century society and was a dominant feature of both ‘scientific’ study and popular culture. There are many parallels between prisons, asylums, and freak shows, and certain variables justify the examination of custodial institutions as sites akin to dime museums, spectacles that held important and multiple meanings within the context of their time. However, the assumption that the custodial institution was isolated from greater society seems to have limited the analysis of their similarities by many historians. Eric Fretz, for example, has portrayed the construction of prisons and asylums as antithetical to the exhibition of ‘freaks’ in dime museums: on the one hand, we have the seclusion of the insane and the criminal within institutions in the nineteenth century and, on the other, we have the public consumption of humans within a theatrical and spectacular museum or show. He writes: Ironically, as the freak shows were entertaining the urban masses, criminal penitentiaries and insane asylums – institutional homes for humans with ‘aberrational’ tendencies – were becoming an integral part of the Ameri-

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

125

can reform culture … The implication was that separation from the social milieu and a good dose of moral reform would rejuvenate rational behavior. Reformers carted aberrants away, sequestering them behind institutional walls while showmen like Barnum paraded ‘defective’ individuals before the wondering and paying public gaze … The irony of a society that has made room for human aberrations in the forum of a culture of exhibition and, at the same time, demanded the removal of social pariahs, illustrates one of the paradoxes of the tension-filled nineteenth century.25

While Fretz makes the important argument that society sought to establish firm demarcations between ‘normal’ and ‘other,’ custodial institutions do not differ dramatically from these dime museums in many ways. In particular, prison and asylum visiting was closely tied to society’s fascination with the unusual and its faith in empiricism. Although the criminal and the insane were confined in increasing numbers in penitentiaries and asylums and were perhaps perceived and treated differently from those found in freak shows, they nevertheless were still seen or viewed by urban masses and, in some ways, were ‘paraded’ before the ‘wondering’ public. As was also the case for many members of the freak-show audience, it was the notion of education and self-improvement that often lay behind visitors’ incentives and justifications for their activities. When physicians and natural scientists visited ‘freaks,’ according to Robert Bogdan, their comments fanned widespread interest in the nature and origin of these creatures and fostered the notion that seeing them was linked to scientific inquiry.26 Likewise, the interest of many visitors was provoked by the writings of experts who described modern approaches to crime and mental illness and who emphasized the ways in which pressing issues of the day were being worked out in these institutions. Consequently, most visitors to prisons and asylums commented upon the ways in which their tours had enhanced their understanding of crime, mental illness, and institutional reform programs and portrayed their experiences as intellectually meaningful and fruitful. In this regard, the sensory experience of visiting could be constructed as an active search for comprehension and experience and, for many, constituted an opportunity to engage in meaningful contact with the people inside the institution. The tendency among visitors to depict institutional tourism as educational intersected with popular interest in the ‘scientific’ discourses and theories behind mental illness and criminology, which themselves

126

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

were tied to a broader culture that often centred on sight. Indeed, the emphasis on the visual can be seen as reflective of changes in approaches to mental illness that began in the late eighteenth century. According to Michel Foucault, the asylum reforms pioneered by Phillipe Pinel and William Tuke fostered new ways of detecting mental illness that were predicated on the visible: insanity became something that was seen, and, within the asylum, observation and surveillance became a tool of repression that replaced physical restraint. Within this context, the science of mental disease, as it would unfold in the asylum, would be only of the order of observation and classification.27 In penitentiaries and penal discourse, an emphasis on the visible is also apparent. For example, prison reform emphasized the visual in terms of the panoptic surveillance systems that originated with Jeremy Bentham (1748– 1832) and captivated the public imagination. Bentham’s 1791 treatise provided a general guide for a model prison and established a system of surveillance through a central inspection tower.28 As Jacques-Alain Miller has explained, Bentham’s ‘configuration set up a brutal symmetry of visibility. The enclosed space lacks depth; it is spread out and open to a single, solitary central eye. It is bathed in light. Nothing and no one can be hidden inside it.’29 Many visitors felt compelled to see the new systems of surveillance established in penitentiaries and remarked on the sensation of watching others without themselves being seen. In addition to architectural systems of surveillance, the importance of the visual in penal discourse also influenced discussions of the causes behind criminal behaviour. In the nineteenth century, Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) placed observation at the forefront of criminology by relating criminal behaviour to physical characteristics. Through the use of extensive illustrations, Lombroso argued that physiognomy or facial features could be interpreted by trained experts and used to predict delinquency in advance of any particular action.30 By the late nineteenth century, the significance of physical appearance often dominated discussions on insanity or criminality, and it was believed that certain tell-tale visual signs or markers could reveal a great deal about an individual’s character. Explorations into the workings of the mind in the nineteenth century further reflect the broader culture of observation. Public displays of psychological and parapsychological phenomena were very common and drew large crowds, and much psychology of the time relied on the reading of visual or physical signifiers. According to Michael M. Sokal, itinerant phrenologists travelled throughout the United States in the

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

127

mid-nineteenth century, serving the public as psychological examiners, diagnosticians, prognosticians, and counsellors, and based their science on the powers of observation. Phrenologists ‘shook their [patients’] hands and felt their calluses. They observed their dress, and noted its style, and cleanliness, and usage. They observed their subjects’ carriage as they entered and walked around the examining room and read their “body language.” They stood over and behind them as they moved their hands and their heads … At a time when dress, and speech, and carriage, and personal habits revealed much, the phrenologist had much to observe.’31 Not only phrenology, but mesmerism, hypnotism, and spiritualism also were contingent on the visual representation of ‘science’ and presented to the public displays or demonstrations of parapsychology. Other fields related to health and medicine also embraced the spectacle and found nineteenth-century crowds receptive to its appeal. Laughing gas demonstrations proved to be especially popular at social and public gatherings, which allowed audiences to witness the effects of nitrous oxide on individuals. Dr Gardiner Quincy Colton, for example, travelled throughout the eastern United States in the mid1840s and entertained and educated the paying public with exhibitions of laughing gas on volunteers from the audience, reportedly drawing record crowds in many cities.32 Purveyors of patent medicines, popular in British North America and, especially, the United States, also realized the power of physical demonstrations and choreographed melodramatic displays of their cures in public spaces as a means of fostering faith and boosting sales in a pre–mass media context. Outside of what was considered ‘quackery’ in some circles, demonstrations of various phenomena were prominent, and uncovering the mysteries of the body and exposing them for public consumption drove the actions of many scientists. Physiology in the early 1800s, for instance, embraced scientific explorations based on sight in order to uncover the mysteries of human nature. As Jonathan Crary has argued in his book Techniques of the Observer (1990), physiology in the first half of the nineteenth century was organized around ‘excitement and wonderment about the body, which now appeared like a new continent to be explored, mapped, and mastered, with new recesses and mechanisms now uncovered for the first time … It was the discovery that knowledge was conditioned by the physical and anatomical functioning of the body, and perhaps most importantly, of the eyes.’33 In addition, as experimental psychology developed in the nineteenth century, it further embraced this fascination with the visual and sought to ‘un-

128

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

derstand and display the results of investigations into the mind and consciousness in material terms.’34 For the general public, the excitement and curiosity that propelled ventures into the human body and mind were contagious and incited a desire to see the human body in its different states. These scientific explorations into the mind and body helped to fuel the interest behind institutional tourism as well. Demonstrations of physical or psychological phenomena were conceived of as accessible and comprehensible to those outside of the medical profession, and not as the exclusive reserve of an educated elite. Consequently, this rendered it very easy for visitors to rationalize their tours of prisons and asylums – where mental illness and criminal tendencies were displayed for observation and study – as tied to both science and the search for insight into human nature. By depicting the practice as linked to educational endeavours, visiting could be placed outside the realm of mere entertainment or voyeurism, and the combination of looking, witnessing, investigating, and interacting could enable visitors to represent their activities as more than superfluous or meaningless entertainment.35 Visitors to asylums, for example, often remarked on different categories of mental illness and believed that by observing and speaking with patients they could diagnose their particular ailment and even its cause. Highlighting the instructional possibilities the practice offered to the public allowed many visitors and administrators to place the activity outside the realm of entertainment and to present themselves as active sightseers rather than mere spectators. This emphasis on enlightenment and education lay behind a number of popular pastimes in the nineteenth century and was related in part to prevalent Christian attitudes towards entertainment and middle-class ethics surrounding leisure. During the first half of the century, Christian convention advocated edificatory activities, such as educational lectures, and condemned forms of ‘pure entertainment,’ such as theatre.36 As one visitor from England remarked on theatres in the United States, ‘At nearly all the provincial towns of the United States, [the theatre] is not in good repute; and is not frequented by the most respectable families of the city. The dramatic entertainments are, therefore, of the lowest kind.’37 Such derogatory attitudes towards theatres and other venues of popular amusement were very common, particularly among middle-class travellers, and many denominations, such as the Friends of the Quakers, considered all worldly amusement sinful and, instead, sought alternative diversions that were socially acceptable and morally respectable.38 Consequently,

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

129

as Robert Bogdan argues, ‘the public craved entertainment, and the museum provided a cover of “rational amusement” (enjoyment while learning) that legitimized people’s having fun.’39 Like freak shows, institutional tourism could be portrayed and rationalized as more than frivolous entertainment and as ‘morally uplifting, educational, and prudent.’40 Prisons and asylums offered the public the possibility of studying criminal behaviour and mental illness and enabled visitors to experience amusement and education simultaneously without jeopardizing their outward adherence to religious dogma. Many visitors surely enjoyed their tours, but, rather than constituting a selfish or prurient endeavour, time and energy spent studying prisons and asylums could easily be interpreted as ‘productive’ and instructional activities. This portrayal of institutional tourism as an educational endeavour rendered prisons and asylums cultural institutions that fostered understandings of ‘the other.’ In his examination of early museums and freak shows in the United States, Edward L. Schwarzschild identifies a process of self-identification that manifested in a number of sociocultural forums, which can be applied to asylum and prison visitors as well. He writes: Recent analyses of cultural institutions – from all bands of the political spectrum – forcefully evidence that museums can function as ‘powerful identity-defining machines,’ capable of determining and displaying how a commodity sees itself and, simultaneously, how it views and interprets ‘others.’ Understood broadly, museums offer carefully designed, framed spectacles, enabling and encouraging visitors to form various distinctions, be they aesthetic, social, racial, national, or historical. Freak shows, of course, function similarly. Unlike the participatory structure of carnivals, which can hinge on an almost democratic reciprocity and blurring of extant boundaries, the framed spectacles of museums and freak shows tend to be structured by distance, by marked divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them.’41

Similar to the freak shows and museums described by Schwarzschild, both the prison and the asylum upheld the notion of classification and categorization through physical space and the construction of taxonomies of criminality and insanity. In the process, they helped to create an identifiable division between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal.’ Bolstered by scientific discourse, these boundaries became supposedly visible to the onlooker and had the potential to make him or her sensitive to the de-

130

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

marcations that lay between free society and the confined. The physical framework provided by the penitentiary or asylum allowed the public to identify those who transgressed social norms. The process of seeing and observing what was considered deviant enabled visitors to define themselves against others and to draw distinctions that may not have been ‘readable’ or apparent had they seen the institutionalized in the outside world. Not only did visiting and witnessing the treatment of the criminal and the insane provide the public with the sense that they were gaining greater comprehension, but this activity may have also contributed to emerging notions surrounding middle-class identity. Custodial tours entailed a process of validation that positioned many of the viewers passing through these institutions as united in their adherence to certain mores, values, or attributes, and, in doing so, visiting likely helped to fashion the middle-class self. The sheer act of touring an institution enabled visitors to reflect upon and articulate attributes or ‘values’ that came to be important identifiers for the middle class’s sense of place within society, particularly their sense of civic responsibility and preoccupation with social ills and vices. In this regard, institutional tourism helped to establish codes of conduct and delineate the parameters of middle-class respectability. Seeing the treatment of the insane and the criminal provided members of the middle class with the opportunity to contemplate growing social problems and express their visions for an improved society, thereby allowing them to justify their activities as connected to social reform efforts. The mere act of observing, in the minds of many visitors, provided them with the means to evaluate therapeutic or punitive practices, to see that treatment of the insane and the criminal were improving, and to uncover the existence of abuse or poor management within the institution. Visitors from the middle class frequently rationalized the practice as educational or scientific, yet the discourse surrounding institutional tourism and the act of observing others was riddled with tension and paradox, as were many other nineteenth-century pastimes. For example, leisure activities often involved voyeurism, yet commentators occasionally felt compelled to critique this feature while simultaneously engaging in such activities themselves. Many visitors expressed concern over the consequences of visiting on inmates while embarking on their own tour. Members of the middle class, in particular, condemned the ‘masses’ who witnessed public executions, while nevertheless themselves attending such events as well. By positioning themselves

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

131

as scientific observers, these commentators felt that they were distinct from gawking masses and were able to position themselves as spectators motivated by a higher purpose. The desire to observe other humans, however, was evident in many tourists’ activities and extended well beyond prisons, asylums, and freak shows. In particular, it was often people from different ethnic backgrounds who fell under the purview of the middle-class, Caucasian traveller or sightseer. While most expressed no discomfort with roaming the wards and corridors of prisons and asylums, neither did they express hesitation at invading the private spaces and homes of North America’s native peoples. Consequently, although the nineteenth century often has been characterized by an increasing separation of public and private spheres, the respect for privacy was certainly not extended by the middle class to all ethnic groups. Instead, many groups in society – especially those who were socially and economically marginalized – were visually consumed by a middle class in search of depictions of the ‘real’ and the ‘authentic.’ This lack of sensitivity to the privacy of others was likely related to the sense that tourists or visitors were doing good deeds and were motivated by reform and philanthropic interests. However, aside from prisons, asylums, and people’s dwellings, even religious institutions, such as convents, were frequently visited by tourists who perceived them as exotic, mysterious sites that warranted accessibility by the curious and wondering public.42 Visiting prisons and asylums further represented an opportunity to legitimize and evaluate the institutions that were being established in North America and was predicated on the idea that the power to see abuse, success, or failure lay within the scope of the visitors’ vision. Being under the watch of the public eye fostered the impression that instances of abuse were less likely to occur, for, as Samuel Tuke speculated, ‘the uncertainty of visitors arriving would be some check upon neglect, or improper conduct.’43 Indeed, those who passed through custodial institutions often expressed criticism or mistrust of the state and were opposed to governments that tried to render private such activities as executions. One traveller, for example, claimed that corruption inevitably arises when ‘the public eye is not present to control.’44 Visitors’ narratives frequently implied that they were seeing things as they really were. Although referring to incidents surrounding a public execution, the following letter of a Toronto medical student to his father highlights the faith society invested in first-hand observation and visual demonstration. In February of 1864, he wrote:

132

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

My Dear Father, Since I last wrote to you there has been a great deal of excitement in the city about the Greenwood affair, about which you must have seen a great deal in the papers. On the morning on which he was to have been executed, thousands came in from the country and collected about the gaol and would not leave for many hours as they thought the story about the suicide was only a spread to keep them away so as not to have a large crowd at the execution … There was such an excitement about it, that the body was exposed to public view at the city dead-house and this with the identity sworn to at the Coroner’s inquest set the matter in its true light and satisfied the public that it was really Greenwood.45

As this young man’s letter suggested, simply seeing the body assured the public that the government was telling the truth and dispelled the rumours that were circulating about the disappearance of a convict by the name of Greenwood. While it would be an exaggeration to claim that nineteenth-century society was gullible enough to believe everything it saw, visual demonstrations did provide people with a significant degree of reassurance or confidence. Thus, whether serving an educational function or undermining the dangers associated with privacy and the state, accessibility and openness to public scrutiny reflected nineteenth-century society’s emphasis on visual display and observation. While this chapter has focused on cultural meanings behind the visual in the nineteenth century, the sense of needing to watch government activities expressed in the letter above also reflected broader political changes in nineteenth-century North America and expanding notions of citizenhood. For those who engaged in institutional tourism, visiting and witnessing in person were construed as part of the broader process of democratization in the nineteenth century, and the idea that the populace should see and inspect these institutions was frequently expressed. For males of European descent, the franchise was being broadened during this time, and responsible government, already established in the United States, was granted to Upper and Lower Canada at mid-century. As more and more men were eligible to vote, expanded notions of civil rights and responsibilities accompanied this change. In addition, for those who paid taxes, to see how revenue was being spent and to have visual proof of its use were conceived of as a fundamental

Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture

133

right of citizens and as essential for the legitimacy of the state. As the role of the state increased in both British North America and the United States, the inspection of prisons and asylums by the public represented an opportunity for the general populace – even those who could not vote, such as women – to feel involved in the process of institutionbuilding. Although the extent of most people’s influence and power had limitations, visiting ensured that seeing and visually studying the treatment of the criminal and the mentally ill were not the reserve of an elite and, in significant ways, information could lie within reach of all astute observers. When visiting is situated within the context of nineteenth-century culture, the practice becomes part of a wider movement whereby people actively sought to uncover and understand the world around them. Furthermore, it highlights the emphasis North American society placed upon knowledge gained through observation. Crowds clamoured to see the internal workings of penitentiaries and asylums, arguing it was their right to ‘know what was going on’ inside of these publicly funded institutions, and presented their tours as investigations into the mysteries of human nature and the advancements of social progress. Although the growing number of publications on prisons and asylums would have satiated some, others emphasized that visual consumption and first-hand interaction represented a fundamental means by which they could understand and ultimately improve the world around them. Thus, in the minds of many, visiting and seeing the institutionalized constituted an edifying activity that could lead not only to self-improvement, but to social betterment as well. However, even when a didactic or instructional tone pervaded visitors’ narratives, the treatment of prisons and asylums as spectacles was never entirely absent. Nevertheless, as the previous chapter discussed, the meanings of and implications behind institutional tourism were very different from the viewpoint of those confined in prisons and asylums, people who could never entirely be ‘contained’ by the gaze of the public.

6 ‘To Avoid Exposure and Publicity’: Opposition to Visiting

The status of the prison or asylum as an institution open to the public was increasingly contested by a small number of authorities whose vision of modern reform rested on the isolation of inmates and the exclusion of the public. In spite of the strong convictions of those such as Maurice Bucke of the London Asylum, who saw visiting as progressive, advantageous, beneficial, and even necessary, there was no consensus surrounding the entry of the public into prisons and asylums among officials, even in the first half of the nineteenth century, and opposition would be voiced periodically. In annual reports, independent examinations, and government commissions, few failed to address the issue. If some were untroubled by the throngs of visitors passing through prisons and asylums and sought to foster daily and often elaborate social interactions with the outside world, others perceived visiting as an anachronistic tradition that had no place in contemporary institutions. A minority of penologists, alienists, and other ‘experts’ affiliated to prisons and asylums in the nineteenth century hoped to see the practice abolished entirely and struggled to prohibit casual visitors from touring their establishments. Initially a minority, their views would prevail by the turn of the century. As this chapter will discuss, opponents of visiting shared a conceptualization of both their profession and the institutions they were connected with that contrasted with those who supported visiting. In the minds of those opposed to the practice, penitentiaries and asylums needed to exist outside of social scrutiny: the knowledge and language of penal and medical practices should be the reserve of those with specialized education, and the internal workings of prisons and asylums should not be witnessed first-hand by the public. For a society that

Opposition to Visiting

135

prized itself on its enlightened humanity, visiting undermined what some believed to be the very aim of modern prisons and asylums: the reformation of character and behaviour. As critics reasoned, if prisons were to reform rather than merely punish, and if asylums were to cure rather than merely house, then inmates and patients should not be treated as spectacles by visitors. For some, the well-being of the institutionalized was paramount and the presence of strangers in their midst was nothing more than a source of degradation. Superintendents and wardens complained of their inability to ‘protect’ patients and inmates from ‘the brutal or idle gaze of spectators,’1 and argued that the people under their care were being taken advantage of by members of society motivated by the simple desire to gawk at the confined. Nevertheless, although exclusionary rules and regulations were formulated in some instances, the efforts of these individuals were usually constrained in the nineteenth century by the public’s insistence on having access to the very institutions they financially supported. The Desire for Closed Asylums Being treated like animals in a zoo, numerous administrators stipulated, resulted in the alienation of those who were already socially marginalized. According to many connected to hospitals for the insane, there was no therapeutic benefit to the presence of visitors as Bucke would have insisted, and the progress of curative efforts was actually hindered by them. The public provoked patients, causing distress among those suffering from mental illness, and any tranquillity or order that transpired in the asylum setting dissolved as soon as visitors traipsed through the wards and across the grounds. D.H. Trezevant complained that the visitor ‘interferes with the well-being of the patient … They often recognize the patients, call to them by name, and irritate them by their remarks, and throwing tobacco to them for the despicable purpose of witnessing their excited reactions in struggling to get it.’2 Superintendents argued that those under their care had been institutionalized in part to protect them from the pressures of society, and exposing them to the gaze of onlookers merely contributed to the anguish of insanity. If physicians were to cure mental disease effectively, then they had to have the capacity to shield their patients from stressful situations; to ensure the ‘recovery and restoration of the insane to society,’ asylums had to ‘strictly exclude visitors’ as part of the therapy under moral management.3 As Isaac Ray claimed, ‘I see not how we can pretend to

136

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

rely on moral treatment in the work of restoration, while we expose our patients every hour to such communications’ with visitors.4 Dr Clark, superintendent of the Provincial Asylum in Toronto from 1875 to 1905, further explained the importance of seclusion, arguing that ‘a daily influx of strange visitors to the wards causes undue excitement, and thereby retards the recovery of the afflicted under treatment.’5 Moreover, he felt his own position as a medical practitioner was being compromised, explaining, ‘Very painful to Asylum physicians it truly is, to be called on day by day, to “show through” empty-headed visitors, who come to stare, and laugh and wonder at the aberrative manifestations of their fellow beings.’6 Regardless of their views concerning lay tourism, visits from family and friends of the mentally ill posed a particularly detrimental threat in the minds of many superintendents.7 They roused the excitement of patients, upset them by speaking of depressing and sombre matters, and interfered with the progress of treatment. Perhaps the most vehement opposition to such visitors stemmed from the fact that many superintendents felt their professional authority was undermined and their therapeutic efforts thwarted by meddling relatives who were ignorant of the nature of insanity. Asylum physicians frequently complained of the premature release of patients by relatives and friends who, for example, saw the person working and thus assumed his or her recovery.8 The physician’s authority was to be uncontested in all matters, and ‘it [was] considered that the Physician has the same discretion to decline proposed visits to any patients, as he has in prescribing or withholding medicine.’9 Consequently, some superintendents sought to exclude even familial visitors. Isaac Ray of the Insane Hospital in Maine explained: ‘Since we so frequently see their mischievous effects, it becomes our duty to prevent [such visitors] … though at the risk of giving offence.’10 While family members often resented not being able to see loved ones, others pressured superintendents to enforce more stringent policies regarding visitors. As Geoffrey Reaume revealed in his study of the Toronto Asylum, many complained of relatives being gawked at by the public, citing not only the impact on the institutionalized, but also the potential social consequences for the family. The brother of one patient wrote to the superintendent in 1906 and requested the protection of his sister from sightseers: ‘I would like you to keep visitors from seeing her or knowing anything about her[.] [Port Hope] is a small Town and some people are after news to tell.’11 Some relatives forbade all social

Opposition to Visiting

137

contact both in and outside of the asylum, demanding that their relatives not participate in excursions beyond the asylum grounds.12 Consequently, even Bucke tried to appease those who might be hesitant to commit relatives to the London Asylum owing to its public openness. Although it is difficult to understand how such a policy could be enforced when the asylum building was open to visitors from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. six days a week, some could at least choose to believe that ‘in case of patients whose friends do not desire it, strangers will not be permitted to visit them without a written order.’13 Superintendents and government officials often shared the views of relatives concerned with privacy and strove to segregate the institutionalized from the outside world, perceiving the isolation of asylum life as an important part of the therapeutic program of reform. In order to seclude patients, many stipulated that asylums should not be located in close proximity to urban centres as a means of dissuading the public. John W. Langmuir, Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities for Ontario, felt that segregation was necessary for patients, and argued: The desiderata in the choice of a site for an Asylum are quietness and seclusion; to avoid exposure and publicity. Apart from the unpleasant character which a city Asylum must always possess, as one of the ‘sights’ to be seen by visitors whom curiosity alone impels them to examine it, is the consideration that diseases of the brain require absolute quietude and peace as curative agents.14

Such attitudes even caused at least one asylum to change its location. Although it initially had tolerated visitors, the Bloomingdale Asylum was eventually moved from New York City to White Plains, and officials found that ‘the patients have a much less sense of restricted liberty than they had in New York, where the proximity of streets and avenues made necessary higher fences and smaller enclosures, to seclude the noisy and unsightly, and to defeat the morbid curiosity of the passers-by.’15 Although less verbose on the topic, Daniel Clark of the Toronto Asylum represented Bucke’s counterpart in the visiting debate in many ways.16 Clark saw no advantages to the practice and felt that it was nothing more than a voyeuristic pastime engaged in by the general public for non-altruistic purposes. Arguing that ‘curiosity hunters’ inflicted ‘mental injury’ on patients and caused much distress to their families and friends, Clark stated that he ‘rigidly excluded’ such visi-

138

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

tors from his institution. Aware of the unpopularity of his measures among the general public, he defended his position by citing the ‘drain upon the time of the medical staff and attendants.’17 Further challenging the usefulness of the practice, he claimed: Were the laconic speeches of timid visitors, and the frightened faces of such, productive of power to heal a mind diseased, or even to contribute in a small degree towards recovery, the Asylums whose doors are open to all and sundry should show favourably in striking contrast to the disadvantages of our system of visitation.18

As discussed earlier, many felt accessibility to public institutions was essential in order to garner the support and trust of the populace: if the public could tour asylums, then they could see that patients were not being ill-treated. However, Isaac Ray argued that visiting could not offer the public any reassurance in this regard. ‘Shocking abuses are not practised before spectators,’ he wrote, ‘but at times and occasions when no eye can see, nor tongue proclaim the fact.’19 On the other hand, Clark believed that visitors were not shielded from abuse, but that they often left asylums with the inaccurate impression that patients were being mistreated. Fearful that social prejudice could be bolstered if visitors conversed with patients who might distort what conditions were really like inside the asylum, he stated: [The visitor] pretends to think that there must be ‘ways that are dark’ and corrupt lurking in an institution within whose walls he is not privileged to air his importance, and carry away his budget of news, gathered from the mad utterances of ones more fortunate, so that their bablings [sic] may be the gossip of a whole countryside.20

In addition, superintendents had to worry about employees perpetuating a fear of asylums in their conversations with visitors. In the grand jury report of 1844, William Rees, who was appointed the superintendent of the Toronto Temporary Asylum when it first opened in 1840, charged the steward with ‘misrepresent[ing] and prejudic[ing] the minds of the visitors’ about the superintendent’s medical practices.21 These concerns were shared by Dr John P. Gray, superintendent of the New York State Asylum at Utica from 1854 to 1886. While attempting to justify his desire to exclude the public, he explained: ‘[Visitors’] chief desire seemed to be to see the “worst cases,” as they phrased it,

Opposition to Visiting

139

and they oftentimes went away fully convinced that there were patients locked up in “cells” whom they had not seen, and this, notwithstanding positive assurances to the contrary.’22 (Ironically, it appears that Gray attempted to resolve this problem by showing outsiders only certain parts of the institution which housed convalescent patients or those suffering from mild forms of insanity.)23 Gray expressed little faith in the public’s ability to comprehend the nature of insanity or its treatment, perceiving this knowledge as the reserve of the trained medical elite, and criticized the ‘talk of inexperienced, self-styled “alienists,” who are without practical knowledge of the disease – people whose eyes, by an occasional visit to an asylum, serve them in the place of knowledge and experience.’24 Furthermore, by mid-century, at least one superintendent, Isaac Ray, felt that public confidence in asylums had already been achieved and that negative views of asylums were no longer common. In one annual report for the Butler Hospital for the Insane, he wrote: The practice in most institutions of this kind in New England, is to take visitors into the galleries as a part of the ordinary routine of duty. In some of them certain days in the week are assigned to this kind of visiting, when the house is thronged with people whose only subject is to gratify an idle curiosity. This custom … probably originated when these institutions were in their infancy, in a laudable desire to disabuse the public of the popular prejudices against them, and to make known as widely as possible their peculiar advantages for the treatment of the insane. If this were the reason once, it is a good one no longer. Hospitals for the insane are now too well understood by every well-informed person in the community, to need such exhibitions.25

Opposition to Prison Visiting Like their counterparts in insane asylums, a few wardens felt their reformative efforts were undermined by intrusive tourists and displayed the same ambiguous or hostile attitudes towards institutional tours. Samuel Gridley Howe encapsulated the attitudes of a number of wardens when he rationalized that the constant exposure to the public gaze under the Auburn or congregate system demeaned convicts, undermined their self-respect, and made them less inclined to reform than the separate system, which, he claimed, protects them from ‘every eye but that of the virtuous and good.’26 However, while Howe used visiting as an opportunity to criticize the congregate system, believ-

