greystone park psychiatric hospital

Pranks of escaped insane

Six Leave Asylum and Fight Yalu Battle with Keepers

June 22, 1904 - New York Times

 

Morristown, N.J., June 21- The battle of the Yalu was fought over in miniature again on the banks of the Speedwell River this morning, when hald a dozen inmates of the insane asylum at Morris Plains escaped and intrenched themselves on the north bank, defying the hospital authorities for several hours.

Most of the patients are Russian in their sympathies, and one body of six of these men managed to get away from their keeper. Running in the direction of the river, they shouted out that they were Russians retreating for the purpose of luring the Japanese on, but that very soon they would act on the aggressive instead of the defensive.

Reaching the river they splashed across and, going up on the other side, formed a fort with logs and sticks and hurled rocks and stones at the hospital attendants who came to arrest them. Some of the hospital attendants tried flanking operations, but were routed with heavy loss, and the six men held their ground gleefully. Thirty attendants were in the attacking party, but they did not dare make a direct assault on the insurgent’s works because they feared broken heads or worse as the result.

For three hours the battle raged. At last Mahion Clarke, one of the Secretaries of the institution, made a megaphone of his hands, and, running up to the white flag, shouted “We have 200 pieces of heavy artiliary on the hills back of us. If you don’t surrender we will wope you off the map.”

That tickled the defenders of the fort immensely, and after a meeting on neutral ground they surrendered.

 

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