Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/66

64 In this connection is an amusing incident which happened just previous to my release. I was talking with Dr. Ingram about many things, and at last told him what I thought would be the result of a fire.

“The nurses are expected to open the doors,” he said.

“But you know positively that they would not wait to do that,” I said, “and these women would burn to death.”

He sat silent, unable to contradict my assertion.

“Why don’t you have it changed?” I asked.

“What can I do?” he replied. “I offer suggestions until my brain is tired, but what good does it do? What would you do?” he asked, turning to me, the proclaimed insane girl.

“Well, I should insist on them having locks put in, I have seen in some places, that by turning a crank at the end of the hall you can lock or unlock every door on the one side. Then there would be some chance of escape. Now, every door being locked separately, there is absolutely none.”

Dr. Ingram turned to me with an anxious look on his kind face as he asked, slowly:

“Nellie Brown, what institution have you been an inmate of before you came here?”

“None. I never was confined in any institution, except boarding-school, in my life.”

“Where then did you see the locks you have described?”

I had seen them in the new Western Penitentiary at Pittsburg, Pa., but I did not dare say so. I merely answered:

“Oh, I have seen them in a place I was in—I mean as a visitor.”

“There is only one place I know of where they have those locks,” he said, sadly, “and that is at Sing Sing.”