Index of English and Welsh Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals
Based on a comprehensive survey in 1844, and extended to other
asylums.
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The asylums index (on the right) lists asylums on this page (paupers in
1844) in yellow, and asylums on other pages in white. Some asylums outside
England and Wales are indexed in blue.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y |
4.13.TA Institutions with Pauper Lunatics in 1844
All County Asylums open in 1844 are listed and all Hospitals receiving paupers. Workhouses mentioned in the 1844 report are listed. The table lists all licensed houses receiving paupers in 1844 and shows which were commended and which severely censured in the 1844 Report.
In the 1844 Report, all asylums apart from workhouses are listed, but only some the workhouses with lunatic wards. This was because the Inquiry Commission did not systematically visit workhouses in the way that it did the other asylums.
| After the 1844 Report, legislation ensured that public asylums were provided for all areas of the country. These new public asylums are shown in white on green. |
| National Health Service Psychiatric Hospitals were classified as "Mental Illness" or "Mental Handicap". I am adding listings of the Mental Handicap ones (1970s) on yellow. |
| Some hospitals will appear on the green and the yellow, usually because they started as chronic asylums in the late nineteenth century. |
| There are some asylums in grey that do not fit in to any of the above categories, but are conveniently included on this page. These include hospitals not receiving paupers in 1844. |
The table is arranged geographically:
-
London,
South East England,
South West England,
Wales, Welsh Border and West Midlands away from Birmingham,
Birmingham and West Midlands
East Midlands and Lincolnshire,
Cheshire and Lancashire,
Yorkshire,
Northumberland and Durham.
before the administrative changes of the last half century
London
Hanwell (1st Middlesex) County Asylum
The address of
West London Healthcare NHS Trust is St. Bernard's Wing, Uxbridge Road
Southall, Middlesex UBI 3EU. 020 8574 2444. (Community services, Mental
health services)
Three Bridges
Regional Secure Unit St Bernard's Hospital,
Uxbridge Road, Southall, Middlesex, UB1 3EU established 1980s?
mid 1990s?
Corsellis Brain Collection moved to St Bernards?
Thomas Moule's 1834 map of Middlesex on Alan Stanier's web
(click bottom right to enlarge)
South East London History has a
map index for
Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley
Area links on this site:
Brentford,
Camberwell (Surrey),
Chelsea,
Fulham,
Hackney,
Hammersmith,
Hayes,
Hoxton,
Kensington
[A Sarah Rutherford case study]
Built 1829 to 1830. Opened
16.5.1831
Architect: William
Alderson. Peter
Cracknell classifies it as
Corridor form.
Jacobi classifies it as a distinct form.
Landscape: Designer D. Ramsay
Built in what
was then country. Closest market town was Brentford.
Technically in Norwood Parish, but known as the Hanwell Asylum from the
beginning as it was much closer to the centre of Hanwell than to Southall
or Norwood. See
GENUKI (1868 National Gazeteer)
For the early history of
Hanwell see the biography of James Clitherow
Tessa
Speight's history
Superintendent January 1831 to early 1838:
William
Ellis. Matron, Mrs Ellis
Visiting physician from 1832:
Alexander Morison
1834:
The Hanwell Lunatic
Asylum
by Harriet Martineau
From about 1835 to about 1840,
George Peacock Button was house
surgeon. He
witnessed William Ellis's will in April 1839. He became
superintendent of the
Dorset County Asylum.
Extra wings added 1837/1838
Architect: William Moseley.
Superintendent April 1838 to 1839
Gideon John Millingen
Superintendent 1839 to 1844:
John Conolly, who
abolished mechanical
restraint.
"old mode of treatment" -
"new
methods"
October 1839 51st Report Visiting Justices
January 1840 52nd Report Visiting Justices
April 1840 53rd Report Visiting Justices
July 1840 54th Report Visiting Justices
January 1841 56th Report Visiting Justices
April 1841 57th Report Visiting Justices
July 1841 58th Report Visiting Justices: they had "been imperatively
called upon to annul the appointment of the Reverend Francis Tebutt as
chaplain to the asylum. His duties will cease on the 11th of the month, and
he will be succeeded by the Reverend Thomas Burt"
October 1841 The Fifty-ninth Report of the Visiting Justices of
the Lunatic Asylum of
Hunwell. The Resident Physician's Report, and the Report of the Chaplain,
. This formed the basis of
an extensive review in the a
New York newspaper on 2.4.1842
1844 to 1852 John Conolly visiting physician Hanwell).
Conolly
became the
proprietor of Lawn
House and
Hayes Park
1.1.1844: 975 patients. All pauper. 1844?
14.6% of
patients
epileptic
Superintendent: April to August 1844: John Godwin (not medical)
Visiting Physician: J. Conolly M.D.; House Surgeons: J. Beyley, M.D.;
Davies M.D.
1845
John Hitchman succeded Dr Nesbit in charge of the female
side. William Chapman Begley was (at about the same time) in charge of the
male side. They each had salaries of £200 a year.
15.1.1848 Full page illustration and short article
"Twelfth Night at the Hanwell
Asylum"
in the
The Illustrated London News
1850
John Hitchman became superintendent
Derby County Asylum
From about 1850 to about 1872, W.C. Begley was resident medical
officer (Annual Reports). William Chapman Begley had witnessed William Ellis's
will in April 1839.
A third floor added in 1859.
13.11.1861 Theodore Edward Edwards, a patient, killed himself.
An autopsy [inquest?] was carried out by
Thomas Wakley. Hospital records show that
Theodore was buried within the hospital grounds. A descendent would like to
know where were this is. We have located the burial ground on
an 1868 map. In the late twentieth century,
a Regional Secure Unit was built on these grounds.
July 1873 R R Alexander, MB, CM. appointed Assistant Medical
Officer in the place of J. Hawkes who went to
Westbrooke House Asylum in Hampshire.
Biography of a patient (Alfred Woodhurst) admitted 1877
1880 Large chapel (surviving) built to replace a smaller one.
The asylum now had nearly 2,000 patients.
1881 Census: Middlesex Lunatic Asylum,
Norwood, Middlesex. There are two medical superintendents: Joseph Pake
Richards (married, aged 40, surgeon) and Henry Rayner (unmarried, aged 39,
physician). Isabella Elizabeth Hicks is Matron.
Became a London County Asylum in 1889.
About 1894?: Robert Reid Alexander M.D. resident
medical superintendent; Rev. Robert Andrews MA. chaplain; James William
Palmer, clerk & Alfred Henry Larcome, steward.
Hanwell Mental Hospital from
1929 to 1937.
St Bernard's Hospital from
1938 to 1980. Uxbridge Road, Southall, UB1 3EU.
