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The Politics of Administration

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London and its Asylums, 1888-1914

Part of the book series: Mental Health in Historical Perspective ((MHHP))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the changes to the management of asylums that followed the passing of the 1888 Local Government Act. While there have been some historiographical considerations of the continuities and discontinuities in terms of personnel, it shifts the focus to consider the impact of municipal politics on the direction of Asylums’ policy and practice. It emphasizes the scale of the new County Council operation and places London at the heart of a national and international movement of goods and people. With explorations of material culture, the impact on patients, and the challenges to political rhetoric from key stakeholders including the Commissioners in Lunacy, it clearly identifies the importance of asylums to political discourses and debates.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Webb, Sidney. 1895. The Work of the London County Council. London: The London Reform Union, 1895: 5.

  2. 2.

    Bewley, Thomas. 2008. Madness to Mental Illness a History of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Trowbridge: Cromwell Press: 45.

  3. 3.

    Ibid.

  4. 4.

    Suzuki, The Politics and Ideology of Non-restraint: 2, 17. Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: 247.

  5. 5.

    Hide, Gender and Class: 4, 46–7.

  6. 6.

    Davies, The Progressive Council, 1889–1907: 31.

  7. 7.

    Thomson, Social Policy and the Management of the Problem of Mental Deficiency: 137.

  8. 8.

    Melling and Bill Forsythe, The Politics of Madness: 42–3. Melling et al. Politics of Lunacy: 80–82.

  9. 9.

    Hayes, Lancashire Public Asylum Provision: 91.

  10. 10.

    Davies, Local Government 1850–1920: 52.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    Stoddart, Jane T. 1900. The Earl of Rosebery K.G.: An Illustrated Biography. London: Hodders and Stoughton: 94–5.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    Schneer, London 1900. The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven: Yale University Press: 225–6.

  15. 15.

    Walkowitz, Judith R. 1992. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London. London: Virago: 25.

  16. 16.

    John Morley, cited in Walkowitz, Judith R.: 25.

  17. 17.

    Inwood, Stephen. 2000. A History of London. London: Macmillan: 440.

  18. 18.

    LMA, LCC 18.6, London County Council, Minutes of Proceedings, January–December 1889, 26 February 1889.

  19. 19.

    Hayes, Lancashire Public Asylum Provision: 84. British Library [Hereafter BL] Municipal Journal, 13 January 1912: 39.

  20. 20.

    Local Government Act, 51 and 52, Vict., c.41, s.3.6.

  21. 21.

    LMA, LCC 18.6, London County Council, Minutes of Proceedings, January–December 1889, 26 February 1889.

  22. 22.

    LMA, LCC/CL/PH/01/276, Miscellaneous Printed Papers, Report of Sub-Committee appointed by Provisional Asylums Committee, 19 June 1889.

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Jackson, Achievement: A Short History of the LCC: 5. Melling, J., Forsythe, B. and Adair, R. 1999. Politics of Lunacy: Central State Regulation and the Devon Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1845–1914. In Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800–1914, eds. J. Melling and B. Forsythe, 68–87. Abingdon: Routledge: 80. Cherry, Steve. 2013. Mental Health Care in Modern England: The Norfolk Lunatic Asylum/St Andrews Hospital, 1810–1998. Woodbridge: Boydell: 112.

  25. 25.

    Melling et al., Politics of Lunacy: 80. See also Melling and Forsythe, The Politics of Madness: 55.

  26. 26.

    Keith-Lucas, B. 1977. English Local Government in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: The Historical Association: 23.

  27. 27.

    Ibid.

  28. 28.

    Cherry, Mental Health Care in Modern England: 112.

  29. 29.

    Forty-Fourth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1890: 218. Available at https://parlipapers.proquest.com/parlipapers. Accessed 24 July 2019.

  30. 30.

    Hawkins, Rev Henry. 1901. Some Notes on the History of the Colney Hatch Asylum, 1849–1901. London: Potter, Batten and Davies: 9.

  31. 31.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The First Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1890. See also the individual reports of the Banstead, Cane Hill, Colney Hatch and Hanwell sub-committees in the same volume.

  32. 32.

    Forty-Third Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1889: 69.

  33. 33.

    Dunbabin, Expectations of the New County Councils, and Their Realization: 353. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: 268.

  34. 34.

    Brodie, M. 2008. Benn, Sir John Williams, first baronet. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/. Accessed 4 July 2019.