140

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

ing visitors were prohibited in prisons that operated under the silent system, much evidence to the contrary exists. Visitors frequently went through the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia, and their presence was so common that many associated with the penitentiary commented upon their disruptive influence on the prisoners. Indeed, owing to the practice of visiting in institutions that aimed to enforce solitude and silence, many administrators felt the very organizing principle of their institution was being thwarted and that principles of punishment and reformative efforts were being subverted. Visitors often failed to adhere to institutional rules, and, rather than respect the silence employees sought to enforce, they endeavoured to distract inmates and engage them in forbidden conversation. Many affiliated to prisons perceived the exhibition of inmates to strangers as constituting an unjust form of punishment that degraded the confined and inhibited their reform. Although referring to the public work of ‘chain gangs,’ the criticism of one of Ontario’s superintendents can be applied to the practice of visiting as well, as both exposed the criminal to the public gaze. (The similarities between the two were furthermore highlighted by the commissioners of the inquiry into the management of Kingston Penitentiary in the late 1840s, who claimed that the admission of visitors was ‘second only to the abomination which formerly existed of working the convicts in chains on the public highways.’)27 In one annual report in 1870–1, J.C. Taché argued that the chain gang system, which had placed prisoners at work on public highways in Canada, should not be resuscitated as a solution to prison idleness. He argued that the exposure ‘to the taunts and jeers of their more fortunate comrades in crime, the sympathy of honest men, and the gaze of all, is utterly unworthy of the spirit of this enlightened age.’28 In contrast to the idea that inmates needed to be protected, some officials were concerned that visitors constituted a source of distraction for inmates themselves. Visitors drew the attention of convicts away from their work and, in defiance of the premise of institutionalization as a form of punishment, helped to ‘relieve the tediousness of confinement.’ Opposition to the practice in this regard highlights the fact that the subject and the object, the watcher and the watched, are not always straightforward, but often fluctuating categories – even in situations where an imbalance of power exists. The commissioners to the legislature of New York demonstrated that spectator and spectacle are tenuous labels as, in regard to the state prison in New York City, they wrote:

Opposition to Visiting

141

‘The throng of visitors is incessant, and becomes to the prisoners a perpetual exhibition to gaze at.’29 For others, the additional responsibilities the presence of visitors entailed for employees formed the basis of their opposition to this practice. Kingston Penitentiary warden D.A. Macdonell complained that ‘the number of visitors who visit the Penitentiary, more especially during the Summer season, is so great as to have become a nuisance, inasmuch as the time of one Guard is almost entirely taken up in attending upon them.’ However, in this particular instance, the warden did not recommend abolishing the practice but, instead, suggested that admission fees be enforced to compensate institutional employees.30 At other institutions as well, the presence of visitors could burden already overworked employees. At the Albany Penitentiary, for example, the clerk not only looked after prison registers and accounts, purchased supplies, dealt with the entry and release of inmates, but also had to ‘attend to showing and conducting strangers and others who may visit the Institution, through the establishment.’31 Even local jails, which did not draw the crowds that penitentiaries did, found the presence of visitors to be disruptive. One inspector in the early 1870s commented in regard to the London jail: At this official visit no less than three prisoners were awaiting trial, charged with the crime of murder. The practice of allowing so many visitors to enter the Gaol merely for the purpose of satisfying idle curiosity, was attended with such bad results, both to the prisoners and prison discipline, that the Gaol officials were instructed to refuse admission to all but prisoners’ relations and counsel.32

In the eyes of some officials, the thousands of visitors who toured many of these institutions interfered with the management of prisons, increased the responsibilities of employees, and further posed a threat to the security of the establishment. After a year that witnessed the ‘unrestricted admission’ of 12,916 persons, the New York Prison Association in their report of 1865 presented perhaps the harshest indictment of this practice: The evils resulting from this immense number of nearly forty per day ought to be at once evident. It gives increased facilities for escape, and for the introduction of contraband articles, especially liquors. It keeps the work shops in a perpetual ferment of curiosity, and leads to infractions

142

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

of discipline, and consequent punishment. The State has no right, either in regard to its own dignity or duty, to make its prisoners a public show. Reformation is greatly impeded by it, for it destroys that which Satan has often left as a means of reformation, the sense of shame. It fixes more deeply in the convict’s mind the impression, which is the chief obstacle to improvement, that he is an object of hatred or contempt to his fellows; and it is felt, especially by the better class, as a profound degradation and a sad addition to their punishment.33

In a number of instances, prison wardens worried about visitors bringing in banned items and about the association of convicts with criminal acquaintances. Abuses of visiting certainly did occur, and for critics of the practice, the scandals that occurred at the Belleville Gaol and came to light in the early 1800s could have easily served to solidify their position. At this prison, the jailer, turnkey, and matron all seemed determined to render the jail as un-prison-like as possible and encouraged extensive interaction between prisoners and visitors. Male and female prisoners were often let out of their cells at night, and not only were there frequent soirées of singing, dancing, and drinking, but ‘grossly immoral conduct and acts had taken place … between female prisoners and male visitors.’34 Significantly, the employees at this jail were replaced, but the practice of visiting nevertheless continued. As mentioned above, the presence of the public also had the potential to undermine the principles behind institutional programs of reform. This would have been the case especially for the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. At this institution, silence and solitude were to prevail under the separate system. Communication among prisoners was forbidden, contact was to be limited to institutional employees, and reformed convicts were to emerge from the penitentiary at the end of their sentences without being known to other prisoners or strangers in society. However, the growing number of visitors through the institution every year undoubtedly limited the possibility of achieving those goals. For example, just shortly after its establishment, approximately 1,100 visitors came to the penitentiary, and by 1839 the number had grown to 4,000. In 1859, warden John Halloway estimated that in the preceding five years 40,000 sightseers had toured the institution. Numbers continued to climb, and Richard Vaux, who had been a member of the Board of Inspectors for fifty-three years and whose son would become warden, claimed that 114,440 members of the public had toured the institution between 1862 and 1872.35 In part it was the controversy surrounding solitary confinement – the accusations of

Opposition to Visiting

143

cruelty, the expense, the high rates of mental illness – that compelled institutional officials to permit the entry of sightseers. However, not only did the presence of visitors contravene the silent system, but they also purportedly affected the security of the prison and provided a number of inmates with the opportunity for escape.36 A range of reasons were cited by both prison and asylum officials in their diatribes against visitors. While most officials were concerned with the entry of the public, J.W. Langmuir, the inspector of prisons and public charities in post-Confederation Ontario, even argued that official visits by inspectors should be limited, so as to reduce ‘the exciting effects’ the presence of strangers had on patients. Langmuir stated: ‘It would be well if the Judges would instruct grand juries to appoint a committee of three or four members to pass through the Asylums,’ making their examinations ‘more efficient, and the exciting effects produced by the visits of the entire jury would be obviated.’37 Official visits were furthermore disruptive because, when they occurred, the entire institution was often thrown open to the general public.38 Moreover, they occasionally created unusual circumstances that jeopardized the security of the institution by increasing inmates’ opportunities for escape. One journalist in the early twentieth century recalled: Some years ago a warden was visited by a Government inspector for whose entertainment during the fine afternoon he planned a trip across the harbor in the official steam launch. Two convicts who had shown much expertness in running the launch were ordered to get up steam and make the vessel look comfortable. This the men did with quite their usual dispatch. As the warden and his guest were halfway to the pier, the convicts slipped the hawser, turned on full steam and shot out into the lake.39

Asylum and prison officials claimed to want to protect their charges and ensure the security and reputation of their institutions, yet both were also influenced by a sense of professional elitism and a desire to assert their authority and expertise. Not only did they want their institutions to be closed to public view, but they insisted that their understanding of medical and penal practices was predicated on specialized training. Public Will and Challenges to the Prerogative of Institutional Authorities At first glance, opinions appear to have been polarized on the issue of institutional tourism: people either supported the practice or advocat-

144

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

ed its abolition. However, the pressures facing officials were such that they relied on public support in both material and non-material terms. Consequently, those opposed to the presence of visitors inside prisons and asylums often did not have the power to enforce their views and, instead, were forced to compromise and satisfy popular demand. One writer sensed this sentiment among asylum officers at the asylum on Blackwell’s Island and commented: ‘Visitors, though always treated with politeness, are not at all desired by the physicians of the place.’40 Harsh criticism of the practice of visiting was voiced periodically. Administrators complained of troublesome visitors, yet few could actually enforce a closed-door policy and most publicly funded prisons or asylums could not keep the public out entirely prior to the turn of the century. Instead, wardens and superintendents tried to devise ways of coping with the masses who wished to see the exteriors of prison and asylums through such means as increasing admission fees or showing visitors only certain parts of the institution. Furthermore, visiting hours generally were limited to regular working hours (at least according to official rules and regulations), which likely rendered institutional tours too inconvenient for many. Some superintendents even tried to appease the public while still appearing to retain their authority by arguing that the practice had a different impact on different ‘classes’ of the insane. According to this reasoning, visiting was acceptable depending on the mental condition of patients. In other words, some patients were more in need of protection from outsiders than were others. Dr John Scott, the first superintendent of the permanent Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Toronto, clarified his views on these differences in the early 1850s: In the cases of recent and curable patients, the indiscriminate admission of strangers is certainly objectionable and injurious. To many of the convalescent it would be exceedingly painful. To the excitable and violent, much mischief might arise. Perhaps it is only in the cases of chronic insanity that the practice can be said to be wholly free from harm.41

Indeed, Isaac Ray argued that ‘there is nothing more abhorrent to all correct feeling … than the practice of gratifying the heartless curiosity of visitors,’ but that, for convalescent patients, ‘monastic seclusion’ could be detrimental to their recovery. For the patient who enjoyed socializing, ‘a restrictive intercourse with his fellow-men is calculated to exert a restorative influence, by making agreeable impressions, and diminishing the irksomeness of seclusion.’42

Opposition to Visiting

145

Even if asylum officials were opposed to custodial tourism, they usually had to tolerate the public’s presence, and, while Gray and Clark were officially against sightseers, the practice continued at both the Utica and Toronto asylums.43 Gray would become dependent on public opinion, much like warden Henry Smith of Kingston Penitentiary had been years earlier, when he found himself in the middle of a highly publicized controversy. In the mid-1880s, public faith in the care provided by Utica was shaken by the death of one patient ‘caused by injuries received at the hands of his attendants’ and by other ‘charges of a grave nature’ against the institution and its management. As the public had ‘lost confidence in the management’ of the asylum and ‘regard with horror the atrocities alleged to have been there committed,’ a special committee was appointed to investigate. Shortly thereafter, in spite of his earlier hostilities to the practice, Gray attempted to pacify the fear among the public by citing the institution’s accessibility to visitors and his willingness to accommodate daily tours of the institution.44 Clearly, the public could not be as easily barred from these institutions as some would have liked. Similarly, prison officials in New York City found visitors particularly troublesome but appear to have been unable to abolish their admission. Joseph Keen, warden of the Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island, complained, ‘There is, in truth, little or no impediment existing to the intercourse of prisoners with any of their acquaintances. The evils inevitably resulting are too apparent to require comment. Discipline is subverted, and the chances for the exercise of a reformatory influence are fatally interfered with.’45 John Gray, during his first year as warden of the New York City Prison in 1853, also faced a situation in which ‘prisoners and visitors all mixed in one great confusion.’ He tried to resolve this problem not by barring visitors, but by prohibiting their entry into the cells, a measure he claimed reduced the number of visitors by half.46 Nevertheless, by at least the early 1870s, employees were overwhelmed with the number of daily visitors who, yet again, had access to the inner portion of the prison.47 Even when officials tried to control visitors, the rules and regulations they devised usually could not be entirely enforced. For example, the rules for the government of the State Penitentiary in Eastern Pennsylvania in 1829 dictated: During the confinement of such prisoners no access shall be had to them by any person or persons, except the inspectors and officers of the institu-

146

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

tion hereinafter mentioned, the grand juries of the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the counties of Allegheny and Philadelphia, and the official visitors hereinafter named, and such other persons as may be permitted for highly urgent reasons, by any rule or regulation of the board of inspectors.48

In spite of such rigid regulations regarding visitors, the number of general visitors to the institution was calculated by some to be as high as 114,440 in its first decade alone.49 Even the Penitentiary Act of 1851 in Ontario, which ‘reduced the use of the penitentiary for sightseeing by fee-paying visitors,’ did not substantially diminish the hundreds of visitors the institution received annually.50 By the end of the nineteenth century, visiting was still of great importance to prison wardens, and their discussions reveal that the issue had not yet been resolved. At the inaugural meeting of the warden’s convention in Canada, which took place in 1898 and was described as marking ‘an important epoch in the history of Canadian penal reform,’ seminal issues surrounding the administration of penitentiaries were discussed. One of the recommendations made was ‘the exclusion of sight-seers.’51 Not only did the wardens from across Canada concur that curiosity seekers were ‘a source of much official embarrassment and inconvenience,’ but they also stated that their presence was ‘in some cases undoubtedly dangerous.’ This danger was brought to their attention when one visitor supplied an inmate with a prison floor plan with certain points of possible escape identified. To prevent further incidents from occurring, the wardens recommended that ‘aside from such as are by statute entitled to admission, no visitor be admitted except by special leave of the department.’52 While such opposition would be voiced with increasing regularity by wardens at the turn of the century, the economic constraints and public pressures that they faced made the abolition of this practice difficult. Officials seemed unable to do little more than wait for public interest to decline, a dramatic difference in attitude from many of their predecessors’ and peers’ desire to incite society’s engagement with these institutions. By the end of the nineteenth century, visitors’ fees were still a lucrative source of revenue and ensured that opposition to visiting was not likely to lead to its elimination. The ‘gate money’ listed in the annual revenue reports for Kingston Penitentiary referred to visitors’ admission fees, and the numbers suggest why many wardens were willing to tolerate the public’s presence. In 1882 gate money was $594.38, which, aside from revenue derived

Opposition to Visiting

147

from prison labour and the stone and lime departments, exceeded that from all other industries combined.53 Thus, although wardens across Canada voiced criticism of visiting in 1898, it is clear that the practice would not quietly disappear.54 Authorities harboured their own personal views of visiting, yet they were compelled to respond to society’s interest in prison and asylum affairs and, to a certain degree, they had to integrate the public into the daily routine of these institutions. This relationship between institutions of confinement and the outside world highlights the fact that nineteenth-century notions of expertise and professional status were, as recent historians have shown, not contingent exclusively on formal education. In Madness at Home, Akihito Suzuki revealed the ways in which alienists’ diagnoses of madness were dependent on the observations and assessments of patients’ relatives and complicated the notion that a dichotomy existed between the laity and experts in the nineteenth century. Although visitors may not have provided authorities with insight into their professional roles and responsibilities, their presence did serve as a reminder of society’s expectations of institutional care. By insisting on having access to asylums and prisons, citizens compelled authorities to recognize their right to be involved in the governance and maintenance of these institutions. Even if some expressed opposition to visiting, the fact that so many officials promoted, encouraged, and supported the presence of the public and the permeability of their institution’s walls suggests a state that, in some ways, sought accessibility, public approval, and transparency. The situation would be transformed at the turn of the century, but in the nineteenth century even those opposed to the practice of visiting rarely argued that they had a right to operate outside of public opinion and surveillance. By the end of the nineteenth century, institutions that prevented the entry of the public were uncommon, and those officials strongly opposed to the practice found it very difficult, if not impossible, to entirely exclude casual visitors. The popularity of the practice was maintained throughout the century, and the advantages that institutional tourism offered could not be easily disregarded by either wardens or superintendents. As the following chapter will discuss, a number of variables colluded to dramatically redefine visiting and social engagement with penal and medical discourse, but the public would still play a role in determining what the relationship would be between prisons, asylums, and the broader community. Some superintendents and wardens

148

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

wanted to keep casual visitors out of their establishments and officially barred their entry, yet sightseers continued to be a presence in custodial institutions in the nineteenth century in spite of employees’ wishes. Officials of institutions could voice their opposition to the practice, but the efforts of some to abolish it usually did not amount to more than setting certain parameters, such as what parts of the institution would be seen by the public. Even this feat was beyond the reach of many officials, and areas that were forbidden to the common person were, in practice, not entirely restricted. Moreover, support for lay visiting remained widespread among authorities who were opposed to the segregation of their institutions from greater society. The ‘power’ of the institution was great yet not paramount, and the public and the institutionalized alike would influence relationships between prisons, asylums, and society at large.

7 ‘Behind Closed Doors’: The Changing Relationship between Custodial Institutions and Society

In October of 1932, a series of riots occurred in Kingston Penitentiary that were allegedly a response by inmates to the ‘inhuman treatment’ they were receiving there. While following events, one editorial in The Globe claimed, ‘the public wants further light thrown on what is going on behind these prison walls.’ In the introduction to a book written by an ex-inmate of the penitentiary (Dr Oswald C.J. Withrow), the managing editor of The Globe, Harry W. Anderson, stipulated: ‘The “riots” and the fear of publicity have already resulted in minor reforms in the “system.” But everything is still behind closed doors. The law-abiding citizenhood is barred out of the penitentiary as effectively as the lawbreaking community is barred in. Those outside have practically no knowledge of what goes on inside. It seems time to let in some light.’1 With criminals and their punishment now firmly behind ‘closed doors,’ the public, according to advocates of prison reform such as Anderson, had become ignorant of the treatment of prisoners in Kingston Penitentiary and was no longer familiar with the penitentiary’s interior. By the early twentieth century, the throngs of visitors who once traipsed through the halls of Kingston Penitentiary had seemingly disappeared and the public’s attraction to the institution and desire to examine it in person had dissolved. As will be discussed in this chapter, the relationship between prisons and the broader populace in Canada and the United States was transformed by the early twentieth century, a change that was also paralleled by the increasingly distant relationship between psychiatric hospitals and society. One journalist had noted of the Kingston Penitentiary more than fifteen years before the riots broke out that ‘visitors are absolutely forbidden except under exceptional circumstances.’2 As strict regulations such as this one would be increas-

150

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

ingly enforced in twentieth-century institutions, the place of prisons and asylums within society would be redefined and the once popular pastime of visiting would disappear. Whereas at one time the crowds that clamoured to gain entry to them rendered these prisons and asylums almost sites of mass tourism, society’s excitement and fascination with these institutions would be transformed dramatically by the early twentieth century. Abuses certainly occurred in nineteenth-century prisons and asylums, as the number of government investigations suggests, and scholars have endeavoured to uncover the violence some patients and inmates experienced.3 However, the mystery surrounding these institutions was very different in comparison to the following century, and a significant number of people from a variety of backgrounds had witnessed and observed the conditions that existed inside of them. Visitors had not necessarily been privy to the workings of these institutions as they were at all times, and their tours were in some ways contrived, orchestrated events. Nevertheless, tens if not hundreds of thousands had some knowledge about their functionings and, at the very least, had a rudimentary familiarity with their interiors and therapeutic, reformative, or punitive practices. As a consequence, prisons and asylums were not entities that existed only in people’s imagination (or, in other words, they were not ‘behind closed doors’ and shrouded in complete mystery), and the insane and the criminal were not merely subjects that were occasionally studied via the popular press. Instead, these were institutions into which many had entered, and their presence was established firmly in the public’s mind. Their exteriors and interiors would have been recognizable, and the criminal or the mentally ill would not have been voiceless and faceless characters who were never seen or heard. Women and men from the upper, middle, and lower classes went through these institutions during their leisure time with their friends, lovers, children, and business acquaintances, and the majority of records – albeit certainly not all – suggest that they saw those confined within them as unthreatening fellow human beings. Although the responses of visitors varied, many tourists did perceive the institutionalized (the criminal and the insane alike) not as depraved or inherently dangerous, but as unfortunate and deserving of empathy. For example, as a result of her tour, Catharine Parr Traill had discovered that many convicts felt sorrow for the death of her murdered son and that they could even provide comfort to her granddaughter. Others, such as a writer for the Utica Daily Gazette, who noted that patients

‘Behind Closed Doors’

151

were indistinguishable from visitors during a celebration in honour of Philippe Pinel, realized that those considered mentally ill were usually non-violent, intelligent, and reflective people.4 Most visitors remarked upon the disciplined, polite, and respectful behaviour of convicts, and, while often highlighting their eccentricities, they recognized both the skills and talents of those suffering from mental illness and the fact that they differed little from the ‘sane’ who lived outside of the asylum. Some visitors undoubtedly were eager to present themselves in their writings as humble, kind, and benevolent, but for many the experience of seeing the institutionalized appears to have stimulated, at the very least, moments of compassion. It is impossible to determine with complete accuracy why people do certain things and how events affect them, yet the simple fact that so many people were interested in prisons, asylums, and those who were institutionalized in them is significant and should not be dismissed or undervalued. In North American society today, knowledge of prisons and mental hospitals tends to be obtained more through the mass media – newspapers, films, and television in particular – than through personal experience and first-hand observation. Undoubtedly, this has affected popular perceptions of and relationships with those who either suffer from mental illness or have been convicted of a criminal act. Few people have knowledge of the conditions inside custodial institutions except as inmates or employees and have never had any experience talking to those institutionalized in them. In contrast to the idea that isolation occurred simultaneously with the erection of custodial institutions, there were varying degrees of marginalization in regard to the relationship between institutions and their surrounding communities in the nineteenth century. In many ways, the marginalization or isolation of the confined was tempered by visiting, and when the practice declined, the relationship between the institutionalized and greater society was altered dramatically. While close relations were fostered between some institutions and the outside world, not all commentators felt that nineteenth-century society was adequately attentive to custodial institutions. Although some institutions received thousands of visitors every year, even in the nineteenth century many were concerned that North American society was neglecting the institutionalized and that people were not sufficiently informed of the conditions inside prisons and asylums. Whereas the state penitentiaries in the United States attracted thousands of visitors annually, one writer in The North American Review felt that the country’s

152

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

local jails were not garnering enough attention from society. The large penitentiaries were ‘frequently visited, and under the eye of the public,’ but the jails were ‘little regulated by law, and still less by the inspection of disinterested persons.’5 ‘So little is known to the public of this class of prisons,’ the author claimed. ‘They are seldom entered by any save prisoners, officers of police, criminal lawyers, or other persons whose business leads them there.’6 Consequently, he or she argued, ‘whatever pride we take in our prison system is derived from an inspection of [state penitentiaries]; whatever private philanthropy does is mainly for the benefit of their inmates.’7 Not only was greater inspection by local and state authorities needed in order to remedy the conditions inside of these jails, the author stipulated, but also necessary was ‘an awakened interest in the welfare of the prisoners among the community where the prison stands.’8 Although the public might find in them ‘not an agreeable spectacle,’ familiarity with these institutions was essential as ‘what stirs within us at such sights as these may well lead us to consider how our prisons can be improved.’9 As another writer hypothesized, if public indifference and neglect were overcome, then ‘every obstacle in the way of immediate improvement would disappear, if the public will were so.’10 While these concerns were expressed in the United States, the inadequacies of local jails were well known in Canada. Nevertheless, conditions inside of them remained unchanged in the nineteenth century.11 Similar attitudes regarding the importance of social interest were expressed among those affiliated with asylums in both Canada and the United States who felt that a much closer relationship was needed with the public. For example, the medical superintendent for Rockwood Asylum in 1871 complained: ‘A great many people feel a good deal of repugnance to lunatic asylums … This feeling is in a great measure attributable to the part that the public are not made sufficiently acquainted with the working of those institutions.’12 Many believed that alienation or isolation from broader society was detrimental to prisons and asylums, and that public familiarity with and interest in these institutions was beneficial both to those people inside of them and to broader society as well. Even the individuals who were confined in institutions themselves often believed that the public should be interested in their community’s prisons and asylums. Opinions expressed in the patient magazine at Utica Asylum diverged on the topic of visitors, but many believed that society should be engaged with the treatment of the insane in asylums in one form or another and that citizens were

‘Behind Closed Doors’

153

responsible for ensuring that these institutions were properly managed and the patients properly treated. In contrast to what many commentators saw as the ideal relationship of prisons and asylums with broader society and their desire to increase contact between them, the topic of prison and asylum tours disappears from the discourses surrounding these institutions by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed, most officials were no longer addressing the issue of visitors in their annual reports by the turn of the century, and the thousands of tourists who once trammelled the grounds and halls of prisons and asylums vanish from discussion. What accounts for this change and the growing distance between these institutions and their wider communities? How and why did these institutions become such foreign entities to the general populace? The changing attitudes of superintendents and wardens explain in part why the number of visitors declined, but, as will also be discussed in this chapter, perhaps even more important than institutional policies is the fact that society’s interest in the people confined in prisons and asylums seemed to decline. The era of optimism and excitement passed, and the hope once instilled in discussions of crime and mental illness gave way to a redefined relationship between prisons and asylums and the outside world. Visitors: A Vanishing Subject A close study of Kingston Penitentiary and the asylums found in Ontario helps to elucidate the transformations that took place between custodial institutions and broader society. Whereas annual reports in the nineteenth century frequently contained entire sections dedicated to strangers, the issue of visiting virtually disappeared by the early 1900s. In particular, the annual reports of prisons and asylums in the first decade of the twentieth century suggest that the attention of officials towards the public and their relationship with it had changed remarkably. Wardens and superintendents no longer addressed the benefits of or drawbacks to tours made by the public, and the emphasis that was once placed on either promoting or discouraging inspections by the laity had ceased. In the mid-nineteenth century, the issue of visitors in Kingston Penitentiary warranted lengthy discussions among officials. Wardens and representatives of the government encouraged inspections by the public, sought to bolster revenue through admission fees, or, in some cases,

154

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

advocated that inmates be shielded from society’s gaze. However, the frequency by which the topic appears tapers off substantially by the end of the century. In the warden’s annual report for 1902, J.M. Platt addressed the issue of public visitors to Kingston Penitentiary for what may have been the last time for officials at this institution. For Platt, visitors represented a source of great nuisance to the institution because, regardless of how ‘circumspecting visitors may conduct themselves,’ they interfered with prison discipline, burdened employees with additional responsibilities, and bred discontent by arousing ‘painful thoughts and emotions and yearning for home and freedom’ among the inmates. Empathizing with the institutionalized, he argued: ‘I considered it a monstrous cruelty to place convicts upon exhibition before men, women, boys and girls, and I do not blame them for resenting it.’ He further complained that when the warden practised discretion in the admission of visitors and permitted tours only by those authorized by statute or by those who were professionally connected to penal reform, he was accused of ‘favouritism and partiality.’ As a consequence, indiscriminate admission of visitors was still in practice during the first few years of the twentieth century, which, according to Platt, simply threw open the doors to prurient sightseers. ‘Ninety-nine hundredths of those who apply for admission,’ he claimed, ‘and nine-tenths of those who are admitted, have no interest in the institution and are drawn thither either by a morbid curiosity or an unexplainable desire to gaze upon the unfortunates confined within its walls.’13 Gone was the sense that tours by the public were based on philanthropic, educational, or ‘scientific’ incentives, as was the notion that they served a legitimizing function. Instead, visiting was portrayed by Platt as mere voyeurism. While also arguing that false impressions were often made by visitors and that no benefit whatsoever could be derived by any party from the experience, Platt’s complaints regarding the presence of strangers were similar to those articulated by critics before him. Indeed, his views mirror in many ways the opposition to visitors expressed at convenient moments by John Gray of the New York City Prison and by Daniel Clark of the Toronto Asylum years before. However, Platt was in a much better position than his predecessors. The position of the penitentiary as a permanent feature of North American society was now firmly established and economic stability had been achieved to a greater degree in comparison to the nineteenth century – two features that undoubtedly undermined, or at least diminished, the need for public support at this time. With a relatively secure revenue base during the early years of

‘Behind Closed Doors’

155

the twentieth century, Platt could highlight the productivity of the institution and the value of convicts’ labour, and conveniently portray the presence of visitors as detrimental to these features. The desire to prevent the institution from being a circus to sightseers for moral reasons paralleled the criticisms voiced in the nineteenth century; on the other hand, though, this emphasis on the economic impracticality of institutional tourism was a new and powerful rationale for closing the penitentiary’s doors to the masses and departed dramatically from previous wardens’ desires to supplement revenue through admission fees. Platt argued: ‘The prison is, or should be, a place of industry. It is not a zoo, nor a menagerie, nor a free show of any kind. In this institution, we are as busy as the inmates of any factory or industrial establishment.’14 Whereas the majority of wardens in the nineteenth century advocated public inspections as a means of proving the institution’s legitimacy and fiscal responsibility (especially to taxpayers), Platt, like many others of his generation, had become intolerant of the presence of strangers and was determined to assert his authority by restricting the public’s entry. Even in regard to society’s interest in correctional institutions, there was a shift away from encouraging public participation in debates and discussions. Wardens and other officials in the 1800s propounded the notion that society had a civic responsibility to be educated and informed on penal matters. This entailed for some not only tours of penitentiaries, but also the perusal of annual reports as well. The warden of the Reformatory Prison in Lower Canada at Isle-Aux-Noix reflected this attitude when he wrote: ‘It may be remarked, by the way, that publicity is the most effectual preventive against abuse, as well as for eliciting and for propagating information. For these reasons, the Annual Reports should be eagerly sought after, scanned and criticized.’15 In the twentieth century, this attitude was no longer reflected in the official discourse surrounding penitentiaries, and the dissemination of information did not surface as an explicit policy or appear to be an aim of wardens. Instead, a mistrust of public interest and a desire to isolate the penitentiary from social scrutiny permeated officials’ discussions and highlighted the redefined and increasingly segregated position of the penitentiary and inmates in the twentieth century. In asylums as well there was a marked difference at the turn of the century in regard to officials’ treatment of and attitudes towards outsiders. In Ontario, most asylum superintendents became silent on the issue of public tours in the twentieth century, and the lengthy assessments of

156

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

their merits or drawbacks that had been included in nineteenth-century annual reports vanished. A discernible change was evident even in those asylums that had developed strong ties with the broader community. After Bucke’s unexpected death from an equestrian accident in 1902, efforts to encourage public tours of the London asylum disappeared and the regular visiting hours that opened the institution to outsiders ceased. Whereas the accessibility of the institution had once been advertised in newspaper articles and employees’ receptivity to visitors frequently recounted in annual reports and travel narratives, the institution had now lost its status as a city landmark that was well known to the surrounding community and popular as a tourist destination. The public could still be found in the asylum on special occasions, including plays, concerts, or sports games, and the London Asylum’s annual reports made frequent reference to the visitors in attendance for these events. The annual report for 1903 stated, ‘On September 9th we held our Annual Games, which were largely attended by many of the best citizens of London.’ Likewise, in the annual report for 1904, superintendent G.A. MacCallum wrote: We held our annual ball on April 13th and as usual it was attended by a very large crowd of guests who thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Our annual games were carried on as usual and were much enjoyed by all. These took place on the 8th of September and were viewed by many visitors from the city who also enjoyed seeing the patients having a day of recreation.

