Jane Swank
As an addendum to the infirmary article of last week, the history of Miss Jane Swank -- an inmate of the institution -- may be given on account of the sad story of her life and the peculiar interest her case presents to the medical fraternity. In the southern part of Jefferson Township, a locality noted for the diversified beauties of its landscapes for the fertility of its soil and for the intelligence and high standing of its people, Jennie Swank passed her childhood and her youth at the family homestead with her parents. She was a lovely girl, beloved by her schoolmates and acquaintances. She is of medium height, a brunette, nut not of that pronounced type for which men cross swords and die. When Jennie was yet in her teens a young man from the Keystone state with whose relatives the Swanks were acquainted, visited in that locality, and, meeting the winsome Jennie, eye spake to eye and soul to soul, and they then realized the saying of the post that "There's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream." Their betrothal followed and soon afterward the young man returned to his home in the east, promising to return and make Jennie his wife. 'Tis useless to dwell upon or try to depict their parting. Lovers separated before, have since and the vicissitudes of life will part others, also; and such parties are, no doub, somewhat similar with too much sameness in their stage settings to admit of narration here. Weeks passed and lengthened into months, but no message came from the absent lover to the trusting maiden. The expected letter was looked for in vain! What did it mean? Had he won her love and asked for her hand but to cast them aside? No, she could not believe that and in confidence she continued to watch and to wait. She went about her household duties, in a mechanical way, while the future seemed to her young and over-burdened heart like a leaden sky to the wave-tossed mariner, as fraught with omens of ill. Jennie had reached that state in her anxious expectations and of hopes unrealized when a woman of a less trustful nature and of different mental endowments would have turned from the avenues of disappointment and gone forth in the world to seek a "career", when she had failed to get a husband and a home. But such thoughts did not occur to this poor girl and such a course was not possible to her. The realm of letteras [sic.], the field of the arts she knew not of, save as she had read of them in her schoolbooks, and if thoughts and vision of a "career" or the "new woman" came to her at all, they were in a dim, indefinite form, pointing only to a path that was too remote and inaccessible for her to reach or tread. She had given the true love of her pure, young heart to the man who had asked her to become his wife and whom she could not believe was untrue to her. There may have been a difference in their stations in life, but love works mysteriously and by the alkahest of its subtle chemistry melts all distinctions in a common crucible. And as Jennie would look upon the betrothal ring her lover had placed upon her finger as they walked side by side in the fields where the cows grazed and the apples ripened, she doubted him not. At last, after months of watchful expectation, she was informed that her father had intercepted her letters. if she had not courage, her innocence and simplicity stood her in its place and she confronted her father and accused him of his duplicity and baseness. An angry scene followed, she announcing that she would go at once to the man to whom she was betrothed and her father declaring she could not. The father had carried his opposition to the daughter's marriage beyond the limit of her forbearance, beyond the wide margin of her endurance, and a look of determination and of icy contempt came over her soft features as she braved the parental authority, and the father permitting his anger to get the better of his judgment and his love, punished his child severely, whipping her unmercifully, it was said. What cause the father had for his opposition to the young man to whom his daughter was engaged is not known, more than that, it is stated, "he hated him" and we hate - as we do everything else - according to our nature. The defects of temperament, and infirmity of temper, the clouded judgment, the unreasonable prejudice extended to our likes and dislikes unconsciously. The punishment inflected upon the daughter by her angry father threw her into convulsions and insanity and loss of speech followed. The writer will not here attempt to give a dissertation upon the case, either pathologically, physiologically, or psychologically, but shall leave the discussion of the same to the learned profession to which it belongs, and to which it presents an interesting study. A blow on the head might have caused insanity from a fracture of the skull, but such is not in evidence. Perhaps the constant over-stimulation of the neuralgia of the brain, resulting from her long-continued expectancy and the confusion in her inability to comprehend the cause of her lover's silence, keeping the delicate brain tissue in an unnatural state of nutrition, added to the severe punishment administered, not only the physical inflection, but social degradation, and the effect it would have upon this nervous tissue for so long a time in a state of super-excitement, the strain could no longer be borne, setting up the fires of inflammation, which have continued to burn slowly for over 20 years, dethroning reason and depriving her life of its mental and spiritual joys. And for all these long years she has been confined first in the infirmary, then in the asylum, from which she was returned as incurable and for a number of those years she was confined in a maniac's cell, but is now given considerable liberty and assists at work in the kitchen department. But in all these years "her tong has been tied" in silence. She is now about 38 years of age and over half of her life has been passed in eleemosynary institutions. She has grown somewhat stout, but her face shows evidence of the beauty of her youth. Her betrothal ring she wore for many years, but it was finally lost and now she wears one she made of wire to take its place. In the past she would hold her white hand so that visitors could see the band of gold that encircled her finger, as they looked at her through the iron bars of her prison cell. No trial through which Jennie has passed has shaken her faith and trust, or displaced her lover from the shrine whereon she had placed him and where in her heart methinks, she worships him still, but no realization of the dreams of her youth can ever be fulfilled. A short time after Mr. Swank had inflicted the punishment upon his daughter he came to his death in a tragic way. While at work in the woods, felling a tree it careened upon the stump, struck him, causing death. But what of the lover the reader may ask. If this were a romance instead of a plain, true tale, the writer might attempt to evolve a romantic story, telling how this whilom lover has remained faithful and true to her who even in her insanity loves him still. But to be truthful, we know naught of him. He, no doubt, looks back in that unfortunate engagement as an episode of his boyish fancy, for the most of us know that the infatuations of youth are dispelled as the years of our age advance and that love, such as young hearts imagine and poets paint, is but a myth. -- A.J. Baughman.
From The Mansfield Semi-Weekly News, October 26, 1897