Asylum Ladies

True Weird Stuff

Now! Media

Science, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.9 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2024

⏱️ 84 minutes

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Summary

Today's True Weird Stuff - Asylum Ladies

In the 1800s, women could be placed in mental institutions simply for not behaving the way society believed they should. Mental diagnoses at the time were simple: you were either deemed a lunatic, a moron, an imbecile, or feeble-minded. Like many others, a woman named Josephine Shaw Lowell believed poor women who lived in almshouses were promiscuous and prone to having illegitimate children. That's why in 1878 she created a place to house those women called the New York State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, true weirdos. We just wanted to take a minute and thank you so much for your support.
0:04.6	True Weird Stuff has won the best history podcast in the Women in Podcasting Awards,
0:09.9	and we've also won a Signal Award in the paranormal category.
0:14.3	And that's only happened because of you, our fellow strange people. Thanks.
0:19.2	Stick around if you want after the episode for a little bonus content and conversation.
0:26.4	If every feeble-minded woman should be faithfully segregated for 20 years, at least 50% of the
0:34.9	feeble-mindedness would disappear.
0:42.3	Feeble-mindedness is no less an evil than tuberculosis.
0:45.3	New York State say what? The feeble-minded girl of 15, 16, or 17 years is, in body, a woman with the instincts and dangers of womanhood, but in mind she is a child.
1:00.1	No more responsible than her younger sister of six or eight years. She is innocent, gentle,
1:07.6	affectionate, confiding. She believes everything that is said to her.
1:12.8	If any man tells her that she is the prettiest girl in town, she believes him.
1:19.2	What?
1:20.7	What are you talking about?
1:23.1	She then becomes a source of corruption and disease to scores of young men, and she bears children one after the other who inherit her infirmities and entails similar afflictions.
1:37.3	Feeble-minded, source of corruption.
1:41.3	What?
1:42.3	She is an incorrigible, a repeater, an enemy to society.
1:48.0	She is cast out and despised by reputable women.
1:56.3	They make out a small beam of light against the mirror.
2:16.2	One. Zero. Run, weird, stuff.
2:26.0	There was an unusual, even a little bit strange question on the 1840 United States census.
	...

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