Outhouse asylums
The
1844 Report criticised a particular
construction of pauper house:
"We have observed that Houses which have been formerly private mansions
frequently require extensive alterations to make them fit for asylums;
that the mansion is sometimes engrossed by the proprietor, his family,
and a few private patients; and that the paupers are consigned to
buildings which were formerly used as offices, and outhouses." (1844
Report p. 41).
Of the nine censured houses, four were outhouse asylums:
Green Hill
[Derby],
Lainston and Grove Place
[Hampshire] and
Plympton [Devon].
Duddeston Hall
[Birmingham] and
Bailbrook House
[Bath] were also
Outhouse asylums, but, although both were unfit in their "present state"
for the care of pauper lunatics, "the proprietors treat their patients with
kindness"
Two other houses listed in the Report were outhouse asylums, but both had
been recently licensed and the Report does not list them as such. They are
Vernon House, near Swansea
[Wales]
and Haydock Lodge
[Lancashire].
London houses were not classified in this way, but
Peckham House
and
Camberwell House were both mansions with large grounds bought in
the 1830s/1840s to cater for private and pauper patients.
Charles Mott, one of the original proprietors of Peckham House
(1836), founded Haydock Lodge (1844).
4.9.8
Hampshire
Hampshire and the
commission compared
discussed the County Visitors administration in
Hampshire in
comparison with that of the Metropolitan Commission. Here I will look at
the conditions in Hampshire's licensed houses and how
the Commissioners and
the Visiting Magistrates
interacted during the
Inquiry years. The absence of somewhere to send paupers if a
house was closed down was a common problem limiting the ability of the
licensing authorities to control pauper houses in London and the counties.
In August 1843 Poor Law Unions in Hampshire maintained 199 of their pauper
lunatics in licensed houses, more than in any other county except
Middlesex, which had 245
(1844 Report appendix F). There appear to
have
been no proposals to construct a county asylum at the time of the Inquiry.
Lainston House, Winchester. Proprietor J. Twynam, M.D.
94 patients. 84 pauper and 10 private. Weekly charge for
paupers: 9/- including clothes.
The visiting Commissioners
comment favourably on the quality of food (but nothing else) at
Lainston House. The report says that the
paupers were "tolerably well fed". (1844 Report page 58). As I note later,
it is not clear where the pauper patients ate their food.
Elsewhere in the report it says that a "tolerably good and liberal diet"
was supplied "even in some establishments which were deficient in other
particulars". (1844 Report page 118)
According to the diet sheet, Dr Twynam gave his pauper patients meat five
days a week,
suet pudding one day, and soup on Saturday.
Sunday dinner was "baked meat, pudding and vegetables". On week-days, meat
was boiled, vegetables were given with the boiled meat and with the soup.
Bread was only given with the soup and with one day's meat. Nothing extra
was given with the suet pudding.
No quantities are specified on the diet sheet but "in regard to
epileptic
cases the attendants are directed to cut less". Every day, the men had a
pint of table beer and the women three-quarters of a pint. The women had
bread and butter for breakfast and supper. At breakfast they had coffee
("with milk") and at supper tea. The men had milk porridge or
broth
for breakfast and bread and cheese with beer for supper. (1844 Report page
264)
Although no quantities are specified, the quality of food given on the diet
sheets at Lainston House is comparable to that stated for many of the
houses that the commissioners
ranked amongst the best. It would appear better than the diet at
least one, Droitwich, where the paupers had soup three days a week.
The quality of food was all that the visiting Commissioners found to
comment on favourably at
Lainston House. They and the visiting JPs
reported that
the whole pauper department was foul; incontinent patients making it
offensive for all. Dr Twynam clearly neglected the paupers who: "have
always been found dirty and ill-clothed". Dr Twynam's charge was inclusive
of clothing.
Visiting JPs had attempted to persuade Dr Twynam to introduce a system of
separating or "classifying" the paupers, but their recommendations were
"unattended to". Probably little classification was possible in the
converted "stabling and outhouses" used for the paupers, which the
Commissioners thought "quite unfit to be used as an asylum".
Seven women were found in hand-locks, chains and straight waistcoats,
and the same seven and three others were chained to their beds at night.
When the commissioners complained, Dr Twynam insisted that the chains and
hand-locks were "essential for safety".
(1844 Report pp 57-58)
Grove Place, Nursling, near Southampton.
72 patients. 53 pauper and 19 private. Weekly charge for paupers not
stated.
Proprietor Mrs H. Middleton
Undue mechanical restraint does not appear to have been a complaint against
Mrs Middleton at Grove Place. The complaint was that
"the buildings appropriated to the paupers had been offices,
and were in a dilapidated state... they could not, in the commissioners'
opinion, be made comfortable. The rooms were small and close, and the
airing courts extremely limited."
Mrs Middleton and her family, together with the nineteen private patients,
occupied the main part of the house whilst the fifty-three paupers were
consigned to the outhouses
"without much consideration as to their general comfort or
eventual cure"
Mrs Middleton does appear to have separated the
clean and dirty patients so
that outhouses were not generally foul, but
"the bed-rooms for the dirty-classes, both of the male and
female paupers were offensive and confined, and had unglazed windows and
only wooden shutters, as protection against the outer air" (1844 Report
pages 58-59)
Hilsea Asylum, Portsea Island, near Portsmouth
35 patients. 29 pauper and 6 private. Weekly charge for paupers:
9/- to 9/6 a week.