  35. 35.

    Brown, Kenneth D. 2004. Burns, John Elliott. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/. Accessed 4 July 2019.

  36. 36.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The First Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1890.

  37. 37.

    LMA, LCC/578, Signed Minutes, March 1912–October 1913: 19 March 1912.

  38. 38.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The First Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1890.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    Keene, H. F. 1907. Memorandum as to the Procedure with Regard to the Admission and Discharge of Patients. London: LCC.

  41. 41.

    Ellis, Rob. 2008. The Asylum, the Poor Law and the Growth of County Asylums in Nineteenth-Century Yorkshire. Northern History 45:2: 279–93.

  42. 42.

    Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: 141.

  43. 43.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/574, Signed Minutes, February 1907–February 1908, 10 December 1907.

  44. 44.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/575, Signed Minutes, March 1908–February 1909, 12 May 1908.

  45. 45.

    Anon.1895. Contracts for Provisions and Necessaries. London County Lunatic Asylums. The Times, 20 September.

  46. 46.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/574, Signed Minutes, February 1907–February 1908, 30 July 1907.

  47. 47.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/574, Signed Minutes, February 1907–February 1908, 30 July 1907, 8 October 1907.

  48. 48.

    Even within gendered categories, experiences could be very different. Hide, for example, suggests that there were differences in the ways that single, married and widowed women adjusted to life in the asylum, while Ellis has shown that participation in sporting activities was not open to all. See Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums and Ellis, Rob. 2013. Asylums and Sport: Participation, Isolation and the Role of Cricket in the Treatment of the Insane. International Journal of the History of Sport 30: 83–101.

  49. 49.

    Hamlett has shown how patients sometimes used institutional spaces and material culture for their own purposes, rather than for the purposes intended. Hamlett, At Home in the Institution.

  50. 50.

    Bibby, The Housing of Pauper Lunatics: xxxvi.

  51. 51.

    British Library, London, 23 August 1894, p. 72.

  52. 52.

    Bibby, George H. 1985. The Housing of Pauper Lunatics. London: Drake, Driver and Leaver Ltd.: xlv. British Library, London, 23 August 1894, p. 72.

  53. 53.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/575, Signed Minutes, March 1908–February 1909, 10 March 1908.

  54. 54.

    For a discussion of the asylum and its place in wider society see Mooney, Graham and Reinarz, Jonathan. 2009. Hospital and Asylum Visiting in Historical Perspective: Themes and Issues. In Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting, eds. G. Mooney and J. Reinarz, 7–30. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

  55. 55.

    Foucault, Michel. 2008. Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1973–1974. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 174.

  56. 56.

    LCC/MIN/569, Signed Minutes, 1899–1901, 16 October 1899. LCC/MIN/569, Signed Minutes, 1899–1901, 13 November 1900. See also LCC/MIN/569, Signed Minutes, 1899–1901, 10 July 1900. LCC/MIN/569, Signed Minutes, 1899–1901, 9 October 1900. LMA, LCC/MIN/570, Signed Minutes, 1901–1902, 17 December 1901. LCC/MIN/570, Signed Minutes, 1901–1902, 18 March 1902. LMA, LCC/MIN/572, Signed Minutes, June 1904–November 1905, 23 May 1905.

  57. 57.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/574, Signed Minutes, February 1907–February 1908, 26 March 1907.

  58. 58.

    LMA LCC/MIN/570, Signed Minutes, 1901–1902, 8 October 1901.

  59. 59.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The Second Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1891.

  60. 60.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The First Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1890. The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1902.

  61. 61.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The Report of the Cane Hill Sub-Committee, for the year ending 31 March 1890. The Report of the Colney Hatch Sub-Committee, for the year ending 31 March 1890.

  62. 62.

    Bartlett, Peter. 1999. The Poor Law of Lunacy: The Administration of Pauper Lunatics in Mid-nineteenth Century England. London: Leicester University Press: passim.

  63. 63.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The Fourth Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1893.

  64. 64.

    H12/CH/A3/2 The Eighth Annual Report of the Asylums Committee and Sub-Committees of Banstead, Cane Hill, Claybury, Colney Hatch, Hanwell, The Heath and Horton Asylums, 1897.

  65. 65.

    LMA, LCC 18.6 Minutes of Proceedings, London County Council, January–December 1889, Report of the Asylums Committee, 3 December 1889. LMA, LCC/MIN/572, Signed Minutes, June 1904–November 1905, 21 March 1905.

