Asylum on the Hill. Katherine Ziff

      FIGURE 2.3 Note from Male Patient 819 to Superintendent Rutter and Dr. Kelly, 1880. Courtesy of the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, Ohio University Libraries.

      Some patients resisted hospitalization by taking matters into their own hands and escaping or making plans to leave.³¹ Their strong feelings and inventive plans are recorded in their own letters as well as in the asylum’s casebook. Male Patient 1060, a Captain C. of the Ohio River town of Marietta,³² was hospitalized by family and friends, who inquired by letter as to his well-being.

      Marietta, Ohio July 8, 1880.

      The Surgeon In Charge of the Asylum Athens O.

      Dear Sir

      Will you please keep us informed of Capt. C. and how he is getting along and what prospects there is of his recovery. His sister sent his clothes but did not here whether he rec’d them hope he did, please give us your Opinion and oblige.

      Yours Respectfully,

      Capt. Ben F. Hall³³

      Captain C., meanwhile, was making plans to escape from the asylum, which he documented in a note written in pencil on a scrap of paper that was confiscated and filed by asylum staff.

      To John Smart:

      Friend John, as I have become convinced that my imprisonment has turned into persecution you are all I have left to depend on now I want you to go and hunt up a saw blade new or old it will be better if fine and hand it up to me at the third windo from the angle don’t fail to get me something this evening for I want to start for home to night also get me a good stout heavy club to defend myself with don’t fail me in the name of the God we both serve and worship. I will be waiting for you.³⁴

      He did not escape; he died there two years later and was buried in the asylum cemetery, where his remains rest today.