Proprietor G.J. Scales (Surgeon)
The system operating at Hilsea was criticised by the commissioners because
"Two licensed houses, those at
Duddeston and Hilsea... have been established and carried on in
connection with workhouses, which send to them only their unmanageable
patients, and afterwards remove them when they become tolerably tranquil,
without reference to the propriety of their remaining at the asylum for the
purpose of cure." (1844
Report p.44)
"The paupers are frequently sent in an advanced stage of their
disease, and in a bad state. They are usually sent, in the first instance,
to the parish workhouse, and are kept there as long as they can be managed,
and when they become violent or
dirty, they are removed to the asylum"
(1844 Report p.230)
Hilsea Asylum itself was criticised because:
"...containing, in June 1843, twenty-nine patients, there is
one yard of tolerable size, for the male patients, adjoining the high road,
and a small one at the back of the house, which appears, from its being
overgrown with grass, to be little used, for the women. We could not
ascertain that any of the patients occupied themselves, with the exception
of two or three of the women, who, we understood, were occasionally
employed in needle and household work." (1844 Report p.133)
One of the Hilsea patients had been responsible for the death of the
previous superintendent. Shortly after recommending the use of restraint at
the aristocratic Whitmore
House in London, in July 1843, the visiting commissioners
"found at the asylum of Mr Scales, near Portsmouth, the widow
of a former superintendent, whose hand had a few months previous been
bitten by a dangerous patient, who was in the house at the time of our
visit. The superintendent die from the effects of the bite, within twelve
days of the injury" (1844 Report, p.148)
House of Industry, Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight
A Licensed Workhouse Asylum: 27 patients all pauper.
In contrast to the other licensed houses in Hampshire, the licensed
workhouse on the Isle of Wight was on the 1844 Report's list of
best conducted pauper
houses.
"...it had never been the practice to detain any curable person" and the
workhouse had been much improved on the suggestion of the commissioners and
"has very good accommodation and yards for exercise" (1844 Report pages 43
and 45)
Hampshire and the Commission
The Hampshire houses were visited regularly by the County Visitors
(3.10.3). Prior to
the Commissioner's third visit to
Lainston, on
28.8.1843:
"this house had been several times visited by the Magistrates. They had
entered in the
Visitor's Book, at
one visit, a remark, that the sleeping
rooms for
dirty male patients, and for the females on the ground-floor,
were 'unwholesome and damp'; and that the clothing of one of the
patients was scanty and insufficient; at another visit, that the yards
of the females were wet and filthy; and, at a third visit, that there
was no classification, and that their previous recommendations upon this
head were unattended to."
(1844 Report p.58)
Commissioner's and County visitors were agreed in their condemnation of
Lainston - and equally ineffective in persuading Dr Twynam to improve
those conditions:
"The Commissioners who first visited the licensed houses at Lainston,
Nursling and Hilsea, in the county of Hants, in
October
1842,
called
the attention of the visiting justices to the urgent want of a public
lunatic asylum for the paupers of the county. The Justices who have
visited the House at Lainston since our first visit, have, in the
Visitor's Book,
condemned in unqualified terms the management of that
large asylum. Nevertheless, the Commissioners who visited this place in
April
1844, found no material improvement, and could only earnestly
repeat their call upon the Magistrates of the county of Hants to provide
a proper receptacle for their neglected paupers."
Hampshire County Asylum
was opened on
13.12.1852 under the provisions of
the
1845 County Asylums Act. However, Parry Jones
says that Lainston was
closed by 1847. Even if this only refers to the pauper
department, it means that Hampshire must have made some other arrangements
for its pauper lunatics between 1847 and 1852. In
London,
Wiltshire
and other parts of the country there were pauper asylums that specialised
in receiving patients from a distance. Their trade was considerably
increased by the immediate effect of the 1845 Acts, and it is possible that one of these
became a
contract house for Hampshire.
Common problem: London and the counties
In four clear cases large pauper houses were censured both by the
Commission and the local visitors:
In Devon (at least) the
local visitation had deficiencies, but there was no conflict of opinion
about the need for reform. Quite possibly some improvement would have
followed systematic pressure on the houses by the JPs, as the Commission
recommended,
but the county JPs were subject to the same restraints in their counties as
the Commission in London. The Commission
renewed the licences of Hoxton
and
Peckham year after year, because if licences were refused there
was nowhere
acceptable to transfer the pauper lunatic. The same problem
existed in the counties and the only solution was to build adequate county
asylums.
4.9.9. The powers of the visiting commissioners 1842-1845
The Commission was not the
licensing authority
in the
counties
so what
could it, or its visiting commissioners, do to alter the conditions found
in county
houses?
Some proprietors were proud of their vocation and would respond positively
to suggestions for improvement, without any need for sanctions. Many would
have been unsure what sanctions could follow if suggestions were not
followed. All would have recognized that the Commissioners were leaving
minutes for the visiting JPs and that
Quarter Sessions
could revoke or refuse to renew
their
licence. A mixture of good will and prudence in varying proportions must
have induced many to reform the defects identified by the visitors from
London:
"It is due to the Proprietors of Licensed Houses in the provincial
districts, to state that alterations, to a considerable extent have
already been made by several of them upon our suggestions."
(1844 Report p.35)
Even some of the houses that the 1844 Report censured "almost without
qualification" had made positive responses to Commissioners' suggestions.
At West Auckland
mechanical
restraint was removed from all but one patient "without accident or
inconvenience of any kind" and in 1843 and 1844 the commissioners found
"some alterations and slight improvements made in consequence of their
suggestions"
(1844 Report pp 54-55). Later it is noted
that "there was at
our first visit only one, and there are now only two very small yards"
(1844 Report p.132)