Nevertheless, aside from exceptional events, the presence of visitors was no longer a common feature of daily life at the asylum.16 Instead, Bucke’s ‘open-door’ policy and active promotion of public tours were policies largely abandoned by his successors. In light of visiting’s popularity in the nineteenth century, it is perplexing as to why this change took place. Although a few superintendents in the nineteenth century sought to discourage visitors and some, such as Clark, vigorously condemned them as ‘curiosity hunters,’ the public remained determined to see these institutions for themselves and officials generally welcomed them (or else were compelled to tolerate them). While asylums had often been established on the margins of city boundaries, they were still surprisingly accessible to visitors who were willing, for example, to take the ferry from New York City to tour the institutions on Blackwell’s Island. In part related to officials’ desires to

‘Behind Closed Doors’

157

ensure that the committal of family members was not hampered by distance, most asylum superintendents concurred that ‘a reasonable proximity to a large town, always offers many advantages that may be made available in the management of a hospital for the insane, and used to add to [the] enjoyment and improvement of the patients.’17 This also had the effect of making sure that casual visitors had relatively easy access to local asylums. Even institutions that demanded visitors to obtain tickets from officials prior to admittance did not deter the public in the nineteenth century. However, by the end of the century, officials sought to make these institutions more inconvenient to visitors. This change is evident especially in the actions of the administration of the Bloomingdale Asylum, which had tried to accommodate visitors by erecting a porter’s lodge in 1879 and sought to establish ‘favor with the community’ in its early years.18 By 1894, Bloomingdale was moved from New York City to White Plains in order to seclude the patients from greater society and protect them from intrusion by outsiders.19 While the idea of isolating the insane surfaced periodically in nineteenth-century discourse, the emphasis on seclusion became especially pronounced in the early twentieth century. When C.K. Clarke became superintendent of the Toronto Asylum after Daniel Clark’s retirement, he began to pressure the government to move the asylum away from city development, arguing that patients needed to be secluded in the countryside away from the sight of the public and the noises of urban life.20 Likewise, by 1911 the city of Utica had grown considerably, and managers of the asylum now claimed that the ‘encroachment upon [the hospital’s] privacy’ was so great that the hospital needed to be rebuilt outside of the city.21 In many ways, this change in attitude towards visitors was related to psychiatrists’ concerns over the status of their profession and their desire to make asylums institutions of scientific research. Even when asylum doctors had established their monopoly over the treatment of insanity in the nineteenth century, they could not shake off the image of the ‘quack’ doctor. According to Maryrose Eannace, asylum medicine was considered a step-child of the medical profession. Despite the fact that American asylum physicians prescribed medicines and even performed some surgeries on patients in the pursuit of restoration of sanity, too much of what they did could be compared to the work of stage mesmerists and other mountebanks and too much of the asylum doctors’ treatment program and skill rested on talk therapy, calming influ-

158

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

ences, and intuition. This positioned asylum medicine as ‘soft science,’ or feminized medicine, a relegation the asylum physicians fought with only limited success.22

Because of such disparaging attitudes towards those who worked in asylums, many superintendents wished to implement therapeutics that were more in step with the changes taking place in hospitals. Indeed, the transformations that took place in the relationship between asylums and society occurred at a time when superintendents were endeavouring to bolster their professional authority. In spite of the fact that superintendents had been trying to improve the reputation of asylums in the nineteenth century through public tours and many visitors did express great pride in and satisfaction with these institutions, the public image of asylums and the professional status of alienists were tenuous at the turn of the century. Asylums had lost much of the prestige that had been achieved in the mid-nineteenth century, in part owing to the growing realization that superintendents had exaggerated the percentage of cured patients. In addition, causes of insanity still were not clearly established or understood, and the legitimacy of curative efforts thus rested on shaky foundations. Psychiatry remained on the fringes of regular medicine, and, by the late nineteenth century there was a growing perception of the field as dated and lacking in innovation.23 With advancements in bacteriology and surgical techniques and with the successful alignment of regular medicine with ‘science,’ psychiatry appeared to be falling by the wayside with little new to offer. Within this context, superintendents struggled to portray their practices as up to date and ‘scientific,’ efforts that were hindered by their inability to locate the physiological cause of mental illness or to offer an effective cure for it. In an attempt to alleviate these limitations and to demonstrate their commitment to scientific research, those working in asylums began to emphasize the need to establish laboratories for medical research and investigation. At the same time, whereas in the nineteenth century the ‘peaceful’ environment of the asylum and work therapy were often highlighted as cures for mental illness and served to justify institutionalization, in the early twentieth century medical professionals increasingly focused on ‘clinical observation’ and bio-medical treatments for mental illness. Edwin R. Rogers, acting as Ontario’s Inspector of Lunatic and Idiot Asylums, encapsulated this new way of thinking:

‘Behind Closed Doors’

159

More encouragement should be given to medical research and investigation … Nothing should be allowed to hinder the fullest development of the scientific spirit in the study of mental diseases. Every Institution can, with very little expense, be equipped with a laboratory for in no department of medical work is it more important to study the blood and its changes, as well as the secretions of the body, and to determine the influences they have upon the course of mental disease.24

This emphasis on laboratory work even influenced the language used by psychiatrists. In particular, superintendents began to promote the terminology of ‘hospital’ rather than asylum, believing that the latter had become an offensive and anachronistic term that did not reflect the medical and scientific nature of their work. According to the 1906 annual report of the Inspectors of Prisons and Public Charities, ‘with all the equipment of a modern Hospital, including trained nurses, training school for nurses, etc. our Institutions are deserving of the more appropriate and proper designation of “Hospital” than that of the name “Asylum” which seems to cause a deep-rooted prejudice.’25 Similarly, sixteen years earlier at the New York State Asylum in Utica, not only were the doors closed to all visitors except officers of the law, scientists and other professionals, and patients’ relatives, but the asylum was renamed the Utica State Hospital.26 In the twentieth century, references to ‘open’ institutions, once common in the nineteenth century, ceased at the same time that there was a discernible shift in asylum care as reflected in annual reports. No longer is the social aspect of therapy paramount to the approaches of superintendents. Instead, ‘scientific’ approaches to mental illness are emphasized. Rather than detailing the amusements that had been a central feature of therapy and often included the participation of visitors, highlighted in the annual reports of superintendents were the physiological or neurological explorations into the causes of insanity taking place at their ‘hospitals.’ Even at the London Asylum, the stress once placed on annual balls, athletic events, and concerts became obscured by the growing importance of pathological work. Consequently, whereas a large portion of annual reports had been dedicated to encouraging public inspections of asylums, medical superintendents concentrated on trying to establish nursing schools and pathology departments, or advocated invasive research into the causes of mental illness. At the Utica Asylum this emphasis on modern science manifested as early as the 1880s, with the appointment of Dr G. Alder Blumer as superinten-

160

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

dent in December 1886 after the death of Gray. At this point, the exclusion of visitors became directly related to the transformation of the asylum into a respectable medical institution. In their extensive study The Institutional Care of the Insane (1916), Henry Hurd and his co-writers evocatively captured the changes implemented by Blumer at Utica: Dr. Blumer also early began to change the institution from an asylum to a hospital. In 1887 the bare wards were carpeted and curtained, the attendants were put into uniforms similar to those of hospital nurses, and the admission of general visitors was interdicted, except by card from the managers. In 1888 … Dr. Blumer suggested that the name be changed to the Utica State Hospital, thus eliminating the unpleasant terms ‘asylum’ and ‘insane.’27

Of course, the change in the image of the asylum was related to factors other than the desire to improve the professional status of psychiatry. In an ironic if not bizarre twist, the medical superintendent for the Rockwood Asylum in Kingston justified the increased medicalization of the asylum environment by claiming that it constituted a healthy distraction for the patients themselves. In contrast to many before him who saw visitors as performing the function of alleviating the monotony of asylum life and directing the attention of patients away from their mental suffering, the superintendent explained in 1907: The opening of our wards for the prosecution of clinical study and research work has been attended with most beneficial effects. It removes much of the dread and mystery with which many, even in the profession of medicine, regard institutions for the treatment and care of this helpless though by no means hopeless portion of our population. It breaks the monotony of life for the patient, who is encouraged and rendered happy in the thought that his condition is receiving constant attention.28

By the early 1900s, most superintendents were becoming more and more preoccupied with establishing psychiatry within the field of medicine, and less concerned with gaining public approval through the practice of visiting. Owing to the desire to boost their professional status and align their work with modern science, an elitist language developed around mental illness, and the earlier desire to make institutional documents accessible to the general public disappeared. In contrast to the nineteenth century, no longer could ‘seeing’ foster comprehen-

‘Behind Closed Doors’

161

sion among those outside of the medical profession, and if a layperson were interested in the treatment of mental illness, he or she would have found the language in annual reports dense and riddled with scientific terminology. Consequently, John Gray’s earlier emphasis on the notion that special training was needed to understand mental illness and its treatment in an asylum became a reality in the early twentieth century, and the annual reports of hospitals, once intended for public consumption and as part of a public forum, became the reserve of the trained expert. The public now would have found it difficult to see, let alone read about, the work being done in the institutions for the mentally ill. The Decline of Visiting and the Role of the Public By the turn of the century, visiting had become an irrelevant matter for most institutional officials. Superintendents and wardens ceased efforts to promote public tours of their institutions, and, while for the most part it was not addressed at all, when visiting was referred to it was with disapproval and a determination to suppress the practice. However, the public also played a critical role in the decline of visiting. As chapter 2 demonstrated, the public exerted a certain degree of indirect influence over these institutions: officials usually could not act outside the parameters of public opinion and were unable, for example, to implement restrictive policies regarding visitors that did not have popular support. As Dr Gray of Utica Asylum had discovered, even if he did not support the practice of institutional tourism, he was unable to keep visitors out of the asylum entirely and was dependent on their approval in many ways. Critics of visiting who were not institutional officials were rare, and few people expressed opposition to the practice (unless, of course, they had relations inside an asylum or themselves were a patient or convict). If condemnation did not increase among the populace at the turn of the century, why did the insatiable interest that had marked the nineteenth century wane? The change in public behaviour was likely related to a number of factors. Many people lost interest in prisons and asylums as they no longer represented the perfect solution to social problems: they had failed to live up to expectations, and, consequently, the nineteenth-century idea that they symbolized the embodiment of ‘enlightened humanity’ had lost its resonance. The ‘golden age’ of prisons and asylums had passed, and many of the curative or reformative claims of these institutions’ founders had proven to be overly optimist. Dr Charles Duncombe, an

162

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

early Upper Canadian advocate of mental asylums, had claimed in the early nineteenth century that insanity was as easily cured ‘as the ordinary diseases of the climate.’29 Until the late nineteenth century, proponents of asylums cited remarkable rates of cure (in some cases doctors claimed one hundred per cent cures), often basing their evidence on discharge rates alone without any consideration for recommittals.30 However, by the early twentieth century, it was clear that asylums did not offer an efficacious remedy for mental illness. Similarly, in spite of years of recommendations, complaints, and pleas for improvement, many associated with Kingston Penitentiary were left frustrated by the failure of their attempts to modernize the institution and acquire basic amenities, such as clean drinking water. The final annual report of retiring inspector James Moylan in 1894, for example, reeks with hostility towards the management of the penitentiary for its failure to ameliorate the conditions inside of the institution, a sentiment that would be echoed years later in many government studies and commissions. In some ways, instead of curing insanity and reducing crime, these institutions became custodial in nature, ‘warehouses’ for the socially or mentally deviant, as many have argued, and were no longer perceived as panaceas for the problems associated with modern industrial life. Periodic investigations into allegations of cruelty, mismanagement, and abuse further undermined the sense of pride, excitement, and fascination prisons and asylums once stimulated. As their novelty and the hope in their potential faded, these institutions held less appeal as being ‘well worthy of a visit’ by the curious.31 Moreover, for those engaged with reform in the late nineteenth century, the focus of some of their efforts changed. Since the prison had failed to become an institution for rehabilitation, many reformers concentrated less and less on the conditions inside of prisons and more on the after-care of the convict upon release and the prevention of crime. This trend is evident in the history of the New York Prison Association, founded in 1844. Originally concerned with the treatment of the criminal in prison, the Prison Association increasingly focused on the reintegration of offenders into society rather than improvement of prison discipline. Reflecting disillusionment with the value of prison discipline as a means of re-educating criminals, the association placed its emphasis on released inmates by the end of the Civil War.32 In the United States, the devastation caused by the Civil War affected society’s interest in prisons and asylums and fostered the growing disengagement with the treatment of the confined. With 2 million men

‘Behind Closed Doors’

163

serving in the Union army, 800,000 serving in the Confederate, and 620,000 killed between 1861 and 1865, the nation emerged from the war in a state of political, social, and economic upheaval. Matters other than penal regimes and institutional therapy concerned the populace. In the postwar period, issues such as reconstruction and its eventual collapse in 1877, political conflict and corruption, economic depression, labour unrest, the emancipation of former slaves, and the struggle for national unity were at the forefront of many people’s minds. For custodial institutions, this unstable context led to diminished state funding and contributed to their increasing isolation from greater society just as their nationwide prestige was dwindling.33 That the decline in visiting had much to do with the public’s shifting interest was recognized by many institutional employees. After expending much time condemning the practice of visiting and exerting his authority in order to exclude sightseers, Platt, the warden of Kingston Penitentiary, realized that visiting had declined as a result of growing public indifference and that it was a change in social attitudes that precipitated the demise of institutional tourism, rather than the efforts of wardens to enact stringent policies. In 1902 he observed: ‘Excursion parties to “Kingston and the penitentiary” were in vogue a few years ago, but happily for the institution, “the penitentiary” is now left out of the bill.’34 Although writing of diminishing subscriptions and the ensuing demise of Utica Asylum’s patient magazine, The Opal, Henry Hurd and his co-writers speculated that the periodical’s ‘novelty to the public wore off’ and that people were no longer engaged with asylum literature and the issue of mental illness.35 This waning interest in the subject of insanity paralleled the disappearance of visiting and highlights the changing social attitudes towards the mentally ill and the treatment of mental illness. Of course, many professional reformers, such as Agnes MacPhail in Canada, and the growing number of eugenicists who saw these institutions as laboratories for the study of degeneration, did not follow this shift and continued to focus on institutional conditions and populations. Thomas Mott Osborne shared many of the concerns of nineteenth-century prison reformers. In 1913 he voluntarily became a prisoner in Auburn for a week to uncover the penitentiary’s workings and thereafter became a vocal advocate of penal reform. Osborne’s interest was sparked by an early boyhood sightseeing visit to the prison, about which he claimed, ‘no incident of childhood made a more vivid impression upon me.’36 However, his commitment to penal matters was exceptional in the early twentieth century. Literature written by the

164

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

institutionalized (or from their perspective) was (and is) still eagerly consumed, but was not accompanied by a demand to open the institutions to greater society. The public seemed to lose its compulsion to witness in person the inside of custodial institutions by the early twentieth century. However, to account for this change in public sentiment, something more than just the mere loss of novelty was likely involved. Indeed, it is significant that the decline of visiting occurred at the same time that attitudes towards the exhibition of humans were changing.37 In particular, whereas nineteenth-century North Americans were enamoured with human curiosities, the ‘freak shows’ of P.T. Barnum’s generation were becoming repugnant, and the act of paying an admission fee to tour a prison or asylum would have been incongruent with emerging sensibilities. Regardless of whether this was due to a heightened sense of humanity, respect, or merely a desire not to see those who might be considered less fortunate by the viewer, people increasingly felt uncomfortable ‘gawking’ at what were considered to be aberrations of human nature. Although many in the nineteenth century would have justified their tours as devoid of any voyeurism, following generations no longer seemed to share this attitude. The impulse to ‘protect’ the institutionalized from inhumane treatment fostered isolation, marginalization, and, in many ways, public apathy, as social and spatial segregation supplanted public interest and engagement. At the same time, with the growth of mass culture at the turn of the century, urban dwellers and tourists faced a growing variety of popular entertainments with which to occupy themselves during their expanding leisure time. In the early nineteenth century, many urban areas were described by visitors as void of amusement venues. Sir Richard Bonnycastle, for example, complained in 1841: ‘The public amusements in Toronto are not of a nature to attract much attention. There have been various attempts to get up respectable races, and to establish a theatre, and a winter assembly for dancing; but owing to the peculiar state of society, these attempts have always proved nearly abortive.’38 However, this had changed dramatically by the end of the century. As Carolyn Strange has discussed in her monograph, Toronto’s Girl Problem, there was a proliferation of new and cheap forms of commercial entertainment at the turn of the century. In Toronto, for example, dime museums, theatres, vaudeville and burlesque houses, moving picture venues, the Canadian National Exhibition, the Beach Park in Scarborough, the Hippodrome on Toronto Island, and a growing number of dance halls all

‘Behind Closed Doors’

165

competed for the attention of the pleasure seeker in the early twentieth century.39 Consequently, the rise of the commercial amusement industry meant that there was much more to do in the city than merely visit prisons or asylums. The burgeoning entertainment industry furthermore was supplemented by the expansion of the tourism industry, which also drew crowds away from prisons and asylums. Increasingly, the sentiments surrounding leisure time and vacationing were transformed, as the ‘purposeful’ traveller of the nineteenth century who emphasized the educational merit of sightseeing was replaced by the tourist in search of relaxation and pleasure. Certainly, tourism was still rationalized at times in terms of respectability and responsibility. As a tour company asserted in 1892, ‘All sensible people recognize the fact that by taking a rational amount of rest and recreation, a man not only obtains more pleasure and satisfaction in life, but is enabled to accomplish more and better work.’40 Nevertheless, the incentives behind travelling and sightseeing began to be disassociated from the reform impulse that characterized much middle-class travel literature in the nineteenth century. This transformation was in large part bolstered by improved transportation systems, which included the expansion and completion of railway networks in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the growing availability of automobiles and improvement of roads in the first half of the twentieth. In addition, owing to an increase in disposable income and leisure time, the middle class increasingly sought relaxation outside of the urban setting, looking instead to such areas as the Grand Canyon and the Canadian Rockies. As historian Marguerite S. Shaffer explains, Between 1880 and 1940 tourism emerged in tandem with an expanding consumer culture, offering a form of geographical amusement for an expanding contingent of white, middle-class Americans … And tourists, taking advantage of increased leisure time, excess capital, and geographical mobility, sought the tourist landscape to escape the workaday routine and embrace a more uplifting ideal of American nature and culture.41

Regardless of the wishes of administrators, prisons and asylums could not compete with the growing number of posh resorts for the well-off or with the amusement parks and dance halls for the working class, as people increasingly and unabashedly sought pleasure and escapism.

166

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

The rise of professional reformers and the decline of private philanthropic organizations may also have played a role in the decline of public visiting. For those who argued visiting served an important function by helping the confined – reforming the criminal and aiding the mentally ill – and served as a safety guard over potential abuses, the presence of the public may have become perceived as redundant. With the expansion of prisoners’ aid associations and such organizations as the Elizabeth Fry Society and the growth of the Salvation Army, greater faith was placed in the ‘professional’ visitor than in the public at large. Moreover, as the evangelical rhetoric of reform began to be supplanted with an emphasis on science, reform became linked with the secular state. As David Montgomery has argued, benevolent individuals had become liberals who ‘sought to bring under the sway of science the management of the social order itself.’ Consequently, the treatment of the insane and the criminal became perceived as the responsibility of the state rather than of the private citizen.42 While visitors occasionally passed through the odd institution, institutional tourism became a rare occurrence, and the large numbers of daily visitors who once wandered the wards and corridors of prisons and asylums no longer appeared. There were of course exceptions to the overall decline in institutional tourism, and some sources suggest that the practice did continue at a minority of institutions in the early twentieth century. However, there may be regional variations to the abolition of visiting, and an examination of the practice beyond the scope of Ontario and the northeastern United States may demonstrate that the practice persisted in many areas well into the twentieth century. For example, Edward L. Fesperman in his Hand-Book of Things You Ought to Know about Raleigh informed readers that at the Central Hospital for the Insane ‘the visitor is welcome and the management takes pleasure in showing and explaining something of the great work North Carolina is doing for the unfortunate.’ The penitentiary, he further wrote, ‘is open to visitors, excepting Saturday and Sunday, from 9 to 11 am and 1:30 to 4 pm, when those in charge take pleasure in showing visitors through the building.’43 Undoubtedly, some people were still interested in prisons and mental hospitals, but for the most part people’s sights turned elsewhere; to paraphrase one postcard writer commenting specifically on Kingston Penitentiary, these institutions had become ‘good place[s] to stay away from.’ As tourists and pleasure seekers increasingly turned their attention to other sites and attractions in Canada and the United States, custodial institutions nevertheless did not immediately fade from sight. In partic-

‘Behind Closed Doors’

167

Figure 11. Kingston, Ontario, postcard [n.d.]. Montreal and Toronto. Author’s collection.

ular, although institutional visits declined, a proliferation of postcards depicted prisons and asylums in the early twentieth century, which suggests the persistence of, at the very least, a slight modicum of public interest. Patriotic icons, such as flags, frequently were represented on such postcards, and custodial institutions were presented alongside other important civic buildings and monuments, including universities and court houses (figure 11). Passers-by were often depicted strolling beside penitentiaries, and beautiful tree-lined entrances to asylums were shown as well (figures 12 and 13). Those who mailed postcards of prisons and asylums included local residents, tourists, and the institutionalized themselves. Between 1907 and 1911, at least eight different postcards of Kingston Penitentiary were printed, one of the most common publishers being The Valentine and Sons Publishing Co. Ltd. It is impossible to determine the popularity of such postcards, but the significant numbers that have survived almost a century later reveal that they were not exceptionally rare. More importantly, however, postcards suggest that the institutions shown on them continued to be depicted in urban landscapes and, in this way, were monuments considered worthy of representation. For example, one tourist sent a postcard to Maine

168

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Figure 12. Entrance to Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York, postcard. New York City: Rotograph Co. (stamped 1905).

in 1910 and wrote: ‘Have traveled 700 miles since yesterday morning. I take steamer to Montreal early in the morning past the Thousand Isles.’ The postcard presented a very stately looking Rockwood Asylum in Kingston surrounded by trees and greenery (figure 14). As well, other images of the asylum evoked a similar sense of civic pride, grandeur, and patriotism and could even be found on dainty souvenir teacups (figure 15). Consequently, there appears to be some continued pride and interest in these institutions in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, while visual representations of prisons and asylums became very common, postcards replaced the in-person tour by the general populace. In this format custodial institutions were safely contained, viewed on paper but rarely entered into, and the people confined within them disappeared behind their walls. Contemporary Lack of Interest Unless visiting a historic institution that no longer houses inmates or patients, today most people have limited knowledge of the prisons

‘Behind Closed Doors’

169

Figure 13. Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, postcard [n.d.]. Montreal and Toronto: The Valentine and Sons Publishing Co., Ltd. Author’s collection.

Figure 14. Rockwood Hospital for the Insane, Kingston, postcard (stamped 1910). Author’s collection.

170

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

Figure 15. Rockwood Asylum, souvenir teacup (date and creator unknown). Author’s collection.

and mental hospitals in their communities and have never entered into their boundaries. Even more significant, perhaps, there appears to be an increasing intolerance for their presence. As the area around 999 Queen Street, the current location of the Toronto mental hospital, has been undergoing a process of gentrification since the 1990s and dilapidated factory buildings have been remodelled into trendy lofts, new residents are beginning to demand the move of the institution to a more secluded area, with little consideration for the history of the institution or the ramifications such a change would have on those who receive care there (often on an out-patient basis) and who have developed a familiarity with the community. Although this particular institution has tried to foster ties with the broader society through such means as maintaining an archives and library, holding seminars and conferences, and hosting cultural events, many people today have little concern for or interest in the workings of this institution. Sadly, people are often oblivious to the institutions around them unless they interfere with the comfort of their lives, and most do little to reduce this distance, apparently seeing segregation as a desirable phenomenon.

‘Behind Closed Doors’

171

Today correctional institutions and psychiatric hospitals are overwhelmed with problems, many of which stem from the social isolation experienced by those within them. One inmate in Kingston Penitentiary serving a life sentence for second-degree murder stated to a journalist: ‘I swallowed all kinds of objects, razor blades and bent wire, anything to get out of the monotony of that concrete tomb just to speak to a nurse.’44 The United States has one of the highest rates of documented incarceration in the world, and rates have increased dramatically since the early twentieth century. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, ‘In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at yearend – 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults.’45 As well, ‘Scared Straight’ programs bring youth into prisons, but they are intended as a deterrent to crime by fostering fear of incarceration. Certainly, these trends have blurred the distinction between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to a certain degree, but in a fundamentally different way than that which existed in the nineteenth century. Excitement, optimism, interaction, or a desire for more humanitarian approaches to reform are not involved. Furthermore, the idea that the public no longer needs to be concerned with these institutions is likely related in part to the belief that governments closely monitor and regulate them. However, those inside of them are often neglected not only by society, but by governments as well. According to an in-depth investigation by The New York Times in the early 2000s, once New York State began closing its psychiatric wards more than a generation ago and replacing them with privately run and ‘state-regulated’ adult homes, these institutions have ‘devolved into places of misery and neglect.’ The government does not even track how many residents are dying in them and under what circumstances.46 Similarly, while the United Nations has condemned the over-crowded conditions of Toronto’s Don Jail, public concern has remained remarkably muted. Ultimately, if society is to remain committed to the principle of confinement, then it must at the very least ensure the well-being of those inside of its institutions more effectively and abandon the mentality ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ Institutional tourism entailed a host of practical, moral, and ideological problems, and horrible conditions continued to plague prisons and asylums in the nineteenth century. Although a resumption of this practice is not being suggested here, contemporary society must reflect upon the relationships that exist with prisons, mental-health facilities, and marginalized populations.

Conclusion

In the late nineteenth century, William Smith, a Yorkshireman, embarked on a trip to North America that would span several weeks and numerous states and provinces. In almost every city he visited, he spent time touring its custodial institutions. Towards the end of his journey, he travelled by train from Toronto to Kingston for six hours, describing the voyage as ‘the most uncomfortable of any that I took during my trip.’ When he finally arrived in Kingston, he spent most of his time touring the penitentiary. Of his visit he wrote: Went with Mr. Folger to the Penitentiary, a massive block of buildings situated about two miles from the city. We were shown over every part of the establishment by the chief warder – an Irishman. We saw the cells, rising in tiers one above the other, with a separate corridor for each tier; the workshops, the provision stores, the chapel, and schools. We also saw – a most painful sight – several prisoners who were being visited by their wives and little children, a privilege granted twice a year, the interview lasting for an hour on each occasion.1

Like many people in the nineteenth century who either lived in North America or were visiting from abroad, Smith was fascinated by the growing number of prisons and asylums found in Canada and the United States and felt compelled to spend his leisure time inspecting them. While his socio-economic status provided him with the luxury to travel and the time for extended leisurely pursuits, even members of the working class found ways of overcoming practical obstacles, such as visiting times that usually took place during working hours, to go on a tour of these institutions. Civic holidays tended to be occasions

Conclusion

173

upon which hundreds of sightseers flocked to the prisons and asylums in their region. Consequently, these were not institutions that existed in isolation on the margins of society. Instead, they were important sites that were visited by tens of thousands of people and thus were deeply embedded within the broader cultural landscape of the nineteenth century. The public not only read about prisons and asylums in contemporary newspapers, periodicals, and fiction, but also toured and inspected these institutions themselves. Their interiors, therapeutic or reformative practices, and inmates were described, analysed, and recorded in letters, diaries, and articles by people who were not members of the medical or legal elites, but simply believed these institutions represented something remarkable in society. Regardless of whether visiting fostered this engagement or was a product of it, the practice ensured that prisons and asylums were dynamic sites of interaction that held a prominent place in the public discourse. That institutions of confinement generated interest among so many people in society was related to the broader context of the 1800s. In that century, reformers and socio-political elites expressed anxiety about the spread of crime and mental illness. With the establishment of institutions designed to reform, regulate, and treat ‘deviant’ behaviour, the problems threatening social stability and progress would be ameliorated, or so it was hoped by many people at the time. Prisons and asylums seemed to offer the opportunity for an improved society and represented a modern solution to crime and insanity. In light of the aspirations these institutions embodied, people from all walks of life became fascinated with the architecture, therapeutic practices, and reform programs of the newly established prisons and asylums found in growing numbers in Canada and the United States alike. However, the interest in modern responses to criminal behaviour and mental illness manifested not only in the consumption of a growing body of literature that dealt with the treatment and practices employed in these institutions, but also in the compulsion to witness in person their implementation. Tens of thousands of individuals embarked on tours that took them through the corridors, rooms, and grounds of prisons and asylums, allowing them to not only view the conditions the incarcerated experienced, but to observe, speak with, listen to, and watch entertainments with the inmates and patients themselves. As a result, significant interchanges took place between custodial institutions and the communities around them. For many in the nineteenth century, prisons and asylums were not impenetrable institutions that existed in isolation, but were often

174

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

important and vibrant centres of social activity, self-education, and ‘scientific’ study. The presence of the public influenced in small yet important ways the management of these institutions as well as the experience of confinement. Members of society exerted a certain degree of influence over the workings of prisons and asylums, even if it was just a matter of demanding access to these institutions when wardens, superintendents, and other officials sought to exclude them. In some ways, administrators and employees of these institutions could not act entirely outside of the purview of the public. Instead, administrators and other employees often sought to foster public support and establish legitimacy by ensuring that people, especially members of the emerging middle class, could evaluate for themselves institutional responses to criminality and insanity. At the same time, however, the public was not entirely privy to the workings of these institutions. Although strong criticism and condemnation of specific officials were occasionally voiced, visitors were often impressed with institutional practices, expressed satisfaction with the care and management of the confined, and believed that what they had seen on their tour reflected how things operated inside the prison and asylum, even when the public was not present. Nevertheless, it is impossible to dismiss entirely the possibility that they may have intercepted abuse. For example, prominent alienist William Hammond argued in 1880 that asylums had become sites of abuse, violence, isolation, and corruption, owing in large part to the power and selfgovernance of superintendents. He asserted that some abuse had been unearthed not only by legislative committees and newspaper reporters, but by ‘casual visitors’ as well, and futher bemoaned the ‘mystery which now constitutes the atmosphere of the asylum, the inaccessibility to the general public.’2 Although visitors did not necessarily witness ‘typical’ conditions inside of custodial institutions, the practice of visiting speaks of a society that valued, for a variety of reasons, first-hand experience, observation, interaction, and engagement. As well, the practice can be seen as closely related to bigger nation-building endeavours: in many ways it helped forge notions of nationhood in the newly independent United States and in an evolving British North American province that would eventually become Ontario in 1867. In both regions the practice fostered civic pride and rendered these institutions important sites of community activity. Institutional tourism helped to instil in the populace a sense that progress was being made in society, that the problems plagu-

Conclusion

175

ing industrial society were being ameliorated, and that the care of the criminal and the insane was becoming more humane and enlightened. Visiting held multiple meanings for people, but the persistence of the practice did not mean that those who were incarcerated in these institutions were not marginalized. In regard to those who resented the presence of visitors, the ‘gawking public’ may have reinforced the sense of social alienation and powerlessness that institutionalization entailed. Nevertheless, there were many inmates and patients who, while defying official rules and regulations, were able to profit in various ways from these meetings with the public. Many of the interactions that arose between visitors and inmates and patients attest to the fact that the institutionalized were determined to improve, in small but important ways, the experience of confinement and refused to submit entirely to institutional regimes. With the public’s presence serving in some ways to mitigate complete social isolation, the ‘total institution’ where inmates are effectively barricaded from the wider world, a separation that ‘lasts around the clock,’ may be a phenomenon that does not apply to the pre-twentieth-century context.3 The disturbing alienation and dehumanization in mid-twentieth-century asylums illuminated by Erving Goffman unfolded only as part of a very slow and gradual process of institutional development which saw early authorities articulate very different relationships for their institutions with the general populace. In spite of what visiting represented to many people in the nineteenth century, by the turn of the twentieth century, visiting had become an almost obsolete activity, and most would condemn the practice as exploitative and harmful. For a variety of reasons that ranged from changing perceptions of the institution to a wider market of cultural activities, public interest began to move away from first-person experience and observation, and increasingly prisons and asylums would be excluded from the tourist’s itinerary. However, the decline of visiting did not represent simply the desire to shield the institutionalized from the gaze of strangers, and the ramifications this change entailed were significant. The institutions that had once represented progress and modernization had lost their lustre, few would tout them as enlightened solutions to contemporary problems, and society’s excitement and pride were seemingly replaced with detachment, distance, and, arguably, a lack of interest. Initially perceived as embodying the potential of modern society, prisons and asylums were no longer at the pinnacle of a widespread and optimistic reform movement or at the centre of a society

176

Prisons, Asylums, and the Public

passionate about the treatment of the institutionalized. Furthermore, the decline paralleled the rise of an elitist discourse surrounding both penology and insanity, which would become the exclusive domain of social workers, physicians, and other such ‘experts.’ As a result, the public would be alienated not just physically from custodial institutions, but from the larger debates surrounding prisons and asylums as well. Moreover, that the change in policy towards visitation occurred at the time that faith in the rehabilitative potential of prisons and asylums was beginning to fade (or had already faded), both the lack of public interest and the increasing seclusion of these institutions appear intertwined. As postcards of Kingston Penitentiary, tea cups with pictures of Rockwood Asylum, and other such early twentieth-century cultural artefacts illustrate, these institutions remained important structures in the public mind. Nevertheless, the distance between them and greater society would grow with the end of visiting, and their interiors would become virtually unknown to the general public.