By 1960 known as St Bernard's, Southall. It had 2500 staffed
beds
Sometime before 1962, Andrew O'Brien visited his uncle in St
Bernard's Hospital. It was "like a small town in itself". There
was a church, a laundry, and a point on the Grand Union Canal
where barges brought the coal for the Hospital. He can remember
the tall Victorian wards and that there seemed to be many
patients in each ward, and white coated male orderlies who seemed
to spend some of their time lighting patients cigarettes. He
felt very sad and could not face going again after his second
visit.
In 1971 it had 2,039 beds,
189 in locked wards.
Two general hospitals: King Edward Memorial Hospital and Claypond's
(started as an isolation hospital) form Ealing Hospital between 1978
and 1980.
Ealing Hospital built adjacent to St Bernard's. A District General
Hospital "in the form of a multistorey concrete slab with lower blocks
around it"
(Scher, P. 1999)
[
Ealing
Hospital weblink]
By 1985, staffed beds reduced to 950
"Since then St Bernard's, a Grade II listed building, has become a
'wing'" [of Ealing Hospital], "albeit a large one, comprising the central
and eastern parts of the original, the western part having been sold for
redevelopment."
(Scher, P. 1999)
West London Mental Health Trust weblink
Stephen James, Head of Partnerships and Diversity, Ealing
Primary Care
Trust writes (26.8.2005) "There is a large range of [psychiatric] services
(including inpatient and forensic) provided by
West London Mental Health Trust (WLMHT)
at the site. There is
also a museum, which I understand the Trust cannot open regularly because
of lack of funds".
"
The
burial grounds were used for building the Regional Secure Unit
(RSU). Any human remains that were uncovered were removed and later re-
interned in the "Garden of Remembrance". This is the small upright
rectangle one can see in the
Google aerial photo
-
If you compare it to
your old map
you can make the match easily. The garden of remembrance is the above the
left hand canal lock and directly above the lock's left-hand gate. To the
immediate right is a parking lot with white hospital vans and the RSU is
the complex further the right with the semicircular crescent." (Paul
Champion, email 12.8.2006)
"Inner Space" by Peter Scher in Hospital Development
1.3.1999 has history and present development
2003
use: "Part luxury housing and part psychiatric hospital"
(external link history of Hanwell district)
(external link Boston House)
| Museum and Chapel of St Bernard's Hospital, Uxbridge Road, Southall. Georgian. Formerly the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum. "Not suitable for under-16s". I can sadly confirm that the Hanwell hospital museum has permanently closed and the collection dispersed. Some of it went to the Gunnersbury Park Museum http://www.hounslow.info/gunnersburyparkmuseum (prior permission is required to view as it is not on display) and some to the Welcome Trust (I think this would have been the apparatus and other clinical hardware) and the London Metropolitan Archives took the records and papers. (Paul Champion, email 12.8.2006) |
Surrey County Asylum
London Licensed Houses receiving paupers:
Warburton's, Bethnal
Green
Hoxton House
Peckham
House
Springfield, near Wandsworth
Nick Hervey says that the asylum was "in
response to the growing expense of farming out the county's chronic insane
to private licensed houses in the metropolis" and that "
Sir Alexander
Morison who was appointed as Visiting Physician before building
commenced,
carried out a survey of these patients".
"The site at Springfield Park, Wandsworth was bought from Henry
Perkins, a wealthy brewer and partner in the firm of Barclay and Perkins,
who had himself obtained the freehold from the 2nd Earl of Spencer"
1838 Building started
Architect: usually
stated to be
E Lapidge, but Nick says he was only one of the designers and
that it "was done to the design of
William Moseley, who was the County Surveyor for Middlesex and
had previously been working on extensions at Hanwell".
-
Corridor form
The present "Main Building", built around a lawn and fountain area
(See external link),
appears to be the centre of the original corridor. Some of the corridors
and main rooms (not all) have a pronounced slope, some running down towards
the south-west of the building. One (at least) main corridor slopes towards
the southeast. Does
anyone know why this is?
opened 14.6.
1841 Cost:
Total £85,366..19..1d. Comprised of Land: (97 acres)
£8,985..9..5 -
Buildings: £67,467..1..10 - Furnishings etc and preliminary expenses:
£7,514..19.3
(1844 Report p.222)
Nick Hervey says that 299 patients were
brought in on the day of opening, increasing to 385 in the first year. They
included 172 from
Peckham House, 51
from
Hoxton
and 54 from
Bethnal Green. However, patients may have moved in from these
asylums earlier as their movement was noted in
a report for the year 1.6.1840 to 31.5.1841.
1.1.1844: 382 patients. All pauper.
Superintendent: S. Hill, Surgeon
1844 At the time of the 1844 Report, Surrey was the most modern
county asylum. Its construction was generally approved of. "the house and
galleries generally are warmed by the circulation of steam, and the
introduction of hot air through apertures in the floor. The temperature is
regulated by stop-cocks, and kept between 56 degrees and 58 degrees. There
are open fires, with proper guards, in the several day rooms on the female
side; and it is proposed to adopt them also in the male division".
(1844
Report p.20)
1848-1858 Hugh Welch Diamond (1809-1886), photographic pioneer
(External links:
RSM,
Getty,
Leggat,
Pearl
Science and Society Picture Library), was
Resident Superintendent
of the Female Department. See
Lutwidge 1853 and
Millar 1853. He
appears to have left to set up his own, high class, lunatic asylum in
Twickenham
Until about 1857, Alexander Morison, Charles Snape and Hugh W. Diamond
were the medical officers connected with Surrey Asylum
About 1860 John Meyer appointed Resident Physician. William
Orange was Assistant Medical Officer
1863 John Meyer and William Orange move to
Broadmoor. James Strange Biggs became Resident Physician
1881
Census: James Strange Biggs, physician, aged 53, was asylum
head
1889 to 1912
Hugh Gardiner Hill medical superintendent. His son, Harold, a
family historian, was very proud of the way his father carried on
Robert Gardiner Hill's non-restraint work at Springfield. The
graves
of Hugh and his wife Rosie are in the Magdalen Road
Cemetery not far from Springfield
Transferred to Middlesex County Council after the 1888
Local
Government
Act, when it was known first as Wandsworth Asylum.
From about 1918 known as Springfield Asylum.
A detached annexe for 260 "low-grade mental
defectives,
180 children and 80 adults" was built under the 1913 Mental
Deficiency Act.
April 1916 A detached block of the main asylum used as
Springfield War Hospital for severe or protracted cases
for the care and treatment of soldiers and pensioners suffering from
neurasthenia or loss of mental balance
(Hansard 12.4.1920)
1919 Post Office Directory:
Middlesex County. Beechcroft Road, Upper Tooting,
SW17 and Garrat Green,
Burntwood Lane, Tooting SW17. Reginald Worth MB medical superintendent;
Gayton Warwick Smith, MD assistant medical officer; Rev William Parkinson
Iddeson, MA, chaplain; Thomas W. Beale, clerk to the asylum.
