One Glorious Ambition

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  A small building across the yard caught her eye. John had said there was another jail that housed inebriates, people awaiting trial, witnesses and debtors, many who made shoes to pay off their creditors so they could be released.

  “They also house those not furiously mad there,” John said, “along with idiots and lunatics and insane persons—if they aren’t dangerous. They bring them as overflow from the state hospital in Worcester.” Dorothea knew that hospital had been built some years back, but she did not realize it had an overflow.

  Perhaps it was the sense of good she might have done by meeting with the Cambridge women, perhaps it was the red-headed woman’s charge that she might not come back, or maybe she heard an inner voice that had been silenced for so long. Whatever it was, Dorothea turned toward the smaller building across the cobblestones. At the entrance of the well-designed stone structure she stopped to read a marker that claimed the design was the work of Charles Bulfinch. He designed Sarah Gibbs’ home on Beacon Hill. Dorothea smiled at the irony. At least these debtors were housed as though they lived in ornate glory. On the outside.

  She watched her hand reach up to knock. She asked to be let in.

  As with other jail sites, she knew the jailer would seek coins. Tourists often visited jails and prisons. It was a way for jailers to make money supposedly put into the keep of their charges. She placed a coin in the hand of a sour-looking man who pocketed it.

  “Come this way.” He carried a stick. She followed him down a hall where he opened a wide heavy door.

  A cold draft hit her face, and she pulled her cloak around her before she realized the stench. Filth, bits of chicken bone, and rotting vegetables littered the large room where an agonized wail beat like a metronome, rising up, then down. Bars separated her from the occupants, but she spied a man wrapped in a shirt with his arms tied in front. He was making the wretched noise. His eyes vacant and his body rocking.

  Several prisoners rushed to the bars, pushing their hands through. “Bread? Do you have bread?”

  Another screeched, and beside her a woman jerked away. “Can you get me out of here? Please! The insane are here!”

  “Step back!” the jailer ordered.

  A woman half-clothed picked at her skin and cried out, her voice sharp as a mad dog’s tooth. Her hair was frizzled, unkempt. Dorothea had a momentary memory of her mother, lost inside a world of her own, plucking at her clothing.

  An elderly woman looked up at Dorothea with sorrow-filled eyes. “It’s very cold. Very cold. This girl will freeze to death here. And I will become as feeble-minded as she is. Can you help us, madam? I cry to you for help.”

  “God hears your cries,” Dorothea said. Her words sounded weak even to her ears. She suppressed a cough.

  The jailer rattled his stick along the bars, and the women whose fingers gripped the metal howled and stepped back. Dorothea saw another woman, stripped bare, lying on the stone floor. Is she dead? No, her bony spine rises and lowers. Where is the dignity for people crushed together, the feeble-minded and the debtors, required witnesses, each clutching to their sanity in the midst of this cluster of prisoners … people. They were all suffering people.

  Dorothea took deep breaths.

  The room had a coal stove, and Dorothea had seen a coal bin. She could also see her breath as she gasped. The woman picking at her skin turned a vacant eye away from Dorothea. So familiar. Dorothea could smell the full chamber pots. One appeared to have been spilled on the far side of the coal stove. The liquid seeped close to the woman lying naked on the stones. Dorothea swallowed the revulsion from the smells, shivered, and turned to the jailer.

  “Can’t you build a fire? It’s freezing in here, and half of them are nearly naked.”

  “They tear their clothes,” he answered. Bam! The jailer’s stick cracked the metal. Dorothea jumped. So did the prisoners who scurried from the bars. “And you can see they don’t care about themselves. And a fire? No telling what they would burn up. Conditions are what they deserve. It’s of their own doing, why they’re here.”

  “They are still human beings. They need to be treated as you would your own mother.” My mother. She caught her breath as she said that.

  “Truth is, the idiots and lunatics, the ones naked lying there? They know no better from cold or hot. Can’t tell it. Their mind won’t let them know about freezing or fire. Guess that’s something a fine lady like you wouldn’t know about.”