Appendix: The Setting

This appendix provides information on the communities in which the prisons and asylums studied here were located, as well as some of the key legislative acts and practices governing these institutions. The towns and cities surrounding the institutions include: Utica, Auburn, New York City, all of which were in New York State; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Kingston, Toronto, and London, located in what is now present-day Ontario. Often it was the prosperity of the surrounding regions that facilitated the establishment of custodial institutions, which undoubtedly influenced their management and operation in a number of ways. In all likelihood, the majority of visitors themselves were drawn from these communities. The Communities Surrounding the Institutions The nineteenth century was a period of economic expansion, but it was also a period characterized by the culmination of social problems wrought by industrialization. While some of the cities of this study were at the centre of international commerce, particularly New York, others were only beginning the process of industrialization. Nevertheless, they followed a similar trajectory of development and shared many common features. All of the communities in which penitentiaries or asylums were established grew significantly during the nineteenth century and were distinguished by industrialization, government expansion, the improvement of transportation systems, and significant population growth. Furthermore, as they grew in size, these communities sought to define themselves as ‘modern’ metropolises and

178 Appendix: The Setting

expressed their identities in scores of civic events, publications, architecture, and, of course, in the establishment of prisons and asylums. Utica, New York The New York State Asylum opened in 1843 and was one of the first large state-funded hospitals in the United States. The asylum was located one and one-half miles west of the town of Utica, which constituted the centre of business activity in the county of Oneida in the eastern section of the ‘Burned-Over District’ in Western New York State.1 Utica was initially settled by Euro-Americans as a military post known as Fort Schuyler during the American Revolution, and its population quickly grew in the early nineteenth century. From approximately 3,000 inhabitants in 1817, the population increased fourfold over the next two decades in large part owing to the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825.2 Having been the home to the well-known evangelical revivalist Charles Finney during his childhood and early adulthood, Oneida County was very active during the Second Great Awakening in the antebellum period. Although the economy initially revolved around small-scale artisan production and local farming, in 1845 the socio-economic landscape of the region would be dramatically changed with the construction of the city’s first textile factories.3 By the mid-nineteenth century, according to Mary P. Ryan, ‘Utica was the archetypal commercial town, the bustling marketplace for a maturing agricultural economy.’4 Auburn, New York Auburn shared a similar path of development to its close neighbour, Utica. Auburn was located on the northeast corner of the Finger Lakes region of central New York and would become the Cayuga County seat in 1807. American settlers moved into the area after the Revolutionary War, and within a few years mills were established and important land routes were constructed, including the New Genesee Trail and the Seneca Turnpike, which linked Auburn to Utica, Albany, and New York City. The community experienced substantial industrial growth and, before declining economically at the end of the century, the area was dotted with large brick factories along waterways and rail lines and boasted such institutions as the Auburn Theological Seminary (established in 1820). The two most important companies in the region were the Oswego Starch Factory, which opened in 1848, and the D.M.

Appendix: The Setting 179

Osborne Company, which was incorporated in 1858 and specialized in agricultural implements.5 One of its most famous institutions was the Auburn State Penitentiary. The penitentiary opened in 1816 and was best known for implementing the congregate system, whereby prisoners slept in separate cells but worked and ate together in silence. New York City, New York In the eastern United States, the growth of New York City superseded that of all other communities. The majority of settlers of central New York during the first half of the nineteenth century were from New England.6 While New York City began as a modest seaport, inhabited primarily by the English and Irish in the late eighteenth century, by the mid-nineteenth century it had become a hub of commerce and mass production that housed an increasingly diverse population. With industrial development and commercial expansion, New York City became the most important port of the United States and North America’s largest manufacturing city.7 The city’s population grew from 166,086 in 1825 to 629,810 in 1855 owing to a high birth rate, internal migration, and immigration. Indeed, over 3.5 million immigrants passed through the Port of New York between 1830 and 1860. Although most of them did not remain in New York City, by 1855 over half of New York City’s population was foreign-born, the majority coming from Ireland and Germany.8 Along with economic and population growth came a range of problems associated with industrialization. By mid-century, as one economist has written, ‘New York City had already become the most populous, the most crowded, the most commercially dynamic and, in all probability, the dirtiest and most vice-ridden center in the nation.’9 Perhaps as a consequence, New York City was a pioneer in the establishment of institutions designed for the treatment of the sick, indigent, or criminal, many of which served as international models. Construction of the New York City prison began in 1835 on the grounds of the old Fresh Water Pond located on Centre Street between White and Leonard. Modelled along the lines of an Egyptian tomb, the jail was completed three years later and became commonly known as ‘the Tombs.’10 As well, the city established a number of institutions on the islands off of New York City, including a penitentiary (established in 1832) and the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island (established in 1839).11 Moreover, in addition to establishing a number

180 Appendix: The Setting

of institutions to house the criminal or the insane, a number of important associations aimed at improving the conditions of the sick, impoverished, or criminal were formed in the city, such as the New York Prison Association founded by Thomas Eddy in 1844. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Like New York City, Philadelphia grew at a rapid rate throughout the nineteenth century and became, by the end of the century, an economically and ethnically diverse centre of trade and industry. In regard to European settlement, it was initially settled by Swedes and then the Dutch. The region eventually would be taken over by the English and populated by Quakers beginning in the 1680s. Conceived of as part of a ‘holy experiment’ by William Penn, Philadelphia evolved into an American political and commercial centre and, from 1790 to 1800, temporarily served as the United States’ capital, thereby attracting many inhabitants. In 1820, the population of Philadelphia County had already reached 136,653, and by 1860 it had climbed to 565,000.12 By 1890, over one million people lived in Philadelphia, including large numbers of African Americans and immigrants from Eastern Europe. However, as was the case in other North American communities, this ethnic diversity was accompanied by racism and xenophobia, which lay behind many events, including the denial of the vote to African Americans in 1838 and the anti-Catholic riots in 1844. The port city of Philadelphia quickly became a thriving centre of economic activity in the nineteenth century. The Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated in 1846, which facilitated the trade, commerce, and tourism of Philadelphia, and sophisticated transportation systems were quickly constructed. Indeed, by 1893, 212 miles of trolley tracks had been laid across the city. The region was characterized by a diversity of industry, including textile factories, hat makers, distilleries, candy factories, shipbuilding, and locomotives. This economic growth was paralleled by a flourishing cultural life, which was demonstrated perhaps most spectacularly by the hosting of a world’s fair in 1876. The city’s development was further accompanied by widespread interest in penal reform. In the late eighteenth century, the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons was formed; later called the Pennsylvania Prison Society, the association served as a model for reforms in other states and countries. The association was dedicated to promoting progressive ideas regarding the reform of

Appendix: The Setting 181

criminals, and its influence was evident in the Walnut Street Jail. According to English reformer Isaac Weld, it was more than a mere jail and ‘deserve[d] the name of a penitentiary house.’ An array of other institutions were built by the end of the 1820s, including the Orphan Asylum, the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the House of Refuge, the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, the Alms House, and the Moyamensing Prison.13 However, one of the most ambitious and famous institutions associated with the city was the Eastern State Penitentiary, which opened in 1829. Built on a slight rise of land called Cherry Hill, the penitentiary was best known for its system of solitary confinement, whereby prisoners worked, slept, and ate alone, and attracted enormous fascination both at home and abroad. Ontario While individual portraits of towns in Ontario (which, prior to 1867, was also called Upper Canada and Canada West) will be provided below, there are many features shared by the communities in this British colony. Ontario was a geopolitical colony created by the British in the late eighteenth century after the American War of Independence. Its economic development and population increase were less spectacular than that of the United States. Nevertheless, the region experienced much growth and prosperity during the nineteenth century, albeit uneven and fluctuating. In spite of population losses to the United States, Ontario grew significantly during the nineteenth century owing to both natural increase and immigration, especially after 1820. The population grew from 70,000 in 1806 to 150,000 in 1824. In 1840, the population was 432,000 and continued to increase, reaching 952,000 in 1850. By the time of Confederation in 1867, some 1,525,000 people lived in the province.14 Most immigrants to Ontario in the nineteenth century came from the British Isles and were usually Protestant, although a growing number of Irish Catholics arrived as well, especially during the potato famine years. The province was predominantly rural – people lived on the land or in market towns that served farming communities – and in the early nineteenth century many prosperous farms were established.15 While most production was for home consumption, wheat farming, especially during the 1850s, and the timber industry, particularly in the Ottawa Valley, dominated the economy. Although the economy was characterized by primary resources, flour mills, breweries, distilleries, sawmills, tanneries, wagon and carriage manufactures, and cabinet works were

182 Appendix: The Setting

the chief secondary industries, and dairies and cheese factories gradually were formed as well.16 Eventually, machine manufactories to serve agricultural industry and to support the broadening network of railways were established in the mid-nineteenth century. As in other communities in the United States and Canada, economic development in Ontario was accompanied by a growing interest in the field of social welfare, provisions being made for the economically marginalized, the mentally and physically ill, and the criminal and delinquent.17 The expansion and improvement in the care of the mentally ill and the criminal were facilitated in the latter half of the nineteenth century by the fact that the Upper Canadian government was, according to Richard B. Splane, ‘in possession of more revenue than it required for its basic functions and for the development of projects to which it gave the next priority.’ Its secure financial position gave the government the assurance of significant public support for its endeavours; consequently, as capital could be spared from the vital task of developing the basic economy, a number of provincial institutions – including one penitentiary and three asylums – were established by the end of the nineteenth century.18 The reform movements that arose in the nineteenth century were in large part connected to the formation of the middle class. Kingston, Ontario One of the earliest communities established by the British in Upper Canada was Kingston. Founded in 1784, Kingston was settled by Loyalist refugees during and after the American Revolution. The population increased steadily over the following years owing to an influx of other immigrants, and after the War of 1812 settlers were recruited primarily from England and Ireland. The town continued to grow in the nineteenth century, and by 1861 it was the third-largest city in Upper Canada with a population of 13,743. By the end of the century in 1891, 19,264 people lived in the town.19 In addition, the ethnic composition of the region changed during the nineteenth century: by the 1870s, over half of its population was Irish-born.20 Kingston initially served as a military garrison, a feature that dominated its social, cultural, and economic spheres of life and even influenced its urban landscape. The town also served as an important commercial entrepôt, and by the mid-nineteenth century the economy had diversified to include shipping, shipbuilding, and small-scale

Appendix: The Setting 183

manufacturing.21 Gradually, the region developed a strong working class. Indeed, in one of the first organized efforts of workers in Canada, Kingston mechanics, fearing competition and lower wages, opposed the establishment of the penitentiary and the use of convict labour in the 1830s.22 Nevertheless in spite of this opposition, the provincial penitentiary opened in 1835 and was taken over by the federal government after Confederation. As well, although people considered to be insane were often housed in the penitentiary, Rockwood Asylum was opened in 1858 to house the criminally insane and eventually accepted noncriminals as well. Toronto, Ontario When John Graves Simcoe became the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada in 1791, he selected Toronto, which he called York, as the provincial capital, settling there with his family in 1793. The town grew very slowly during its first decade, numbering approximately 700 inhabitants in 1812. Like other regions in Ontario, it was settled by Loyalists during and after the American Revolution, many of whom were of German or Huguenot origin. However, while most of these people settled in the fertile farm lands surrounding Toronto, the town itself was predominantly British. At the end of both the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, Toronto attracted immigrants mainly from the British Isles who tended to be either Methodist, Anglican, or Catholic. Many of these people worked within the primary industries of the province, especially wheat farming. By 1861, Toronto was the largest city in Upper Canada, with a population of 44,821.23 In 1891, it had a population of 181,220, more than three times the size of the next-largest town in the province, Hamilton.24 A construction boom accompanied population growth, and, by the mid-nineteenth century, transportation systems were developed, and new parliament buildings, a hospital, a jail, a courthouse, and many homes were erected. It was also the capital of Canada for a brief period in 1855 and became not only the centre of political activity in the province, but also the commercial and financial centre of Ontario. The first permanent asylum for the care of the insane in the province, the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, was opened in 1850. As well, in 1874, the Central Prison for men received its first inmates and served as an intermediary correctional institution. The city’s commitment to reform was further illustrated in 1881 when the Prisoners’

184 Appendix: The Setting

Aid Association was formed to assist the incarcerated both in prison and upon their release. London, Ontario Located on the Thames River, London was founded in 1826 when it was selected to be the administrative centre for southwestern Ontario. Government buildings were constructed, and public servants, merchants, hostel keepers, farmers, and entrepreneurs moved into the region. Its early growth was further bolstered by the government’s reactions to the Upper Canadian Rebellion in 1837. Fearing another uprising, the British government established a garrison in the District of London, which remained there until 1869. The stationing of troops in the area was accompanied by military spending and population increase. Over the next few years, roads were built, tanneries and iron foundries were established, the Great Western Railway was constructed to link the city by rail to other areas, and wheat farming grew (especially during the American Civil War). By 1861, the population of London reached 11,558, and by 1871 London had become the fourth-largest town in Ontario with a population of 15,826.25 Immigration from Great Britain contributed significantly to its expansion, and, indeed, 54 per cent of its workforce was foreign-born in 1871. Along with population growth came the establishment of public institutions; in 1870, the London Asylum was opened at a location three miles east of the city.

Notes

Introduction 1 T.R. Woodhouse, ed., ‘A Trip to Upper Canada, August 1835. From the Diary of John Armour Jr.,’ Ontario History 45, no. 3 (1953): 133–4; Patricia Godsell, ed., The Diary of Jane Ellice (Toronto: Oberon Press, 1975), 100–1; and E. Katharine Bates, A Year in the Great Republic (London: Ward and Downey, 1887), 26. 2 The term ‘custodial institution’ is used throughout this study for the sake of simplicity and refers to prisons and asylums. As well, it should be noted that terms such as ‘lunatic asylum’ are used as part of the nineteenthcentury lexicon and are not employed with any disrespect for the people who were confined in them. 3 David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, rev. ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990.), xxv; Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961), 14. Also see Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1988 [originally published in 1965]), and Andrew Scull, Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Allen Lane, 1979). 4 E. Dwyer, Homes for the Mad: Life Inside Two Nineteenth-Century Asylums (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 28 and 7. 5 In particular, see ibid. 6 Karen Halttunen, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). 7 Daniel Francis and C. James Taylor, ‘Institutions of Confinement: The

186

8 9

10

11

12

13 14

Notes to pages 11–14 Origins of Canadian Mental Hospitals and Penitentiaries,’ in Readings in Canadian History, vol. 1, ed. R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith (Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 388. Stephen Leacock, The Makers of Canada. Baldwin, LaFontaine, Hincks. Responsible Government (Toronto: Morang, 1907), 74. For example, see: S.E.D. Shortt, Victorian Lunacy: Richard M. Bucke and the Practice of Late Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986); Dwyer, Homes for the Mad; Peter McCandless, Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Geoffrey Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); James E. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth-Century Quebec and Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); Akihito Suzuki, Madness at Home: The Psychiatrist, the Patient, and the Family in England, 1820–1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Peter Bartlett and David Wright, eds., Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750–2000 (London and New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, 1999), viii. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Keith Gandal, The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, and the Spectacle of the Slum (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). John C. Burnham, How Superstition Won and Science Lost (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987). Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c. 1848–c. 1918 (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernism in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

Notes to pages 15–19

187

15 Ian McKay, ‘The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,’ Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (2000): 622. 16 Jennifer A. Crets, ‘“Well Worth the Visitor’s While”: Sightseeing in St. Louis, 1865–1910,’ Gateway Heritage 20, no. 3 (Winter 1999–2000): 18. 1: The Establishment of Custodial Institutions and the Early Practice of Visiting 1 ‘Rules and Regulations made by the Inspectors of the Provincial Penitentiary,’ Appendix to the Journals of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada. From the 8th Day of November, 1836, to the 4th Day of March, 1837. First Session of the Thirteenth Provincial Parliament, Session 1836–7, Appendix no. 10 (Toronto: W.J. Coates, 1837). 2 S.G. Lathrop, Crime and Its Punishment, and Life in the Penitentiary (Joliet, IL: The Author, 1866), 226. 3 Testimony Taken by the Special committee to Investigate the Affairs and Management of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1884), Appendix, Exhibit no. 37, 1233. New York State Library [hereafter NYSL], LEG 493.1–4. If the numbers of visitors the Utica Asylum occasionally reported are accurate, they suggest a significant increase in visiting in the latter half of the nineteenth century. According to the asylum’s first superintendent in 1847, Amariah Brigham, the asylum only received approximately 5,229 visitors for that year. Fifth Annual Report of the Managers of the State Lunatic Asylum (Albany: E. Mack, 1848), 68. This number was higher than in preceding years. For example, in the semi-annual report of 1843, Brigham stated, ‘The number of visitors admitted into the Halls and to see our patients is 1121.’ Semi-Annual Report of the Superintendent to the Managers of the New York State Asylum (Albany: E. Mack, 1843). 4 Edward M. Peters, ‘Prison before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds,’ in Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 22. 5 See, for example, W.J. Sheehan, ‘Finding Solace in Eighteenth-Century Newgate,’ in Crime in England, 1550–1800, ed. J.S. Cockburn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977). According to Sheehan’s findings, life in Newgate prison was distinguished by the proliferation of drinking, dancing, and sexual relations. 6 Randall McGowen, ‘The Well-Ordered Prison: England, 1780–1865,’ The Oxford History of the Prison, 82.

188

Notes to pages 19–22

7 Patricia Allderidge, ‘Bedlam: Fact or Fantasy?’ in The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, vol. 2, ed. W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd (London and New York: Tavistock, 1985), 21. 8 Anne Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796–1914 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 3. However, this number has been contested by Patricia Allderidge in, ‘Bedlam: Fact or Fantasy?’ 22–4. 9 Ibid., 88. 10 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. by Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), and Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995); Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1991). 11 Peter Okun, Crime and Nation: Prison Reform and Popular Fiction in Philadelphia 1786–1800 (New York: Routledge, 2002), xix–xx. 12 Allan Greer and Ian Radforth, ‘Introduction,’ in Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Canada, ed. Allan Greer and Ian Radforth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 4. 13 Ibid., 6. 14 David L. Lightner, ed., Asylums, Prisons, and Poorhouses: The Writings and Reform Work of Dorothea Dix in Illinois (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 9–10. 15 Peter Bartlett and David Wright, eds., Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750–2000 (London and New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, 1999), viii. Although this argument has not yet been fully explored within the North American context, much evidence does point to its applicability. For example, Dr Henry Smith Williams wrote in the late nineteenth century: ‘It is true the insane are often restrained of their liberty, but this is almost never done until the afflicted individual has so flagrantly violated the cardinal principle of equal personal rights that his conduct can by no possibility be further tolerated. Let no one suppose that an insane person is commonly sent to an asylum because of his insanity per se … There are, in the aggregate, a vast number of insane persons in the community who are never confined in asylums because their disease does not lead them to commit acts that interfere seriously with the liberties of those about them. An insane person may even act very grotesquely indeed, and say very absurd things without seeming to menace others or himself. He will not usually be restrained.’ ‘Social Relations of the Insane,’ The North American Review 157 (1893): 611–12.

Notes to pages 22–32

189

16 William I. Cole, ‘Boston’s Insane Hospital,’ New England Magazine, old series, 25 (Sept. 1898–Feb. 1899): 753. 17 David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, rev. 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 130. 18 See, for example, Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum, and Peter Oliver, ‘Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 19 Oliver, ‘Terror to Evil-Doers,’ 6. 20 For a thorough discussion of Dix’s efforts, see Lightner, Asylums, Prisons, and Poorhouses. 21 For an excellent summary on the historiography of asylums, see James Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in NineteenthCentury Quebec and Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 6–11. 22 ‘Our Prisons,’ New York Daily Times, 21 November 1854. 23 Third Report of the Executive Committee of the New York Prison Association, cited in ‘Miscellaneous,’ Journal of Pennsylvania 3, no. 2 (July 1847): 115. 24 Foucault, Madness and Civilization, 16–17. 25 Carolyn Strange, ‘The Undercurrents of Penal Culture: Punishment of the Body in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada,’ Law and History Review 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 343. 26 Michel Foucault, History of Madness, ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 143–5. 27 Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 636. 28 Inmate labour was rationalized by administrators as economically beneficial but was also predicated on the notion that physical labour was an essential part of rehabilitation, whether it be for a patient or a convict. 29 Ellen Dwyer, Homes for the Mad: Life inside Two Nineteenth-Century Asylums (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 37–8. 30 Ibid., 186–8. 31 Norman Johnston, ‘Noble Ideas Collide with Reality,’ in Eastern State Penitentiary: Crucible of Good Intentions, ed. Norman Johnston (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994), 47–8. 32 Ibid., 67. 33 Richard B. Splane, Social Welfare in Ontario, 1791–1893 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 26. 34 Ibid., 34. 35 Ibid., 288. 36 Ibid., 27.

190

Notes to pages 32–40

37 Ibid., 288. 38 M.J. Heale, ‘The Formative Years of the New York Prison Association, 1844–1862,’ New York History Society Quarterly 69, no. 4 (1975): 336. 39 Splane, Social Welfare in Ontario, 19 and 176–8. 2: Open Doors: Welcoming the Public into Prisons and Asylums 1 Rules and Regulations and By-Laws for the Government and Discipline of the Albany County Penitentiary (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1849), 4. New York State Library [hereafter NYSL], N 365.34 QR 935 96-8233. 2 For example, Thomas Millman, who served as a physician in the London Asylum, often identified ‘misleading’ comments in superintendent Richard Maurice Bucke’s annual reports. See Thomas Millman Fonds, 20 February 1885, F 4529-1, Archives of Ontario. 3 In regard to the number of visitors and admission fees, these were not consistently recorded in annual reports. Many institutions also kept logbooks that recorded the name and often the address of visitors. For example, a visitors’ register for the Eastern State Penitentiary is held by the Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg (series 15.46). It is discussed in Negley K. Teeters and John D. Shearer, The Prison at Philadelphia: Cherry Hill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 195–200. Unfortunately, the visitors’ book for the New York State Asylum appears to have been lost by the New York State Library. 4 S.G. Lathrop, Crime and Its Punishment, and Life in the Penitentiary (Joliet, IL: The Author, 1866), 11. 5 ‘Rumored Barbarities in the Utica Asylum,’ New York Tribune, 3 March 1860. Furthermore, a mere perusal of the index for the New York Times attests to society’s intense interest in and concern for the treatment of those deemed insane or criminal. 6 ‘Amariah Brigham, M.D.,’ Journal of Insanity 6, no. 2 (October 1849): 188–9. 7 Sixth Annual Report of the Governors of the Alms House, New York, for the Year 1854 (New York, 1855), 58; Letter from Bucke to the Editor, London Free Press, 8 June 1880. 8 Rules and Regulations and By-Laws for the Government and Discipline of the Albany County Penitentiary, 13. Testimony Taken by the Special Committee to Investigate the Affairs and Management of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, Exhibit no. 1, ‘Rules, Regulations and By-Laws of the New York State Lunatic Asylum,’ 1167. 9 Testimony Taken by the Special Committee to Investigate the Affairs and Management of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, Exhibit no. 1, ‘Rules, Regulations and By-Laws of the New York State Lunatic Asylum,’ 1167–9.