1926 Nurses were instructed to show kindness and forbearance
with "example being better than precept" (Regulations and Orders of
Springfield Mental Hospital, London).
(external link)
In 1939 "Springfield (Mental) Hospital" had 2,000 patients, 83 acres
of
farm land
and 14 acres of garden. There was close cooperation between Springfield and
Westminster Hospital.
Spring 1978 Springfield Words
Now
Springfield Hospital (external link), 61 Glenburnie Road,
London, SW17 7DJ.
Autumn 2002: Reported still open, or closed and empty
(street map -
multimap. Simon Cornwall: Was
to close but parts have remained opened.
30.1.2006: from David Gardiner-Hill "It is definitely open
and a Mental Health Trust associated with Georges Hospital Trust. The
Gardiner Hill Unit has unfortunately changed its name though signs to it
still
litter Tooting/Wandsworth!! I have visited on open day, and seen the old
history exhibition in the
mortuary. The superintendent's house
Hugh Gardiner Hill lived in is now offices
overlooking the golf course in the grounds, but I have recognisable photos
of the drive and gardens of this house when Hugh's children were
babies and a lovely one of his wife in a 1906 car, also a record of
speeding ticket from a newspaper. Speeding was newsworthy".
later Surrey County
Asylums
SW17 asylums:
Springfield,
Tooting Bec,
Fountain
1.1.1844 562 patients. 336 pauper and 226 private.
COMMENDED IN 1844
1.1.1844 396 patients. 315 pauper and 81 private.
SEVERELY CENSURED IN 1844
REPORT
1.1.1844 251 patients. 203 pauper and 48 private.
SEVERELY CENSURED IN 1844
REPORT
London Workhouse Lunatic Wards -
Fulham Hospital -
Fulham Road Observation Ward -
St Clement's -
St Marylebone -
Westminster -
St Marylebone See Peter Higginbotham's site
First workhouse established in 1730, after the Workhouse Test Act. A local Act of Parliament, passed in 1775, enabled the Vestry to build a new workhouse. Under this, the administration of poor relief in the parish was conducted by Directors and Guardians of the Poor who included thirty parishioners appointed by the Vestry. The old building was used as an infirmary.
1792 new infirmary block for 300.
War led an widespread increase in pauperism and St Marylebone was over-full with 1,168 inmates in 1797. The Guardians resorted to out-relief without demanding entry into the workhouse.
1815: Lord Robert Seymour, a Director of Poor for the Parish of Saint Marylebone was "in the practice of visiting the insane poor of that parish at Mr Warburton's, Bethnal Green"
1844 Report page 87: "In the Lunatic wards of the Marylebone Workhouse there were admitted in the years 1842 and 1843, 190 paupers considered as insane. Some few of these, however, were stated to be only under temporary excitement. The overseers of this parish could obtain admission into the Hanwell Asylum for only twenty-seven of these 190 cases..."
Workhouse Masters:
1842-1850 James Jones
1850-1851 W Barlow
1851-1856
George Whelan
1856 Richard Ryan (the "woman flogger" of a London ballad)
1857 James Barnet
1847 approval for Marylebone workhouse to become a temporary asylum
for lunatics. (Hervey,
N.B. 1987)
On lists of licensed houses as "St-Mary-le-Bone. Workhouse":
30.6.1846: Licensed to Dr Boyd with
35 patients
30.6.1847: Licensed to Dr Boyd and T.
Jones, surgeon, with 68 patients
1.1.1849: 79 patients, 30 male, 49
female. All pauper.
London Workhouse Union
Westminster Union See Peter Higginbotham's site
Archives Metropolitan Archives contain Registers of patients maintained by the Union in imbecile asylums 1885-1895 (reference WEBG/WM/52/1) and 1896 - 1902 (reference WEBG/WM/52/2).
1885-1895 relates to Hanwell*; Banstead*; Colney Hatch*; Cane Hill*; Hoxton House*; Bethnal House*; Grove Hall, Bow*; Peckham House*; Salisbury, Fisherton House*; Kent County, Barming Heath*; Camberwell House*; Kent County, Chartham*; Moulsford nr. Wallingford; Bristol Borough; and Claybury*
1896-1902 relates to the ones marked with an asterisk (*) above, plus Exeter Borough, Heavitree; Surrey County, Brookwood ; Nottingham Borough, Mapperley Hill ; Dorset County; Glamorgan County; Dorchester; Northampton County, Berry Wood ; Wadsley nr. Sheffield; Warwick County, Hatton; Isle of Wight, Newport; Bristol City, Fishponds; Lancashire, Haydock Lodge; Bexley; Stone nr. Dartford; Manor at Horton; Lancashire County, Prestwich; Winson Green; Hertfordshire County, Hill End; Leicester Borough; Middlesex County, Wandsworth and West Sussex, Chichester
St George's Hanover Square
See Peter Higginbotham's site
Fulham Road Workhouse and Infirmary
See Peter Higginbotham's site
Observation Ward
"At least half of the cases admitted to the male mental ward, or
observation ward, ... between 1917 and 1923 were ex-servicemen". Less than
half of the ex-servicemen were sent on to an asylum. Most were sent home
after a few days.
There was a statutory maximum of 14 days. "The inmate was
usually put on a regimen of eggs, milk pudding and beef tea". Bromide and
paraldehyde were used and there was a padded cell.
(Barham, P. 2004, p.202)
Fulham Hospital
Wandsworth
Whitechapel
| In the early nineteenth century, the City of London and its parishes had a diversity of institutional resources to call on to accommodate pauper lunatics. It controlled Bethlem Hospital. St Lukes was just outside its "square mile", as were the large private pauper asylums at Hoxton and Bethnal Green. Many of the parishes had their own workhouses and, in Hoxton and elsewhere, there were also several private workhouses (pauper farm houses). |
Bethlem Hospital
1377: the Bishopsgate Bedlam (St
Mary of Bethlem)
1403: visited
1536 on: monasteries dissolved -
City
gets Bethlem
1559: Bethlem on oldest map of
London
(sketch
map)
1615 Oldest surviving written lyrics of the ballad
Mad Tom of Bedlam
1618 Helkiah Crooke (1576-1648), physician to James 1st, non-
resident "keeper"
1633 An enquiry into the affairs of Bethlem Hospital led
to Helkiah Crooke's dismissal
From 1634 a resident steward was responsible for the
practical management. Also from the 1630s there was a (non-resident)
physician.
