In the United States of America the straitjacket was often resorted to. Used as early as 1884 in Folsom Penitentiary, California, it consisted, appropriately enough, of a coffin-shaped piece of thick canvas about four feet long, with brass eyelets down each side, and internal pockets for the prisoner's hands. After the convict had been made to lie face down on the jacket, heavy cords were passed through the eyelets and pulled as tight as possible by two or more warders. |
I lay with my thoughts on the cell floor in the early hours of the morning, thoroughly frustrated and angry at all that had gone on and I had cracked. I ran at the metal door and banged at it all that I could, which brought the night patrol in. The noises wakened the rest of the prisoners and they too joined in calling the screws all the names under the sun. The night screws called for reinforcements and opened my cell door. They had a strait-jacket with them and after a struggle I was locked into it, getting some bruises in the process. I was thrown into a padded cell, which was an ordinary cell covered with rough canvas pads. I lay on the cushioned floor struggling with the strait-jacket. It's a very strange experience being locked into one of these as the upper part of the body is completely helpless, even to the extent that one has to do the toilet in it. The rest of the prisoners had ceased their noise but I continued to struggle and by some miraculous means or other managed to break free of the jacket. |
Before I could begin to do anything I was clubbed on the head from behind and a fight started. There was a furious struggle and I distinctly remember someone trying to pull my hair but it was so short they couldn't grip it and I remember feeling pleased about this while I fought. ... I heard them shouting for a straitjacket and saw it in the hands of on of them. I strongly resisted this knowing full well that if they got it on me I was finished as these bastards would kill me. I struggled with all I had, but realized that it would be in vain. The blood was pouring down my face as the batons battered down on the top of my head. They were holding me at waist level, some with my upper body and others with my legs and yet others battering me. The jacket was being put onto me and tightened up "BASTARDS, BASTARDS, BASTARDS, BASTARDS". I screamed in frustration. During this fierce struggle we ended up next to a sink full of dirty water and by this time I was strapped into the straitjacket but still struggling and cursing them. They lifted me and my head was pushed into the sink full of water to the sounds of someone calling out to drown the bastard. I was aware of the struggle between the screws, some of whom were frightened, trying to pull me out, while others were for drowning me. .... |
I came to lying on a stone floor surrounded by hazy figures, notably a man in a white coat. As my vision cleared I could see that the walls were painted asylum blue and that I was inside a cage, the likes of which I had never seen before. My heart sank as I knew I was in an asylum. I had always dreaded this sort of thing, always suspicious that it would happen, and now it had. The straitjacket was saturated with blood. I drifted off again and when I came to I was cleaned and smelling of disinfectant. The place I was in looked weird from where I lay. It was an ordinary cell with a large cage that cut the cell to half its normal size. I was locked in the cage. Outside the cage front was the ordinary metal and wooden door. This meant to reach me the screws would have to enter the one door then the cage door. On the wall at the other side of the cell there was a notice and I crawled over to it. In large writing it said "Rules and Regulations for Prisoners in the Inverness Special Unit". It dawned on me then that I was in the Inverness prison and not in an Asylum. |
"...it will, however, in the first instance, always be proper to gain a complete ascendancy over the patient, either by gentle or coercive measures; his anger and violent passions must be restrained by the strait waistcoat; he should be kept in silence and darkness, and as much as possible, in an erect posture; none of his intimate acquaintances or friends should be allowed to visit him..." |
 When we entered this depressing, crowded dining room, we saw patients lapping up their food as best they might, unaided and hand-bound. The chief nurse, wishing to spare us the painful spectacle, hastily assembled several attendants to feed the camisoled patients. A ward employee later told me it was customary to let restrained patients shift for themselves at meals. |
 As in most state hospitals for the mentally sick, there were too many crowded day-rooms like this at Manhattan. Enforced idleness in cramped quarters, day after day, often has a tragically deteriorating effect on many patients who might be helped along the road to recovery by wholesome occupation and recreation. |
 A corner of a disturbed ward in which some 40 patients were milling about in various stages of excitement and lethargy. Scenes like this one bring forcefully to mind the urgent need for a real all-out research and prevention program, so that fewer Americans would be allowed to sink to this estate. |
 Doubt, despair, and public miserliness "beyond compare" ... |
 ... were the lot of these neglected mental patients ... |
 ... in Napa's wards. |
There was a yellow light in the room, which came from a high wire-netted window in the canvas covered wall. I looked down at my immobilized arms and saw that they were bound in a brown canvas straitjacket. My legs were free; not even trousers covered them, but I still had my shoes on. I drew them up and rocked myself into a sitting position on the edge of the cot. A bolt snapped back, and I stood up facing the leather-padded door as it swung open. |
6.21 - STRAIT JACKET |
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