  Smug little man. A flash of memory pierced Dorothea. Her mother—even in her most vacant states when she slept for hours and hours—would still sigh with comfort when Dorothea pulled a blanket over her to warm her. Even when her mother was so listless she could barely open her mouth to the spoon Dorothea lifted to her lips, her mother would shrink back if the soup was too hot. It was a basic human need to seek warmth in the cold, to be refreshed in the heat. To bring comfort was a moral imperative, especially for the least of these. Dorothea felt her face grow hot, her breathing quicken.

  “You are wrong, sir, about the cold not affecting them. It affects all humans, the same whether one is lost to the vagaries of the mind or fully stable before us. We all suffer.”

  “Not them.” The jailer poked his stick through the bar and jabbed at a man who then tripped and fell to the floor. The commotion appeared to irritate the rocking person in the corner. He increased his cries, shortened the rhythm of his wails.

  The jailer laughed. “There’s your humans,” he said. “More like dogs.”

  “Even dogs are given beds out of the cold, sir.”

  “Time’s up. You’ve gotten your money’s worth.” He motioned for Dorothea to leave. She resisted, so he pushed her with his stick. The cries behind her grew louder. Something made Dorothea turn back, take one last look at this cesspool of suffering. The woman, unaware of the cold, continued to pluck at her arms, but then she looked up, her eyes pleading this time.

  As Dorothea’s mother had so often done.

  In that moment Dorothea knew: it was beyond them to change by themselves. They could not help it, might never change at all, but each of them deserved to be treated with kindness, care, hope. She could see that now. They needed others—they needed her.

  “I’ll be back!” she shouted over her shoulder. She had no doubt.

  The jailer urged her forward. “Don’t go all high and mighty on me. You don’t know what it’s like. I earn my pay.”

  He slammed the door behind her as the cold air hit her face. Her hands clasped the Bible and the basket of tracts she hadn’t left behind. She had failed with her mother, but here … she must not fail. She must bring relief. She had never felt so certain of anything. But how?

  Nineteen

  A Second Journey

  That night Dorothea prepared a petition to the East Middlesex court situated next to the debtors’ jail. She demanded that it provide adequate heat and empty the chamber pots at least daily. “These suffering souls might be your distant cousin, your maiden aunt made low by a poor choice. None deserve to suffer cold or want for simple covering.”

  In the morning, she stood outside the court in a drizzle that only made her more adamant. “Finally,” she said when the clerk opened the door. “I would meet with the magistrate.”

  “He’s not here yet, miss. His schedule is taken with court issues.”

  “I’ll wait.

  “It’ll take some time,” the clerk said. He was shaped like a pickle and wore glasses near the end of his nose. Dorothea followed close behind him as he entered the office.

  “I know. I’ll wait.”

  “It could be weeks.” He poked at the coals in the stove.

  “Those people are cold now,” Dorothea said. “I ought to have presented the petition yesterday when I was there, but the court, as you know, was not open. They have gone yet another night in the cold. It’s paramount that I plead their case, wouldn’t you agree?” The clerk leaned away from her, and Dorothea softened. “I know it’s not up to you. But we have to provide a
t least basic dignity for all people. It diminishes us if we don’t.”

  He nodded. “I’ve a sister in the Worcester asylum, and I worry over her. I can’t keep her with my family, but the overcrowding …” His eyes focused on the petition. “I’ll see the judge looks at this straightaway if you care to leave it. And I’ll send word when he’s decided.” He rose, motioning for Dorothea to stand as well.

  Maybe having the magistrate read her petition without the challenge of Dorothea before him was a good idea. He would feel less … intimidated. “Yes. Give it to him. But I’ll still wait right here for his reply.” She remained seated.

  She was unaware of hunger and instead sat and prayed. Dorothea looked at her pocket watch. Two hours had passed and she had hardly noticed.

