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The last visit to the Ipswich prison was the third week in December. Twenty-two insane persons and idiots: general condition gradually improved within the last year. All suffer for want of air and exercise. The turnkey, while disposed to discharge kindly the duties of his office, is so crowded with business as to be positively unable to give any but the most general attention to the insane department. Some of the subjects are invariably confined in small dreary cells, insufficiently warmed and ventilated. Here one sees them traversing the narrow dens with ceaseless rapidity, or dashing from side to side like caged tigers, perfectly furious, through the invariable condition of unalleviated confinement. The case of one simple boy is peculiarly hard. Dec. 6, 1841, he was comitted to the house of correction, East Cambridge, from Charlestown, as an insane or idiotic boy. He was unoffending, and competent to perform a variety of light labors under direction, and was often allowed a good deal of freedom in the open air. Sept. 6, 1842, he was directed to pull some weeds (which indulgence his harmless disposition permitted) without the prison walls, merely, I believe, for the sake of giving him a little employment. He escaped, it was thought, rather through sudden waywardness than any distinct purpose. From that time nothing was heard of him till in the latter part of December, while at Ipswich, in the common room, occupied by a portion of the lunatics not furiously mad, I heard some one say, "I know her, I know her," and with a joyous laugh John hastened toward me. "I'm so glad to see you, so glad to see you! I can't stay here long: I want to go out," etc. It seems he had wandered to Salem, and was committed as an insane or idiot boy. I cannot but assert that most of the idiotic subjects in the prisons in Massachusetts are unjustly committed, being wholly incapable of doing harm, and none manifesting any disposition either to injure others or to exercise mischievous propensities. I ask an investigation into this subject for the sake of many whose association with prisoners and criminals, and also with persons in almost every stage of insanity, is as useless and unnecessary as it is cruel and ill-judged. If it were proper, I might place in your hands a volume, rather than give a page, illustrating these premises.

Sudbury. First week in September last I directed my way to the poor-farm there. Approaching, as I supposed, that place, all uncertainty vanished as to which, of several dwellings in view, the course should be directed, The terrible screams and imprecations, impure language and amazing blasphemies, of a maniac, now, as often heretofore, indicated the place sought after. I know not how to proceed. The English language affords no combinations fit for describing the condition of the unhappy wretch there confined. In a Stall, built under a wood-shed on the road, was a naked man, defiled with filth, furiously tossing through the bars and about the cage portions of straw (the only furnishing of his prison) already trampled to chaff. The mass of filth within diffused wide abroad the most noisome stench. I have never witnessed paroxysms of madness so appalling: it seemed as if the ancient doctrine of the Possession of demons was here illustrated. I hastened to the house overwhelmed with horror. The mistress informed me that ten days since he had been brought from Worcester Hospital, where the town did not choose any longer to meet the expenses of maintaining him; that he had been "dreadful noisy and dangerous to go near" ever since. It was hard work to give him food at any rate; for what was not immediately dashed at those who carried it was cast down upon the festering mass within. "He's a dreadful care; worse than all the people and work on the farm beside." "Have you any other insane persons?" "Yes: this man's sister has been crazy here for several years. She does nothing but take on about him; and maybe she'll grow as bad as he." I went into the adjoining room to see this unhappy creature. In a low chair, wearing an air of deepest despondence, sat a female no longer young; her hair fell uncombed upon her shoulders; her whole air revealed woe, unmitigated woe. She regarded me coldly and uneasily. I spoke a few words of sympathy and kindness. She fixed her gaze for a few moments steadily upon me, then grasping my hand, and bursting into a passionate flood of tears, repeatedly kissed it, exclaiming in a voice broken by sobs: "Oh, my poor brother, my poor brother. Hark, hear him, hear him!" then, relapsing into apathetic calmness, she neither spoke nor moved; but the tears again flowed fast as I went away. I avoided passing the maniac's cage; but there, with strange curiosity and eager exclamations, were gathered, at a safe distance, the children of the establishment, little boys and girls, receiving their early lessons in hardness of heart and vice; but the demoralizing influences were not confined to children.