Notes to pages 41–2

191

10 Report of the State of New York Hospital and Bloomingdale Asylum for the Year 1878 (New York, 1879), 23. 11 See, for example, R.D. Gidney and W.P.J. Millar, ‘“Beyond the Measure of the Golden Rule”: The Contribution of the Poor to Medical Science in Ontario,’ Ontario History 86 (1994): 219–35. 12 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto,’ Appendix to the Fifteenth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 26th February to the 10th June, 1857, Session 1857, Appendix No. 12 (Toronto: Campbell, 1857). As well, a scandal involving the dissection of patients had developed a few years earlier. In the early 1850s, the coffin of a patient was found to contain only a part of the corpse and, in the ensuing inquest, Superintendent Scott admitted that occasionally parts of dead patients were removed for ‘anatomical purposes.’ James E. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth-Century Quebec and Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 63. 13 Only in the early twentieth century with technological and therapeutic changes would hospitals be transformed into ‘respectable’ and curative institutions used by the middle class. See, for example, Charles Rosenberg, ‘Community and Communities: The Evolution of the American Hospital,’ in The American General Hospital: Communities and Social Contexts, ed. Diana Elizabeth Long and Janet Golden (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 3–17; and Joel Howell, Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). 14 ‘Separate Report of Wolfred Nelson for 1861,’ Second Annual Report of the Board of Inspectors of Asylums, Prisons, &c. 1861, Sessional Papers, First Session of the Seventh Parliament of the Province of Canada, Session 1862, no. 19 (Quebec: Hunter, Rose, and Lemieux, 1862). 15 Cited in D.H. Trezevant, Letters to His Excellency Governor Manning on the Lunatic Asylum (Columbia, SC: R.W. Gibbs, 1854), 31, 44–5, and 53. For an excellent study of Kirkbride, see Nancy Tomes, A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum-Keeping, 1840–1883 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 16 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto,’ Appendix to the Eleventh Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 19th August, 1852, to the 14th June 1853, Session 1852–3, Appendix J (Quebec: John Lovell, 1852). 17 ‘First Annual Report of the Directors of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, Toronto, Canada West,’ Appendix to the Tenth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 20th Day of May to the

192

18 19

20 21 22

23

24

25 26

27

28

Notes to pages 42–5 30th Day of August, Fourth Session of the Third Provincial Parliament of Canada, Session 1851, Appendix C (Quebec: R. Campbell, 1851). ‘Visit to the State Lunatic Asylum by Dr. Van,’ The Cobleskill, 25 January 1873. ‘Report of the Board of Directors of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, for the Year Ending November, 1851,’ Appendix to the Eleventh Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 19th August, 1852, to the 14th June 1853, Session 1852–3, Appendix J (Quebec: John Lovell, 1852). ‘“Journal of Prison Discipline” and Lunatic Asylums,’ Journal of Insanity 2, no. 2 (October 1845): 177–8. ‘Separate Report of Wolfred Nelson for 1861.’ S.E.D. Shortt, Victorian Lunacy: Richard M. Bucke and the Practice of Late Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 26. William P. Letchworth, Commissioner, Extract from the Eleventh Annual Report of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York Relating to the Charities of the Eighth Judicial District (Albany: Argus Company, Printer, 1878), 37. See also Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Expediency of Revising the System of Administration of the Public Charities of the Commonwealth (Boston: Rand, Abery, 1878), 20. ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, For the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Appendix to ‘Report of Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1877, vol. ix, part 1, no. 2 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1877), 208. ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ Journal of Insanity 4, no. 3 (January 1848): 272. ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Malden Lunatic Asylum,’ Appendix to ‘Report of Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities for the Twelve Months Ending 30th September, 1869,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the First Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1869, vol. 2, no. 4 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1869), 60. ‘Annual Report of the Warden of the Reformatory Prison of Lower Canada,’ Second Annual Report of the Board of Inspectors of Asylums, Prisons, &c., 1861, Sessional Papers, First Session of the Seventh Parliament of Canada, Session 1862, no. 19 (Quebec: Hunter, Rose, and Lemieux, 1862). ‘Report of the Warden,’Appendix to the Sixth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canda, From the 2nd Day of June to the

Notes to pages 45–6

29

30

31

32 33

34

193

28th Day of July, 1847, Third Session of the Second Provincial Parliament of Canada, Session 1847, Appendix N (Montreal: R. Campbell, 1847). However, this did not seem to be an overly effective strategy for Smith, as he would be lambasted for negligent management of the penitentiary and abuse of the inmates in the government’s investigative report of 1849. S. Etheridge, ‘State Prisons and the Penitentiary System Vindicated,’ The North American Review, old series, 13 (1821): 434–5. The need to demonstrate work regimes was apparent even in regard to asylums, as occasionally members of the public suspected that those who did not want to work went there simply to ‘relax.’ ‘Report of Mr. Taché for the Year 1861,’ Second Annual Report of the Board of Inspectors of Asylums, Prisons, &c., 1861, Sessional Papers, First Session of the Seventh Parliament of Canada, Session 1862, no. 19 (Quebec: Hunter, Rose, and Lemieux, 1862). The documentary Scared Straight! was released in 1978 to much critical acclaim. Influenced in part by the documentary, a number of American states introduced programs in following years that sought to prevent delinquency, crime, and drug use among juveniles. Youths identified as ‘at risk’ for future criminal behaviour were taken on tours of prisons, where they interacted with adult convicts. Contemporary studies have shown that not only do these programs fail to deter crime, but they lead to more offending behaviour. For example, see Anthony Petrosino, Caolyn Turpin-Petrosino, and John Buehler, ‘“Scared Straight” and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency’ (Updated C2 Review), in The Campbell Collaboration Reviews of Intervention and Policy Evaluations (C2RIPE) (Philadelphia: Campbell Collaboration, November 2003). David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, rev. 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 81. During the first few years of its establishment, Auburn Prison initially isolated inmates in cells without work. However, owing to high rates of mental and physical disease, this system was abandoned and replaced with the silent system. Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York – A Review,’ New York History 47, no. 1 (1966): 76–7. This change was related to the growing number of criticisms of the Auburn Prison system. In particular, Thomas Mott Osborne investigated the conditions inside the prison and wrote a scathing study of its effects. See his Within Prison Walls: Being a Narrative of Personal Experience during a Week of Voluntary Confinement in the State Prison at Auburn, New York (New York and London: D. Appleton, 1914). As well, by the 1910s, the Irish prison

194

35 36

37 38 39

40 41 42

43

Notes to pages 46–8 program devised by Walter Crofton and Joshua Jebb in the 1840s and 1850s would influence the penitentiary system in the United States. Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum, 82. Samuel Gridley Howe, An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline, Being a Report Made to the Boston Prison Discipline Society (Boston: W.D. Ticknor, 1846), 23–4. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum, 49. Howe, An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems, 46. Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 19–20. Superintendents and wardens often referred to the meagre wages paid to attendants and guards. For example, in the late 1870s the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities for Ontario, J.W. Langmuir, wrote: ‘The value of intelligent and faithful performance of duty on the part of Asylum nurses and attendants, cannot well be overrated … It cannot be expected, however, that intelligent and thoughtful attendants can be either obtained or retained, without being adequately recompensed for their services … The wages paid to Asylum attendants have within the past few years been slightly increased but they are still below a rate calculated to command the services of the class of persons, whom it is so desirable to obtain.’ ‘Eleventh Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September 1878,’ Sessional Papers, Fourth Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1879, vol. xi, part iii, no. 8 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1879), 21. Rules and Regulations and By-laws for the Government and Discipline of the Albany County Penitentiary (Albany, 1849), 13. J.S. Buckingham, The Eastern and Western States of America, vol. 1 (London: Fisher, Son and Company, 1842), 310. As the warden explained in his annual report for 1869, ‘There being no fund on which to draw for such instruments, we depend entirely upon the small fee of a quarter dollar paid by visitors, and upon charitable donations at the gate.’ Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, Third Session of the First Parliament, Session 1870, vol. II, no. 5 (Ottawa: I.B. Taylor, 1870), 7. ‘Annual Report of the Central Prison of Toronto,’ ‘Seventeenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities Upon the Common Gaols, Prisons and Reformatories for the Province of Ontario, Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1884,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Fifth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1885, vol. xvii, part iv, no. 12 (Toronto: Grip Printing and Publishing, 1885), 87. While the rules

Notes to pages 48–50

44 45 46 47 48

49

50

195

and regulations of Kingston Penitentiary devised a fee scale for visitors, it appears that admission fees were not tabulated in the institution’s annual reports. The only reference to the revenue derived from such fees was in the annual report for the year 1840, when reportedly 1 pound 5 s was collected. This number is curious considering how many references to visitors are contained in both official and popular documents. ‘The Warden’s Report,’ Journals of the Legislative Council of the Province of Canada, Third Session of the First Provincial Parliament, 1841, vol. i, Appendix 14, Table H (Kingston: R. Stanton, 1841), 360. In the last few decades of the century, the warden for Kingston Penitentiary does appear to report admission fees with greater regularity. The Charter, Laws, and Rules, of the Pennsylvania Hospital (Philadelphia, 1837), 23. New York Public Library, C.p.v. 859. Third Annual Report of the Governors of the Alms House, New York, for the Year 1851 (New York, 1852), 106. Sixth Annual Report of the Governors of the Alms House, New York, for the Year 1854 (New York, 1855), 115. Eleventh Annual Report of the Governors of the Alms House, New York, for the Year 1859 (New York, 1860), 186. Amariah Brigham, ‘Brief Notice of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, at Utica,’ Journal of Insanity 1, no. 1 (July 1844): 6; ‘Second Annual Fair at the N.Y. State Lunatic Asylum,’ Journal of Insanity 1, no. 4 (April 1845): 348. On the exploitation of patient labour, see Geoffrey Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). In his annual reports, Bucke frequently endorsed the practice and often seemed to be defending his views from attacks by superintendents with opposing attitudes, especially Daniel Clark. In one report, Bucke stated: ‘I have not in the slightest degree allied to opinion expressed in my last year’s report as to the propriety and advisability of admitting visitors to the asylum.’ In the following year he reiterated his position: ‘During the past year we have had the usual number of visitors to the Institution; and I have again to say that I have still no doubt whatever that it is highly desirable that visitors should be allowed free access to institutions of this kind.’ ‘Asylum for the Insane, London. Report of the Medical Superintendent for the Year Ending 30th September, 1878,’ Appendix to ‘Eleventh Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario,’ Sessional Papers, Fourth Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1879, vol. 11, part iii, no. 8 (Toronto: Rose, Hunter, 1879), 316; ‘Asylum for the Insane, London. Report

196

51

52 53 54 55

56

Notes to pages 51–2 of the Medical Superintendent for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Appendix to ‘Twelfth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Sessional Papers, First Session of the Fourth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1880, vol. 12, part ii, no. 8 (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1880), 331. ‘London Asylum. Report of the Medical Superintendent and Statistical Information 1876–7,’ Appendix to ‘Tenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1877,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1878, vol. 10, part ii, no. 4 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1878), 281. Ibid. Asylum Scrapbook, undated and unnamed newspaper article, University of Western Ontario Archives. ‘The Ball at the Lunatic Asylum,’ British Colonist, 8 January 1847. ‘London Asylum. Report of the Medical Superintendent and Statistical Information 1876–7,’ Appendix to ‘Tenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1877,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1878, vol. 10, part ii, no. 4 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1878), 281. This annual report was also reproduced in the Sarnia Canadian, 24 July 1878. ‘Asylum for the Insane, London. Report of the Medical Superintendent for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Appendix to the ‘Twelfth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Sessional Papers, First Session of the Fourth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1880, vol. 12, part ii, no. 8 (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1880), 316. The idea that social interaction with the outside world was beneficial to patients was earlier expressed by Isaac Ray. He wrote: ‘Conversation has lost none of its power to beguile the tedious hours of confinement. Upon the convalescent patient yearning for the sight of family or friends, and with the keenest relish of social enjoyment, a restricted intercourse with his fellow-men is calculated to exert a restorative influence, by making agreeable impressions, and diminishing the irksomeness of seclusion … In every asylum there are some patients who would be happier and better, by occasionally seeing and conversing with their more rational fellowmen.’ ‘Observations on the Principal Hospitals for the Insane in Great Britain, France and Germany,’ Journal of Insanity 2, no. 4 (April 1846): 346.

Notes to pages 52–9 57 58 59 60

197

Sarnia Canadian, 19 March 1877. ‘Fairy Grotto,’ London Free Press, 12 January 1878. London Free Press, 29 September 1899. Sarnia Canadian, 24 July 1878.

3: ‘You Must Go!’: Visitors to Prisons and Asylums 1 Samuel Gridley Howe, An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline, Being a Report Made to the Boston Prison Discipline Society (Boston: W.D. Ticknor, 1846), 46. 2 Journal of the Superintendent for the Kingston Asylum, 21 September 1882, 157–8. 3 Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 11. 4 The custom may not have resulted in greater empathy for the institutionalized among all visitors, but, at the very least, it could provide people with the opportunity to better understand their conditions. 5 For a discussion of the evolution of travel guides in nineteenth-century United States, see Beth Lynne Lueck, American Writers and the Picturesque Tour: The Search for National Identity (New York and London: Garland, 1997). 6 Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001). 7 Joseph Adshead, Prisons and Prisoners (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1845), 112. 8 ‘The Unsound of Mind,’ London Free Press, 22 November 1880. 9 For a study of newspapers in nineteen-century Canada, see Paul Rutherford, A Victorian Authority: The Daily Press in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982). 10 John Symons, manuscript of book of travels through the United States and Canada West (1852), John Symons Family Papers, Archives of Ontario, F 786-2-0-1, box 2. 11 Visitors Register for the Eastern State Penitentiary, Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg, series 15.46; Negley K. Teeters and John D. Shearer, The Prison at Philadelphia: Cherry Hill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 198. 12 ‘Rules and Regulations made by the Inspectors of the Provincial Penitentiary,’ Appendix to the Journals of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada. From the 8th Day of November, 1836, to the 4th Day of March, 1837. First Session of the Thirteenth Provincial Parliament, Session 1836-7, Appendix no. 10 (Toronto: W.J. Coates, 1837).

198

Notes to pages 59–62

13 For examples of visitors from outside of English-speaking countries who toured North American prisons and asylums, see Sandor Boloni Farkas, Journey in North America (1831), translated and edited by Arpad Kadarkay (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-Clio, 1978); Count Francesco Arese, A Trip to the Prairies and in the Interior of North America (1837–8), reprint (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1975); Friedrick Ratzel, Sketches of Urban and Cultural Life in North America, translated and edited by Stewart A. Stehlin (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988); Lorenzo de Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America (1834), translated by Wallace Woolsey (Austin: Shoal Creek, 1980). As well, Anne Digby mentions in her work the seven Seneca Indians who visited the York Retreat in England in 1818 and signed the guest book with skilful drawings. Anne Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796– 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 256. 14 Jennifer A. Crets, ‘“Well Worth the Visitor’s While”: Sightseeing in St. Louis, 1865–1910,’ Gateway Heritage 20, no. 3 (Winter 1999–2000): 5. 15 Anonymous, The New World in 1859: Being the United States and Canada, Illustrated and Described in Four Parts (New York: Ailliere; London: H. Bailliere, 1859), part two, 66. 16 Anonymous, The Canadian Handbook and Tourist’s Guide (Montreal: M. Longmoore, 1867), 111 and 133. 17 J.C. Myers, Sketches on a Tour through the Northern and Eastern States, the Canadas and Nova Scotia (Harrisburg, VA: J.H. Wartmann, 1849), 116; Alexander Marjoribanks, Travels in South and North America (London: Simpkin, 1854), 244. 18 Agnes Maule Machar, Down the River to the Sea (New York: Home Book Company, ca 1894), 73–4. 19 Sarnia Canadian, 19 March 1877. 20 ‘The Insane. Pleasures by Which They Are Surrounded,’ London Advertiser, 1 July 1880. 21 ‘An Exploration of the Tombs,’ New York Times, 16 March 1862. 22 ‘Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 6, no. 11 (1857): 269. 23 Diary of Thomas Dick (1867–1905), Archives of Ontario, MU 840 1-D-4. Diary of Sarah Hallen Drinkwater (1879), Archives of Ontario, MU 840. 24 One such joke in a Kingston newspaper read: ‘As some lady visitors were going through a penitentiary under the escort of a superintendent, they came to a room in which three women were sewing. “Dear me!” one of the visitors whispered, “what vicious looking creatures! Pray what are they here for?” “Because they have no other home; this is our sitting room, and they are my wife and two daughters,” blandly answered the superintendent.’ British Whig, 3 May 1873.

Notes to pages 62–7

199

25 Ishbel Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, Through Canada with a Kodak (Edinburgh: W.H. White, 1893), 39. 26 D.H. Trezevant, Letters to His Excellency Governor Manning on the Lunatic Asylum (Columbia, SC: R.W. Gibbs, 1854), 46. 27 Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Conduct, Discipline, and Management of the Provincial Penitentiary (Montreal: Rollo Campbell, 1849) (hereafter Brown Report), 296. 28 Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 16. 29 However, this is not to say that the institutionalized passively allowed themselves to be gawked at; rather, as will be discussed in chapter 4, both the criminal and the insane often actively resisted being treated as compliant exhibits. 30 Susanna Moodie, Life in the Clearings versus the Bush (1853), reprint (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989), 190. 31 Ibid., 272. 32 William Roscoe, ‘Observations on Penal Jurisprudence and the Reformation of Criminals,’ North American Review 10 (1820): 235; S.G. Lathrop, Crime and Its Punishment and Life in the Penitentiary (Joliet, IL: The Author, 1866), 11; William I. Cole, ‘Boston’s Insane Hospital,’ New England Magazine, old series, 25 (Sept. 1898–Feb. 1899): 253. 33 John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 87. 34 Sarnia Canadian, 24 July 1878. 35 ‘Our Walk,’ British Whig, 12 April 1848; E. Katherine Bates, A Year in the Great Republic (London: Ward and Downey, 1887), 26. 36 London Advertiser, 1 July 1880. 37 ‘A Visit to the State Prison,’ New York Times, 16 June 1859. 38 For example, one annual report for the Toronto Asylum stated: ‘It has been the desire of the Directors to have the Asylum as open to the public as is compatible with the welfare of the patients and the duties of their attendants. Large numbers of visitors have therefore, from time to time, been attended through the building, and these have witnessed the condition of the apartments, the appearance and happiness of the patients, the tender, but effective discipline, which prevails amongst the afflicted and their attendants. The result has been, so far as is known, a universal satisfaction to visitors.’ ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto,’ Appendix to the Eleventh Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 19th August, 1852, to the 14th June 1853, Session 1852–3, Appendix J (Quebec: John Lovell, 1852).

200

Notes to pages 67–70

39 Annual Report of the Alms House Commissioners. Comprising Reports from the Several Departments Embraced in the Institution (New York, 1848), 62. 40 John S. Billings and Henry M. Hurd, Suggestions to Hospital and Asylum Visitors, with an introduction by S. Weir Mitchell (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1895), 5–6. 41 Accounts that suggest communities were not proud to be affiliated with specific mental or carceral institutions were not common, but do exist. For example, ‘Captain “Mac”’ wrote that ‘the Kingstonians repudiate the charge that the latter building [the penitentiary] belongs to them.’ Captain ‘Mac,’ Canada: The Country, Its People, Religions, Politics, Rules, and Its Apparent Future (Montreal: [s.n.] 1892), 68. In addition, after the penitentiary was built some members of Kingston’s working class voiced opposition when they perceived convict labour as a threat to their economic interests. 42 R.M. Bucke, Medical Superintendent’s Journal, E 16, Black Box 3, University of Western Ontario. 43 The Opal 10, no. 3 (1860): 78. 44 George Augustus Sala, America Revisited from the Bay of New York to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Lake Michigan to the Pacific (London: Vizetelly, 1882), 217–18. 45 David Sinclair and Germaine Warkentin, eds., The New World Journal of Alexander Graham Dunlop 1845 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1976), 55. 46 Sarnia Canadian, 24 July 1878. 47 Theodore Dwight, Summer Tours, or, Notes of a Traveler (New York: Harper, 1847), 98–9. Originally published as Things as They Are (New York, 1834). This sense of pride, however, was not necessarily felt by those who had friends or family confined in asylums or prisons. As Geoffrey Reaume discusses in his study of the Queen Street Mental Hospital in Toronto, many people feared discrimination and sought to keep the institutionalization of loved ones confidential. Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 48 For an excellent history of the Kingston Penitentiary, see Peter Oliver, ‘Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 49 ‘Our Walk,’ British Whig, 12 April 1848. 50 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Appendix to ‘Ninth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1877, vol. ix, part 1, no. 2 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1877), 208.

Notes to pages 70–3

201

51 ‘Our Walk,’ British Whig, 12 April 1848. 52 Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, vol. 1 (Austria: Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt, 1965), 56. 53 For a discussion on the importance of the visual and nineteenth-century national history, see Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 54 Although not referring to the display of the institutionalized to the public, A.T. Scull has also likened asylums to museums. He writes: ‘From the moment most asylums opened, they functioned as museums for the collection of the unwanted.’ Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Allen Lane, 1979), 251. 55 ‘The New Lunatic Asylum,’ Bathurst Courier, 16 August 1850. 56 ‘Lunatic Asylum, Toronto,’ British Colonist, 29 December 1846. 57 In his diary, Alexander Bickerton Edmison contemplated becoming a phrenologist as teaching was not paying enough. He wrote, ‘I think that there is plenty room in Canada for a good practical scientific phrenologist.’ Alexander Bickerton Edmison Diary, 22 December 1857 and 21 February 1858, MS 37, Archives of Ontario. 58 C.D. Arfwedson, The United States and Canada in 1832, 1833, and 1834, vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1834), 261. 59 ‘The New Lunatic Asylum,’ Bathurst Courier, 16 August 1850. 60 Hall, Travels in North America, vol. 1, 53. Of his visit to the South Boston State Hospital for the Insane, George Moore also claimed: ‘I felt quite at ease amongst them: nearly all are unrestrained.’ Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic With Notes on Canada and the United States; and Return to Great Britain in 1844 (London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1845), 75. 61 For example, see: John MacGregor, Our Brothers and Cousins: A Summer Tour in Canada and the States (London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1859); Moore, Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic; and Anne (Newport) Royall, Sketches of History, Life, and Manners, in the United States. By a Traveller (New Haven: Printed for Author, 1826). 62 This was important, as many feared being mistaken and consequently unjustly institutionalized. Patient writers in The Opal were aware of this concern and occasionally used it as a means of tempering the behaviour of boisterous visitors. Warning that ‘great circumspection therefore should be maintained by all visitors – especially young men,’ it relayed the story of Sir Edward Sugden, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who was mistaken for a patient at the lunatic asylum in Dublin. ‘Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 4, no. 2 (February 1854): 122–3. 63 ‘Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 6 (1856), 123.

202

Notes to pages 73–6

64 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 3–7. 65 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992). 66 ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ Harper’s Monthly Magazine, February 1866, 285. 67 Charles Dickens, ‘A Visit to Newgate,’ Selected Short Fiction (Middlesex: Penguin, 1976), 112–13. 68 Boston Prison Discipline Society, Sixteenth Report (1841), 64. 69 Anne Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine, 237. Furthermore, there are biblical roots to visiting, which may have compelled Judaeo-Christians to see it as a spiritual duty. According to Matthew 25:36, Jesus predicted that those who visited prisons would be counted among the righteous. See also Hebrews 13:3 and 10:34. 70 Joseph John Gurney, A Journey in North America, Described in Familiar Letters to Amelia Opie (Norwich, 1841), 100. This sentiment was particularly prominent in the growing evangelicalism of Quakerism, and for many it was religious inspiration that underlay their philanthropic efforts and interest in prison and asylum reform. See, for example, Robert Alan Cooper, ‘Jeremy Bentham, Elizabeth Fry, and English Prison Reform,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 42, no. 4 (October–December, 1981), 675–90. For women, the justification behind visiting as an act of benevolence was particularly significant. In a period in which their political rights and opportunities were very circumscribed, the reform movement in general provided a veil of respectability that bolstered the entry of middle-class women into public arenas and socio-political debates. A few women were able to carve out important roles for themselves as social critics and advocates of change, such as Dorothea Dix, who became well known in both the United States and Canada. See, for example, Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990). According to Ginzberg, with the growth of women’s involvement in benevolent associations in the nineteenth century, ‘women’s influence leapt across barriers, permitting them to enter all but the most protected male bastions’ (17). Visiting was part of this larger philanthropic enterprise of women in Canada and the United States. 71 On the evangelical revivals in Utica, see, for example, Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, reprint (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), and Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

Notes to pages 76–80

203

72 ‘Annual Fair,’ The Opal 8, no. 8 (August 1858), 181. 73 ‘The Ball at the Lunatic Asylum,’ British Colonist, 8 January 1847. 74 ‘The Asylum Annual Ball,’ London Free Press, 21 January 1881. This particular ball was deemed ‘the greatest assemblage in the history of the institution’ and attracted 125 people from the city. 75 ‘The Ball at the Lunatic Asylum.’ 76 ‘Lunatic Ball,’ Toronto Examiner, 13 January 1847; see also, ‘Lunatic Ball,’ The Globe, 9 January 1847; and ‘Lunatic Asylum, Toronto,’ British Colonist, 29 December 1846. 77 Moodie, Life in the Clearings, 272. 78 The majority of commentators, however, did support entertainment that involved the outside world. In London, for example, local newspapers frequently emphasized the notion of amusement as therapy. One newspaper claimed, ‘What most of the patients require is amusement – something to cause them to forget their sad condition.’ Other comments included: amusement ‘is the best kind of physic that can be administered the patients,’ and ‘amusement is one of the best curative means in Asylum treatment.’ London Advertiser, 6 April 1877; London Herald, 6 April 1877; and London Free Press, 6 March 1878. 79 Sears, Sacred Places, 89. 80 Isaac Ray, ‘The Popular Feeling towards Hospitals for the Insane,’ Journal of Insanity 9, no. 1 (1852): 38. 81 Captain Marryat, A Diary in America, With Remarks on Its Institutions (New York: Wm. H. Colyer, 1839), 28. 82 ‘Insanity,’ Christian Inquirer 3, no. 23 (17 March 1849): 90; ‘Visit of the Common Council to Our City Institutions,’ New York Times, 21 June 1855, 4; ‘Lunatic Asylum, Blackwell’s Island,’ The National Magazine 7 (October 1855): 314. 83 ‘New York State Lunatic Asylum,’ Tribune, 13 February 1869. 84 Carl Ballstadt et al., eds., I Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 192. 85 Rev. M.B. Buckley, Diary of a Tour in America (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker, 1886), 21. 86 However, Buckley does not appear to have been immune to visitors’ fascination with the macabre. In St John, he not only visited out of curiosity the site where a notorious and gruesome murder took place, but he further asked that a friend forward to him as soon as possible the execution pamphlet for the case. Ibid., 120–31. 87 Patricia Godsell, ed., The Diary of Jane Ellice (Toronto: Oberon Press, 1975), 100. 88 Visiting could also be depicted as a moving religious experience. While

204

89

90 91 92 93

94

95 96

Notes to pages 80–3 struggling to catch a glimpse of the notorious Grace Marks, Susanna Moodie claimed that visiting could be a source of spiritual enlightenment. Moodie used the example of her visit as an opportunity to remind her readers that the mad, although frightening to her at times, were ‘still a wonderful illustration of the wisdom and power of God.’ Repeatedly, visitors characterized both the insane and the criminal as ‘creatures of god’ and as fellow human beings, deserving of their compassion and sympathy rather than condemnation. Moodie, Life in the Clearings, 272–3. Barnes wrote: ‘It was almost exactly seventy years ago that my grandfather, a friend of the warden, took me on my first visit to Auburn Prison, about five miles from my birthplace. I stood with him looking out of an upper story window and watched the prisoners, with their shaved heads, striped clothing, rigid figures and downcast eyes, file out of the prison shops at the noon hour and march silently down the prison yard in lockstep to the dining room, where they ate in grim silence. All that was lacking were handcuffs and the ball and chain, but the psychological equivalents of these were amply supplied by the Auburn system of discipline which still prevailed with only minor mitigation.’ Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York – A Review,’ New York History 47, no. 1 (1966): 74. ‘Temperance in Prison,’ New York Times, 9 June 1874; ‘A Visit to the State Prison,’ New York Times, 16 June 1859. ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ Harper’s Monthly Magazine, February 1866, 278. ‘The New York Lunatic Asylum,’ New York Tribune, 13 February 1869. For example, James F.W. Johnston visited Albany Penitentiary and noted: ‘It was on the occasion of a public visit of the authorities, and therefore every part of the building was thrown open.’ Notes on North America: Agricultural, Economical, and Social, vol. 2 (Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown, 1851), 292. Margaret Atwood’s historical novel Alias Grace alludes to the performance that many visitors witnessed and the fact that what many saw could be a contrived version of custodial conditions. As the character of Grace Marks claimed of the Toronto Asylum attendants, ‘Sometimes they would provoke us, especially right before the visitors were to come. They wanted to show how dangerous we were, but also how well they could control us, as it made them appear more valuable and skilled.’ Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996), 32. Brown Report, 10. Isabella Strange Trotter, First Impressions of the New World on Two Travellers

Notes to pages 83–9

97 98

99 100

101

205

from the Old: In the Autumn of 1858 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1859), 66–7. Jane Porter, A Six Weeks’ Tour in Western Canada (Montreal?: [s.n.], 1865), 13. Royall, Sketches of History, 218–19. However, there was inconsistency in regard to institutional employees’ attitudes towards gender. For example, for visitors to Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, ‘if they come provided with the proper ticket, will, upon presenting it to the clerk, be shown through a single female hall of the main building, usually Hall 3. I have supposed that ladies are of the party; if none but gentlemen are present, they are escorted in addition through male Hall 3.’ In this instance, it was acceptable for men to see female patients, but women were not permitted to see male patients. ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ 278. Warden’s Letterbook, Kingston Penitentiary, number 542, 2 September 1863. Library and Archives Canada, RG 13 D 1. In Kingston Penitentiary, William Smith witnessed prisoners visiting with family: ‘We also saw – a most painful sight – several prisoners who were being visited by their wives and little children, a privilege granted twice a year, the interview lasting for an hour on each occasion.’ William Smith, A Yorkshireman’s Trip to the United States and Canada (London: Longmans, Green, 1892), 267. In one instance, when Mackenzie’s daughter came to the prison to inform him of his other daughter’s poor health, the jailer made her wait ‘in the public place in the gaol, perhaps for an hour or more, till supper comes, as he can’t be put to the trouble of opening [Mackenzie’s] cage.’ Robina and Kathleen Lizars, Humours of ’37: Grave, Gay and Grim (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1897), 351–2.

4: ‘I Am Even Afraid That She Put Her Tongue Out’: Inmate and Patient Responses to Visitors 1 Maryrose Eannace, ‘Lunatic Literature: New York State’s The Opal, 1850–1860’ (PhD dissertation, University at Albany, State University of New York, 2001), 24. 2 Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (London: Penguin Books, 1991). 3 Geoffrey Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 257.