  66. 66.

    Doyle, Barry M. 2001. The Changing Functions of Urban Government: Councillors, Officials and Pressure Groups, 1835–1950. In The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 287–313, 296–7).

  67. 67.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/571, Signed Minutes, November 1902–May 1904, 14 May 1901.

  68. 68.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/572, Signed Minutes, June 1904–November 1905, 21 March 1905.

  69. 69.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/753. Minutes of Special Committees 1908–1914, 17 November 1908.

  70. 70.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/574, Signed Minutes, February 1907–February 1908, 8 October 1907.

  71. 71.

    Pennybacker, A Vision for London, 1889–1914: Chapter 1.

  72. 72.

    See, for example, BL, London County Council Staff Gazette (1901), Vol. II, No. 14: 2. London County Council Staff Gazette (1901), Vol. II, No. 16: 42.

  73. 73.

    BL, London County Council Staff Gazette (1913), Vol. XIV, No. 157: 3. BL, London County Council Staff Gazette (1913), Vol. XIV, No. 158: 40.

  74. 74.

    See, for example, BL, London County Council Staff Gazette (1902), Vol. III, No. 31: 83.

  75. 75.

    See, for example, BL, London County Council Staff Gazette (1913), Vol. XIV, No. 157.

  76. 76.

    See, for example, BL, London County Council Staff Gazette (1915), Vol. XVI, No. 182: 27. BL, LCC, Record of Service in the Great War 1914–18 by Members of the Council Staff, LCC, London, 1922, passim.

  77. 77.

    LCC/PH/MENT/5/3, Minutes of Meetings of Asylum Officers, 10 December 1900. LMA, LCC/PH/MENT/05/003, Minutes of Meetings of Asylum Officers, 1899–1915, 10 December 1900, 7 October 1903.

  78. 78.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/748, Pathologist Sub-Committee Minute Book, 1901–1908, 9 June 1904. LMA, LCC/MIN/748, Pathologist Sub-Committee Minute Book, 1901–1908, 5 April 1906.

  79. 79.

    LMA, LCC/26.21, Annual Reports for LCC Asylums Committee for 1889–1892, The Second Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1891.

  80. 80.

    Simmons, J. 1973. The Power of the Railway. In The Victorian City: Images and Realities, vol. 1, eds. H. J. Dyos and M. Wolff, 277–311. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul: 298.

  81. 81.

    LMA, LCC/18.6, London County Council Minutes of Proceedings, May–August 1900, 17 July 1900.

  82. 82.

    LMA, LCC/578, Signed Minutes, March 1912–October 1913, 26 November 1912.

  83. 83.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The Fourth Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1893.

  84. 84.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The Second Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1891.

  85. 85.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The Third Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1892.

  86. 86.

    LMA, LCC 18.6 Minutes of Proceedings, London County Council, January–December 1889, Report of the Asylums Committee, 3 December 1889.

  87. 87.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/574, Signed Minutes, February 1907–February 1908, 19 February 1907.

  88. 88.

    Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: 253.

  89. 89.

    Fox, George L. 1895. The London County Council and its Work. Yale Review May: 80–102: 83, 100, 101.

  90. 90.

    Anon. Three Years Good Work for the People: 19.

  91. 91.

    Ibid.: Preface.

  92. 92.

    Daily Chronicle, The Council and the Asylums: For Sick Minds and Bodies: 50.

  93. 93.

    Shpayer-Makov, Haia. 1987. The Reception of Peter Kropotkin in Britain, 1886–1917. Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 19: 3, 373–90, 375–6.

  94. 94.

    GL, PAM 3438, Progressive Leaflets, London County Council Election. 1907. Eighteen Year’s Good Progressive Work for the People. London: Progressive Election Committee.

  95. 95.

    GL, PAM 3438. 1907. Progressive Leaflets, London County Council Election. Eighteen Year’s Good Progressive Work for the People. London: Progressive Election Committee.

  96. 96.

    Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven: Yale University Press: 34.

  97. 97.

    BL 8139B22, c.1907. The Daily Mail and the Fight for London: A Handbook to the London County Council Election Giving both Sides: 12.

  98. 98.

    Bishopsgate Institute (Hereafter BI) 230/4, Baumann, Arthur A. c.1890. The London County Council, The Universal Review: 493–502: 493.

