 Sunday
Gazetteer
Sunday, January 16, 1887 pg. 1 NOT INSANE About two months ago a Mrs. George Over, aged about 25 years, wife of a Denison brick mason, was tried before Judge Gregg in this city on a charge of being insane and upon the evidence of her husband and other found guilty as charged and sent to the branch State Asylum at Terrell. Last Sunday she returned to the city, having been discharged from the asylum with the assurance of the medical faculty of the institution that she was not and never had been crazy. The following relation of her case is what a Gazetteer representative has been able to learn from herself and others acquainted with facts. She had not been well for some time back and in addition to her physical indisposition she failed to live happily with her husband. She alleges that he ill-treated her and by so doing aggravated the difficulty from which she suffered. As previously intimated, about two months ago her husband laid complaint in the Commissioner's Court that his wife was insane, and Judge Gregg was summoned to hold an inquest upon her with the result given above. She was torn from her children, not forcibly of course, but still taken from her home to Terrell. Here she was examined and pronounced (so she says) perfectly sane, but suffering from blood poisoning for which she was treated during her stay at the institution. The laws of the State respecting lunatics specifies that no one sent to the asylum shall, sane or insane, be turned away under six weeks, this time being thought necessary to the full understanding of the case. Mrs. Over was therefore kept the specified time and then discharged. She returned to Denison to find her children, three in number, scattered about among the neighbors and her house rented to strangers. Commissioner Tibbs, who had been called upon to furnish her with the necessary clothes in which to go to the asylum, is now kindly assisting her to get her furniture and children together and to put her in a position to earn a living. This woman was, from what we can learn, undoubtedly sane at the time of her incarceration in the Terrell asylum and the fact that she was put there is an outrage against all human feelings and calls for severe censure. Being sane it is a wonder that being torn from her little children and being locked up in a mad-house, did not have the effect of destroying her reason and making her what she was alleged to be. Commissioner Tibbs states that this is not an isolated case that frequently charges of insanity are prefered against people of perfect mental equilibrium just because they happen to be in some one's way, and this being the case some means should be devised to punish the workers of such malicious mischief. Susan Hawkins
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