Several of the 17 scenes were shockers.
They showed "lunatics" lying half-naked in filthy pens, or fighting like starved wolverines when a heartless jailer tossed them a moldy crust. Some inmates were in chains; some were being beaten. More astonishing than the play were the players : housewives and secretaries suffering from involutional melancholia or agitated schizophrenia, mechanics or plumbers in manic-depressive states. Among them, confined by court order, were conmen, kleptomaniacs, counterfeiters, and even some who had committed homicide.
The two-hour pageant, Cry of Humanity, was written and produced by inmates of the District of Columbia's St. Elizabeths Hospital*; to mark the...