1676: Moorfields Bedlam and pay
to
view insanity (sketch
map)
[A Sarah Rutherford case study]
Architect: Robert
Hooke
The Bedlam page on Molly Brown's tour of Restoration
London
1684 Edward Tyson (1650-1708) physician
1698-1770
Ned Ward's The London Spy
1700 David Irish in Guildford advertised
"good fires, meat, and drink, with good attendance, and all necessaries far
beyond what is allowed at Bedlam"
1701
Henry Mackenzie The Man of Feeling
1704
Swift's Tale of a Tub
1708 Death of Dr Edward Tyson
2.10.1728 James Monro appointed physician
1730s: wings for incurables added.
These necessitated alteration to the airing courts.
1737 A General Committee of about 46 Governors appointed
to administer Bridewell and Bethlem on behalf of the (large) Court of
Governors
24.7.1751 John
Monro appointed physician with his father
4.11.1752: death of James Monro. John sole physician.
From the 1750s a resident apothecary was appointed.
21.4.1764 Following holiday riots at Christmas, Easter and
Whitsun, it was ordered that constables and assistants be placed in the
galleries during the forthcoming holiday.
(Hunter and Macalpine 1963 p.427)
John Monro's 1766 Case Book
1770 Visiting restricted to people with tickets
of admission from a Governor. By 1779, visiting was restricted to
Mondays and Wednesdays (by 1794, "between the hours of ten and
twelve o,clock in the forenoon". On 22.5.1779 it was ordered that
the number of visitors on one ticket be limited to the person who it was
made out to and three others, to curb the "great number of persons
admitted".
(Hunter and Macalpine 1963 p.428 + 429)
1772 John Gozna Apothecary to Bedlam.
1787: Thomas
Monro appointed assistant to his father
27.12.1791: death of John, Thomas Monro succeeds
1795: John Haslam (born London 1764, died July 1844) succeeded
John Gozna as Apothecary to Bedlam.
October 1796: Mary Lamb fearful of
being confined in Bethlem
"There are many persons now living who can remember passing the gates
of old
Bethlehem and hearing, as they passed, the cut of the lash and
the screams of its victims". (1849 memo on new style asylum)
31.12.1798 241 patients
1799 201 patients admitted
Bethlem on 1799 map of
London (sketch
map)
31.12.1799 243 patients
1800 235 patients admitted
31.12.1800 266 patients
1801 195 patients admitted
31.12.1801 237 patients
1802 185 patients admitted
31.12.1802 201 patients
1803 180 patients admitted
31.12.1803 220 patients
1804 150 patients admitted
"N.B: During this Year one of the Wings of the Hospital was taken down"
(p.390) [Probably refers to 1804, could be 1805]
1804 to 1806 Urbane Metcalf a patient for the first time. His
case note on his second stay (1817-1818) say "he is frequently engaged in
the occupation of a tailor.. but I am informed that he gets his living out
of doors as a hawker and pedlar." In 1817 he considered himself heir to the
throne of Denmark, and was suffering as much from depression as delusions.
He was discharged cured.
"I spent twenty-two months in that dreary abode, Old Bethlem Hospital; not more I believe than six weeks during that time I was incapable, through indisposition, of judging the occurrences that daily took place. From the supineness of the then physician, the cruelty of the apothecary, the weakness of the steward, and the uncontrolled audacity of the keepers [scenes took place that should have been discovered if only six humane people a year had visited] but what was the fact? it stood in the midst of the most populous city in Europe... was almost daily visited by some of the most exalted characters in the country, as well as by feigners. Part of the time, I occupied the next room to... Norris... the iron bar to which he was fastened stood at the foot of my bed." |
16.6.1804 Governors sign order that James Norris "be put in the iron apparatus, prepared for him" (p.382)
31.12.1804 186 patients
1805 44 patients admitted
Decline in numbers may have been due to deteriorating conditions of the building making some parts uninhabitable. [At some time] many pauper lunatics were moved to Warburton's in Bethnal Green
31.12.1805 127 patients
1806 64 patients admitted
1806: Transport Board responsible for naval maniacs. See description of relations with Hoxton House etc
31.12.1806 135 patients
1807 54 patients admitted
31.12.1807 126 patients
1808 85 patients admitted
31.12.1808 147 patients
1809 103 patients admitted
31.12.1809 143 patients
1810 92 patients admitted
31.12.1810 147 patients
1811 99 patients admitted
31.12.1811 148 patients
1812 88 patients admitted
31.12.1812 146 patients
1813 106 patients admitted
31.12.1813 143 patients
1814 93 patients admitted
31.12.1814: 119 patients.
25.4.1814: Edward Wakefield's first visit
2.5.1814 Edward Wakefield's party visit the women's galleries where they find a side room with ten chained patients clothed only in blanket gowns. In a cell on the lower gallery they found William Norris, 55 years old, who said he had been confined about fourteen years. [Norris is William in Wakefield's account (p.47 following) and James in the account by the Governors of Bethlem (p.376 following).
7.6.1814: drawing made of William Norris, in restraint
1815: St George's Field Bedlam and criminal lunatics.
Piddock, S. 2002: Linear design: wards over three full storeys and an attic floor. Men and women accommodated in mirror wings on either side of a central administrative section. Accommodation primarily in single cells with a small spur ward on either side providing three cells for the noisy. Arlidge, J.T. 1859 "argued that most, if not all, lunatic asylums were based on the design of Bethlem Hospital, itself based on the monasteries which had provided the early asylums for the insane".
July 1816: John Haslam and Thomas Monro not re-appointed, but Thomas succeeded by his son, Edward Thomas Monro and another (jointly appointed) physician, Sir George Leman Tuthill (born 1772, died 1835). Reforms in the management introduced about this time included keeping case notes on patients. The British Library Catalogue lists To the Governors of the Royal Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, etc. [Asking for support in his candidature for the post of physician to the Hospitals] by Sir George Leman Tuthill, London, 1816.
1.6.1817 to 12.11.1818 Urbane Metcalf a patient for the
second time. On his release he published a pamphlet The Interior of
Bethlem Hospital which he sold around London (3d a copy?).
"I... became again a patient in the New Bethlem Hospital, and am happy to be able to state that I found many alterations in the provisions, and in other things that greatly added to the comfort of patients, and to the honour of those governors through whom those alterations were effected. I found there were four galleries, and that the patients in one gallery had seldom access to those in another, except when in the green yard, and the establishment to be considerably larger, but not so many patients. I became Dr Tothill's patient, and was put in the upper gallery, Thomas Rodbird keeper. I wish to observe that I have read the printed rules of the establishment, and their principle is good, the comforts of the patients are secured in every respect, but these regulations are departed from and the keepers do just as they please."