  “It will be done,” the clerk stood before her, his glasses pushed up closer to his eyes.

  “It will?” Dorothea stood. “I mean, of course it will be done. But when?”

  “They said they would see to it immediately.” He smiled. “Someone has already been dispatched to build the fires.”

  “Well. That’s excellent. Yes. Excellent. Please, thank them for me. And thank you.”

  The clerk patted her gloved hands. “It’s a good thing you do, it is.”

  Tears pressed behind her nose. Thank you.

  “And clothing? Decent clothes to cover them?”

  “Your words must have been very forceful,” he told her. “I’ve been directed to find such clothing and to ensure that the jailer makes it available. The magistrates hope you will continue your Sunday school classes and expand them to the witness court.”

  “Oh, I will. That I will.”

  Just like that, the court granted her petition. Immediately. Fires would be built daily, along with chamber pot attention. Clothes would be provided, although the court added it was uncertain if the occupants, being feeble-minded and all, could be required to keep their clothes on. The swell of success brought a joy to Dorothea that she had not realized she had been missing.

  At Greenbank, she remembered, she had assisted Elizabeth Rathbone at a charity event to help the Liverpool asylum. She had watched the woman speak to each potential donor, knowing something of each family, asking after a grandson or a niece. “Your generosity is so appreciated. I know you have many places to do your faithful work, and we are honored you would choose the asylum.”

  “Happy to help. Happy to. Indeed.”

  “We know how much the asylum means to you and William.”

  Words spoken as the stewards served small sandwiches and cider around the room, fluttering the hibiscus as they passed.

  “Yes, it does. Your gifts mean even more to the patients who are the least of these. You do the Lord’s work, you know.”

  “I’d say you do that,” the donor bowed his head.

  “We do it together.” Elizabeth clasped the donor’s hands.

  “Indeed. If it’s to be, it’s up to thee.”

  She guided them then to where William sat, accepting their contributions.

  Dorothea watched, learned, took a chance conferring with a potential donor herself. “We are both newcomers,” she said. “I understand you are from America too.”

  “How do you know that? Oh.” The man grinned. “My accent. Virginia. Guess we do sound different than the British.” After introductions, he said, “I’m a friend of Lord Thaylor.” He nodded toward a man who had just written a commitment to the asylum.

  “Perhaps you would like to share in his happiness at making the lives of those at the asylum better. He seems quite pleased. Generosity does the heart good.”

  “Ha. Well, it likely does at that.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did you see me as an easy mark, Miss Dix?”

  “Not at all. I see you as a fellow countryman whose charitable spirit reflects the goodness of our nation. I offer you a chance to model our country’s philanthropic history and make a statement here in Liverpool. And receive the blessings of our Lord in doing so.”

  He grinned again and tugged at his goatee. “Well done, Miss Dix. I will do my patriotic duty and support an English hospital.” He pulled a long wallet from his jacket pocket. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I think.” He smiled and headed toward William, holding court at the table.

  But this present success with the East Middlesex court was a singular joy, greater than raising money for the asylum. Here, she knew that at least one person would be relieved of the cold because of something she had done personally, something simply giving money could not have accomplished.

  She began teaching the Sunday school classes weekly, along with an additional class at the debtors’ jail, where she saw for herself a low fire heating the cavernous room and the smaller cells as well. The greatly impaired prisoners had been removed, and when she asked to see where they were, she was shown to another room, where a flame rose. It brought scant warmth, but at least the freeze of the stone walls had lessened.

  Still, the moans of despair and minds in peril overpowered the lingering scent of pain and degradation. It seemed to Dorothea that the people housed here needed to be in a hospital or they would soon affect the healthier cellmates. This mixing of prisoners simply was not wise. Prisoners with less reason could easily become victims of their stronger cellmates, or they might harm the other prisoners as their thoughts grew beyond spats to confused attacks.

  “Required to pay my brother-in-law to sit in here and watch ’em when the fire’s going,” the jailer growled. Jailers were paid by the local sheriffs, and the cost of any care came from their profits, if there were any. “Hope you’re happy now,” he said.

