'Ten Days in a Mad-House' by Nellie Bly

Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The saddest and scariest part of this journalistic account from the late 19th century (originally published in 1887) is how easy it was for the reporter to be declared "incurable." No one even remotely tried to "cure" her.

By McD - Penn University library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16890004

In fact, of the women she encountered in the "mad-house," few of them would be considered mentally ill by today's diagnostic standards. No doubt some of them were depressed, but others were grieving. Some of them were just poor. One woman couldn't be evaluated at all because she didn't speak English and none of the four doctors could speak German.

It was shockingly easy for a woman to be locked away forever, mistreated, and deemed incurable just because she had unfortunate life circumstances happen to her.

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12 Creepy Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
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Julius Casear by William Shakespeare
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte