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Looking Out from the Asylum: Deathbeds, Distribution, and Diversity

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Child Insanity in England, 1845-1907

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood ((PSHC))

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Abstract

The ‘mixed economy of care’ for children with mental impairments is the focus in Chap. 4. The chapter considers the role and purpose of the asylum for this particularly vulnerable patient population. It examines institutional relationships, particularly in urban areas to demonstrate that a range of outcomes were available to children. Additionally it explores intra-regional relationships between Poor Law Unions and asylums to identify the varying attitudes that occurred at local levels.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    L. Smith, ‘The County Asylum in the Mixed Economy of Care, 1808–1845,’ in J. Melling and B. Forsythe (eds.), Insanity, Institutions, and Society, 1800–1914: A Social History of Madness in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 33–47.

  2. 2.

    C. Smith, ‘Parsimony, Power, and Prescriptive Legislation: The Politics of Pauper Lunacy in Northamptonshire, 1845–1876,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 81/2 (2007), pp. 359–385, p. 366; P. Bartlett and D. Wright (eds.), Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community (London: Athone, 1999).

  3. 3.

    L. Smith, ‘“A Sad Spectacle of Hopeless Mental Degradation”: The Management of the Insane in West Midlands Workhouses, 1815–60,’ in J. Reinarz and L. Schwarz (eds.), Medicine and the Workhouse (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), pp. 103–122; P. Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy: The Administration of Pauper Lunatics in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (London: University of Leicester Press, 1999); P. Bartlett, ‘The Asylum and the Poor Law: The Productive Alliance,’ in J. Melling and B. Forsythe (eds.), Insanity, Institutions and Society, pp. 48–67; P. Bartlett, ‘The Asylum, the Workhouse, and the Voice of the Insane Poor in Nineteenth-Century-England,’ International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 24/4 (1998), pp. 421–432; J.K. Walton, ‘Casting Out and Bringing Back in Victorian England: Pauper Lunatics 1840–1870,’ The Anatomy of Madness, vol. 2, pp. 132–146; C. Smith, ‘Family, Community and the Victorian Asylum: A Case Study of Northampton General Lunatic Asylum and its Pauper Lunatics,’ Family and Community History, 9/2 (2006), pp. 109–124, suggested that asylums were used strategically by families at times. Mark Finnane, ‘Asylums, Families and the State,’ History Workshop Journal, 20 (1985), pp. 134–148.

  4. 4.

    A. Scull, Museums of Madness: Madness and Society in Britain 1700–1900 (London: Allen Lane, 1979); Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain 1700–1900 (London: Yale University Press, 1993); D. Mellet, The Prerogative of Asylumdom: Social, Cultural and Administrative Aspects of the Institutional Treatment of the Insane in Nineteenth Century Britain (London: Garland, 1982); C. Smith, ‘Family, Community and the Victorian Asylum’; C. Smith, “Living with Insanity: Narratives of Poverty, Pauperism and Sickness in Asylum records 1840–76,’ in A. Gestrich, E. Hurren, and S. King (eds.), Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe: Narratives of the Sick Poor, 1780–1938 (London: Continuum, 2012), pp. 117–142.

  5. 5.

    BCA, All Saints Asylum, Male Casebook 4, MS344/12/4, George Clift, p. 62.

  6. 6.

    LMA, Friern Hospital (Colney Hatch), Female Casebook 3, H12/CH/B/11/003a, Susan Squires.

  7. 7.

    LMA, Friern Hospital (Colney Hatch), Male Casebook 33, H12/CH/B/13/033, John Feltham, p. 140.

  8. 8.

    LMA, Friern Hospital (Colney Hatch), Male Casebook 49, H12/CH/B/13/049, Thomas Walker, p. 134.

  9. 9.

    For example some northern industrial poor law unions had lunatic wards that could hold over 100 patients, see F. Driver, Power and Pauperism: The Workhouse System, 1834–1884 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 160–161.

  10. 10.

    LMA, Friern Hospital (Colney Hatch), Male Casebook 18, H12/CH/B/13/018, Alfred Morran, Admission no. 4952.

  11. 11.

    LMA, Friern Hospital (Colney Hatch), Male Casebook 44, H12/CH/B/13/044, Alfred Sowter, Admission no. 12634.

  12. 12.

    BCA, All Saints Asylum, Female Casebook, MS344/12/42, Maria Butler, p. 62.

  13. 13.

    LRO, Prestwich, Male Casebook 1, QAM6/6/1, Edward Ridings, Admission no. 68.

  14. 14.

    BLA, Three Counties, Male Casebook 2, LF31/2, John Beale, Admission no. 1292, p. 1.

  15. 15.