  99. 99.

    BI 230/4, Baumann, Arthur A. c.1890. The London County Council, The Universal Review: 493–502, 493.

  100. 100.

    LMA, LCC 18.6 Minutes of Proceedings, London County Council, July–December 1903, Report of the Asylums Committee, 27 October 1903.

  101. 101.

    The London Argus cited in LCC/MIN/569, Signed Minutes, 1899–1901, 19 May 1901.

  102. 102.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/575, Signed Minutes, March 1908-February 1909, 14 July 1908.

  103. 103.

    London Daily News, 26 April 1904: 9.

  104. 104.

    Fifty-Ninth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1905: 57.

  105. 105.

    Garrard, John. 2003. Scandals: A Tentative overview. In Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950, eds. James Moore and John Smith 23–40. Aldershot: Ashgate: 35.

  106. 106.

    Hayes, Lancashire Public Asylum Provision: 89.

  107. 107.

    Anon. 1903. Who is responsible? Daily Mail, 28 January.

  108. 108.

    LMA, PH/Ment/3/5, Newspaper Cuttings, ‘The Morning Leader’, 14 March 1910.

  109. 109.

    LMA, PH/Ment/3/5, Newspaper Cuttings, ‘The Morning Leader’, 14 March 1910. LMA, LCC/576, Signed Minutes, March 1909–July 1910: 9 October 1909. Anon. 1903. Colney Hatch Fire Verdict. Daily Mail, 13 February.

  110. 110.

    GL, LMS107, London County Council, Election 1904, Facts and Arguments, London Municipal Society, London, 1904.

  111. 111.

    LMA, ACC/3606/001 Election Literature and Newspaper Cuttings, 1906–1907, ‘To the Electors of West Newington’, February 1907.

  112. 112.

    LMA, PH/Ment/3/5, Newspaper Cuttings, ‘The Morning Leader’, 14 March 1910.

  113. 113.

    LMA, ACC/3606/001 Election Literature and Newspaper Cuttings, 1906–1907, ‘London County Council Election’, 1907, February 1907.

  114. 114.

    GL, LMS132, London Municipal Society 1898. Election Leaflets and Pamphlets, ‘Electors of London!’, Leaflet No. 46.

  115. 115.

    Laski, The Committee System in Local Government: 82.

  116. 116.

    Davies, John. 1988. Reforming London: The London Government Problem, 1855–1900. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 147–8.

  117. 117.

    Ibid.: 111–2.

  118. 118.

    Doyle, Barry M. 2015. The Politics of Hospital Provision in Early Twentieth-Century Britain. London: Routledge: 144.

  119. 119.

    LMA, LCC 18.6, London County Council, Minutes of Proceedings, January–December 1889, 5 March 1889.

  120. 120.

    Geake, Charles. 1899. Appreciations and Addresses Delivered by Lord Rosebery. London: John Lane: 188–9.

  121. 121.

    London County Council. 1890. A Review of the First Year’s Work of the Council in a Series of Addresses Delivered by the Chairman, the Earl of Rosebery. London: LCC: 6.

  122. 122.

    Rosebery cited in Pennybacker, The Millennium by Return of Post: 133. London County Council, A Review of the First Year’s Work of the Council: 6.

  123. 123.

    London County Council, A Review of the First Year’s Work of the Council: 9.

  124. 124.

    Ibid.: 6.

  125. 125.

    Webb, The Work of the London County Council: 130–52. Sidney Webb was first elected to the Council in 1892 as the Progressive member for Deptford, a working-class area in the south-east of London. Davis, J. 2008. Webb, Beatrice 1858–1943, social reformer and diarist. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/. Accessed 4 July 2019.

  126. 126.

    Davies, The Progressive Council: 31.

  127. 127.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/575, Signed Minutes, March 1908–February 1909, 8 December 1908.

  128. 128.

    LMA, LCC/26.21 Annual Reports for LCC Asylums Committee for 1889–1892, The First Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1890.

  129. 129.

    LMA, LCC/MIN/570, Signed Minutes, 1901–1902, 14 May 1901.

  130. 130.

    LMA, GLC/DG/AE/ROL/82/001, LCC Standing Orders, 1891–3: 120.

  131. 131.

    LMA, LCC/18.6, London County Council Minutes of Proceedings, July–December 1891, 14 July 1891.

  132. 132.

