A method to keep the demented from getting too agitated was to put them in cages that allowed little to no movement during the nineteenth century.
Treatment of the Mentally Ill Before Dorothea
Before the 1850s, few people knew the causes of mental illnesses, even less how to treat them. It was even widely believed that evil spirits caused the illnesses, or that God punished sinners by making them mentally ill. Even so, there was beginning to be a support for establishing institutions designed to care for the ill, but very few of these institutions actually existed in the United States in the early 1800s.
Oftentimes, the people suffering from mental illnesses were kept in prisons and poorhouses, in which they were treated terribly. Prisons were unregulated and unhygienic, and the mentally ill resided amongst violent criminals, which was dangerous to both parties. Moreover, the jailers responsible for the inmates would beat, whip, and chain them, as well as physically and sexually abuse them. They were left naked with no heat or sanitation. Sometimes, public officials traded mentally ill people for money, and gave them to the local residents whom fed and housed them.
As Dorothea went on her tours to prisons and poorhouses to find these existing conditions, her aspirations for improving the conditions for the mentally ill only intensified.