    BLA, Three Counties, Male Casebook 2, LF31/2, Edwin Seabrook, Admission no. 1380, pp. 43–45; BLA, Three Counties, Male Casebook 2, LF31/2, John Prutton, Admission no. 1554, p. 120; BLA, Three Counties, Male Casebook 2, LF31/2, Alfred Lester, Admission no. 1654, p. 168; BLA, Three Counties, Male Casebook 3, LF31/3, Henry Aylett, Admission no. 2384, p. 125 and p. 319; BLA, Three Counties, Female Casebook 12, LF29/12, Ada Harding, Admission no. 6577, p. 39.

  16. 16.

    NRO, St Crispin Collection, Male Casebook 3, NCLA/6/2/2/3, Charles York, Admission no. 1196, pp. 147–149; NRO, St Crispin Collection, Male Casebook 4, NCLA/6/2/2/4, Joseph Harris, Admission no. 1550, p. 39; NRO, St Crispin Collection, Female Casebook 5, NCLA/6/2/1/, Lucy Jones, Admission no. 2242, p. 175; NRO, St Crispin Collection, Female Casebook 6, NCLA/6/2/1/6, Elizabeth Robinson, Admission no. 2696, p. 74.

  17. 17.

    BLA, Three Counties, Female Casebook 2, LF29/2, Priscilla Elliot, Admission no. 1413, p. 60.

  18. 18.

    D. Wright, ‘Learning Disability and the New Poor Law in England, 1834–1867,’ Disability and Society, 15/5 (2000), pp. 731–745, p. 741.

  19. 19.

    A. Tomkins, ‘Paupers and the Infirmary in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Shrewsbury,’ Medical History, 43/2 (1999), pp. 208–227.

  20. 20.

    LRO, Prestwich, Male Casebook 33, QAM6/6/33, Joseph Smith, Admission no. 7655.

  21. 21.

    BCA, All Saints Asylum, Male Casebook 5, MS344/12/5, William Binton, p. 78.

  22. 22.

    LRO, Prestwich, Male Casebook 18, QAM6/6/18, Frederick Bowcock, Admission no. 4394.

  23. 23.

    LMA, Friern Hospital (Colney Hatch), Male Casebook 1, H12/CH/B/13/001, James Gray, Admission no. 426.

  24. 24.

    LMA, Friern Hospital (Colney Hatch), Female Casebook 1a, H12/CH/B/11/001a, Mary Ann Beard, Admission no. 876.

  25. 25.

    Bartlett, ‘The Productive Alliance’; Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy; Forsythe, Melling, and Adair, ‘The New Poor Law and the County Pauper Lunatic Asylum—The Devon Experience 1834–1884,’ Social History of Medicine, 9/3 (1996), pp. 335–355; Wright, ‘Learning Disability’; Adair, Forsythe, and Melling, ‘A Danger to the Public? Disposing of Pauper Lunatics in Late Victorian and Edwardian England: Plympton St. Mary Union and the Devon County Asylum, 1867–1914,’ Medical History, 42/1 (1998), pp. 1–25.

  26. 26.

    Wright, Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum, 1847–1901 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), p. 17.

  27. 27.

    GMCRO, Proceedings of the Lancashire Asylums Board and Arrival Reports of County Asylums, A/Pres/Box 647 1894–1912.

  28. 28.

    Lancashire Asylums Board, A/Pres/Box 647 1894–1912.

  29. 29.

    GMCRO, Lancashire Asylums Board, A/Pres/Box 647, p. 67.

  30. 30.

    NRO, St Crispin Collection, Accounts Book, NCLA/2/18/2/1, Out of Counties 1 pp. 820–828.

  31. 31.

    GMCRO, Proceedings of the Lancashire Asylums Board, A/Pres/Box 647, 28 November 1895, p. 16.

  32. 32.

    K. Jones, A History of the Mental Health Services (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 161; Scull, Most Solitary, p. 308.

  33. 33.

    L. Ray, ‘Models of Madness in Victorian Asylum Practice,’ European Journal of Sociology, 22 (1981), pp. 229–264, pp. 252–253; Rob Ellis, ‘Reassessment of the Four-Shilling Grant’.

  34. 34.

    Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1907, included in the proceedings of Lancashire Asylums Board, A/Pres/Box647, 1907.

  35. 35.

    Proceedings of the Lancashire Asylums Board, A/Pres/Box647, 1907.

  36. 36.

    Proceedings of the Lancashire Asylums Board, A/Pres/Box 647, 28 February 1895, p. 5.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., pp. 5–6.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 29 August 1895, p. 6.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 19 July 1898, p. 61.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 28 November 1896, p. 8.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., 26 August 1897, p. 63.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 1895, 29 August 1895, p. 7.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 1895, p. 6.

  44. 44.

    The Manchester Guardian, ‘Chorlton Board of Guardians,’ 29 February 1868, p. 5.

  45. 45.

    BCA, Birmingham Union Infirmary Sub-Committee, GP/B/2/4/1/1, 28 July 1882.

  46. 46.

    BCA, All Saints Asylum, Index male 12/4, William Stanley, Admission no. 5219.

  47. 47.

    BCA, Infirmary Sub-Committee, GP/B/2/4/1/1, 27 October 1882.

  48. 48.

    BCA, Infirmary Sub-Committee, GP/B/2/4/1/2, 4 il 1884.

  49. 49.

    J. Walton, ‘Lunacy in the Industrial Revolution: A Study of Asylum Admissions in Lancashire, 1848–1850,’ Journal of Social History, 13/1 (1979–1980), pp. 1–22, p. 4.

  50. 50.

    BCA, Infirmary Sub-Committee, GP/B/2/4/1/2, 28 November 1884.

  51. 51.

    BCA, Infirmary Sub-Committee, GP/B/2/4/1/2, 20 January 1903.

  52. 52.

    C. Smith, ‘Living with Insanity’.

  53. 53.

    Melling et al., ‘The New Poor Law,’ p. 340.

  54. 54.

    BCA, Infirmary Sub-Committee, GP/B/2/4/1/4, 6 June 1888.

  55. 55.

    Ibid.

  56. 56.

    BCA, Birmingham Education Committee Special Schools Committee of the School Board Minutes 10 February 1898–17 March 1903, SB/B11/1/1/1, 10 February 1898, pp. 1–2.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., 14 March 1899, p. 46.

  58. 58.

    Ibid.

  59. 59.

    E.D. Myers, ‘Workhouse or Asylum: The Nineteenth Century Battle for the Care of the Pauper Insane,’ Psychiatric Bulletin, 22/9 (1998), pp. 575–577; C. Smith, ‘Parsimony, Power, and Prescriptive Legislation’; N. Hervey, ‘A Slavish Bowing Down: The Lunacy Commission and the Psychiatric Profession,’ in Bynum et al., Anatomy of Madness, vol. 2, pp. 98–131.

  60. 60.

    A. Scull, Most Solitary of Afflictions; R. Porter, Mind Forg’d Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to Regency (London: Athlone, 1987), p. 287.

  61. 61.

    B. Forsythe, J. Melling, and R. Adair, ‘Politics of Lunacy: Central State Regulation and the Devon Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1845–1914,’ in Melling and Forsythe (eds.), Insanity, Institutions; Pamela Michael, Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill in North Wales, 1800–2000 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003); A. Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); R. Hunter and I. MacAlpine, Psychiatry for the Poor:1851 Colney Hatch Asylum—Friern Hospital 1973: A Medical and Social History (London: Dawsons 1974); Bartlett and Wright (eds.), Outside the Walls of the Asylum; P. Bartlett, ‘The Productive Alliance’.

  62. 62.

    Melling et al., ‘The New Poor Law’; Bartlett, Poor Law of Lunacy; A. Suzuki, ‘The Politics and Ideology of Non-Restraint: The Case of Hanwell Asylum,’ Medical History, 39/1 (1995), pp. 1–17; Wright ‘Learning Disability’; E. Miller, ‘Variations in the Official Prevalence and Disposal of the Insane in England under the Poor Law, 1850–1900,’ History of Psychiatry, 18/1 (2007), pp. 25–38.

  63. 63.

    S. King, Poverty and Welfare in England 1700–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

  64. 64.

    Ibid.

  65. 65.

    Melling, ‘New Poor Law’; C. Smith, ‘Parsimony, Power and Prescriptive Legislation’.

  66. 66.

    Hurren, Protesting About Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870–1900 (London: Boydell & Brewer, 2008), p. 82.

  67. 67.

    Ibid., pp. 82–84.

  68. 68.

    Ibid., p. 83.

  69. 69.

    Cathy Smith, ‘Parsimony, Power, and Prescriptive Legislation,’ p. 361.

  70. 70.

    NRO, Daventry Lunatic Register, PL3/306, 1896–1901; Daventry Guardians Minutes, PL3/13-19, 1874–1894.

  71. 71.

    Hurren, Protesting.

  72. 72.

    NRO, Brixworth Union, Register of Lunatics, PL2/203

  73. 73.

    NRO, Peterborough Guardian Minutes, PL8/19-23, 1874–1889.

  74. 74.

    Ellis, ‘Reassessment of the 4s. Grant’.

  75. 75.

    Miller, ‘Variations in the Official Prevalence and Disposal of the Insane,’ p. 32; Ellis ibid.

  76. 76.

    Scull, Museums; The Most Solitary of Afflictions.

  77. 77.

    Wright, ‘Learning Disability and the Poor Law’.

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    Steven J. Taylor

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Taylor, S.J. (2017). Looking Out from the Asylum: Deathbeds, Distribution, and Diversity. In: Child Insanity in England, 1845-1907. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-60027-1_4

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