Creating Caterham

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the developments leading up to the workhouse and Poor Law reforms of the 1860s, the passing of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 and the founding of the first state imbecile built in England, Caterham. It is concerned with the debates aimed at the management and accommodation of the insane, curable and incurable and how sanitary reforms led to the reorganisation of the Victorian mixed economy of welfare. It considers the ways in which different interest groups, namely the Commissioners in Lunacy and Workhouse Reformers, understood idiocy and imbecility, and how these shaped the remit of the Metropolitan Asylum Board, the authority responsible for the building and administration of Caterham Imbecile Asylum. It explores the design and geography of the asylum, arguing that ideas around sanitary order shaped the both the arrangement and remit of Caterham, to counter the unsanitary disorder of the wider mixed economy of welfare on the idiot and imbecile body.