Urbane arranges his complaint under sub-headings of
the keepers and officers names, attempting to show how the institution is
being run for their benefit, at the expense of the patients
|
October 1830: Dr E. Wright, Apothecary Superintendent, dismissed, having forfeited the confidence of the Governors. [Note that he calls it "the Royal Hospital of Bethlem"]
Consultant physician (with E.T. Monro) from 1835 to 1853: Alexander Morison
1837 extensions to the building
| 1841 Census: (ages of adults are given to nearest five years) Nathanial Nicholls, Steward, 50. Hannah Nicholls, 45. John Thomas, Apothecary, 45. Mary Thomas, 35. Henrietta Hearn, Matron, 40. John Hearn, 20. William Brown, Porter, 50. Thomas Medley?, Gate Keeper, 40. Elizabeth Medley, 30. Mary David, Kitchen Maid, 30. Charles French, Cutter of Provisions, 30. Three Laundry Maids. Twelve male Keepers. Twelve female Keepers. William Howard, Gardener, 35. Mary Pandigrath, Housemaid, aged 15. Harriet Eliza Hunter, aged 15 (an officer's relative). Five female servants to officers and two male. 167 male patients. 166 female patients, 333 total patients. |
|
1844 Bethlem Hospital, St George's Fields, South London.
1.1.1844: 355 patients of whom 90 were criminals. Bethlem was outside the Metropolitan Commission's investigative authority. For statistical purposes: "In the absence of any specific information ... we have entered the Criminal Lunatics ... seventy Males and twenty Females, as Paupers. We have also assumed that the remainder of the Patients ... generally, are of Private class, although we have reason to believe that some of them are maintained, wholly or in part, at the charge of Unions or Parishes" (1844 Report p.186)" |
The Lancet 15.2.1845: Editorial comparing Bethlem unfavourably with Bicêtre and Salpétrière in Paris which are "open to all pupils and medical men, who have a right to follow the physicians in their daily visits to the wards". "The directors of Bethlem have, it is true, lately relaxed the extreme severity of their regulations, and distributed amongst the schools a few tickets of admission, for which we give them due credit, but this relaxation of former rules is by no means sufficient. Every facility should be afforded to students to acquire a familiar knowledge of insanity, and our hospitals ought to be freely open..."
1846: Dome, designed by Sidney Smirke, added
1852:: Critical Report
William Charles Hood became Resident Medical Superintendent
1862 W.C. Hood became a Chancery Visitor. Succeeded as Resident Medical Superintendent by William Rhys Williams
1878 William Rhys Williams became a Lunacy Commissioner. Succeeded as Resident Medical Superintendent by George Henry Savage.
1863: criminal lunatics sent to Broadmoor
| 1881 Census: "Bethlem Royal Hospital", St Georges Cross, Southwark - St George Martyr, Surrey. Resident Officer (Physician) George Henry Savage, widower, aged 38, born Brighton. His housekeeper and housemaid. A friend, Wilhelm Von Speyr (physician aged 28), from Basle in Switzerland was visiting. William Edward Ramsden Wood: Medical Officer (Physician), aged 31. His wife, children and servants. The Gate Porter and his wife. Under Storekeeper. Cutter of Provisions. Assistant Hall Porter. Edmund Smeeth, married, aged 63: Head Attendant Male Side and 15 male and 21 female "Attendants on Insane". A laundress. A housemaid. Another female domestic servant. About 255 patients, only about 94 of whom were men. There were also two "other" and one "visitor". The Gardener, Richard Whibley, and his large family, lived at St Edwards Schools in St Georges Road. Two of his daughters were training to be teachers. |
1948 Bethlem Royal and
Maudsley Hospitals amalgamated as a single postgraduate teaching
hospital in the new
National Health Service.
1967 The Maudsley took over the management of the district catchment
area service for the mentally ill.
The Bethlem Museum was established in 1970, as a small exhibition space
in the new building which housed the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital archives
-
external link
1991 Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals become an NHS Trust.
1997 Bethlem Royal Hospital 750 years old
The Bethlem Gallery is a permanent exhibition space in the
grounds of the Bethlem Royal Hospital. The gallery was set up in 1997 to
provide opportunities for artists who have experienced mental health
problems.
March 1997 Psychiatric Bulletin "The Bethlem and Maudsley
NHS Trust will be celebrating its 750 Anniversary of the Bethlem Royal
Hospital, with many events during 1997 including a joint Royal College of
Psychiatrists and Maudsley Winter Meeting to be held in London in 1998.
Further details for events: The Anniversary Office, The Maudsley Hospital,
Denmark Hill, London SES 8AZ (Tel: 0171 919 2014; Fax: 0171 9192171)".
3.6.1997 All in the Mind BBC Radio 4: "Bedlam" Presented by
Professor Anthony Clare. Programme to mark the 750th anniversary. Wellcome
Film and Audio Collections shelf mark MFAC/HM/97.06.
source
22.6.1997 Family Spectacular "An open afternoon at Bethlem on a spectacular scale. We welcome the general public as well as staff, users and carers. Shows will include jousting and medieval pageantry, a celebrity raffle draw and the launch of 750 balloons, a wide range of activities for all the family, a marquee with music and afternoon tea, and an array of stalls with food, arts and crafts."
15.7.1997 BBC Radio 3 Broadcast: "A medical history". "Claudia Hammond visits the Maudsley Hospital which this year celebrates 750 years of treating the mentally ill". National Sound Archive reference H9034/2 source
4.9.1997 to 30.9.1997 The Arts and Our Users. An exhibition of current art work on display at the Community Centre, Bethlem Royal Hospital as part of the 750th - "A celebration of the creativity of service users. We are having an artist-in-residence to facilitate a range of exhibitions and activities. We are also publishing and illustrated book of poetry written by users and staff"
9.9.2007 to 8.12.2007 Art and Psychiatry Exhibition at the Kuntsforum in Vienna "Art from the Bethlem Archives will be part of this major international exhibition archive".
7.10.1997 to 15.3.1998 Exhibition on the History of Bethlem at the Museum of London
The Museum of London website opened in 1997 - first archive 28.1.1998 - The first digital exhibition was "Bedlam: Custody, Care and Cure". Museums were still charging for admission.
Friday 10.10.1997 to Sunday 10.10.1997 International Nursing Congress Kensington Town Hall. Organised by Nursing Times in association with the Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust. Included Eilleen Skeller lecture.
See Reclaim Bedlam
10.10.1997 "Publication of a national collection of user's poetry. The launch marks World Mental Health Day and National poetry Day" [Original programme]. Collection was called Beyond Bedlam: Poems written out of Mental Distress
18.10.1997 British Medical Journal review of "Bedlam: Custody, Care and Cure".
Thursday 23.10.1997 Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral 11am "Cardinal Hume will give the address".
