A Disability History of the United States Read Online Free Page B

despite the disruptive behavior of one Jack Downs. Downs regularly enjoyed plucking wigs off the heads of church worshippers with a string and a fishhook, and was well known for throwing rotten apples at the minister during the sermon. Bill Buck, of Hopkinton, lived in the town’s almshouse but was not confined there. Townsfolk apparently endured and even enjoyed the insulting speeches he gave residents, as well as the local cornfields, while he roamed the community. 11
    Hopkinton’s almshouse was not the only such institution in the rapidly developing Colonies. Almshouses, which began to be in regular use by the end of the colonial period, met many community needs and were a general dumping ground for all those unable to support themselves financially. They also served as correctional institutions. Connecticut’s first such institution, for example, established in 1727, was intended to house “all rogues, vagabonds and idle persons going about in town or country begging, or persons . . . feigning themselves to have knowledge in physiognomy, palmistry, or pretending that they can tell fortunes, or discover where lost or stolen goods may be found, common pipers, fidlers, runaways . . . common drunkards, common night-walkers, pilferers, wanton and lascivious persons . . . common railers or brawlers . . . as also persons under distraction and unfit to go at large, whose friends do not take care for their safe confinement.” 12 A perception of the need for care or confinement, rather than diagnosis (for one could be a “fidler,” a vagabond, or “persons under distraction”), drove this early development of institutionalization.
    Similar institutions developed in Rhode Island in 1725, in New York in 1736, and in Pennsylvania in 1752. The Pennsylvania Hospital was intended for “the Reception and Relief of Lunaticks: and other distemper’d and sick Poor within this Province.” The New York “Poor-House, Work-House, and House of Correction” similarly welcomed a broad spectrum of people. Virginia opened the doors of the first asylum exclusively for those with mental and cognitive disabilities—“ideots, lunatics, and other persons of unsound minds”—in 1773. The institution sought to “care . . . [for] those whose cases have not become quite desperate . . . [and restrain] others who may be dangerous to society.” 13
    Those with cognitive or mental disabilities may have been confined only if considered necessary, but confinement was not pleasant—either at home or in an institution. Sometimes confinement was horrific. Patrick Henry’s wife died locked in her cellar. All individuals who entered Connecticut’s institution were automatically whipped on the back “not exceeding ten lashes.” Those institutionalized as insane in the Pennsylvania Hospital were confined in the institution’s cellar and chained by the waist or ankle to the wall. Many wore a “madd-shirt”: “a close-fitting cylindrical garment of ticking, canvas, or other strong material without sleeves, which, drawn over the head, reached below the knees, and left the patient an impotent bundle or wrath, deprived of effective motion.” 14
    Though horrid in contemporary terms, such conditions are evidence of early efforts to provide curative treatment. The decades surrounding the American Revolution were a period of transition for those with mental and cognitive disabilities, in which some were referred to experts outside of the family and some were not. The little that physicians had to offer generally included bleeding, purging, and blistering, but turning to physicians implied that those involved considered “cure” to be possible. For James Otis Jr., cure involved a simple firming up of self-control—at least according to his father. Increasingly, however, finding a solution (which assumed an identified problem) meant seeking the assistance of individuals outside the family. Those considered available to provide assistance variably were