206

Notes to pages 89–92

4 Two particularly excellent examples are: Joseph A. Berkovits, ‘“Us Poor Devils”: Prison Life and Culture in Ontario: 1874–1914’ (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2000), and Eannace, ‘Lunatic Literature.’ 5 For example, while Amariah Brigham was superintendent of the Utica Asylum, he founded and was editor of the Journal of Insanity. A number of patients from the Utica Asylum published pieces in it. 6 ‘Progress of the Periodical Literature of Lunatic Asylums,’ Journal of Insanity 2, no. 1 (July 1845): 77–8. 7 ‘On the Claims of the Insane to the Respect and Interest of Society,’ The Opal 2, no. 8 (August 1852): 242. 8 ‘Ninth Annual Report of the Manager of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica’ (1852), 32–3. 9 For information on A.M.’s patient files, see Eannace, ‘Lunatic Literature,’ 77–8. 10 ‘On the Claims of the Insane,’ 241. 11 ‘Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 2, no. 4 (April 1852): 121; ‘Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 3, no. 10 (October 1853): 317. 12 ‘On the Claims of the Insane,’ 242. While censored by institutional officials, it is impossible to gauge how much the magazine was actually interfered with. Criticisms of the asylum and staff were not common, yet they nevertheless occurred occasionally. In an article titled ‘Life in the Asylum,’ the female author wrote: ‘Now comes the power of man, with his scaffoldings and hammer sounds. I try to pass his boundary and my fate is declared. The master, man, makes me a lunatic in these walls … The Doctor is the champion knight here, and his process is one of bitter pills.’ The Opal 5, no. 1 (January 1855): 5. Moreover, writers for the magazine frequently referred to their autonomy and insinuated that, in practice, officials did not exercise any authority. According to one patient-writer, ‘We deem it proper to say, here, that its [The Opal’s] articles are all written by patients, and under no other “supervision” or restraint than their own genii. The beloved and honored Superintendent, nor either of his estimable assistants interpose any control or direction in the production of the brains or pens of the contributors to the OPAL.’ ‘The Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 5, no. 5 (May 1855): 188. 13 Eannace, ‘Lunatic Literature,’ 90. 14 The reference to this newspaper was noted in ‘Notes and Comments,’ North American Review 151 (1890): 76–8. 15 ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, February 1866, 293. ‘The Work-House – Blackwell’s Island,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1866, 693. The records of inmates and patients also reveal their ability to ‘perform’ at convenient times. See, for

Notes to pages 93–5

16

17 18 19 20 21

22

23

24 25

207

example, Phebe B. Davis, The Travels and Experience of Miss Phebe B. Davis (Syracuse, NY: J.G.K. Truair, 1860), and Felix Poutre (pseud.), Escaped from the Gallows: Souvenirs of a Canadian State Prisoner in 1838 (Montreal: Printed for the Author by de Montigny, 1862). Even after their release, ex-patients writing of their experiences felt compelled to prove their sanity. This tendency is discussed by Mary Elene Wood in The Writing on the Wall: Women’s Autobiography and the Asylum (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). Geoffrey Reaume, ‘Portraits of People with Mental Disorders in English Canadian History,’ Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 17 (2000): 93–125. See, for example, Lydia Maria Child, Letters from New York, first series (New York: C. S. Francis, 1846), 205. Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c.1848–c.1918 (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 109. C.D. Arfwedson, The United States and Canada in 1832, 1833, and 1834, vol. 2 (London: Bentley, 1834), 210. Cited in Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past, 183. Clark was pleased to report a number of years later that the iron bars had been removed from the verandas. He wrote: ‘The iron bars, so suggestive of cages, have been removed and window-sash protected by screens, have been substituted.’ ‘Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto. October 1st, 1889,’ Appendix to ‘Twenty-Second Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1889,’ Sessional Papers, Fourth Session of the Sixth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1890, vol. 22, part 3, no. 10 (Toronto: Warwick and Sons, 1890), 5. Although he radically revised the concept of prisons and asylums, Foucault has been criticized for depicting institutional regimes as monolithic in their power: agency is annihilated in his work and the power of the individual is non-existent. For Foucault, the positioning of the watcher and the watched is absolute and transfixed, and ‘the madman cannot return this observation [of the watcher] in any form, since he is merely observed.’ Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 249. ‘The Work-House – Blackwell’s Island,’ 693. This disguise lasted only so long though, as he was eventually recognized as a Harper’s artist, and ‘a hasty departure from sight was made by the troop’ (694). ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ 284. Ibid., 281.

208

Notes to pages 95–7

26 ‘A Day in a Lunatic Asylum,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, September 1854, 656. 27 ‘Asylum for the Insane, London. Report of the Medical Superintendent for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Appendix to the ‘Twelfth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Sessional Papers, First Session of the Fourth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1880, vol. xii, part ii, no. 8 (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1880), 331. 28 ‘An Exploration of the Tombs,’ New York Times, 16 March 1862. 29 Samuel Gridley Howe, An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline, Being a Report Made to the Boston Prison Discipline Society (Boston: W.D. Ticknor, 1846), 48. 30 Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841 (1842), reprint (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), 131. 31 ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ 277. 32 Rules and Regulations Adopted by the Management of the New York State Lunatic Asylum (Utica, 1842), 13. NYPL C.p.v. 1711. 33 Patient Letters, London Asylum, Archives Ontario, RG 10-20-C-4-13 MS 856, reel 19. 34 For example, see Warden’s Letterbooks, Kingston Penitentiary, Library and Archives Canada. 35 Lorenzo de Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America (1834), trans. Wallace Woolsey (Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1980), 203. 36 The Opal 11, no. 4 (April 1861): 347. 37 The Opal 8, no. 8 (August 1858): 181. 38 Even visitors, however, acknowledged the fact that some communication did take place between convicts. For example, Charles Daubeny referred to the ‘modes by which the voice of any one prisoner can be rendered audible to another.’ He remarked: ‘One of these channels of communication consists of tubes through which the apartments are vented and warmed; another, of those which run through the whole range of cells for carrying off filth, and which are emptied once a day, at which time it is admitted that sound might pass through them.’ Journal of a Tour through the United States and Canada, Made during the Years 1837–38 (Oxford: T. Combe, 1843), 82. Similarly, of the Millbank Penitentiary, O.H. Dutun noted the varying methods female inmates devised for communicating with their ‘pals’ in spite of the rule of silence, which included writing messages on lamplighter papers and in library books. ‘Women under Difficulties,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1864, 198.

Notes to pages 97–101

209

39 J.C. Myers, Sketches on a Tour through the Northern and Eastern States, the Canadas and Nova Scotia (Harrisburg, VA: J.H. Wartmann, 1849), 245. 40 Boston Prison Discipline Society, Eighteenth Report (1843), reprint (Boston: Patterson Smith, 1972), 98–9. 41 For example, see Daubeny, Journal of a Tour through the United States and Canada, 82–3. 42 Sturge, A Visit, 132. See also C.D. Arfwedson, The United States and Canada. Arfwedson spoke with several convicts about factors ‘which had … led to the commission of crimes’ (215–16); William Chambers, Things as They Are in America (1854), reprint (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968). At Eastern Penitentiary, he spoke to one inmate about the two pigeons he kept in his cell; the inmate claimed, ‘They do me good when I look at them; their cooing cheers me when I am alone’ (310). 43 ‘Lunatic Ball,’ Toronto Examiner, 13 January 1847. 44 ‘Ball at Lunatic Asylum,’ British Colonist, 8 January 1847. 45 ‘Schools in Lunatic Asylums,’ Journal of Insanity 1, no. 4 (April 1845): 327–8. 46 George Augustus Sala, America Revisited from the Bay of New York to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Lake Michigan to the Pacific (London: Vizetelly, 1882), 220. 47 ‘The Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 2, no. 1 (January 1852): 26–7. 48 Anne (Newport) Royall, Sketches of History, Life, and Manners, in the United States. By a Traveller (New Haven: Printed for Author, 1826), 195. 49 Thomas Byrnes, ‘How to Protect a City from Crime,’ The North American Review 159, no. 452 (July 1894): 104. 50 ‘Provincial Penitentiary, Report of the Chaplain,’ Appendix to the Fourth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 28th Day of November, 1844, to the 29th Day of March, 1845, First Session of the Second Provincial Parliament of Canada, Session 1844–5, Appendix M (Montreal: R. Campbell, 1845). 51 Royall, Sketches of History, 252. 52 Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, My Canadian Journal 1872–8: Extracts from My Letters Home Written while Lord Dufferin Was Governor-General (London: J. Murray, 1891), 28. 53 Royall, Sketches of History, 219. ‘An Exploration of the Tombs,’ New York Times, 16 March 1862. 54 ‘An Exploration of the Tombs,’ New York Times, 16 March 1862. 55 ‘Rules and Regulations to Be Observed in the Provincial Penitentiary’ (SI: s.n. H. Chubb, 18–?). 56 ‘Commissioners of the Temporary Lunatic Asylum at Toronto,’ Appendix to the Eight Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of

210

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74

Notes to pages 101–4 Canada, from the 18th Day of January to the 30th day of May, Second Session of the Third Provincial Parliament of Canada, Session 1849, Appendix M (Montreal: R. Campbell, 1849). Franklin D. Scott, ed. and trans., Baron Klonkowstrom’s America 1818–1820 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1952), 98. Boston Prison Discipline Society, Third Report (1828), reprint (Boston: Patterson Smith, 1972), 21. ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ 280. ‘The Work-House – Blackwell’s Island,’ 692. Eleventh Annual Report of the Governors of the Alms House, New York, for the Year 1859 (New York, 1860), 172–3. NYPL, *z-6416. Boston Prison Discipline Society, Second Report (1827), 16 and 62. ‘The Work-House – Blackwell’s Island,’ 608–9. William Morris, Letters Sent Home. Out and Home Again by Way of Canada and the United States, 2nd ed. (London: Frederick Warne, ca 1875), 200–1. A number of inmates meticulously decorated their cells and were very pleased to show them to visitors. For example, see John Walter, First Impressions of America (London: [s.n.], 1867), 77; George Moore, Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic with Notes on Canada and the United States; and Return to Great Britain in 1844 (London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1845), 100–1. George Augustus Sala, America Revisited, 224–5. Willard Glazier, Peculiarities of American Cities (Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros., 1886), 392. ‘Visit to the Tombs,’ New York Times, 27 March 1872. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 757. Sturge, A Visit, 132. ‘Second Annual Report of the Inspector of Penitentiaries, as to Dominion of Canada, for the Year 1876,’ Sessional Papers, Fourth Session of the Third Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1877, vol. 10, no. 15 (Ottawa: MacLean, Roger, 1877), 15. Howe, An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems, 6. ‘A Day in a Lunatic Asylum,’ 656. ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Appendix to ‘Report of Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1877, vol. 9, part 1, no. 2 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1877), 209.

Notes to pages 104–9

211

75 ‘The Ladies Fair,’ The Opal 5, no. 3 (March 1855): 82. 76 Susanna Moodie, Life in the Clearings versus the Bush (1853), reprint (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989), 271–2. 77 S. Etheridge, ‘State Prison and the Penitentiary System Vindicated,’ The North American Review, old series, 13 (Boston, 1821), 435; ‘Our Walk,’ British Whig, 12 April 1848. 78 ‘A Visit to the State Prison,’ New York Times, 16 June 1859. 79 ‘Preparations for the Execution of Donnelly – His Declaration’ and ‘Interview with the Prisoner in his Cell,’ Hamilton Daily Spectator, 11 January 1858. 80 ‘A Day in a Lunatic Asylum,’ 657. 81 Rules and Regulations to be Observed by the Officers of the [Kingston] Provincial Penitentiary (Kingston, Ontario: s.n. 1856). Such rules were common in penitentiaries. At Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet, the second rule for the ‘government of convicts’ was: ‘The convict must not speak to any visitor or receive from, or give to them anything whatever.’ S.G. Lathrop, Crime and Its Punishment, and Life in the Penitentiary (Joliet, IL: The Author, 1866), 245. 82 Rules and Regulations and By-Laws for the Government and Discipline of the Albany County Penitentiary (Albany: Joel Munsell, 1849), 6. NYSL N 365.34 QR 935 96-8233. 83 Sandor Boloni Farkas, Journey in North America (1831), trans. and ed. Arpad Kadarkay (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-Clio, 1978), 120–1; Warden’s Letterbooks, 23 June 1858, Warden to J.J. Langmuir. 84 T.R. Woodhouse, ed., ‘A Trip to Upper Canada, August 1835. From the Diary of John Armour, Jr.,’ Ontario History 14, no. 3 (1953): 133. 85 Arfwedson, The United States and Canada, 2: 202. 86 Baron Klinkowstrom’s America, 98. 87 Child, Letters from New York, 266–7. 88 The Opal 3, no. 9 (September 1853): 291. 89 ‘Life in the Asylum,’ The Opal 5, no. 1 (January 1855): 4–5. 90 ‘Editor’s Table,’ The Opal 2, no. 4 (March 1852): 122. 91 Hiram Chase, Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum, from August 20th, 1863, to December 20th, 1865 (Saratoga Springs, NY: Ban Benthuysen and Sons Steam Printing, 1868), 9. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 75. 94 Ibid., 109. 95 Rules and Regulations Adopted by the Managers of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, at Utica (Utica: R.W. Roberts, 1842), 11. NYPL Cp. v. 1711.

212

Notes to pages 110–20

96 Chase, Two Years and Four Months, 110. 97 The fear of unofficial reprimand by guards was also common in prisons. For example, a widow of a clergyman who frequently visited New York’s Tombs stated during an investigation into the prison that ‘the entire truth could not be elicited, for the prisoners were in such dread of their keepers that they would not dare make known their grievances.’ ‘Reform Needed in the Tombs,’ New York Times, 5 October 1875. 98 Chase, Two Years and Four Months, 116. 99 Ibid., 93. 100 ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ 278–9. 101 ‘The New Lunatic Asylum,’ Bathurst Courier, 16 August 1850. Similarly, Marianne Finch wrote: ‘The matron took me through five or six of these wards, occupied by women, introducing me to each person. Some of them were very friendly – hoped I would come again and make a longer stay; others took little notice of me.’ An Englishwoman’s Experience in America (1853), reprint (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 186. 5: ‘What We Saw with Our Own Eyes’: Visiting and Nineteenth-Century Culture 1 ‘Our Walk,’ British Whig, 12 April 1848. 2 London Advertiser, 1 July 1880. 3 William Archer, America To-Day: Observations and Reflections (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899), 16. 4 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 3. 5 Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, trans. Beatrice Gottlieb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 432. 6 Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Methuen, 1982), 127–30. 7 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernism in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 16. 8 Jay, Downcast Eyes, 435. 9 Ibid., 69. 10 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 127 and 14. 11 Marlene Shore, ‘Psychology and Memory in the Midst of Change: The Social Concerns of Late-19th-Century North American Psychologists,’ in The Transformation of Psychology: Influences of 19th-Century Philosophy, Technology, and Natural Science, ed. Christopher D. Green, Marlene Shore, and

Notes to pages 120–2

12

13 14

15

16

17

18 19

213

Thomas Teo (Washington, DC: American Psychology Association, 2001), 76. Edward Sullivan, Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America (London: R. Bentley, 1852), 31. In his account of travelling through the Americas, Sullivan described young women’s fascination with death in the United States. He wrote: ‘The young ladies in the Northern and Eastern States have an extraordinary fashion of visiting corpses within reach. A gentleman I met, who resided at Boston, told me that his father-in-law had died and been laid out, when the next day he was surprised at the arrival of ten or fifteen young ladies at the door, and on asking their business they said: “Oh! They only wanted to see the body;” and when they had gone many more came.’ John Chester Greville, Transatlantic Sketches in the West Indies, South America, Canada, and the United States (London: Smith, Elder, 1869), 264. Eric Fretz, ‘P.T. Barnum’s Theatrical Selfhood and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Exhibition,’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 97. Angela M. Blake, ‘Beyond Darkness and Daylight: Constructing New York’s Public Image, 1890–1930’ (PhD dissertation, American University, 1999), 23. On these and other reformers see, for example: Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); Keith Gandal, The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, and the Spectacle of the Slum (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995). John S. Billings and Henry M. Hurd, Suggestions to Hospital and Asylum Visitors, with an introduction by S. Weir Mitchell (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1895), 5–6. Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, vol. 1 (Austria: Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt, 1965), 56. ‘Our Walk,’ British Whig, 12 April 1848. ‘An Exploration of the Tombs,’ New York Times, 16 March 1862. Many examples that highlight the importance placed on first-hand experience can be found in documents pertaining to prisons and asylums. To assuage criticism of the London Asylum by Members of the Legislative Assembly, Bucke intended to ‘present to their own eyes, to let them see for themselves what had been done, and how it had been done.’ London Free Press, 9 June 1898.

214

Notes to pages 122–8

20 Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 119–20. 21 Jay, Downcast Eyes, 140. 22 Marianne Finch, An Englishwoman’s Experience in America (1853), reprint (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1853), 256. 23 J.E. Hilary Skinner, After the Storm; or, Jonathan and His Neighbours in 1865–6 (London: R. Bentley, 1866), 6. 24 The Opal 1, no. 7 (July 1851): 53. 25 Fretz, ‘P.T. Barnum’s Theatrical Selfhood,’ 102. 26 Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 27. 27 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 249–50. 28 Peter Oliver, ’Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in NineteenthCentury Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 110. 29 Jacques-Alain Miller, ‘Jeremy Bentham’s Panoptic Device,’ cited in Jay, Downcast Eyes, 382. 30 Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c.1848–c.1918 (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 109. According to Peter Oliver, the positivist theories of Lombroso had little impact on Canadian prison administrators, who generally accepted an environmental analysis of criminal causality. ’Terror to Evil-Doers,’ 315. Nevertheless, Lombroso’s theories, whether they were accepted or not, point towards the increasing tendency to visualize deviancy. 31 Michael M. Sokal, ‘Practical Phrenology as Psychological Counseling in the 19th-Century United States,’ in Transformation of Psychology, 24 and 37–8. 32 Ellen Hickey Grayson, ‘Social Order and Psychological Disorder: Laughing Gas Demonstrations, 1800–1850,’ in Freakery, 108–9. 33 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 79. 34 Shore, ‘Psychology and Memory,’ 76. 35 Even outside of institutional tourism, the aegis of science could be conveniently employed to justify an array of activities. In many different contexts, people were often consciously aware of the illusion that could be provided when scientific education was cited as a pretext for potentially ‘unrespectable’ activities. One nineteenth-century traveller, James Lumsden, seemed to snicker at the way in which science could be used to mask intentions or ulterior motives. Referring to his friend’s interest in the female factory workers of Boston, Lumsden wrote: ‘One peculiarity we noticed was that

Notes to pages 128–31

36 37 38 39 40

41 42

43

215

these young women invariably wore veils on going and returning from their work. This fashion, tho’ very neat and becoming in them, proved rather a barrier to the physiognomical curiosity of my bachelor companion.’ James Lumsden, America Memoranda, by a Mercantile Man, during a Short Tour in the Summer in 1843 (Glasgow: Bell and Bain, 1844) 7. Bogdan, Freak Show, 30. J.S. Buckingham, The Eastern and Western States of America, vol. 1 (London: Fisher, Son, 1842), 103. Edward C. Guillet, Pioneer Days in Upper Canada (1933), reprint (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 141. Bogdan, Freak Show, 30. Ibid., 104. Certainly not all shared the same attitudes towards entertainment and many were interested in amusements for non-educational or ‘uplifting’ reasons. According to one tourist, Alfred Domett, he travelled ‘for pleasure more than information, to destroy ennui rather than ignorance.’ For Domett, ‘the opportunity of seeing is pleasant; the necessity of observing wearisome.’ The Canadian Journal of Alfred Domett. Being an Extract from a Journal of a Tour in Canada, the United States, and Jamaica, 1833–35, ed. E.A. Horseman and Lillian Rea Benson (London: University of Western Ontario, 1955), 17. Likewise, Lord Rosebery felt no hesitation in going to Barnum’s Museum simply for the sake of entertainment: ‘I love circuses for the simple reason that they are the reductio ad absurdum of amusements.’ A.R.C. Grant, ed., Lord Rosebery’s North American Journal, 1873 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967), 83. Edward L. Schwarzschild, ‘Death-Defying/Defining Spectacles: Charles Willson Peale as Early American Freak Showman,’ in Freakery, 82. For example, see: James Logan, Notes of a Journey through Canada, the United States of America, and the West Indies (Edinburgh: Fraser and Co., 1838), 26–8, 31; J.B. Loudon, A Tour through Canada and the United States of America (Coventry, England: Curtis and Beamish, 1879), 115; and John Shaw, A Ramble through the United States, Canada, and the West Indies (London: Hope, 1856), 20. Moreover, the practice of institutional tourism highlights the tensions that surrounded Victorian attitudes towards privacy – a privilege that did not belong to everyone. The middle class’s sense of privacy was apparently suspended when prisons and asylums were entered into and some of the most intimate moments of other people’s lives were witnessed. Samuel Tuke, Description of the Retreat: An Institution Near York for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends (1813), reprint (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1964), xii.

216

Notes to pages 131–6

44 Serjeant William Ballantine, The Old World and the New. Being a Continuation of His ‘Experiences’ (London: R. Bentley, 1884), 82. 45 Personal letter, W [J or I?] Mickle to father, February 1864, Mickle Family Diary, Metropolitan Library of Toronto. 6: ‘To Avoid Exposure and Publicity’: Opposition to Visiting 1 Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Conduct, Discipline, and Management of the Provincial Penitentiary (Montreal: Rollo Campbell, 1849) (hereafter Brown Commission), 296. 2 D.H. Trezevant, Letters to His Excellency Governor Manning on the Lunatic Asylum (Columbia, SC: R.W. Gibbs, 1854), 45–6. 3 Theodric Romeyn Beck, An Inaugural Dissertation on Insanity (New York, 1811), 27–34. New York Public Library, Cp v 1711. 4 Isaac Ray, ‘The Popular Feeling towards Hospitals for the Insane,’ Journal of Insanity 9, no. 1 (July 1951), 52. 5 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Appendix to ‘Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1877, vol. ix, part 1, no. 2 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1877), 208. 6 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto,’ Appendix to ‘Report of Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, &c., for the Year Ending 30th September 1873,’ Sessional Papers, Province of Ontario, Session 1873, no. 2 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1877), 160. 7 Prison officials also tried to regulate visits by family members. While visitors flowed in and out of prisons, acquaintances or relatives of convicts faced barriers. For example, the rules and regulations of the Kingston Penitentiary stated, ‘The Keeper may admit Visitors not having relations or friends amongst the Prisoners.’ Rules and Regulations to Be Observed in the [Kingston] Provincial Penitentiary. (SI: s.n. H. Chubb, 18–?). Furthermore, both wardens and superintendents usually controlled the movement of all written communications, and any letter sent out of the institution required their consent. 8 ‘17th Annual Report, 1842,’ Reports of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston. The 29th Annual Report of the Board of Managers, 1826–1854, reprinted from 1855 edition, vol. 4 (Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1972), 178. 9 ‘Physician’s Report to the Governor of the New-York Hospital’ (Bloomingdale, 1849), Appendix, p. 19. NYPL, *C.p.v. 859.

Notes to pages 136–8

217

10 ‘17th Annual Report, 1842,’ Reports of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston. The 29th Annual Report of the Board of Managers, 1826–1854, vol. 4, 70. 11 Geoffrey Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 195. 12 Ibid., 197. 13 ‘The Insane. Pleasures by Which They are Surrounded,’ London Advertiser, 1 July 1880. 14 ‘Ninth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1877, vol. ix, part i, no. 2 (Toronto: Hunter Rose, 1877), 27. 15 The Society of the New York Hospital 124th Annual Report for the Year 1894 (New York, 1895), 20. Occasionally, even ‘medical men’ were not allowed to see certain patients in asylums. On his tour of asylums in Britain, France, and Germany, for example, Isaac Ray was not permitted to see patients in some institutions due to public sentiment and the demand for seclusion of the mentally ill. Isaac Ray, ‘Observations on the Principal Hospitals for the Insane in Great Britain, France and Germany,’ Journal of Insanity 2, no. 4 (April 1846), 366. 16 An exchange seems to have taken place between Bucke and Clark in annual reports, and for a number of years they appear to be responding to the views of the other. Bucke, however, repeatedly reiterated his position and dismissed criticism of the practice as ‘trivial and without force.’ ‘Asylum for the Insane, London. Report of the Medical Superintendent for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Appendix to the ‘Twelfth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1879,’ Sessional Papers, First Session of the Fourth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1880, vol. xii, part ii, no. 8 (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1880), 331. 17 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, For the Year Ending 30th September, 1877,’ Appendix to the ‘Tenth Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1877,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1878, vol. x, part ii, no. 4 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1878), 258. 18 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1878,’ Appendix to the ‘Eleventh Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public

218

19 20

21

22

23

24 25

Notes to pages 138–9 Charities for the Province of Ontario, For the Year Ending 30th September, 1878,’ Sessional Papers, Fourth Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1879, vol. xi, part iii, no. 8 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1878), 292. Isaac Ray, ‘The Popular Feeling towards Hospitals for the Insane,’ 62. ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Appendix to ‘Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September, 1876,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Third Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1877, vol. ix, part 1, no. 2 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1877), 208. The passage regarding visitors was repeated by Clark ten years later. See ‘Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, for the Year Ending October 1st, 1885,’ Appendix to ‘Lunatic and Idiotic Asylums. Eighteenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending September 30th, 1885,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Fifth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1886, vol. xvii, part 1, no. 2 (Toronto: Warwick and Sons, 1886), 44. James E. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth-Century Quebec and Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2000), 54. Cited in ‘Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, Toronto, for the Year Ending October 1st, 1885,’ Appendix to ‘Lunatic and Idiotic Asylums. Eighteenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending September 30th, 1885,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Fifth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1886, vol. xvii, part 1, no. 2 (Toronto: Warwick and Sons, 1886), 43. Hiram Chase, Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum, From August 20th, 1863, to December 20th, 1865 (Saratoga Springs, NY: Ban Benthuysen and Sons Steam Printing, 1868), 75. NYSL LEG 493.1-4 Appendix, Exhibit No. 37, 1232. Reports of the Trustees and Superintendent of the Butler Hospital for the Insane (Providence, 1849), 22–3. Ray further argued a few years later that those who did not have ‘the least idea how such an institution [an asylum] should be administered’ and sought ‘to tear way the veil that shields it from the public gaze’ unnecessarily interfered with asylum management and fostered public mistrust of mental hospitals. Ray clearly believed that all charges of abuse should be investigated internally ‘without proclaiming

Notes to pages 139–41

26

27 28

29

30

31

32

219

the facts to the public ear,’ as knowledge of them might ‘impair the confidence of the public.’ Admitting that asylums were ‘liable to an indefinite amount of real abuse,’ he nevertheless believed that this fact should not supersede the positive benefits achieved in them. Isaac Ray, ‘The Popular Feeling towards Hospitals for the Insane,’ 50–2. Samuel Gridley Howe, An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline, Being a Report Made to the Boston Prison Discipline Society (Boston: W.D. Ticknor, 1846), 25. Brown Commission, 296. However, as was the case among a number of asylum superintendents, many prison officials felt there were different classes of inmates who should be given different degrees of protection from the prying eyes of outsiders. Taché, while concerned with practices that turned convicts into spectacles, could not refrain from commenting that there nevertheless existed a group of criminals who ‘richly deserve’ being on a chain gang and exposed to public ridicule. ‘Fourth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities, for the Province of Ontario, 1870–1,’ Sessional Papers, Second Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1870–71, vol. iii, part 2, no. 6 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1871), 4. Cited in ‘Provincial Penitentiary, Report of the Chaplain,’ Appendix to the Fourth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 28th Day of November, 1844, to the 29th Day of March, 1845, First Session of the Second Provincial Parliament of Canada, Session 1844–5, Appendix M (Montreal: R. Campbell, 1845). ‘Provincial Penitentiary. Warden’s Report,’ Appendix to the Thirteenth Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 5th September, 1854, to 30th May, 1855, 1st Session of the 5th Provincial Parliament of Canada, Session, 1854–5, Appendix DD (Quebec: R. Campbell, 1855). That the Albany Penitentiary charged visitors twelve and a half cents for admission likely offset the additional work they entailed. Rules and Regulations and By-laws (Albany, 1849), 13–14. NYSL N 365.34 QR 935 96-8233. ‘London Gaol. Middlesex County. Separate Reports on the State and Management of the Common Gaols,’ ‘Fourth Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons, and Public Charities, for the Province of Ontario, 1870–71,’ Sessional Papers, Second Parliament of the Province of Ontario, Session 1871–2, vol. iv, part 1, no. 4 (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1871), 34. Occasionally, the burden of institutional tourism could be detected by visitors themselves. According to Edward Thomas Coke during his tour of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the woman in charge of the institution had ‘been

220

33

34

35

36 37

38 39

Notes to pages 142–3 wearied by tedious visitors.’ A Subaltern’s Furlough (New York: J. and J. Harper, 1833), 39. S.G. Lathrop, Crime and Its Punishment, and Life in the Penitentiary (Joliet, IL: The Author, 1866), 225–6. The New York Prison Association was founded in 1844 by John Worth Edmonds and would become the State Commission of Correction in the twentieth century. ‘Investigations. Part II. Prisons, Common Gaols, and Reformatories,’ ‘Fourteenth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities for the Province of Ontario, Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1881,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Fourth Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1882, vol. xiv, part iv, no. 8 (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1882), 74. Negley K. Teeters and John D. Shearer, The Prison at Philadelphia: Cherry Hill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 196 and 200; Norman Johnston, ‘Noble Ideas Collide With Reality,’ in Crucible of Good Intentions: Eastern State Penitentiary, ed. Norman Johnston (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994), 47 and 57. Norman Johnston, ‘Noble Ideas Collide,’ 63. ‘Eleventh Annual Report of the Inspector of Asylums, Prisons and Public Charities, for the Province of Ontario, for the Year Ending 30th September 1878,’ Sessional Papers, vol. xi, part iii, no. 8 (Toronto: C.B. Robinson, 1879), 42. A few years later in 1881, grand juries would be forbidden to visit the Female Prison of Kingston Penitentiary. Joseph A.G. Berkovits, ‘“Us Poor Devils”: Prison Life and Culture in Ontario: 1874–1914’ (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2000), 160. See, for example, ‘Governor Hoffmann’s Visit to the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica,’ The World, 1 October 1870. Robson Black, ‘A Town in Tethers: The Life Day by Day in the Penitentiary at Kingston,’ MacLean’s Magazine, May 1915, 10. In addition, it is interesting to note that while often supportive of visits by the public, the patient magazine at Utica Asylum, The Opal, was opposed to official visitors who meddled in asylum affairs and scrutinized physicians. Referring to the directors appointed by the governor of New York, one writer for the magazine claimed, ‘It is absurd to suppose that the intellect is doomed to inactivity and uselessness because within the walls of a public place; or that physicians whose duty is very responsible should be exposed to the gaping curiosity and whole-soul disposition of whomsoever chooses to gaze at, or animadvert upon the children of sorrow.’ ‘On the Claims of the Insane to the Respect and Interest of Society,’ The Opal 2, no. 8 (August 1852): 241–2.

