The Project Gutenberg EBook of Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic
Asylum, by Mary Huestis Pengilly

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Title: Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum

Author: Mary Huestis Pengilly

Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #18398]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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DIARY
WRITTEN IN THE
Provincial Lunatic Asylum,

BY

MARY HUESTIS PENGILLY.

_The prison doors are open--I am free;
Be this my messenger o'er land and sea._

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.
1885.

This little book is humbly dedicated to the Province of New
Brunswick, and the State of Massachusetts, by one who has had so
sad an experience in this, the sixty-second year of her age, that
she feels it to be her imperative duty to lay it before the public
in such a manner as shall reach the hearts of the people in this
her native Province, as also the people of Massachusetts, with whom
she had a refuge since driven from her own home by the St. John
fire of 1877. She sincerely hopes it may be read in every State of
the Union, as well as throughout the Dominion of Canada, that it
may help to show the inner workings of their Hospitals and Asylums,
and prompt them to search out better methods of conducting them, as
well for the benefit of the superintendent as the patient.

December.--They will not allow me to go home, and I must write these
things down for fear I forget. It will help to pass the time away. It is
very hard to endure this prison life, and know that my sons think me
insane when I am not.

How unkind Mrs. Mills is today; does she think this sort of treatment is
for the good of our health? I begged for milk today, and she can't spare
me any; she has not enough for all the old women, she says. I don't wish
to deprive any one of that which they require, but have I not a right to
all I require to feed me and make me well? All I do need is good
nourishing food, and I know better than