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The Second Great Awakening and the Treatment of Prisoners and Handicapped.

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The Second Great Awakening and the Treatment of Prisoners and Handicapped.

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The main belief of the Second Great Awakening was that the churches were the agent for change. Many took the belief in a utopian society where pain and torture were not the answer. These new ideas spread throughout American society and inspired many of the time when they witnessed the treatment of prisoners and the handicapped. Such people included Dorothea Dix and Thomas Gallaudet. People such as Dorothy Dix, visited prisons and witnessed the abuse (brutally punishing of mentally insane prisoners) and the imprisonment of both children and adults in the same prison. People such as Thomas Gallaudet were inspired and in some cases appalled by the treatment of the handicapped especially of the treatment of the mentally ill in prisons. These people led to reforms such as the separation of children and adults in prison, creating new prisons for the mentally ill criminals, changing the way that prisoners were treated. These activists stood in front of the government, even foreign governments (Dorothy Dix in Britain) and pushed for these changes, where others took matters into their own hands and created new prisons and psychiatric hospitals for the mental ill.

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During the Temperance Movement against the sale and consumption of alcohol inspired by the ethical and religious beliefs brought upon by the Second Great Awakening, the state of Maine, which had their own alcohol issues, took action and passed laws that banned the sale and consumption of alcohol in 1851. Maine became the first state to pass this law and twelve other states followed suit. These laws were referred to as the Maine Laws around the country.

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Thomas Gallaudet - Treatment of the Prisoners and Handicapped

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Thomas Gallaudet - Treatment of the Prisoners and Handicapped

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Thomas Gaullaudet was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the deaf to help the handicapped. He founded the first education for the deaf in North America and wrote many books supporting to spread awareness. He helped found the base for the treatment of how the handicapped, like the deaf, should be treated.

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National Association of the Deaf Bust ASL Myths

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Dorothea Dix on Treatment of Prisoners and Handicapped

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Dorothea Dix on Treatment of Prisoners and Handicapped

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Dorothea Dix went to a prison one day to teach Sunday School and was horrified. She witnessed all these nasty treatments and talked against it to try to change their ways. She went around to multiple prisons to make sure that the prisoners were treated bad everywhere like the one she witnessed in Boston. She got people to create private asylums and improve the treatments of prisoners especially the handicapped.

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One day in 1841, a Boston woman named Dorothea Dix agreed to teach Sunday school at a jail. What she witnessed that day changed her life forever. She was horrified to see that many inmates were bound...

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Causes of the Treatment of Prisoners and Handicapped

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Causes of the Treatment of Prisoners and Handicapped

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The Treatment of Prisoners was an aftermath of the Second Great Awakening. They were very strict on crimes committed. The big crimes were jailed with the small crimes and the adult criminals were jailed withe the child criminals. They were beaten daily like African American slaves.

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Eastern State Penitentiary

Eastern State Penitentiary was designed to intimidate prisoners by its appearance. Today a historical society runs tours of the prison, as well as a haunted house around Halloween.

The pretty woman who stood before the all-male audience seemed unlikely to provoke controversy. Tiny and timid, she rose to the platform of the Massachusetts Legislature to speak. Those who had underestimated the determination and dedication of Dorothea Dix, however, were brought to attention when they heard her say that the sick and insane were "confined in this Commonwealth in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, beaten with rods, lashed into obedience." Thus, her crusade for humane hospitals for the insane, which she began in 1841, was reaching a climax. After touring prisons, workhouses, almshouses, and private homes to gather evidence of appalling abuses, she made her case for state-supported care. Ultimately, she not only helped establish five hospitals in America, but also went to Europe where she successfully pleaded for human rights to Queen Victoria and the Pope.

Dorothea Dix, a tireless crusader for the treatment of the mentally ill, was made the Superintendent of Nurses for the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, she retired to an apartment in the first hospital that she had founded, in Trenton, New Jersey.