    LMA, LCC/18.6, London County Council Minutes of Proceedings, January–June 1892, 5 April 1892.

  133. 133.

    GL, PAM3472. 1898. Progressive Party Leaflets, ‘Who Have Done London’s Work?’, Leaflet No. 9.

  134. 134.

    GL, PAM3472. 1898. Progressive Party Leaflets, ‘Who Have Done London’s Work?’, Leaflet No. 9.

  135. 135.

    BI, 229/12, A. Emil Davies, The LCC 1889–1937: 13.

  136. 136.

    Webb, The Work of the London County Council: 130–52.

  137. 137.

    Anon. 1903. Housing the Insane. What the London County Council Has Done. Daily Mail, 29 January. Haward described Hubbard as a ‘shrewd but bigoted Radical of the narrow-minded type, and an ardent worker in the Progressive cause’. Haward, The London County Council from Within: 23.

  138. 138.

    Davies, Local Government 1850–1920: 52.

  139. 139.

    Two women were elected to the LCC 1889 and another was appointed as alderman but this was challenged in the courts and they were unseated. The 1907 Qualification of Women (County and Borough Councils) Act of 1907 allowed women to be elected to councils in England and Wales. BI 229/12, Davies. Emil, A. 1937. The LCC 1889–1937, a Historical Sketch. London: Fabian Society: 6. See also Stokes, Wendy. 2011. Missing from the Picture. Women’s Initiatives in English Local Government. In Women and Representation in Local Government: International Case Studies, eds. Barbara Pini and Paula McDonald, 95–108. London: Routledge: 97.

  140. 140.

    Doyle, The Politics of Hospital Provision: 144. Westwood, Louise. 2006. Separatism and Exclusion. Women in Psychiatry. In Mental Illness and Learning Disability Since 1850, eds. Pamela Dale and Joseph Melling, 91–111. London: Routledge.

  141. 141.

    Milliken, Emma. 2006. Boyle, Helen 1869–1957. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/. Accessed 4 July 2019.

  142. 142.

    Hollis, Patricia. 1987. Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government, 1865–1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 310–17.

  143. 143.

    Ibid.

  144. 144.

    Ibid.

  145. 145.

    LMA, LCC 26.21. The Second Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1891.

  146. 146.

    Geddes Poole, Andrea. 2014. Philanthropy and the Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 97.

  147. 147.

    Ibid.: 212.

  148. 148.

    Ibid.: 211.

  149. 149.

    Ibid.: 317. Gibbon and Bell, History of the London County Council: 80.

  150. 150.

    Anon. 1903. A women’s view of things. London Daily News, 10 August. Fenwick Miller practised medicine briefly after completing her medical degree at London’s Ladies Medical College. She also served as an elected member on the London School board, representing the borough of Hackney. Ardsel, Rosemary T. 2004. Miller, Florence Fenwick, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/. Accessed 4 July 2019.

  151. 151.

    BI LH P4168. 1913. Women’s Local Government Society, LCC election, An appeal to women. See also BI P3422. 1913. Women’s Local Government Society. Nineteen Reasons Why Women are Wanted on London County Council.

  152. 152.

    BI LH P4168. 1913. Women’s Local Government Society, LCC election, An appeal to women.

  153. 153.

    Hollis, Patricia. 1987. Ladies Elect. Women in English Local Government, 1865–1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 310–17.

  154. 154.

    LMA, The Twenty-First Annual Report of the Asylums Committee of the London County Council, for the year ending 31 March 1910.

  155. 155.

    See, for example, Schneer, London 1900. The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven: Yale University Press: 123–4.

  156. 156.

    Chandler, J. A. 2000. Explaining Local Government, Local Government in Britain since 1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 100.

  157. 157.

    Pennybacker, A Vision for London, 1889–1914: 4–5.

  158. 158.

    London County Council. 1910. Progressive leaflets. https://archive.org/stream/progressiveleafl00lond#page/n3/mode/2up. Accessed 4 July 2019.

  159. 159.

    GL, PAM3556. 1907. Progressive Party Leaflets, ‘A Letter to Women Electors?’, Leaflet No. 18.

  160. 160.

    Anon. 1901. London County Council: A letter to Women Electors. London: Alexander and Shepherd.

  161. 161.

    GL, LMS72. 1910. London Municipal Pamphlets and Leaflets. ‘The London County Council’, Municipal Reform Leaflet A23.