  “My happiness is much improved, thank you. It’s especially good to see the floors have been washed. Thank you for that as well.”

  “Brother-in-law has to keep busy.”

  “And he’s chosen wisely. You may find it easier to manage the prisoner demands by separating the feeble-minded from the others.”

  “I wouldn’t push, miss, if I was you. Take what you got and leave us be.”

  On a Sunday some weeks later, Dorothea was approached by a prisoner awaiting sentencing and asked if she couldn’t intervene on her behalf. “The woman, my cellmate, hardly sleeps,” the woman told her. Her clothes hung on her. She must have lost weight during her incarceration or she wore someone else’s clothes. “She hovers over me so, when I wake, she’s there, staring at me. Other times she wails and rocks, her eyes jerk like a squirrel’s from here to there.” The woman leaned in close. “She talks to people who aren’t present and sometimes barks like a dog. She can look fierce too. I worry for myself but for her too.”

  Dorothea had seen the woman who usually mumbled and rocked in the back corner when she came for the classes.

  “Is she ever able to speak of what is happening?”

  “Not that I’ve been aware.”

  “Why is she here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dorothea inquired of the jailer, who told her the woman had been sent from the Worcester asylum due to overcrowding.

  “She appears to have picked at her arms so badly she bleeds.”

  “Noticed that,” the jailer said. He rolled a toothpick in his mouth.

  “Could we please bring in a physician?”

  “That’ll be another expense.”

  “I’ll pay for it myself.”

  Dorothea contacted Dr. Samuel Howe, the head of the Perkins School for the Blind and a board member of the Boston Normal School. Their paths had crossed during her school-teaching years.

  Howe made the journey with her the next Sunday and examined the woman. “Her behavior certainly puts her cellmate at risk. There’s no telling what she might do in her mad state.”

  Dorothea advocated with the jailer, her compassion easing onto him, and a separate cell was found, though the jailer complained, “I don’t know how long I can keep her there. I have new prisoners coming in daily and not many going out.”

  “We appreciate your assistance,” Dorot
hea said. She had to be gentle with jailers or they would prevent her from visiting.

  “Those conditions for the insane … it really needs a public exposure.” Dr. Howe expressed his concerns while riding in the carriage back to Dorothea’s townhouse.

  “It’s not something I can do, being a woman.”

  “You were successful in getting heat into the cells. And they allowed me to come in and separate the poor woman from her cellmate’s insanity. I doubt that would have happened without your intervention. You can do more than you think, though you are quite right in knowing a woman’s place.” He gazed out the carriage window. “It is best for women not to be out publicly crusading for some cause.”

  Dorothea knew Dr. Howe was courting the beautiful Julia Ward, who was outspoken against slavery. She did not want to mention Julia’s public presence. He apparently approved of crusading quietly. He was but a year older than Dorothea and had wavy hair, which he wore longish at his neck, and a beard that twisted like grass around a fencepost. He had served as a surgeon during the Greek revolution, and some called him the “Lafayette of Greece” for his later fund-raising for refugees. It was a nickname that pleased him.

  “Truly, that poor woman needs to be hospitalized. Moral treatment is what she needs.”

  “You’ve read the Jarvis pamphlet?” Her excitement bubbled. “Or know of Doctors Tuke and Thomas Kirkbride who promote such treatment?”

  “I do. Our friend Horace Mann invited Dr. Jarvis to write of his successes in treating the mentally ill in his home and to describe the way to bring health into schools.”

  Dorothea had liked the philosophy of moral treatment ever since being introduced to it while at the Rathbones’. It required treating all people, rich or poor, with dignity and compassion in a homelike setting.

  “Worcester, for all its good intent, merely houses them,” Howe continued. He combed his beard with his fingers. “They need more than that. They need to be in a world as normal as possible, with structure, of course, but more with love, like a family.”