Notes to pages 144–7

221

40 ‘Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum,’ Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 32 (1866): 278. 41 ‘Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto,’ Appendix to the Eleventh Volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, From the 19th August, 1852, to the 14th June 1853, Session 1852–3, Appendix J (Quebec: John Lovell, 1852). 42 Isaac Ray, ‘Observations on the Principal Hospitals for the Insane in Great Britain, France and Germany,’ 365. 43 For example, visitors to Utica while Gray was superintendent are mentioned in Chase’s account and in John Walter, First Impressions of America (London, 1867), 77. E. Katharine Bates also claims to have toured the Toronto Asylum with Clark. E. Katharine Bates, A Year in the Great Republic (London: Ward and Downey, 1887). Also, Anne (Newport) Royall stated of the hospital in Baltimore: ‘It is against the rules of the institution to suffer strangers to see the insane; this prohibition proceeds from motives of delicacy towards the friends and relations of the afflicted, who do not wish them exposed’; nevertheless, she was still able to see many of the ‘convalescent lunatics.’ Sketches of History, Life, and Manners, in the United States. By a Traveller (New Haven: Printed for Author, 1826), 192. 44 Testimony Taken by the Special Committee to Investigate the Affairs and Management of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, 1233. NYSL LEG 493.1-4. 45 Fourth Annual Report of the Governors of the Alms House, New York, for the Year 1852 (New York, 1853), 124. 46 Fifth Annual Report of the Governors of the Alms House, New York, for the Year 1853 (New York, 1854), 40. 47 ‘Visit to the Tombs,’ New York Times, 27 March 1872. 48 Richard Vaux, Brief Sketch of the Origin and History of the State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1892), 37. 49 Ibid., 94. 50 Canada, Statutes, 1851 c. 2. 51 ‘Department of Justice. Report of the Inspector of Penitentiaries for the Fiscal Year 1896–97,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Eighth Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1898, vol. 17, part 13, no. 18 (Ottawa: D.E. Dawson, 1899), xvi–xvii. 52 Ibid., xvii. 53 These industries included the blacksmiths’, carpenters’, tailors’, and matron’s departments, as well as money generated from the farm and light, coal, and oil, and barrels. ‘Kingston Penitentiary. Report of the Warden for the Fiscal Year Ending 30th June, 1882,’ Appendix to ‘Report of the Minister of Justice as to Penitentiaries in Canada for the Year Ended 30th June,

222

Notes to pages 147–52

1882,’ Sessional Papers, First Session of the Fourth Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1883, vol. 16, part 11, no. 29 (Ottawa: MacLean, Roger, 1883), 39. 54 ‘Department of Justice. Report of the Inspector of Penitentiaries for the Fiscal Year 1896–97,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of the Eighth Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1898, vol. 17, part 13, no. 18 (Ottawa: D.E. Dawson, 1899), 121. Between 1890 and 1897, ‘gate money’ disappears from the accounts of the institution’s revenue in the annual reports, and apparently the government had to press the penitentiary to state the amount received from visitors’ fees and to explain how they were disposed of in 1893 and 1894. Finally, in 1897, the institution’s revenue indicated that a whopping $4,400.83 had been transferred from the ‘Visitors’ Fund’ and collected during the year. 7: ‘Behind Closed Doors’: The Changing Relationship between Custodial Institutions and Society 1 H.W. Anderson, ‘Introduction,’ Shackling the Transgressor: An Indictment of the Canadian Penal System, by Oswald C.J. Withrow (Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1933), ix–x. 2 Robson Black, ‘A Town in Tethers: The Life Day by Day in the Penitentiary at Kingston,’ MacLean’s Magazine, May 1915, 12. 3 In particular, see Geoffrey Reaume, ‘Accounts of Abuse of Patients at the Toronto Asylum for the Insane, 1883–1937,’ Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 14, no. 1 (1997): 65–106. 4 Cited in ‘Celebration of the Birth-day of Pinel,’ Journal of Insanity 3, no. 1 (July 1846): 81. 5 ‘American Prisons,’ The North American Review 103, no. 213 (October 1866): 399 and 386. 6 Ibid., 389. 7 Ibid., 399. 8 Ibid., 395. 9 Ibid., 410. 10 William G. Eliot, Statement of the Actual Condition of the Prisons in the City and County of St. Louis (St Louis, 1865), cited in ‘American Prisons,’ 395. 11 See Peter Oliver, ‘Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), chap. 9. 12 ‘Rockwood Asylum. Medical Superintendent’s Report,’ Appendix to ‘Fourth Annual Report of the Director of Penitentiaries of the Dominion of Canada for the Year 1871,’ Sessional Papers, Fifth Session of the First Parlia-

Notes to pages 154–7

13

14 15

16

17

223

ment of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1872, vol. 5, no. 27 (Ottawa: I.B. Taylor, 1872), 45. ‘Warden’s Report, Kingston Penitentiary,’ Appendix A, ‘Report of the Minister of Justice as to the Penitentiaries of Canada for the Year Ended June 30th, 1901,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Ninth Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1902, vol. 13, no. 34 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1902), 28–9. Ibid., 29. ‘Annual Report of the Warden of the Reformatory Prison, Isle-Aux-Noix,’ Sessional Papers, Fourth Session of the Sixth Parliament of the Province of Canada, Session 1861, Province of Canada, vol. 19, no. 24 (Quebec: Hunter, Rose, 1861). ‘Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, London, Ontario, Ending September 1903,’ Appendix, ‘Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities upon the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums of the Province of Ontario, Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1903,’ Sessional Papers, no. 38 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1904), 29; ‘Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent for the Insane, London, Ontario,’ Sessional Papers, no. 38 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1905), 34. Aside from the London Asylum, a few other asylums also continued the practice of providing amusements for patients that included the participation of the outside world. For example, Thomas J. Moher, the medical superintendent for the asylum in Brockville in 1905, referred in his report to the amusements offered to patients and to the annual sporting event and exhibition that attracted many visitors. Like many before him, he argued that it was necessary ‘to make life in [patients’] restricted quarters as bright and cheerful as possible,’ and that the various entertainments ‘aided materially in hastening the recovery of many … patients, and have also rendered life more attractive’ for them. ‘Asylum for the Insane, Brockville. Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent for the Year Ending December 31st, 1906,’ Appendix, ‘Thirty-Ninth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities upon the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums, 1906,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of Eleventh Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1907, vol. 39, part viii, no. 41 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1907), 96. In addition, even in 1920, Hamiltonians, dressed in their Sunday best, were captured in a photograph while attending outdoor games at the asylum. Thomas S. Kirkbride, ‘Description of the Pleasure Grounds and Farm of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane,’ Journal of Insanity 4, no. 4 (April 1848): 251. Another writer for the journal argued that the location of an

224

18

19 20

21 22

23 24

25 26

27 28

29

Notes to pages 157–62 asylum for the insane ‘should be central, and in the neighborhood of a city or large village.’ ‘Lunatic Asylums in the United States,’ Journal of Insanity 2, no. 2 (October 1845): 174. ‘Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent,’ Report of the State of New York Hospital and Bloomingdale Asylum for the Year 1879 (New York, 1880), 23; ‘Annual Report of Governors,’ Report of the State of New York Hospital and Bloomingdale Asylum for the Year 1880 (New York, 1881), 13. ‘Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent,’ The Society of the New York Hospital 124th Report for the Year 1894 (New York, 1895), 20. ‘Medical Superintendent’s Annual Report for the Toronto Asylum for the Year Ending December 31st, 1906,’ Appendix, ‘Thirty-Ninth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities upon the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums, 1906,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of Eleventh Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1907, vol. 39, part viii, no. 41 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1907), 4–5. Henry M. Hurd et al., The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada, vol. 3 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1916), 158. Maryrose Eannace, ‘Lunatic Literature: New York State’s The Opal, 1850– 1860’ (PhD dissertation, University at Albany, State University of New York, 2001), 32. In light of such attitudes towards asylum physicians, it is perhaps no coincidence that Gray of the Utica Asylum was opposed not only to visitors, but to moral therapy and, instead, emphasized ‘science’ and the role of the psychiatrist in treating insanity. Gerald N. Grob, Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 41. ‘Thirty-Ninth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities upon the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums, 1906,’ Sessional Papers, Third Session of Eleventh Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Session 1907, vol. 39, part viii, no. 41 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1907), viii–ix. Ibid., x. See also ‘38th Annual Report upon the Asylums for the Insane and Idiotic for 1905,’ vol. 38, no. 8 (1906), ix–x. Ellen Dwyer, Homes for the Mad: Life Inside Two Nineteenth-Century Asylums (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 27; emphasis added. Hurd et al., The Institutional Care of the Insane, 3: 156. ‘Annual Report of the Medical Superintendent, Hospital for the Insane, Kingston,’ Sessional Papers, 1907, no. 41 (Toronto, 1908), 59; emphasis added. Daniel Francis and C. James Taylor, ‘Institutions of Confinement: The Origins of Canadian Mental Hospitals and Penitentiaries,’ in Readings in

Notes to pages 162–6

30 31 32 33 34

35 36

37

38 39 40

41

42

225

Canadian History, vol. 1, ed. R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith (Calgary: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 341. David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, rev. 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), 131. Anonymous, The Canadian Handbook and Tourist’s Guide (Montreal: M. Longmoore, 1867), 11. M.J. Heale, ‘The Formative Years of the New York Prison Association, 1844–1862,’ New York History Society Quarterly 69, no. 4 (1975): 340–1. Dwyer, Homes for the Mad, 43 and 186. ‘Warden’s Report, Kinston Penitentiary,’ Appendix A, ‘Report of the Minister of Justice as to the Penitentiaries of Canada for the Year Ended June 30th, 1901,’ Sessional Papers, Second Session of the Ninth Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, Session 1902, vol. 13, no. 34 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1902), 29. Hurd et al., The Institutional Care of the Insane, 250–3. Thomas Mott Osborne, Within Prison Walls: Being a Narrative of Personal Experience during a Week of Voluntary Confinement in the State Prison at Auburn, New York (New York and London: D. Appleton, 1914), 1. For a discussion on the decline of the ‘freak show,’ see Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Sir Richard Bonnycastle, The Canadas in 1841, vol. 1 (London: H. Colburn, 1841), 168. Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 122–3. Cook’s Excursionist and Home and Foreign Advertiser, August 1892, 10; cited in Catherine Cocks, ‘The Chamber of Commerce’s Carnival: City Festivals and Urban Tourism in the United States, 1890–1915,’ in Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America, ed. Shelley Baranowski and Ellen Furlough (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 93. Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 262. Cited in Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 210. In addition, the decline of visiting paralleled the increasing preoccupation with privacy in the late nineteenth century. This suggests that the public and popular ideologies may have been responsible for the demise of the practice, rather than the administra-

226

43 44 45 46

Notes to pages 166–79 tion. This is important, as it highlights the important role the public played in determining the shape, role, and status of these institutions. Edward L. Fesperman, Hand-Book of Things You Ought to Know about Raleigh (Raleigh, NC, 1908–9), 32–5. Tracey Tyler, ‘Prisons Kill Minds, Bodies Lifer Says,’ Toronto Star, 13 May 2000. ‘Total Correctional Population,’ United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov (accessed 13 March 2010). Clifford J. Levy, ‘For Mentally Ill, Death and Misery,’ New York Times, 28 April 2002.

Conclusion 1 William Smith, A Yorkshireman’s Trip to Canada and the United States (London: Longmans, Green, 1892), 266. 2 William A. Hammond, ‘The Treatment of the Insane,’ The International Review (March 1880): 227 and 236. 3 Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961), 14. Appendix: The Setting 1 The Oneida region in New York State became known as the ‘Burned Over District’ owing to the radicalism, revivalism, and utopian experiments that flourished in the area during America’s Second Great Awakening in the early to mid-nineteenth century. 2 Mary P. Ryan, ‘A Women’s Awakening: Evangelical Religion and the Families of Utica, New York, 1800–1840,’ American Quarterly 30, no. 5 (Winter 1978): 609. 3 Ibid., 610 and 621. 4 Ibid., 602–3 and 609. 5 Scott Anderson, ‘Entrepreneurs and Place: The Rise and Decline of Urban Communities in Central New York, 1848–1900,’ New York History 80, no. 3 (1999): 246, 252–4. 6 Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York – A Review,’ New York History 47, no. 1 (1966): 81. 7 Christine Stansel, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), xi. 8 M.J. Heale, ‘Patterns of Benevolence: Associated Philanthropy in the Cities of New York, 1830–1860,’ New York History 57, no. 1 (1976): 59.

Notes to pages 179–84

227

9 George Rogers Taylor, ‘Gaslight Foster: A New York “Journeyman Journalist” at Mid-Century,’ New York History 58, no. 3 (1977): 297. 10 Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 636. 11 The island is now called Roosevelt Island. 12 Kenneth Finkel, ‘Philadelphia in the 1820s: A New Civic Consciousness,’ in Eastern State Penitentiary: Crucible of Good Intentions, ed. Norman Johnston (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994), 10. 13 Ibid., 9. 14 Richard B. Splane, Social Welfare in Ontario, 1791–1893 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 5. 15 W.L. Morton, The Critical Years: The Union of British North America 1857– 1873 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1964), 2–3. 16 Morton, The Critical Years, 6–7. 17 The seminal work in this field is Splane, Social Welfare in Ontario. 18 Ibid., 280–1. 19 Ibid., 8. 20 Morton, The Critical Years, 3. 21 See, for example, Gerald Tulchinsky, ed., To Preserve and Defend: Essays on Kingston in the Nineteenth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976). 22 See, for example, Bryan D. Palmer, ‘Kingston Mechanics and the Rise of the Penitentiary, 1833–1836,’ Histoire Sociale/Social History 13, no. 25 (1980): 7–32. 23 Morton, The Critical Years, 3. 24 Splane, Social Welfare in Ontario, 8. 25 Morton, The Critical Years, 3.

This page intentionally left blank

Bibliography

Primary Sources Archives and Manuscript Collections Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa Archives of Ontario, Toronto University of Western Ontario Archives, London New York State Library, Albany New York Public Library Annual Reports Ontario and Canada, Annual Reports Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada Ontario, Sessional Papers Canada, Sessional Papers New York State, Annual Reports Annual Reports of the State of New York Hospital and Bloomingdale Asylum Annual Reports of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York Annual Reports of the Managers of the State Lunatic Asylum Annual Reports of the Committees of the Alms House, Bridewell, and Penitentiary Albany County Penitentiary, Annual Reports of the Inspectors Order Books, Rules and Regulations, and Commissions The Charter, Laws, and Rules, of the Pennsylvania Hospital. Philadelphia, 1837.

230

Bibliography

Order Book, London Asylum, University of Western Ontario Archives. Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Expediency of Revising the System of Administration of the Public Charities of the Commonwealth. Boston: Rand, Abery, 1878. Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Conduct, Discipline, and Management of the Provincial Penitentiary. Montreal: Rollo Campbell, 1849. Reports of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston, 1826–1854, reprint. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1972. Rules and Regulations Adopted by the Management of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, at Utica. Utica: R.W. Roberts, 1842. Rules and Regulations to be Observed by the Officers of the [Kingston] Provincial Penitentiary. Kingston, Ontario: s.n., 1856. Rules and Regulations to Be Observed in the [Kingston] Provincial Penitentiary. SI: s.n. H. Chubb, 18–?. Rules and Regulations and By-Laws for the Government and Discipline of the Albany County Penitentiary. Albany: Joel Munsell, 1849. Testimony Taken by the Special Committee to Investigate the Affairs and Management of the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica. Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1884. Newspapers Bathurst Courier British Colonist British Whig London Advertiser London Free Press London Herald New York Times Sarnia Canadian Toronto Examiner Toronto Globe Periodicals Harper’s New Monthly Magazine Household Words Journal of Insanity New England Magazine North American Review The Opal (Utica Asylum)

Bibliography

231

Unpublished Manuscript Beck, Theodric Romeyn. An Inaugural Dissertation on Insanity. New York, 1811. New York Public Library. Letters Patient Letters, London Asylum, Archives of Ontario. Warden’s Letterbooks, Kingston Penitentiary, Library and Archives Canada. Diaries and Scrapbooks Asylum Scrapbook, University of Western Ontario Archives. Bucke, R.M. Medical Superintendent’s Journal, University of Western Ontario. Dick, Thomas. Diary (1867–1905). Archives of Ontario. Edmison, Alexander Bickerton. Diary (1857–8). Archives of Ontario. Journal of the Superintendent for the Kingston Asylum, Archives of Ontario. Mickle, William, to Father, February 1864. Mickle Family Diary, Metropolitan Reference Library (Toronto). Sippi, Dr Charles. Diary. Bursar of the London Insane Asylum, University of Western Ontario Archives. Symons, John. Manuscript of book of travels through the United States and Canada West (1852). John Symons Family Papers, Archives of Ontario. Books Adshead, Joseph. Prisons and Prisoners. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1845. Alexander, James Edward. L’Acadie, or Seven Years’ Exploration in British North America. London: H. Colburn, 1849. Anonymous. The New World in 1859: Being the United States and Canada, Illustrated and Described in Four Parts. New York: Ailliere; London: H. Bailliere, 1859. Anonymous. The Canadian Handbook and Tourist’s Guide. Montreal: M. Longmoore, 1867. Archer, William. America To-Day: Observations and Reflections. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899. Arese, Count Francesco. A Trip to the Prairies and in the Interior of North America [1837–1838], reprint. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1975. Arfwedson, C.D. The United States and Canada in 1832, 1833, and 1834, vols. 1 and 2. London: Richard Bentley, 1834.

232

Bibliography

Ballantine, Serjeant William. The Old World and the New. Being a Continuation of His ‘Experiences.’ London: R. Bentley, 1884. Ballstadt, Carl et al., eds. I Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Bates, E. Katharine. A Year in the Great Republic. London: Ward and Downey, 1887. Billings, John S. and Henry M. Hurd. Suggestions to Hospital and Asylum Visitors, with an introduction by S. Weir Mitchell. Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1895. Bonnycastle, Sir Richard. The Canadas in 1841, vol. 1. London: H. Colburn, 1841. Browne, W.A.F. What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be. Edinburgh, 1837. Buckley, Rev. M.B. Diary of a Tour in America. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker, 1886. Buckingham, J.S. The Eastern and Western States of America, vol. 1. London: Fisher, Son and Company, 1842. Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Captain ‘Mac.’ Canada: The Country, its People, Religions, Politics, Rules, and its Apparent Future. Montreal: [s.n.] 1892. Chambers, William. Things as They Are in America (1854), reprint. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968. Chase, Hiram. Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum, From August 20th, 1863, to December 20th, 1865. Saratoga Springs, New York: Ban Benthuysen and Sons Steam Printing, 1868. Child, Lydia Maria. Letters From New York, first series. New York: C.S. Francis and Co., 1846. Coke, Edward Thomas. A Subaltern’s Furlough. New York: J. and J. Harper, 1833. Daubeny, Charles. Journal of a Tour through the United States and Canada, Made during the Years 1837–38. Oxford: T. Combe, 1843. Davis, Phebe B. The Travels and Experience of Miss Phebe B. Davis. Syracuse, NY: J.G.K. Truair and Co., 1860. Dickens, Charles. American Notes for General Circulation (1842), reprint. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. – Selected Short Fiction. Middlesex: Penguin, 1976. Domett, Alfred. The Canadian Journal of Alfred Domett. Being an Extract from a Journal of a Tour in Canada, the United States, and Jamaica, 1833–35, ed. E.A. Horseman and Lillian Rea Benson. London: University of Western Ontario, 1955. Dufferin, Lady, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. My Canadian Journal 1872–8:

Bibliography

233

Extracts from My Letters Home Written while Lord Dufferin Was GovernorGeneral. London: J. Murray, 1891. Dwight, Theodore. Summer Tours, or, Notes of a Traveler. New York: Harper, 1847. Originally published as: Things as They Are. New York, 1834. Farkas, Sandor Boloni. Journey in North America, 1831. Translated and edited by Arpad Kadarkay. Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-Clio, 1978. Fesperman, Edward L. Hand-Book of Things You Ought to Know about Raleigh. Raleigh, NC, 1908–9. Finch, Marianne. An Englishwoman’s Experience in America (1853), reprint. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. Glazier, Willard. Peculiarities of American Cities. Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros., 1886. Godsell, Patricia, ed. The Diary of Jane Ellice. Toronto: Oberon Press, 1975. Gordon, Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair. Through Canada with a Kodak. Edinburgh: W.H. White, 1893. Grant, A.R.C., ed., with Caroline Combe. Lord Rosebery’s North American Journal, 1873. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967. Greville, John Chester. Transatlantic Sketches in the West Indies, South America, Canada, and the United States. London: Smith, Elder, 1869. Gurney, Joseph John. A Journey in North America, Described in Familiar Letters to Amelia Opie. Norwich, 1841. Hall, Basil. Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, vol. 1. Austria: Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt, 1965. Howe, Samuel Gridley. An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline, Being a Report Made to the Boston Prison Discipline Society. Boston: W.D. Ticknor, 1846. Johnston, James F.W. Notes on North America: Agricultural, Economical, and Social, vol. 2. Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown, 1851. Lathrop, S.G. Crime and Its Punishment, and Life in the Penitentiary. Joliet, IL: The Author, 1866. Lizars, Robina and Kathleen. Humours of ’37: Grave, Gay and Grim. Toronto: W. Briggs, 1897. Logan, James. Notes of a Journey through Canada, the United States of America, and the West Indies. Edinburgh: Fraser, 1838. Lumsden, James. America Memoranda, by a Mercantile Man, during a Short Tour in the Summer in 1843. Glasgow: Bell and Bain, 1844. MacGregor, John. Our Brothers and Cousins: A Summer Tour in Canada and the States. London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1859. Machar, Agnes Maule. Down the River to the Sea. New York: Home Book Company, ca 1894.

234

Bibliography

Marjoribanks, Alexander. Travels in South and North America. London: Simpkin, 1854. Marryat, Captain. A Diary in America, With Remarks on Its Institutions. New York: Wm. H. Colyer, 1839. Moodie, Susanna. Life in the Clearings versus the Bush (1853), reprint. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989. Moore, George. Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic with Notes on Canada and the United States; and Return to Great Britain in 1844. London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1845. Morris, William. Letters Sent Home. Out and Home Again by Way of Canada and the United States, 2nd ed. London: Frederick Warne, ca 1875. Myers, J.C. Sketches on a Tour through the Northern and Eastern States, the Canadas and Nova Scotia. Harrisburg, VA: J.H. Wartmann, 1849. Osborne, Thomas Mott. Within Prison Walls: Being a Narrative of Personal Experience during a Week of Voluntary Confinement in the State Prison at Auburn, New York. New York and London: D. Appleton, 1914. Porter, Jane. A Six Weeks’ Tour in Western Canada. Montreal?: [s.n.], 1865. Poutre, Felix (pseud.). Escaped from the Gallows: Souvenirs of a Canadian State Prisoner in 1838. Montreal: Printed for the Author by de Montigny, 1862. Ratzel, Friedrick. Sketches of Urban and Cultural Life in North America. Translated and edited by Stewart A. Stehlin. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988. Royall, Anne Newport. Sketches of History, Life, and Manners, in the United States. By a Traveller. New Haven: Printed for Author, 1826. Sala, George Augustus. America Revisited from the Bay of New York to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Lake Michigan to the Pacific. London: Vizetelly, 1882. Scott, Franklin D., ed. and trans. Baron Klonkowstrom’s America 1818–1820. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1952. Shaw, John. A Ramble through the United States, Canada and the West Indies. London: Hope, 1856. Sinclair, David and Germaine Warkentin, eds. The New World Journal of Alexander Graham Dunlop 1845. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1976. Skinner, J.E. Hilary. After the Storm; or, Jonathan and His Neighbours in 1865–6. London: R. Bentley, 1866. Smith, William. A Yorkshireman’s Trip to the United States and Canada. London: Longmans, Green, 1892. Sturge, Joseph. A Visit to the United States in 1841 (1842), reprint. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969. Sullivan, Edward. Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America. London: R. Bentley, 1852.

Bibliography

235

Trezevant, D.H. Letters to His Excellency Governor Manning on the Lunatic Asylum. Columbia, SC: R.W. Gibbs, 1854. Trotter, Isabella Strange. First Impressions of the New World on Two Travellers from the Old: In the Autumn of 1858. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1859. Tuke, Samuel. Description of the Retreat: An Institution Near York for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends (1813), reprint. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1964. Vaux, Richard. Brief Sketch of the Origin and History of the State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: McLaughlin Brothers, 1872. Walter, John. First Impressions of America. London: [s.n.], 1867. Withrow, Oswald C.J. Shackling the Transgressor: An Indictment of the Canadian Penal System. Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1933. Withrow, W.H. Our Own Country. Toronto: W. Briggs, 1889. Zavala, Lorenzo de. Journey to the United States of North America (1834). Translated by Wallace Woolsey. Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1980. Secondary Sources Unpublished Manuscripts Berkovits, Joseph A.G. ‘“Us Poor Devils”: Prison Life and Culture in Ontario: 1874–1914.’ PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2000. Blake, Angela M. ‘Beyond Darkness and Daylight: Constructing New York’s Public Image, 1890–1930.’ PhD dissertation, American University, 1999. Eannace, Maryrose. ‘Lunatic Literature: New York State’s The Opal, 1850–1860.’ PhD dissertation, University at Albany, State University of New York, 2001. Articles Anderson, Scott. ‘Entrepreneurs and Place: The Rise and Decline of Urban Communities in Central New York, 1848–1900.’ New York History 80, no. 3 (1999): 245–78. Barnes, Harry Elmer. ‘The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York – A Review.’ New York History 47, no. 1 (1966): 74–82. Cooper, Robert Alan. ‘Jeremy Bentham, Elizabeth Fry, and English Prison Reform.’ Journal of the History of Ideas 42, no. 4 (October–December 1981): 675–90. Crets, Jennifer A. ‘“Well Worth the Visitor’s While”: Sightseeing in St. Louis, 1865–1910.’ Gateway Heritage 20, no. 3 (Winter 1999–2000): 4–19.

236

Bibliography

Finkel, Kenneth. ‘Philadelphia in the 1820s: A New Civic Consciousness.’ In Eastern State Penitentiary: Crucible of Good Intentions, ed. Norman Johnston, 9–20. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994. Francis, Daniel and C. James Taylor. ‘Institutions of Confinement: The Origins of Canadian Mental Hospitals and Penitentiaries.’ In Readings in Canadian History, vol. 1, ed. R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith, 388–96. Calgary: Harcourt Brace, 1994. Gidney, R.D. and W.P.J. Millar. ‘“Beyond the Measure of the Golden Rule”: The Contribution of the Poor to Medical Science in Ontario.’ Ontario History 86 (1994): 219–35. Heale, M.J. ‘The Formative Years of the New York Prison Association, 1844– 1862.’ New York History Society Quarterly 69, no. 4 (1975): 320–47. – ‘Patterns of Benevolence: Associated Philanthropy in the Cities of New York, 1830–1860.’ New York History 57, no. 1 (1976): 53–79. Houston, Susan E. ‘The Role of the Criminal Law in Redefining “Youth” in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Upper Canada.’ Historical Studies in Education 6, no. 3 (1994): 39–55. Johnston, Norman. ‘Noble Ideas Collide With Reality.’ In Eastern State Penitentiary: Crucible of Good Intentions, ed. Norman Johnston, 47–58. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994. Lightman, Bernard. ‘The Visual Theology of Victorian Popularizers of Science: From Reverent Eye to Chemical Retina.’ Isis 91 (2000): 651–80. McGowen, Randall. ‘The Well-Ordered Prison: England, 1780–1865.’ In The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, 79–110. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. McKay, Ian. ‘The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History.’ Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (2000): 617–45. Neufeld, Roger. ‘Cabals, Quarrels, Strikes and Impudence: Kingston Penitentiary, 1890–1914.’ Histoire Sociale/Social History 31, no. 6 (1998): 95–125. Palmer, Bryan D. ‘Kingston Mechanics and the Rise of the Penitentiary, 1833– 1836.’ Histoire Sociale/Social History 13, no. 25 (1980): 7–32. Peters, Edward M. ‘Prison before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds.’ In Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, 3–48. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Reaume, Geoffrey. ‘Accounts of Abuse of Patients at the Toronto Asylum for the Insane, 1883–1937.’ Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 14, no. 1 (1997): 65–106.

Bibliography

237

– ‘Portraits of People with Mental Disorders in English Canadian History.’ Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 17, no. 1 (2000): 93–125. Rosenberg, Charles. ‘Community and Communities: The Evolution of the American Hospital.’ In The American General Hospital: Communities and Social Contexts, ed. Diana Elizabeth Long and Janet Golden, 3–17. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Ryan, Mary P. ‘A Women’s Awakening: Evangelical Religion and the Families of Utica, New York, 1800–1840.’ American Quarterly 30, no. 5 (Winter 1978): 602–23. Sheehan, W.J. ‘Finding Solace in Eighteenth-Century Newgate.’ In Crime in England, 1550–1800, ed. J.S. Cockburn, 229–45. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. Strange, Carolyn. ‘The Undercurrents of Penal Culture: Punishment of the Body in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada.’ Law and History Review 19, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 343–86. Taylor, C.J. ‘The Kingston, Ontario Penitentiary and Moral Architecture.’ Histoire Sociale/Social History 12, no. 24 (November 1979): 385–408. Taylor, George Rogers. ‘Gaslight Foster: A New York “Journeyman Journalist” at Mid-Century.’ New York History 58, no. 3 (1977): 297–312. Books Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996. Bailey, Peter. Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Baranowski, Shelley and Ellen Furlough, eds. Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Bartlett, Peter and David Wright, eds. Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750–2000. London and New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone, 1999. Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Burnham, John C. How Superstition Won and Science Lost. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Bynum, W.F., Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd, eds. The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, vol. 2. London and New York: Tavistock, 1985.