  162. 162.

    National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, ‘A word to midwives and trained nurses on pending legislation’, 199. Cited in Pennybacker, A Vision for London, 1889–1914: 244.

  163. 163.

    Saint, Andrew. 1989. Technical Education and the Early LCC. In Politics and the People of London: The London County Council 1889–1965, ed. Andrew Saint, 71–92. London: Hambledon Press: 75. Benn, J. Williams. 1892. The Internal Working of the London County Council, The Times, 7 January 1892: 6.

  164. 164.

    Benn, J. Williams. 1892. The Internal Working of the London County Council. The Times, 7 January. Although not mentioned here, Benn’s father had been murdered by his brother, William, who was then sent to an asylum in 1883. I am grateful to Heather Shore for this information.

  165. 165.

    The Earl of Rosebery. 1894. Municipal and Social Reform. London: Liberal Publications: 6.

  166. 166.

    Anon. 1903. Housing the Insane. What the London County Council Has Done. Daily Mail, 29 January. BL 8139B22, The Daily Mail and the Fight for London: 5–6.

  167. 167.

    Forty-Seventh Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1893: 216. Fifty-Second Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1898: 312. Fifty-Fifth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1901: 300. Fifty-Seventh Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1903: 318. Fifty-Eighth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1904: 322. Fifty-Ninth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1905: 344. Sixtieth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1906: 346. Fifty-Seventh Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1903: 318.

  168. 168.

    Following the death of a patient (W.S.) as a result of undue force at the Banstead Asylum, for example, the Commissioners recommended that the two attendants involved should be dismissed. Instead, the sub-committee at Banstead ‘severely reprimanded’ one attendant, while the other was only dismissed after a subsequent charge of using bad language towards a patient. Fifty-Fourth Report of the Commissioners, 1900: 28–9. Fifty-Sixth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1902: 309. In another case, an attendant was fined after an assault on a ‘troublesome and violent patient’ who was nicknamed ‘Dummy’ because he was deaf and dumb. In imposing the fine on the attendant for the assault, the bench noted that it did not consider it to be a bad case. Anon. 1908. Asylum Scene, Daily News, 17 April.

  169. 169.

    Forty-Fifth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1891: 194. Forty-Ninth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1895: 264. Fifty-Second Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1898: 316.

  170. 170.

    The Liberal Speaker claimed the Asylums Committee had ‘economised, improved, reformed, in every conceivable direction. Its sub-committees, sharing between them the control of 16,000 lunatics have set a new model for the management of public asylums’. Anon. 1892. Back to Vestrydom? The Speaker, 9 January. Fifty-Second Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1898: 303. Forty-Ninth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1895: 270.

  171. 171.

    Forty-Fifth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1891: 194.

  172. 172.

    Sixty-Fourth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1910: 346.

  173. 173.

    In their response, the Hanwell sub-committee, described the clothes as warm enough and they pointed to statistics of improving rates of cure, along with a diminishing death rates to deflect the criticism. They did, however, conclude, that as one of LCC’s older asylums, Hanwell suffered from some defects that were undesirable to modern eyes. LMA, LCC/18.6, London County Council Minutes of Proceedings, January–June 1894, 24 April 1894. LMA, LCC/18.6, London County Council Minutes of Proceedings, January–December 1893, 21 November 1893.

  174. 174.

    Fifty-Fourth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1900: 312.

  175. 175.

    Anon. 1905. Asylum Scandal. London Daily News, 13 October 1905.

  176. 176.

    Anon. 1914. Chelsea Guardians. Chelsea News and General Advertiser, 26 June.

  177. 177.

    Sixty-Second Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1908: 77–85. This was something that was not undermined even when there was a case of mistaken identity at the Cane Hill in the same year. In that case, relatives were called to the bedside of a seriously ill-patient at the asylum only to discover the person in question was not their mother but a stranger with the same name. LMA, PH/Ment/3/5, Newspaper Cuttings, ‘Evening News’, 4 February 1907.

  178. 178.

    Anon. 1900. What Will Follow St Pancras Inquiry. Municipal Journal, 13 July.

  179. 179.

    Ibid.

  180. 180.

    Yeomans, Henry. 2014. Alcohol and Moral Regulation: Public Attitudes, Spirited Measures and Victorian Hangovers. Bristol: Policy Press: 35, 98.

  181. 181.

