When disobedient wives were taken to special homes
Nowadays, most insane asylums are nothing but ruins of the former buildings that hid the terrible things and horrors people were subjected to in mental institutions one hundred years ago. Most people brought to madhouses were kept in filthy and unspeakable conditions.
The practice of putting people in insane asylums died out around the same time children were stopped being put in orphanages. However, according to the American Psychological Association, by the time the looney bins started losing their popularity, almost anyone who was considered “insane” (for example, women who did not want to get married, or those who, God forbid, contradicted their husbands) were seen as dangerous and sent to madhouses, to be kept there for the rest of their lives. Divorcing your wife was not that easy back then, whereas sending her to the madhouse required only your signature, so you can imagine how many women were put in mental institutions for ridiculous reasons.
Apart from women whose husbands wanted to get rid of, mental asylums were also full of mentally ill people (certified crazy). But, as in the case of the discarded wives, the mentally ill were just put there and forgotten, without receiving any efficient medical treatment that would help them get better and return to their families. Luckily, all that changed (or, at least, some things changed) with the arrival of psychotherapy.
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5 thoughts on “8 Baffling Things You Won’t Believe People Did 100 Years Ago”
I’m 80 years old and I’ve NEVER heard of this old law. I was born in the St. Louis, MO area.
Did you know, Rita, that the mayor is defunding the police and St. Louis is beating Chicago in murder rate now?
When I was a little girl
When I was a little girl my mother made my costume, but that was before mothers worked outside the home. Mostly I went as a hobo or a clown.
I started smocking in High school. I remember saying “they” can’t make American’s stop smoking. How can they enforce it ? LOL
“The first orphanage in America was first opened in 1729 for white children”…
Let’s be fair here, in America then there were practically nothing BUT white children. This sounds like it was established as a racist institution. I doubt the Indians were going to put their war orphans in the enemy’s care anyhow.