238

Bibliography

Conn, Steven. Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernism in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Cross, Whitney R. The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, reprint. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Digby, Anne. Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796– 1914. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Dwyer, Ellen. Homes for the Mad: Life inside Two Nineteenth-Century Asylums. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Febvre, Lucien. The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais. Trans. Beatrice Gottlieb. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. – Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. – History of Madness. Ed. Jean Khalfa. Trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Gandal, Keith. The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, and the Spectacle of the Slum. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Goffman, Erving. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961. Green, Christopher D., Marlene Shore, and Thomas Teo, eds. The Transformation of Psychology: Influences of 19th-Century Philosophy, Technology, and Natural Science. Washington, DC: American Psychology Association, 2001. Greer, Allan and Ian Radforth, eds. Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in MidNineteenth-Century Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Grob, Gerald N. Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Guillet, Edward C. Pioneer Days in Upper Canada (1933), reprint. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. Halttunen, Karen. Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Howell, Joel. Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Bibliography

239

Ignatieff, Michael. A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1978. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Jones, Gareth Stedman. Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Leacock, Stephen. The Makers of Canada. Baldwin, LaFontaine, Hincks. Responsible Government. Toronto: Morang, 1907. Leavitt, Judith Walzer and Ronald L. Numbers, eds. Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, 2nd ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Lightner, David L., ed. Asylums, Prisons, and Poorhouses: The Writings and Reform Work of Dorothea Dix in Illinois. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. Lueck, Beth Lynne. American Writers and the Picturesque Tour: The Search for National Identity. New York and London: Garland, 1997. McCandless, Peter. Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. McKnight, Natalie. Idiots, Madmen, and Other Prisoners in Dickens. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993. Moran, James. Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in NineteenthCentury Quebec and Ontario. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Morton, W.L. The Critical Years: The Union of British North America 1857–1873. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964. Okun, Peter. Crime and Nation: Prison Reform and Popular Fiction in Philadelphia 1786–1800. New York: Routledge, 2002. Oliver, Peter. ‘Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in NineteenthCentury Ontario. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York: Methuen, 1982. Pick, Daniel. Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c.1848–c.1918. Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge 1992. Reaume, Geoffrey. Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Rothman, David J. The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic, rev. 2nd ed. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1990.

240

Bibliography

Rutherford, Paul. A Victorian Authority: The Daily Press in Late NineteenthCentury Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Ryan, Mary P. Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. Schwartz, Vanessa R. Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Scull, Andrew. Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England. London: Allen Lane, 1979. Sears, John F. Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Shaffer, Marguerite S. See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880– 1940. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Shortt, S.E.D. Victorian Lunacy: Richard M. Bucke and the Practice of Late Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Spierenburg, Pieter. The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Splane, Richard B. Social Welfare in Ontario, 1791–1893. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. Strange, Carolyn. Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Suzuki, Akihito. Madness at Home: The Psychiatrist, the Patient, and the Family in England, 1820–1860. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Teeters, Negley K. and John D. Shearer. The Prison at Philadelphia: Cherry Hill. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957. Thomson, Rosemarie Garland, ed. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Tomes, Nancy. A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum-Keeping, 1840–1883. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Tulchinsky, Gerald, ed. To Preserve and Defend: Essays on Kingston in the Nineteenth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976. Walden, Keith. Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Bibliography

241

Walkowitz, Judith. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in LateVictorian London. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Wood, Mary Elene. The Writing on the Wall: Women’s Autobiography and the Asylum. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

Note: f is used to indicate figures. ‘An Act for the better Management of the Provincial Penitentiary’ (Ontario), 31–2 ‘An Act to Authorize the Establishment of the New York State Lunatic Asylum’ (New York), 30 admission fees, 47–8, 141, 190n3, 194–5n43 admission tickets, 38, 39f advertisements, 61 Albany Penitentiary, 40, 106, 141, 204n89, 219n31 alcohol, 100–2, 187n5 Alias Grace (Atwood), 204n94 American Notes (Dickens), 58 Anderson, Benedict, 79 Anderson, Harry W., 149 annual fairs, 49–50 architectural design, 10, 93–4, 126, 207nn21–22 Arfwedson, C.D., 72, 94, 106, 209n42 Armour, John, Jr., 3 Asylum for the Insane, Brockville, 223n16 Asylum Journal, 90

asylums: abuse at, 174; accessibility of, 156–7; administrative opinions on visitors, 144–5; architectural features of, 94, 207n21; Bedlam, 19; characteristics of, 7; cost of, 43; desire to close, 135–9; failure of, 157–8, 162; family visits to, 136; fundraising by, 48–9; lunatic asylum (as term), 185n2; management of, 219–20n25; as museums of unwanted, 201n54; name change to hospitals, 159–60; and new treatment options, 24, 27; in nineteenth century, 22; and the other, 130–1; perceptions of, 37, 41–3, 50–4, 138– 9, 152–3, 158–60; and professional reformers, 163; and progress, 6; public opinion on visiting, 155–61; reasons to commit the ill, 188n15; and safety of visitors, 72; visits by doctors, 217n15. See also mental illness; names of specific asylums; patients; psychiatric hospitals; segregation; special events Atwood, Margaret, 204n94 Auburn, New York, 178–9 Auburn State Penitentiary (New

244

Index

York): and admission fees, 47–8; and congregate system, 26, 30, 46, 193–4nn33–34; establishment of, 26; and guidebooks, 61; picture of, 71f; postcard of, 168f; restrictions on outside communication, 96; and visiting, 10, 17, 80 Auburn system, 46. See also congregate system Baltimore Prison, 99 Barnes, Harry Elmer, 80, 204n89 Barthes, Roland, 122 Bartlett, Peter, 13 Bates, E. Katherine, 3, 221n43 Baudelaire, Charles, 118 Bedlam, 19 Bentham, Jeremy, 93, 115, 116, 126 Bethlem Royal Hospital, 19 Billings, John S., 67 ‘Black Jimmy,’ 75, 112f Blackwell’s Island. See Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island; New York City Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island Bloomingdale Asylum, 40–1, 137, 157 Blumer, G. Alder, 159–60 Bogdan, Robert, 14, 125, 129 Bonnycastle, Richard, 164 Booth, Charles, 121 Brigham, Amariah, 30, 37–8, 187n3, 206n5. See also New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica British Whig, 69, 122 Bucke, Richard Maurice: article on London Asylum, 115; and Daniel Clark, 217n16; death of, 156; on patient response to visitors, 95; on privacy of patients, 137; Thomas

Millman on, 190n2; on visiting, 38, 50–4, 195–6n50 Buckley, Michael Bernard, 79–80, 203nn85–86 Burnham, John C., 14, 69 Butolph, H.A., 30 Byrnes, Thomas, 99 The Canadian Handbook and Tourist’s Guide, 60–1 Carpenter, Mary, 38 Central Hospital for the Insane, 166 Central Prison of Ontario (Toronto): establishment of, 27; setting of, 10; tours in fiction, 61; visiting revenue, 48 chain gang system, 140 Chase, Hiram, 108–10, 221n43 Chatfield (Mrs), 30 Chatfield, Cyrus, 30 Child, L. Maria, 107 citizenship, 132–3 the Civil War, 162–3 Clark, C.S.G., 121 Clark, Daniel: on architecture of Toronto Insane Asylum, 94, 207n21; on importance of seclusion, 136; opposition to visiting, 137–8, 145, 156, 195n50, 218n20; on patient complaints about visitors, 104; and Richard Bucke, 217n16; on right to visit, 43; tours by scientists, 70 Clarke, C.K., 157 class, 9, 84, 92, 130–1, 219n28 Coke, Edward Thomas, 219n32 Colton, Gardiner Quincy, 127 community care, 13, 22, 188n15 congregate system: and Auburn Penitentiary, 26, 30; and institutional visiting, 139–40; and Massachusetts

Index State Prison, 47; as system, 46, 193–4nn33–34 Conn, Steven, 14 contact (zones of), 73, 75 contraband, 100–1, 141–2 convicts. See inmates corpses, 120, 213n12 correspondence, 96, 100–1, 103 Cowper, William, 73 Crary, Jonathan, 14, 118, 127 Crets, Jennifer A., 16, 60 crime: prevention of, 24, 45–6, 162, 171, 193n31; rise in, 65 criminal punishment: and flogging, 30; physical punishment, 22, 25; society’s views on, 24; and visiting, 45, 140, 154. See also prisons Crofton, Walter, 193–4n34 custodial institutions, 185n2. See also institutions Daubeny, Charles, 208n38 Daybreak Boys, 103 deterrence, 24, 45–6, 171, 193n31 Dick, Thomas, 62 Dickens, Charles: American interest in, 61; American Notes, 58; and institutional tourism, 26, 38, 75, 97; prisoner response to writings, 103 Digby, Anne, 198n13 The Discovery of the Asylum (Rothman), 5, 88 dissections, 41, 191n12 Dix, Dorothea L., 23, 38, 202n70 Domett, Alfred, 215n40 Downcast Eyes (Jay), 118 Down the River to the Sea (Machar), 61 Drinkwater, Sarah Hallen, 62 Duncombe, Charles, 161–2 Dunlop, Alexander Graham, 69

245

Dutun, O.H., 208n38 Dwight, Louis, 36 Dwight, Theodore, 200n47 Dwyer, Ellen, 5 Eannace, Maryrose, 92, 157–8 Eastern State Penitentiary: about, 27; admission tickets, 39f; discussed as Philadelphia Penitentiary, 46, 84, 100; documentation of female visitors, 83; engraving of, 28f; institutional structure of, 31; interactions with visitors, 95–6, 140; rules of, 145–6; and solitary system, 97, 142 Edmison, Alexander Bickerton, 201n57 education events, 52 Ellice, Jane, 3, 80 entertainment, 128–9, 164, 215n40 An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline (Howe), 46 eugenics, 163 exhibitions: culture of, 119–21; decline of, 164; Peale Museum, 123; P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, 123–5; types of, 120–5, 129. See also spectacle; visual culture eyes (functioning of), 117 Faces of Degeneration (Pick), 93 family visits, 84–5, 96, 136, 205nn100– 101, 216n7 Febvre, Lucien, 116 Fesperman, Edward L., 166 festivals, 49 financial gain, 47–50, 146–7, 194n42, 194–5n43 Finch, Marianne, 123, 212n101 first-hand observation: and citizen-

246

Index

hood, 132–3; and comprehension, 120–1; decline in, 164; importance of, 115; and institutional visiting, 122, 213n19; of institutions, 173–4; and the observer-consumer, 118; of urban decay, 121 First Impressions of America (Walter), 221n43 flogging, 30 Foucault, Michel: criticism of, 207n22; History of Madness, 25–6; influence of, 5, 13; on institutions, 88; on prison reforms, 126; and privatization of institutions, 20 Francis, Daniel, 7 freak shows, 123–5, 129, 164 Fretz, Eric, 120, 124–5 Fry, Elizabeth, 75 Gandal, Keith, 14 gardens, 52 Garland, David, 13 Ginzberg, Lori D., 202n70 The Globe, 149 Goffman, Erving, 89, 175 Gordon, Ishbel, 62 Gramsci, Antonio, 15 grave-robbings, 41 Gray, John P.: focus on science, 161, 224n22; and Hiram Chase, 109; and patient complaints of visitors, 104; as superintendent at Utica, 221n43; and visiting, 38, 138–9, 145 Gurney, Joseph John, 75, 82 Hall, Basil, 72, 122 Halloway, John, 142 Halttunen, Karen, 5 Hammond, William, 174 Hand-Book of Things You Ought to

Know about Raleigh (Fesperman), 166 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 29f, 94, 101, 111, 112 Haviland, John, 31 History of Madness (Foucault), 25–6 hospitals: perception of, 41, 191n13; as preferred term, 159–60 Howard, John, 19 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 46, 95–6, 139 How Superstition Won and Science Lost (Burnham), 14 human body, 120, 123–4, 127–8 humanitarian duty, 4, 75–6 Hurd, Henry M., 67, 160, 163 Illinois State Hospital, 90 illustrations, 117 industrialization, 177 inmates: communication between, 208n38; decoration of cells, 102–3, 210n65; experiences of, 9; family visits to, 84–5, 96, 205nn100–101, 216n7; inmate accounts, 92, 111, 113; inmate labour, 155, 189n28, 193nn29, 33; inmates as creature of God, 203–4n88; interactions with visitors, 94–9, 100–3, 151, 175; negative responses to visitors, 105–7; protection of, 140; restrictions on, 93–4, 96, 211n81; as spectacle, 219n28; stigmatization of, 107. See also patients; prisons inspection, 67–8, 78, 131–2, 143, 204n93 The Institutional Care of the Insane (1916) (Hurd), 160 institutionalization: historiography of, 88–90; sources on, 90–2. See also inmates; patients

Index institutional tourism: admission tickets, 38, 39f; and class, 84; debates on, 6; decline of, 153–7, 161–8, 166; discussion of, 153–4; early history of, 18–21; encouragement of, 36–8, 40–2; financial costs of, 219nn31– 32; and financial gain, 47–50, 146–7, 194n42, 194–5n43; limits on tourists, 81–5, 144, 145–6; and local jails, 152 institutional tourism (opposition to): by administrators, 144–7; and asylums, 135–9, 155–61; as cruel curiosity, 63; disruptive effects of, 141–2, 154; by Hiram Chase, 108–10; in nineteenth century, 35; and official inspections, 143; and prisons, 139–43; and privacy, 131, 215n42, 225–6n42; security concerns, 141–2, 143, 146; social consequences of, 136–7; and spectatorship, 43, 137–8, 154–5; as undermining reform, 107, 142 institutional tourism: overview of, 3–6; as part of system, 25–6; and patient care, 43; policies on, 17; and public awareness of institutions, 150–1; and race, 59–60 institutional tourism (reasons for): Bucke on, 195–6n50; as Christian duty, 76, 202nn69–70; and civic pride, 68–9; and class, 84, 130–1; as deterrent, 45–6; to experience the other, 73, 75; as first-hand observation, 118–21, 122, 213n19; as humanitarian duty, 75–6; to inspect institutions, 67–8, 78, 131–2; as ‘non-frivolous’ amusement, 129; to participate in social debates, 66–7, 147; and public confidence, 44–5,

247

192–3n28; purposes of, 34–5; as reassurance on social problems, 66; as religious experience, 203–4n88; for scientific interest, 69–70, 72; and self-education, 69–70, 72, 115, 119–21, 122, 125, 128; and sense of progress, 173–5; as social involvement, 78–9; and spectacle, 63–5, 125; to understand the criminal and the insane, 57, 197n4; and urban reform, 63–4. See also special events institutional tourism: and safety of visitors, 72, 201n60; and society, 7–8; sources on, 57–60; and spectacle, 87; spread of, 21, 60–3; as term, 7–8; variations in, 151–2; visitor experiences of, 79–80, 172–3, 204n89 institutions: abuses in, 149–50; acceptance of, 81; annual reports of, 37, 38; characteristics of, 7; and civic pride, 200n47; and control of the self, 89; custodial institution (term), 185n2; discussions of visiting at, 153–4; establishment of, 26–32; and inmate labour, 189n28, 193nn29, 33; institutional structure of, 29–32; in nineteenth century, 21–6; official inspections of, 204n93, 220n37; other types of, 8; public awareness of, 149–51; public discourse on, 172–3; public perception of, 34, 36–7, 41–3, 45; settings of, 10–11; and social control, 45; and social reform movement, 23–4, 54, 161–2; staffing concerns, 47, 194n39; in twentieth century, 149–50; visitor logs, 190n3. See also asylums; prisons; segregation isolation. See segregation

248

Index

jails, 152 Jay, Martin, 14, 118, 119 Jebb, Joshua, 193–4n34 Johnston, James F.W., 204n93 Journal of Insanity, 38, 111, 206n5 Judaeo-Christian theology, 19, 202n69 juvenile reformatory at Isle-AuxNoix, 44 Keen, Joseph, 145 Kingston, Ontario, 11, 167f, 182–3. See also Rockwood Asylum Kingston Penitentiary: in 1930s, 149; and admission fees, 47, 48, 59, 194–5n43; civic opposition to, 200n41, 221–2n53; decline in visiting to, 163; discussions of visiting at, 153–4; disruptions from visiting, 154; establishment of, 17, 27; failure to modernize, 162; financial problems at, 47; and guidebooks, 60, 61; institutional structure of, 31; investigations and visiting, 44–5, 69; motives for visiting, 64, 69, 70, 122; negative responses to visitors, 104–5; pardon of prisoner, 103; protection of female prisoners, 83; rules and regulations of, 100, 106; visitor experiences at, 172 Kirkbride, Thomas, 41–2 Klinkowstrom (Baron), 107 Landor, Henry, 44 Langmuir, John W., 137, 143, 194n39 language use, 160–1 laughing gas demonstrations, 127 lay visiting. See institutional tourism leisure activities, 128–9, 164, 215n40 letters, 96, 100–1, 103

‘The Liberal Order Framework’ (McKay), 15 Lizars, Kathleen, 85 Lizars, Robina, 85 local jails, 152 Lombroso, Cesare, 126, 214n30 London Asylum: and civic pride, 68, 69; decline in visiting, 156; encouragment of visiting, 38; limits on tourists, 82; London Asylum Ball, 77; postcard of, 54f; and Richard Maurice Bucke, 50–4; travel literature on, 114–15; visitors as inspectors, 67 London, Ontario, 184; London Advertiser, 62, 114; London Free Press, 38 Lumsden, James, 214–15n35 lunatic asylum (term), 185n2. See also asylums Lunatic Asylum at Hartford, Connecticut, 90 Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island: deception of patients, 94; discipline at, 145; establishment of, 27; impact of visiting, 79; institutional structure of, 30; limits on tourists, 82; location of, 10, 11; opposition to visiting, 144; patient-visitor interactions, 94–5, 96, 101, 111; picture of, 29f; and race, 75; reports of, 44; use of restraints, 106 MacCallum, G.A., 156 Macdonell, Donald Aeneas, 84, 141 Machar, Agnes Maule, 61 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 85, 205n101 MacPhail, Agnes, 163 madness. See mental illness Madness at Home (Suzuki), 13, 147

Index Magar, James, 41 Malden Lunatic Asylum, 44 Marjoribanks, Alexander, 61 Marks, Grace, 104–5, 203–4n88, 204n94 Marryat, Captain, 78 Martineau, Harriet, 78 Massachusetts State Prison, 47, 105 Massie, James, 48 mass media culture, 151, 164 McGowen, Randall, 19 McKay, Ian, 15 medical demonstrations, 126–8 medical research, 158–9 mental hospitals. See asylums mental illness: and community care, 13, 22, 188n15; as family problem, 21; insane as creature of God, 203–4n88; in nineteenth-century society, 13; phrenology, 72, 201n57; public interest in, 37–8; as side effect of modern life, 65; as spectacle, 25–6; and visual culture, 126; visual diagnosis of, 128. See also asylums Mercer Reformatory for Women, 61 Middle East (myth of), 73 Millard, D.J., 109–10 Miller, Jacques-Alain, 126 Millman, Thomas, 190n2 Moher, Thomas J., 223n16 Montgomery, David, 166 Moodie, Susanna, 26, 64, 77, 104–5, 203–4n88 Moore, George, 201n60 moral therapy, 136 Moran, James, 47 Moylan, James, 162 museums, 120–1, 129, 201n54 Myers, J.C., 61

249

Nelson, Wolfred, 41, 43 Newgate prison, 187n5 newspapers, 61–2. See also names of specific newspapers New York Bridewell and Jail, 99 New York City, New York, 10, 179–80; New York Daily Times, 24; New York Times, 62, 95, 122, 171, 190n5. See also Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island New York City Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island: contraband, 101; discipline at, 145; establishment of, 26; visitor-inmate interactions, 102 New York Prison Association, 24, 141, 162 New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica: annual fairs, 49–50; establishment of, 27; and Hiram Chase, 108–10; institutional structure of, 30; limits on tourists, 82–3; motives for visiting, 70; name change to Utica State Hospital, 159; patient complaints about visitors, 104; perception of, 145; rules on visiting, 40, 96; and safety of visitors, 73; shift to scientific emphasis, 159–60; special events at, 68, 76, 98; travel to, 10; visiting and perception of, 42; visiting rates to, 17–18, 187n3. See also Brigham, Amariah; The Opal New York State Reformatory at Elmira, 92 New York system, 46. See also congregate system North American ‘Grand Tour,’ 62 The North American Review, 151 observation. See first-hand observation

250

Index

observer-consumer, 118 Okun, Peter, 20 Oliver, Peter, 23, 214n30 Ong, Walter, 117 Ontario, 31, 181–2 The Opal: about, 90–2; diminishing subscriptions to, 163; fear of being institutionalized, 201n62; on foreign visitors, 124; and inmate accounts, 111; on institutional visiting, 62, 97, 99, 104, 107, 108, 220n39; production of, 206n12; on special events, 76. See also New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica Ordronaux, John, 30 Orientalism, 73 Osborne, Thomas Mott, 163, 193– 4n34 Ossining Penitentiary: architecture of, 94; and congregate system, 46; and guidebooks, 60; interactions with inmates, 97; motives for visiting, 70, 122; negative responses to visitors, 105; patient-inmate interactions, 106; restrictions on outside communication, 96, 103; and safety of visitors, 72; visitors as inspectors, 67 the other, 73, 75, 122–5, 130–1 Outside the Walls of the Asylum (Bartlett and Wright, eds.), 13 Packard, Elizabeth, 23, 90 ‘Paddy,’ 75 panopticon, 93, 126 panoramas, 120–1 pardons, 103 patient care: and amusement, 203n78; image of ‘quack doctor,’ 157–8, 224n22; increased medicalization,

158–61; moral therapy, 66, 136; opposition to visiting, 135–9; and race, 75; restraints, 105–6; and visiting, 43, 51, 144, 199n38 patients: attempts to prove sanity, 104, 207n16; deception of patients, 94; experiences of, 9, 89; Hiram Chase, 108–10; interactions with visitors, 94–9, 100–3, 104, 175; negative reactions to visitors, 104, 105–6; patient accounts, 90–2, 111, 113; privacy of, 96; provoking of, 204n94; public awareness of, 150–1; restrictions on, 93–4; visitors as spectacle for, 98–9; visitors who became patients, 107–8, 201n62. See also asylums; inmates; The Opal Peale Museum, 123 penitentiary models, 46–7 Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, 41–2, 48, 72, 219–20n32 Pennsylvania Prison Society, 32 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 180–1 Philadelphia Penitentiary. See Eastern State Penitentiary phrenology, 72, 126–7, 201n57 physical demonstrations, 126–7 physical punishment, 22, 25 physiology, 127 Pick, Daniel, 14, 93 Pinel, Philippe, 66, 126 Platt, J.M., 154, 163 postcards, 54f, 166–8, 167f, 168f, 169f Pratt, Mary Louise, 73 printing, 117–18 Prison Association of New York, 32 Prisoners Aid Association, 32 prisons: in 1930s, 149; admission fees, 47–8; as apart, 5; architectural

Index design, 93–4, 126, 207n22; current state of, 171; failure of, 162; ideals behind, 24; inmate labour, 155, 189n28; institutional characteristics of, 7; and local jails, 152; and the other, 130–1; penitentiary models, 46–7; professional reformers, 163; and progress, 6; rules and regulations of, 17; and safety of visitors, 72; social scrutiny of, 155; visiting rates to, 17–18. See also criminal punishment; inmates; names of specific prisons privacy, 96, 131, 136–7, 200n47, 215n42, 225–6n42 The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century (Febvre), 116 professional reformers, 163, 166 progress, 4 Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto: architectural features of, 94, 207n21; and contraband, 100–1; encouragement of visiting, 42; establishment of, 29; and guidebooks, 60; institutional structure of, 32; motives for visiting, 64, 70; and patient care, 51; patient complaints about visitors, 104; postcard of, 169f; public perception of, 41; and safety of visitors, 72; and seclusion, 157; and special events, 76–7, 97–8; tours in fiction, 61 Provincial Penitentiary of Canada. See Kingston Penitentiary psychiatric hospitals, 170–1. See also asylums psychiatry, 158–9, 160 P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, 123–5 publications: annual reports of

251

institutions, 37, 38; on institutions, 37–8; Journal of Insanity, 38, 42–3 race, 59–60, 75 railroads, 61, 165 Ranney, M.H., 48–9, 104 Ray, Isaac: on management of asylums, 218n25; on perception of asylums, 78, 139; on social interaction, 196n56; travel experiences of, 217n15; on visiting, 135–6, 138, 144 Reaume, Geoffrey, 89, 93, 136, 200n47 Rees, William, 138 reform. See social reform religion: theology, 19, 202n69; visiting as Christian duty, 76, 202nn69–70; visiting as religious experience, 203–4n88 Remembrance of Patients Past (Reaume), 89 research: on institutionalization, 90–2; on institutional tourism, 11, 57–60; primary sources, 11–12; secondary sources, 14–15 restraints, 105–6 Retreat Gazette, 90 Riis, Jacob, 121 riots, 149 Robinson, Henrietta, 105 Rockwood Asylum: establishment of, 29; increased medicalization of, 160; perception of, 152; picture of, 74f; postcard of, 168, 169f; souvenir teacup, 170f; visitor-patient interactions, 102 Rogers, Edwin R., 158–9 Rogers, R.V., 83 Rosebery (Lord), 215n40 Rothman, David J., 5, 13, 23, 46, 88

252

Index

Royall, Anne, 83, 99, 221n43 royal pardon, 103 Ryan, Mary P., 178 Said, Edward, 73 Sala, George Augustus, 68–9, 98, 103 Sarnia Canadian, 66 Scared Straight! 193n31 Schwartz, Vanessa R., 14 Schwarzschild, Edward L., 129 science: as justification, 214–15n35; popular interest in, 69–70, 72, 125, 126–7; and visual culture, 160–1 Scott, John, 144, 191n12 Scull, Andrew, 13, 23 Scull, A.T., 201n54 Sears, John F., 66 segregation: desire for, 135–9, 157, 170; gradual implementation of, 151–2, 156–7; and institutional tourism, 6, 13, 175; of institutions, 5; of mental patients, 51, 144; of the other, 124–5; as protection, 164; theory vs. practice, 20; undesirability of, 35, 196n56 self-education, 69–70, 72, 115, 119–21, 122, 125, 128 sexual relations, 101, 142, 187n5 Shaffer, Marguerite S., 165 Sheehan, W.J., 187n5 Shore, Marlene, 120 Shortt, S.E.D., 43 sight. See visual culture Simcoe, John Graves, 183 Sing Sing. See Ossining Penitentiary Skinner, J.E. Hillary, 123 Smith, Henry, 44–5, 69, 145, 192–3n28 Smith, William, 172, 205n100 social control, 45 social reform: and class structure,

130; crime prevention, 162; and institutional visiting, 4, 25, 63–4, 107, 135, 142; and institutions, 23–4, 54, 161–2; as movement, 21; professional reformers, 163, 166; role of secular state, 166; social welfare associations, 32; and tourism, 165; and urban decay, 121; urban reform movement, 9–10; and women, 202n70 Sokal, Michael M., 126 solitary confinement: communication between inmates, 208n38; and Eastern State Penitentiary, 27, 31; and institutional visiting, 97, 140, 142, 175; as system, 46, 204n89 South Carolina Lunatic Asylum, 63 souvenir notes, 61 special events: annual fairs, 49–50; appeal of, 76–8; Brockville Asylum, 223n16; at London Asylum, 52, 53f, 68, 156; patient-visitor interactions at, 97–8; and public awareness, 150–2; sports events, 53f. See also institutional tourism (reasons for) spectacle: and architectural features, 93–4, 207nn21–22; and desire for the real, 120, 131; and institutional visiting, 43, 63–5, 87, 125, 137–8, 154–5; and medical demonstrations, 126–8; mental illness as, 25–6; and social stigma, 107; special events as, 77; spectacularization of modern life, 56–7; visitors as spectacle, 98–9, 140–1. See also exhibition; visual culture Spierenburg, Pieter, 20 Splane, Richard B., 182 sports events, 53f staffing concerns, 47, 194n39

Index State Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, 48 Strange, Carolyn, 25, 164 Stumbaugh (colonel), 59 Sturge, Joseph, 96, 97, 103 Sugden, Edward, 201n62 Suggestions to Hospital and Asylum Visitors (Billings and Hurd), 67–8 Sullivan, Edward, 213n12 The Summary, 92 Summer Tours, or, Notes of a Traveler (Dwight), 200n47 surveillance, 93–4, 126, 207nn21–22 Suzuki, Akihito, 147; Madness at Home, 13 Taché, J.C., 140, 219n28 Taylor, C. James, 7 Techniques of the Observer (Crary), 127 Telfer (doctor), 51, 76 theatres, 128 tobacco, 100–1 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 38 the Tombs (New York City): annual report, 38; discipline at, 145; firsthand observation of, 122; setting of, 10; visitor-inmate interactions, 100, 102, 103 Toronto, Ontario: about, 10, 183–4; entertainment in, 164–5; Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 89; Toronto mental hospital, 170. See also Central Prison of Ontario (Toronto); Provincial Lunatic Asylum at Toronto Toronto’s Girl Problem (Strange), 164 tourism. See institutional tourism Traill, Catharine Parr, 79, 150 transportation systems, 10, 165 travel: reasons for, 215n40; shift in,

253

165; travel narratives, 58. See also institutional tourism Trezevant, D.H., 63, 135 Trotter, Isabella Strange, 83 Tuke, Samuel, 131 Tuke, William, 66, 126 Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum from August to December (Chase), 108 urban decay, 121 urban reform. See social reform Utica, New York, 10, 178; Utica Daily Gazette, 150; Utica Gazette, 49 Utica Asylum. See New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica Utica State Hospital, 159. See also New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica Vaux, Richard, 142 Vermont Asylum, 90 visiting. See institutional tourism visual culture: cult of images, 118; culture of exhibition, 119–21; decline of, 164; and mental illness, 126; and modern science, 160–1; and the other, 122–5; rise of, 116–17, 120–1; and urban decay, 121; visual representations, 117–18; world fairs and exhibitions, 122–3. See also exhibition; spectacle voyeurism. See spectacle Walden, Keith, 14, 122 Walkowitz, Judith, 14, 64 Walter, John, 221n43 Wetmore, E.A., 30 Whitman, Walt, 82 Williams, Henry Smith, 188n15

254

Index

Withrow, Oswald C.J., 149 Withrow, W.H., 82 women: female inmates, 99–100; protection of female prisoners, 83; restrictions on female visitors, 83–4, 205n98; sexual relations, 101, 142, 187n5; and social reform, 202n70 Wood, Mary Elene, 207n16

Wood, Samuel R., 31 world fairs, 122–3 Wright, David, 13 York Retreat for the Insane, 66 zones of contact, 73, 75