ix. The fact was
that she had understated the case. Dr. Bell of the McLean Asylum,
confirmed her report and added details. In an outbuilding at the
almshouse, a young man, slightly deranged but entirely inoffensive,
was confined by a heavy iron collar to which was attached a chain six
feet in length, the limit of his possible movements. His hands were
fastened together by heavy clavises secured by iron bolts. There was
no window in his dungeon, but for ventilation there was an opening,
half the size of a sash, closed in cold weather by a board shutter.
From this cell, he had been taken to the McLean Asylum, where his
irons had been knocked off, his swollen limbs chafed gently, and
finding himself comfortable, he exclaimed, "My good man, I must kiss
you." He showed no violence, ate at the common table, slept in the
common bedroom, and seemed in a fair way to recovery when, to save the
expense of three dollars a week for his board and care, the thrifty
Groton officials took him away. He could be boarded at the almshouse
for nothing, and, chained in an outbuilding, he would not require any
care.

We can follow Miss Dix in her career through a dozen states of this
Union, into the British Provinces, to Scotland and England, thence
across to the Continent, without repeating these details, if we bear
in mind that such as we have seen was the condition of the pauper
insane at that period. Her memorial was presented by Dr. S. G. Howe,
then happily a member of the Legislature, and a bill was passed, not
without opposition, but finally passed, enlarging the asylum at
Worcester to accommodate two hundred additional patients. The
provision was inadequate, but a reform of old abuses had begun. It was
her first victory.

Grateful for what had been accomplished in Massachusetts, Miss Dix
turned to Rhode Island, whose borders she had often approached and
sometimes crossed in her investigations in the adjoining state. Rhode
Island was perhaps not less civilized than her neighbor, but Rhode
Island furnished the prize case of horrors in the mistreatment of
insanity, a case which in a letter introducing the discoverer, Mr.
Thomas G. Hazard said went beyond anything he supposed to exist in the
civilized world. The case was this: Abraham Simmons, a man whose name
ought to go on the roll of martyrdom, was confined in the town of
Little Compton, in a cell seven feet square, stone-built,
stone-roofed, and stone-floored, the entrance double-wa