19th Century Patient Voices
Letters and publications written by 19th century patients living in asylums offer insight into their perspectives, experiences, and environments.
Known as Fanny Ward, Frances Margaret Ward was an English woman who was deemed mentally ill as a teenager. Consequently, she spent much of her life receiving care and living away from her family. Dating from 1878 to 1895, the Fanny Ward Papers at the Diethelm Library contain correspondence, reports, financial records, and other documents related to her treatment and well-being. While much of the letters describe and discuss Fanny’s health and the manifestations of her illness, Fanny’s own voice and hand also appear.
Across the Atlantic, 19th century psychiatric patients in the US were also engaged in writing endeavors. A particularly ambitious and relatively long-enduring literary project was that of the Opal. In 1850, patients at the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica commenced publication of the Opal. The first issue of this literary journal was produced by hand and distributed only within the asylum. By the following year, the Opal’s audience expanded well beyond the asylum’s gate. Published on the asylum’s printing press, the journal quickly gained a following: in 1851 it already had 900 subscribers and an exchange list of 330 with other periodicals. The journal ran for a decade before ending in 1860.
Contributors included both women and men, though they generally remained anonymous. Still, commentary on and descriptions of asylum life should not necessarily be taken as accurate. Inviting outsiders in as readers of the Opal, Reiss (2004) contends, had an element of advertising. By the mid-19th century, negative portrayals of asylums as places where superintendents forced their wards to perform considerable labor and punished them harshly for the smallest infractions had entered the public consciousness. Seemingly in direct contrast to these unseemly stereotypes, the Opal consistently painted a much rosier picture. In its pages, daily existence for patients at the asylum appears comfortable and recreational, while superintendents are praised for their kindliness. A nearly complete collection of the Opal can be found in the Diethelm Library's journal holdings.