    GL, PM 3438. 1907. Progressive Leaflets, London County Council Election 1907, ‘The Progressives and Temperance Reform’, Progressive Election Committee.

  182. 182.

    Taylor, Barbara. 2015. The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness on Our Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 105.

  183. 183.

    Suzuki, The Politics and Ideology of Non-restraint: 2.

  184. 184.

    Doyle, Barry M. 2001. The Changing Functions of Urban Government: Councillors, Officials and Pressure Groups, 1835–1950. In The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, eds. D. M. Palliser, Peter Clark, and Martin J. Daunton, 287–313. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 296–7.

  185. 185.

    Harrison, B. 1973, Pubs. The Victorian City: Images and Realities, vol. 1, eds. H. J. Dyos and M. Wolff, 161–90. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul: 162. Pennybacker, The Millennium by Return of Post: 131.

  186. 186.

    LMA, H12/CH/B/46/63, Colney Hatch Female Reception Orders, 16451–16475: Rules for Visitors to Patients.

  187. 187.

    Reinarz, J. and Wynter, R. 2014. The Spirit of Medicine: The Use of Alcohol in Nineteenth-Century Medical Practice. In Drink in the Eighteen and Nineteenth Centuries, eds. S. Schmid and B. Schmidt-Haberkamp. 127–40. London: Pickering and Chatto.

  188. 188.

    Yeomans, Alcohol and Moral Regulation: 98.

  189. 189.

    Brodie, M. 2008. Benn, Sir John Williams, first baronet. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/. Accessed 4 July 2019.

  190. 190.

    BL, Municipal Journal, 14 October 1904: 72.

  191. 191.

    Anon. 1898. Temperance Crusade. The Times, 26 October.

  192. 192.

    Lawrence, J. 1993. Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880–1914. English Historical Review, 108: 629–52.

  193. 193.

    Ball and Sunderland, An Economic History of London: 411.

  194. 194.

    Anon. 1901. The London County Council of 1895 and 1898. London: Alexander and Shepherd. Anon. 1901. London County Council Election 1901. London: Alexander and Shepherd.

  195. 195.

    LSE, JS203–211. 1909. London Under the Moderates. LSE, ILP/6/22/1/84504. 1913. London County Council, An urgent appeal to Ministers and Churches.

  196. 196.

    Mckenzie, Fred A. 1902. The Triumph of Mr McDougall. Daily Mail, 12 March.

  197. 197.

    Ibid.

  198. 198.

    Griffiths, John. 2009. Were There Municipal Networks in the British World c.1890–1939. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37:4: 575–597, 579.

  199. 199.

    GL, PAM3556. 1907. Progressive Party Leaflets, ‘What the Progressive Party on the County Council Has Done for Temperance in London?’, Leaflet No. 13.

  200. 200.

    Forty-Fifth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1891: 199.

  201. 201.

    LSE, Coll. Misc. 904. No date. London Reform Union, Leaflet No. 57, ‘What the County Council Has Done for Temperance Reform’.

  202. 202.

    Hide, Gender and Class: 151. Bibby, The Planning of Lunatic Asylums: 67.

  203. 203.

    Daily Chronicle. ‘The Council and the Asylums: For Sick Minds and Bodies’: 52. Hide, Gender and Class: 34–5.

  204. 204.

    Forty-Seventh Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1893: 214.

  205. 205.

    Forty-Sixth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1892: 215.

  206. 206.

    Daily Chronicle, The Council and the Asylums: For Sick Minds and Bodies: 52.

  207. 207.

    Ibid.

  208. 208.

    Ibid.

  209. 209.

    Forty-Eighth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1894: 237.

  210. 210.

    Ibid.

  211. 211.

    Ibid.

  212. 212.

    Fifty-Second Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1898: 311. Fiftieth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1896: 300.

  213. 213.

    Fifty-First Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, 1897: 287. However, the rules of Colney Hatch revealed that small quantities of tobacco sent by relatives to patients was allowed. LMA, H12/CH/B/46/63, Colney Hatch Female Reception Orders, 16451–16475: Rules for Visitors to Patients.

  214. 214.

    LMA, ACC/3606/001 Election Literature and Newspaper Cuttings, 1906–1907, ‘Who have done London’s work?’, February 1907. ‘Who does the work?’, Daily News, 11 February 1907: 8.

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Ellis, R. (2020). The Politics of Administration. In: London and its Asylums, 1888-1914. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44432-7_2

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