In the late nineteenth century, psychiatry was gradually beginning to be recognized as a medical discipline in Europe and in the more progressive “insane asylums” in the eastern United States. Derisive terms such as crazy, maniac, insane, madman, and lunatic were in common use to describe and disparage the mentally ill, but they did not appear in Utah newspapers until 1868, when Joseph Sherman, said to be a boot-maker from Canada, had already been jailed for nearly a year in the basement of city hall.
Without offering any details, the Deseret News reported that Sherman had been “arrested as a maniac” in June of 1867 and simply held in jail. When he was brought before Judge Thomas J. Drake on April 14, 1868, Sherman refused to answer any questions, called the judge “a d____d old humbug,” and then tried to escape. Captured and brought back, he...