The year 1841 also marked the beginning of the superintendence of Dr. John Galt at Eastern Lunatic Asylum, in Williamsburg, Virginia, the first publicly supported psychiatric hospital in America. Warehousing of the sick was primary; their care was not. Dr. Galt had many revolutionary ideas about treating the insane, based on his conviction that they had dignity. Among his enlightened approaches were the use of drugs, the introduction of "talk therapy" and advocating outplacement rather than lifelong stays.

In addition to the problems in asylums, prisons were filled to overflowing with everyone who gave offense to society from committing murder to spitting on the street. Men, women, children were thrown together in the most atrocious conditions. Something needed to be done - but what?

Until the 19th century, juveniles offenders were passed into the custody of their parents. During the time of prison and asylum reform, juvenile detention centers like the House of Refuge in New York were built to reform children of delinquent behavior.

After the War of 1812, reformers from Boston and New York began a crusade to remove children from jails into juvenile detention centers. But the larger controversy continued over the purpose of prison - was it for punishment or penitence? In 1821, a disaster occurred in Auburn Prison that shocked even the governor into pardoning hardened criminals. After being locked down in solitary, many of the eighty men committed suicide or had mental breakdowns. Auburn reverted to a strict disciplinary approach. The champion of discipline and first national figure in prison reform was Louis Dwight. founder of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, he spread the Auburn system throughout America's jails and added salvation and Sabbath School to further penitence.

After several bad starts, America finally enjoyed about a decade of real reform. Idealism, plus hope in the perfectibility of institutions, spurred a new generation of leaders including Francis Lieber, Samuel Gridley Howe and the peerless Dix. Their goals were prison libraries, basic literacy (for Bible reading), reduction of whipping and beating, commutation of sentences, and separation of women, children and the sick.

By 1835, America was considered to have two of the "best" prisons in the world in Pennsylvania. Astonishingly, reformers from Europe looked to the new nation as a model for building, utilizing and improving their own systems. Advocates for prisoners believed that deviants could change and that a prison stay could have a positive effect. It was a revolutionary idea in the beginning of the 19th century that society rather than individuals had the responsibility for criminal activity and had the duty to treat neglected children and rehabilitate alcoholics.

In reality it became clear that, despite intervention by outsiders, prisoners were often no better off, and often worse off, for their incarceration. Yet, in keeping with the optimistic spirit of the era, these early reformers had only begun a crusade to alleviate human suffering that continues today.

Medicating the mentally ill is nothing new - Benjamin Hornor Coates, M.D. was working wonders with narcotics way back in 1752.
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Listen up to this radio broadcast about the story of Sing Sing, one of America's most notorious prisons which actually began during the time of reform.
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Prison and Asylum Reform [ushistory.org]

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Eastern State Penitentiary Eastern State Penitentiary was designed to intimidate prisoners by its appearance. Today a historical society runs tours of the prison, as well as a haunted house around Halloween. The pretty woman who stood before the all-male audience seemed unlikely to provoke controversy.

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Neal Dow, "the father of prohibition", sponsored the Main Law of 1851, prohibiting any sale or manufacturing of drinking alcohol in Maine, after witnessing abused children from their drunk parents and his drunken employees. This transformed Maine, protecting religions from the threats of alcohol, which was a reform during Second Great Awakening.

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MPBN editor Heidi Perkins first sets up the Maine Experience segment on Neal Dow, the former Portland mayor seen as this country's "father of prohibition" before describing the process of editing together this video segment of the program in collaboration with Executive Producer Chris Sweet.

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During the Second Great Awakening, reformers began to stress temperance, a moderation and self restraint, in an attempt to eliminate total intoxication. A drinking problem was widespread across the United States that particularly threatened  spiritual welfare. Because religious beliefs was a prime cause from the Second Great Awakening, the American Temperance Society was formed to have reformers join and pledge not to intake any alcohol. They used propaganda to spread the idea of temperance.