From the writings of Elizabeth T. Stone
In 1840, Elizabeth T. Stone was institutionalized by her family and confined to the Charlestown McLean Asylum. They considered her "insane" for her decision to switch from her family's Methodist religion to the Baptist sect.
Elizabeth T. Stone's pioneering nineteenth century writings criticized common misconceptions about mental health that persist today. We name our programs after a woman ahead of her time in recognition of her independent spirit. The following excerpt comes from Elizabeth T. Stone's own record of her physical and emotional suffering during her forced institutionalization. The following is an excerpt from/ Elizabeth 1. Stone's "A Secret Way of Persecuting Christians in Order to Hush the Voice of Truth: Insane Hospitals Are Inquisition Houses.
I was born in Westford, Massachusetts, June 3, 1811. My father's name was Samuel Stone; he was a mechanic, poor and intemperate. Ten children of us, seven sons and three daughters: two brothers younger then myself. I was disowned by my father as being his lawful child. I was often ordered away from the house in vile reproach by my father, and my brothers and sisters, from the oldest to the youngest, delighted to tantalize me about it. My mother would never rebuke them for doing so, but when she would find me crying alone by myself, she would scold me and hold me up in ridicule to them, and call me a weak-minded child for crying, which brought me into fear before them; never daring to say a word for myself.
When I was a very little girl, I would go away alone, and weep and pray to God to take me away from them and let me live among strangers that would be kind to me. Truly I could say, that from my mother's womb I was an alien to my mother's children, -a child of sorrow and acquainted with grief. But I kept my troubles all to myself, looking forward to the time when I should go out into the world to earn my living, and be away from their unkind treatment.
At the age of fifteen, I left home with the consent of my parents, to get my living in the Lowell factories. That morning was a bright spot in my life. Before I left the house, I went into my chamber, knelt down and prayed to God to keep and guide me through this world, despised, as I was by the whole family, that I might not do anything to cause strangers to despise me. I walked to Lowell, ten miles, alone; before this, I had never been a mile on the road. I arrived safe, about noon, at Lowell, and got a place to work; and happy to think I was to be away from the wicked taunts of the family. I always found friends, and was, comparatively, happy; and I never mingled with the family, only enough to avoid the reproach of strangers, for it was just like death to me to go amongst them, for I knew the despised me in their hearts.
From that time, forth I never knew what it was to have so much as a skein of thread, but what my hands provided. I sustained an unspotted character, not a person could bring and evil accusation against me. I felt that my parents were poor, and they had troubles, and that it was my duty to help them. Accordingly, I did what I could. My youngest brother I. loved with all the ender love of a sister, and I wanted him to have an education, and I worked in the factory to get money to help educate him; and is it possible that a brother, or a human being, could be so hardened or cruel, on account of difference of religion, to put a sister in prison and hire men to try experiments, and to commit rape on a sister, and to delight in her sufferings! But such is the wickedness of the human heart against followers of Jesus Christ. That was my bother, James M. Stone.
At the age of twenty-two, I placed myself at school in New Hampton, in the year 1834. It was there I found a balm for my wounded heart, a joy for my grief, the one altogether lovely; the chiefest among ten thousand. It was Jesus Christ,--the love of God. My heart was changed for the love of pride and vanity to the love of holiness. I was now happy; my earthly sorrows seemed to be nothing compared to what my happiness was. I now commenced a new life, and on my return home I told my parents, bothers and sisters of how I had dedicated my self to God and his Gospel. It was then that the vilest hatred of the family was brought down upon me, but I was happy amidst all their cruel treatment, always rejoicing before them in the God of my salvation. For my happiness was not in temporal things, neither could they find aught against me as an evil doer, but working with my own hands in the factory, until my sister Nancy and bother James declared I should not go to meeting anymore.
In the midst of my happiness, I was seized upon by my brothers, and cast into prison, without any cause whatever, only because my religion was different from what they believed; I was there solely for nothing else. They hired the doctors to experiment upon me out of revenge; my life was unspotted with the least· thing that· nay one could bring up against me, to the day that they place me in that prison house of death, falsely called an Asylum or Hospital. I did not go to their house to trouble them about what I believed, but my bother Stephen cam up form Boston to my boarding house in Lowell, and pleaded with me to come down and spend Thanksgiving with them, pretending to have a family party. Accordingly, in the innocence and simplicity of my heart, I came down the night before; they all appeared the same as usual.
Little did I think they had plotted my ruin-to destroy my happiness within the walls of a prison, and there to writhe in agony under their dreadful torture. I know the public is as ignorant of this crime as I was; for when my brother Stephen asked me to take a ride with him I asked him where, and he said to see Dr. Bell. I refused to go, and said I did not wish to see a doctor. I had always done for myself and I knew I had no disease upon me that I must see a doctor; but he said so much consented to go, as I never was a person to make many words about anything; but as soon as I said I can go and talk with him if you want me to, he said with a great deal of triumphant feeling: that this is the place for such ones as you are.
But as I had always been treated with contempt by all the family, I did not think so strange of it as some might suppose, and I never dared to say much to them for fear they would wound my feelings as they always delighted to, on the least occasion. I went to his wife, as she was a professor of religion, and asked her to persuade her husband to let me alone, for I was not sick and I did not wish to see a doctor. The reply she made to me was this, God has nothing more for you to do. Now what does this language imply? Does this not show that some crime was about to be committed upon me. If I had been among strangers, I should have supposed I was about to be murdered.
Every law of the United States was violated, in secretly depriving me of my liberty, on the 25th day of November 1840, in the Charlestown McLean Asylum, at Somerville, by Stephen S. Stone and Eben W. Stone. My brother Stephen hired Dr. Wheelock Graves, of Lowell, a perfect stranger, to give me a line about me; for I was not sick, nor I never was. Neither does he dare to say there was any disease; only my religion was different from my family.....