Friday 24.10.1997 Launch of book, The History of Bethlem Hospital. Symposium at the Wellcome Trust. - Google Books link
27.10.1997 to 29.7.1997 "Mental Health in the City" An international conference hosted by the King's Fund and the Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust (source)
Wednesday 29.10.1997 The Maudsley Alumni Dinner
Thursday 30.10.1997 Institute of Psychiatry Symposium A review of current and future research
15.11.1997 Survivors Poetry launch of Beyond Bedlam: Poems written out of Mental Distress
December 1997 through April 1998 Exhibition of art from the Bethlem Archives at the Science Museum, London.
20.1.1998 to 23.1.1998 Royal College of Psychiatrists' Winter Meeting, London. Royal Lancaster Hotel, London. Joint meeting with Maudsley to mark the 750th anniversary.
Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum
Monks Orchard Road
Beckenham
Kent BR3 3BX
Royal Bethlem Hospital Museum other museums
external link to map with arrow pointing to present site Notice the sites of several other asylums in south London.
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Kingsley Hall
April 1965 Ronald Laing - Aaron? Esterson - and David Cooper co-founded the Philadelphia Association. About July 1965 to 1970 Kingsley Hall used by the Philadelphia Association as a therapeutic community. At some time (before Autumn 1967), Ronald Laing evicted Robin Farquharson for non-payment of telephone bills.
External link to
History of Kingsley Hall -
19.3.2010 "A Pageant of Survivor History - Mental patients in poetry, story and song from the 18th to 21st century" - |
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St Luke's Hospital
probably not receiving paupers in 1844 17.6.1750 Meeting in the King's Arms in Exchange Alley that decided to found a hospital: Founders Thomas Crowe, physician; Richard Speed, druggist of Old Fish Street; William Prowing, apothecary of Tower Street; James Sperling and Thomas Light, merchants of Mincing Lane; and Francis Magnus (250 year history booklet) Opened 1751 Upper Moorfields, opposite Bethlem. (see sketch map). Took its name from the new parish of St Luke's "The first patients were admitted in July 1751. In February 1753 the number was increased to 57. From 1754 some incurable patients were readmitted and for some time the numbers remained steady: 50 curable and 20 incurable patients. The staff consisted of the keeper and his wife plus two male and two female attendants." (250 year history booklet) William Battie (1703-1776) was physician to 1764 1781 Samuel Foart Simmons (born 17.3.1750, died 23.4.1813) became physician. "From this time... he devoted himself almost exclusively to the treatment of insanity... he attained a high reputation and from it accumulated an ample fortune."1782 Thomas Dunston moved from being "senior basketman" at Bethlem 1786 moved to Old Street. (New building designed by George Dance and erected 1782 to 1784?) Mr and Mrs Thomas Dunston became Master and Matron from 1786, previously (from 1782) they had been head man keeper and head woman keeper. Their son, John Dunston, apothecary, married the daughter of Thomas Warburton 1810 Benjamin Rush refered to "Dr Dunston" "physician of St Luke's Hospital... eminent for his knowledge of diseases of the mind" February 1811 Samuel Foart Simmons resigned as physician. Appointed consultant physician. His son did not wish to succeed him, but did wish his university friend, Alexander Robert Sutherland, to succeed. One of the unsuccessful candidates was George Leman Tuthill Alexander Robert Sutherland elected physician: "The House also for private patients at Islington was consigned to Dr S. on certain valuable considerations" 1812 Samuel Tuke visited St Lukes and compared ideas with Thomas Dunston. In a manuscript memorandum, he wrote: "There are three hundred patients, sexes about equal; number of women formerly much greater than men; incurables about half the number. The superintendent has never seen much advantage from the use of medicine, and relies chiefly on management. Thinks chains a preferable mode of restraint to straps or the waistcoat in some violent cases. Says they have some patients who do not generally wear clothes. Thinks confinement or restraint may be imposed as a punishment with some advantage, and, on the whole, thinks fear the most effectual principle by which to reduce the insane to orderly conduct. Instance: I observed a young woman chained by the arm to the wall in a small room with a large fire and several other patients, for having run downstairs to the committee-room door. The building has entirely the appearance of a place of confinement, enclosed by high walls, and there are strong iron grates to the windows. Many of the windows are not glazed, but have iron shutters which are closed at night. On the whole, I think St Luke's stands in need of a radical reform." (Quoted Tuke, D.H. 1882 pages 89-90)
1813
Mrs
Foulkes
prosecuted for keeping lunatics without a licence in a house
owned by Thomas Dunston.
31.3.1829 After setting fire to York Minster, Jonathan Martin was found not guilty on the ground of insanity. He was confined in St Luke's, where he died 3.6.1838
1829:
John
Warburton MD elected physician
"From 1833 it was recognised that it was important to provide some form of occupational therapy for patients. This was another idea supported by Dr Sutherland and also by John Warburton. Whilst this was a step forward they nevertheless maintained some older forms of treatment such as the use of occasional forcible restraint. This was said to be necessary because the number of staff employed to care for the patients was relatively small, in fact a ratio of 7 to 1." (250 year history booklet)31.8.1833 Clementina and William John Stinton had a baby girl who they christened Clementina Stinton at Saint Luke Old Street on 25.9.1833 1841 Census: Henry Lambert, aged 24, Resident Apothecary. William Jno Swinton, aged 37, Steward. Clementina Stinton, aged 39, Matron. Eight year old daughter (same name as Mrs Stinton] and a second Matron (Harriet Camerow?) aged about 60. Apart from Henry Lambert, the above were all born in Middlesex. Clementina Stinton, born Middlesex about 1834, was living in Lewes in 1881. The 1841 Census return was certified on 7.6.1841 by "Wm Jm Stinton, Steward of St Lukes Hospital for Lunatics". 1841 Alexander Robert Sutherland retired as physician and was succeeded by his son AlexanderJohn Sutherland 1842: A chaplain was hired and a chapel was being built 1844: Steward: Mr Stinton 1.1.1844: 93 curable patients, 84 incurable Henry Monro was a physician from 1855 to 1882. 1860 AlexanderJohn Sutherland retired as a physician to St Luke's From 1871 the Governors began to examine the possibility of acquiring a site for a second building in the country which could be used for convalescent patients. 1881 Census: George Mickley (Physician, unmarried, aged 37) [May previously have worked at Wyke House], Resident Medical Superintendent; Francis William Edward Hinners (unmarried, aged 23) and Edgar Vivian Ayre Phipps (unmarried, aged 24) Resident Clinical Assistant Surgeons. Steward: Thomas Collier Walker, aged 72, born Scotland. Matron: Charlotte Eliza Walker, aged 65, born Douglas, Isle of Man (presumably husband and wife), living with unmarried and unoccupied son and daughter of Steward, both born in Scotland: George Lyell Walker, aged 47 and Margaret Jane Walker, aged 40. 1882 The practice of having a husband a wife as Steward and Matron of the hospital ended. (250 year history booklet) In 1893 Nether Hall, near Ramsgate, was taken over for the benefit of [convalescing] female patients. Initially the property was rented but in 1901 it was purchased by the Hospital. 12.6.1904 to 5.11.1905 painted postcards from Edward O. Cole (patient). The research for most of the information from 1871 to the present was carried out by Jean Cullen, present owner of these postcards. 1910 the Hospital bought the Welders Estate near Jordans in Buckinghamshire, with the intention of building a substantial convalescent home. The project was never brought to completion, but an Encyclopedia reference in 1922 refers to new buildings being constructed at Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. "When St Luke's Hospital closed at the end of 1916, all the remaining patients were either discharged to their homes or transferred to other institutions. In 1922 it was suggested that a psychiatric unit should be instituted by St Luke's in cooperation with a General hospital. This led to the funding by the St Luke's charity of both an out-patient clinic and a psychiatric in-patient ward at the Middlesex Hospital. This continued until the new St Luke's-Woodisde Hospital opened in 1930." (Richard Morris to Jean Cullen)1917? Site of Old Street St Luke's sold to the Bank of England. Until later than 1958, the building was used as a printing works for Bank of England notes. 1930 "Third St Luke's" opened in Woodside Avenue, Muswell Hill after an "association with Middlesex Hospital" that began in 1923" 1930: Woodside Nerve Hospital 1940: St Luke's Woodside Hospital for Functional Nervous Disorders 1948 St Luke's Woodside, Woodside Avenue, Muswell Hill, London, N10 3HU 2001 250 year history booklet
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Guy's Hospital Lunatic Ward
not receiving paupers in 1844 1.1.1844: 25 private patients
George Savage physician for psychological medicine to Guy's Hospital to
1906.
