
In her book Ten Days in a Mad House, published in 1887, Nellie Bly gave a chilling account of what it was like to spend ten days in a New York asylum and exposed the deplorable living conditions and brutality that were the norm for asylums during the 19th century. Professor Tamburini laid a plan for asylum reform that could have been inspired by the exposure that Nellie Bly brought to this corrupt system. Gilles Vandal documented inadequacies in Curing the Insane in New Orleans: The Failure of the “Temporary Insane Asylum”. Nellie Bly helped enlightened the public and lawmakers to see that the current system for caring for the mentally ill was inadequate, and in need of drastic reformation. 

Prof. Tamburini on Individual Liberty is a 1913 account on insane asylum patient’s individual liberties. It shows that Nellie Bly was not the only one who saw the problem with the system in place for dealing with the mentally ill. The first part is about “The Guarantee of the Individual and of the family in Indeterminate Segregation within Prison Institutions and Hospitals for the Criminal Insane, and in Insane Asylums.” Tamburini explains that the decision to take away a person’s liberty should not be taken lightly. He believes there should be a process the court systems should utilize in order to have someone committed. First, he says, there needs to be an order from the magistrate for a “provisional commitment”. Second, upon a motion from the attorney general, there should be a sentence from a higher court in order to authorize admission to the asylum. Once admitted, they cannot be released until the superintendent asks the higher court to release the patient, but this should only be done after the patient has been proven mentally stable by a psychiatrist. He also gives his three modes for discharge. The first, “discharge after cure”, says that the patient should not be discharged without the order of the chief justice at the request of the superintendent of the asylum or the family. The second is “discharge after improvement” which is when the patient improves enough that they no longer require treatment from the facility. The third is “discharge made under false pretenses”. This is when the family wants to take over care and custody of the patient against the advice of the superintendent. Tamburini also stresses humane treatment of the patients, which excludes brutal things such as whippings. Lastly, he talks about how hospitals and institutions should be supervised and inspected by people qualified to do so. By following these provisions, Tamburini believed patient’s individual liberties could be protected. 

When comparing Tamburini’s thoughts on how an asylum should be run to Nellie Bly’s actual experience within an asylum, there are significant contrasts between the two. One of the main differences is the process of committing a patient. Tamburini stressed how great care and thought should be put into admitting someone into a hospital by having multiple authorities and courts approve it. Clearly, this was not what Nellie Bly witnessed. In her case, she was given little examination and therefore was able to easily be admitted as a completely sane person. She gives her account of seeing the German woman, Mrs. Louise Schanz, being admitted into the asylum. The woman was essentially admitted because she was foreign. She was unable to speak English and therefore she was given no chance to plead here case and was admitted without having someone who spoke German explain to her what was happening. This is a far cry from Tamburini’s ideal admission process. Also Bly recounts how inhumane those ten days were. They were fed inedible food, left to freeze at night, and brutally beaten by the nurses. This again goes against Tamburini’s views on humane treatment of the patients. Nellie Bly’s goal of going to the asylum was to expose the wrong doings so that people would want to reform it. It could be said that she met her goal because of people like Tamburini who a few years later sought to make the reforms. 

Curing the Insane in New Orleans: The Failure of the ‘Temporary Insane Asylum discusses the development, and need for insane asylums in New Orleans in the 19th century. New Orleans was behind others states in establishing mental health facilities. In the 19th century, immigrants and people from surrounding rural areas were moving to the city. These new people were considered a “social threat” by the existing population. Therefore, the charity hospital was turned into a temporary asylum to be a solution to deal with these people. This temporary asylum soon became inadequate for all of the mentally insane. In 1840, the state government provided funds for construction of a three story mental ward to be added to the existing hospital. Over the years, as the number of patients grew, the ward deteriorated and, in 1844, there was a 14% death rate among patients. Many of the patients in the hospital were being exposed to diseases such as smallpox. Because this was so contagious, the mental health patients who contracted it were often sent to the Orleans Parish Prison. Finally, the Orleans Parish Grand Jury was tired of this and petitioned legislature to establish a more permanent facility in 1846. This sparked an investigation into the mental health facility at the hospital, which led to an insane asylum being constructed. This Facility could still not keep up with the needs of the state and could only house 20% of the people who needed to be institutionalized. For the next thirty years, the temporary asylums were set up and dissolved through out the state. In 1872, money was finally allocated to find a new permanent facility to house the insane. They settled on The Marine Hospital but the problem with this was that it was in a swampy area filled with mosquitos causing most of the patients to contract malaria. So the facility was closed in 1875, and the patients were transferred back to the prison. Eventually, the Jackson facility was expanded and most people were sent there, but it was still an inadequate facility to house the mentally insane and was unregulated and unmonitored resulting in rough conditions. 

Even though this article is about insane asylums in New Orleans, and the one that Nellie Bly stayed in was in New York City, it is relevant because it shows that the inadequate care was not limited to the facility she visited but was a problem the whole country was facing. There are some distinct similarities between the two that can be seen to prove that this was indeed a nation wide problem. One common factor both cities faced was overcrowding. Bly talks about how, when she went on her first walk outside, she was struck by how many other inmates there were and what poor condition they were all in. The people in New Orleans would most likely have this thought in seeing the vast number of inmates squeezed into one facility. One difference between the Asylum in New York and the one in New Orleans is that the one in New York was at least permanent. That did not help to improve conditions there but at least it meant that the patients were not shipped to different facilities regularly. This inconsistency would be hard on a person who is truly mentally ill. Another common factor between the two facilities is that there were a large number of immigrants housed in them. This could perhaps be because of Americans’ distrust of the new immigrants coming to America at this time. Unfortunately, another common factor was poor living conditions. Bly clearly recounts the poor conditions in the New York facility such as inadequate nutrition and poor medical care. With a 14% death rate in the New Orleans charity hospital mental ward, it is safe to assume the patients must have been suffering from similar conditions. 

Nellie Bly’s undercover investigative report exposed the flawed and corrupt system of care at one asylum in New York. The story opened the eyes of her readers to the appalling treatment of the mentally ill. As others took up the cause, they realized that insufficient funding and lack of understanding of how to properly care for people with mental illness was the norm. It was people like Bly, Tamburini, and Vandal whose writings and actions led to reforms for humane care and treatment for this otherwise hopeless segment of the population. 