Crazy "Carlin"

Last week sleepy-eyed Allen Bernard, crack reporter on the New York Journal and American, escaped from New York's model Rockland State Hospital for the Insane. Sixteen days before, he had signed a voluntary admission slip as "Allen Carlin," had begun a 30-day incarceration. But Reporter Bernard was not suffering from a breakdown nor looking for an eccentric vacation. He was on a job: to investigate asylum conditions for an expose of New York's politically controlled lunacy commission system. Sharp City Editor Amster Spiro had given him the assignment because Reporter Bernard had done some good sleuthing for the Journal before. But what was only a stunt for Editor Spiro turned out to be near-disaster for Reporter Bernard; last week he had to go to a private sanatorium to recover from his ordeal. Rested and relaxed, he will begin his ghastly story in the Journal and American next week.

When Allen Bernard, alias "Carlin." arrived at Rockland, he introduced a friend he had brought with him as his sister, and faked a serious mental depression. "Doctor," his helpful "sister" pleaded, "Allen has tried to take his own life and I think he ought to be treated here for a while." Half an hour later, greatly to his surprise, he was bedded in a ward full of madmen.

At the end of two days, Patient Carlin had spent 31-c- (all the money he had) for newspapers, had taken to playing checkers with fellow inmates, had dropped his depressed air. "But the more natural I acted," he said, "the wackier they thought I was." At the end of ten days, Patient Carlin was losing sleep, losing his appetite for the drab, saltless food, and began to realize that his surroundings were having no good effect on him. As a voluntary patient he petitioned for release, saying he felt much better. Rockland's officials told him that he was an incipient dementia praecox victim, warned him to withdraw his petition, threatened to have his sister sign a three-month commitment. Thoroughly alarmed, Patient Carlin loudly demanded his freedom. After three anxious days, his "sister" arrived and he was able to warn her against signing the commitment which the doctors urgently advised. After two more endless days--up at 5:30 a. m., back to a sleepless cot at 8 p. m., locked away from all telephones --his "sister" came back with a Park Avenue neurologist who succeeded in getting Bernard out by agreeing to take him to a private sanatorium. En route, the shaken "patient" admitted his identity to the rescuing doctor.

"Why didn't you tell them you were a reporter and save yourself, your family and your paper all this anxiety?" the amazed doctor asked. Said Hearst Reporter Bernard, no less amazed: "Why, that would have spoiled the whole story!"

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