1906 Maurice Craig (1886-6.1.1935) physician for psychological medicine to Guy's Hospital to 1926 external link - (offline) 1926 Robert Dick Gillespie physician for psychological medicine to Guy's Hospital
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Batavia Hospital Ship
Moored in the Thames, off Woolwich, this ship received naval patients from Hoxton House when they were considered fit for convalesecence. It also sent patients to Hoxton House and Bethlem. |
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The Epsom Group
1890? London County Council bought all the land belonging to the Manor of Horton in Epsom, Surrey, to develop a complex of asylums which was to become the largest in Europe. The five hospitals built were
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Maudsley Hospital In 1907, Dr Henry Maudsley offered London
County Council £30,000 (subsequently increased to £40,000) to
help found a new mental hospital that would 1) be exclusively for early and
acute cases, 2) have an out-patients' clinic, 3) provide for teaching and
research
Buildings were completed in 1915 and an Act of Parliament was secured to make voluntary treatment possible. However, the empty buildings were taken over as a military hospital. Fourth London General Hospital by early 1915 Neurological section established acting as a clearing hospital for these cases. (source) By June 1918 known as Maudsley Neurological Clearing Hospital After the war, the Ministry of Pensions continued to use it for the treament of shell shock Hansard 12.4.1920 "The present status of the Maudsley Hospital is that of a Ministry of Pensions Hospital, but it is to be handed back to the London County Council in July next" The London County Council Mental Hospital was opened in 1923. 1.1.1925 Accomodation for 146 uncertified patients. Sometime: Maudsley Hospital Medical School officially recognised by the University of London. 1936-1948 Clinical Director Dr Aubrey Lewis 1939? Belmont and Mill Hill 1948 Maudsley Hospital amalgamated with The Bethlem Hospital. Medical School renamed Institute of Psychiatry. [external link] Its Department of Psychiatry was under the chairmanship of Dr Aubrey Lewis from 1945 to 1966 South London and Maudsley NHS Trust - web archive 2.6.2001 to 2.7.2007 1994 Conference held in the Maudsley Hospital for service users and mental health professionals with the aim of trying to bring about a dialogue between the two groups. (A service user initiative). From that conference and a similar second conference, a group emerged which decided to work on issues of concern to service users. Communicate
"The Maudsley Hospital: Design and Strategic Direction, 1923-1939" by Edgar Jones, Shahina Rahman, and Robin Woolven. Medical History 1.7.2007
Belmont Asylum, Brighton Road, Sutton, Surrey was established by the Metropolitan Asylums Board in the premises of the South Metropolitan District School (Poor Law), probably in the first decade of the 20th century. It appears to have occupied the older part (boys school), whilst the girls school became Sutton and Cheam General Hospital. In 1930, it presumably passed to the London County Council. See Peter Higginbotham on the schools 1939? During World War Two, Belmont ("Sutton") was one of the "two evacuation centres" of Maudsley Hospital. William Sargant (24.4.1907 - 27.8.1988) and Eliot Slater worked there. One of them (Sargant?) had conceived the idea of a book on physical methods of treatment in psychiatry whilst working under Edward Mapother at the Maudsley in 1937. Sutton "tested the principles we have absorbed, in the hard school of work under pressure on the largest scale" (Preface to the first edition of An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry by William Sargant and Eliot Slater 1944.
On Sargant see
Wellcome Library
-
Wikipedia (and talk page!)
1948 William Sargant at St Thomas's, after a period in the USA.
31.3.1964 Valerie Argent admitted to Belmont Hospital
A building next to Belmont Hospital became the Henderson Hospital. Under its medical director, Dr Maxwell Jones, Henderson was one of the birth places of the therapeutic community, whilst Belmont was associated with the physical forms of treatment favoured by Dr William Sargant. Belmont is closed, but Henderson continues in new premises: 2 Homeland Drive, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5LT. See the Henderson Hospital web site - archive 2000-2006
Surrey County Asylum at Brookwood, Knaphill, near Woking
Opened as a second Surrey County Asylum in June 1867. 328 patients were received in 1867. On an 1873 map it is on Knaphill Common, south west of "Woking Convict Prison".
"The site was selected for cheap land and the Surrey Justices purchased 150 acres in 1860 for £70 per acre... The asylum was designed to be self sufficient with its own gas works, sewage plant, a water tower with reservoirs holding one million gallons of water, the four acre Home Farm, and recreational areas. Occupational therapy was born and able patients put to work on making items the asylum needed such as furniture, baskets, rugs, tools, etc. and growing their own food. It was all commendably enlightened for its time and with building extensions the number of inmates grew steadily from 670 in 1875 to 1500 in the 1930s. Besides providing a great deal of local employment for nursing and maintenance staff the hospital became a major social centre for the district, organising fetes, shows, weekly dances, sports events and fund raisers." (John Quarendon's Surrey Walks: "Roots of Woking" downloaded from WokingAlive.com, or later from dirty boots is in the international archive)
Edward Sackett (born 1840) was
admitted to the
[Workhouse] Infirmary, Russell
Street, Bermondsey on 14.11.1874, but moved to Brookwood Lunatic
Asylum a week later.
It became Brookwood Hospital, Knaphill, Woking, GU21 2YP. Closure planned from 1986, but did not take place until 1994. "The surviving buildings have now been converted into luxury apartments". (Part of the site was developed as housing Percheron Drive, GU212QY). See Woking's Villages 2003 use: "Luxury housing" Cataloguing its records - archive Surrey County Asylum at Cane Hill was opened in 1883. It was originally the third Surrey County Asylum. (map link) - Brighton Road, Coulsdon, near Croydon, Surrey. "The hospital is located in Coulsdon, near Croydon, in South London. It is just to the west of the A23 which runs from Croydon to Brighton. Although it is so close to London, this is one of the points where the land becomes less urban, Coulsdon being a small town, with downs and farmland to the south. This is where the hospital is, on top of a hill opposite the Farthing Downs" Andrew Tierney
London County Council Asylum, with provision for Croydon: 15.3.1889: Sub-Committees of the Provisional Councils of London and Surrey met at Spring Gardens, London, to make suggestions about dividing the relevant assets of Surrey (previously managed by the County Justices). It was suggested that Cane Hill be taken by London, with one-eighth of its accommodation reserved for the Borough of Croydon. (Information, with references, from Margaret Griffiths for Surrey County Archivist). [Croydon became a county borough in 1889, under the same legislation that created County Councils for London and Surrey] By an agreement dated 25.3.1890, backdated to 1.4.1889, London County Council agreed to "accommodate and maintain" in Cane Hill "all such pauper lunatics of the county borough of Croydon" for five years. Croydon would meet all the costs of caring for its patients. "There are periodic references in the minutes to lunatics being housed elsewhere although the majority were at Cane Hill. Croydon appointed officials to regularly inspect conditions." (Chris Bennett, archivist Croydon Local Studies - Croydon Library, who provided above information, with references). Cane Hill was probably used as Croydon's main asylum until 1903, when its own asylum was opened. - [Surrey was left with only one asylum: Brookwood - Netherne was built to ease the overcrowding.]
Hannah Harriett Pedlingham Hill
born 11 Camden Street, Walworth on 6.8.1865. She married
Charles Chaplin senior on 22.6.1885. Charlie Chaplin was born 16.4.1889.
See also
Wikipedia (German)
Hannah Chaplin was a vaudeville artist until her voice failed. After that she lived in rooms in Kennington, in Lambeth workhouse, or Cane Hill Asylum. Charlie Chaplin and his brother Sydney visited her in Cane Hill in 1912:
"It was a depressing day, for she was not well. She had just got over an obstreperous phase of singing hymns, and had been confined to a padded room. The nurse had warned us of this beforehand. Sydney saw her, but I had not the courage, so I waited. He came back upset, and said that she had been given shock treatment of icy cold showers and that her face was quite blue. That made us decide to put her into a private institution - we could afford it now."
They moved her to Peckham House for a few years (until the money
ran
out).
Surrey County Mental Hospital at Netherne,
St Lukes Church (see Moyna Peters' story) has been "redesigned internally" as a leisure club with a swimming pool and gym exclusive to Netherne Village residents. 2007 Netherne Community website history page January 2009 Moyna Peters told some of her story on Radio Four's State of Mind
Tooting Bec Asylum, opened in 1903 by the Metropolitan Asylums Board, mainly for people with
senile dementia.
1919 Post Office Directory: also lists a private asylum: Newlands House Mental Hospital. Tooting Bec Road SW17. J. Noel Sergent, MB, BS London, proprietor and resident physician.
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Fountain Asylum
Established as a fever hospital in 1893
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Pauper lunatics from Croydon went to the Surrey asylum at Cane Hill, and this
continued
when Croydon became an independent County Borough in 1889. However, the
"Lunacy Visiting Committee" of the new "County Borough of Croydon" also
made arrangements for patients to be kept in the Isle of Wight County
Asylum (1897-1902), others may have gone elsewhere.
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Holloway Sanatorium
Virginia Water, Surrey Opened as a private asylum in 1884 Closed December 1980 2003 use: "Gated housing development"
See
Wikipedia
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Lingfield Training Colony
1894: Opened Became St Pier's School, St Piers Lane, Lingfield, Surrey RH7 6PW 19/23.3.2001: pdf: Ofsted report
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Latchmere Special Hospital for (Army) Officers
Latchmere, Ham Common, Richmond, Surrey. A private house before the first world war. Taken over in November 1915 with beds for 51 officers. (external link and another ). In March 1920, Mrs. M. J. Shepperd, Sister, Special Hospital for Officers, Latchmere, Ham Common, Surrey, was awarded the Royal Red Cross (Second Class), by the King, in recognition of her valuable services in connection with the War (British Journal of Nursing 27.3.1920, p.124 - pdf-) ---- "MI5's Secret Interrogation Centre - Latchmere House - 'Camp 020' - at Ham Common, Richmond", After the Battle --- Latchmere House: "The Prison Service took over the site from the military in 1948. As a Prison Service establishment it has had several roles as a young offender institution, remand centre, and a deportees prison. It became a resettlement prison in 1992". HMP Latchmere House, Church Road, Ham Common, Richmond, Surrey, TW10 5HH Operational Capacity: 198 |
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Hackney (East London)
All in-patient beds were at Long Grove Hospital, Epsom,
about 25 miles away on the other side of London, until the psychiatric unit
opened at
Hackney Hospital.
Date that outpatients clinics started at Hackney Hospital is not known. But
none listed in 1940. If the Duly Authorised Officer was summoned to a
crisis in Hackney in
1956-1957, the person might be taken by ambulance to
St Clements (or another London observation unit) or directly to
Long Grove.
1959 Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (PRA) started at
Longrove and in Hackney.
1962 Enid Mills'
Living with Mental Illness. A study in East
London, etc. Reports of the
Institute of Community Studies number 7. Published: London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962.
1962 Start of PRA research project to study mental hospital
admission and discharge rates for Hackney and Tower Hamlets and the
available community services, in relation to the national statistics.
[John Reed gave 1967 as the date some psychiatric beds opened at
Hackney Hospital. Before this there were out-patient clinics, but the
in-patient beds were at Long Grove Hospital. However, the in-patient beds
at Hackney Hopsital appear to pre-date 1967 - See below].
1966 All in-patients passing through Long Grove - St Clements - and
Hackney ("the main psychiatric hospitals serving East and North London")
were included in the PRA survey. "The total number of patients discharged
who were previously admitted from East London was 2061. 37% were discharged
from Long Grove, 52.8% from St Clement's Hospital, and 10.2% from Hackney
Psychatric Unit"
(PRA1968, p.6)
February 1968 Publication of The Mental Health of East London
by the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association.
1970 Publication of Mental illness in City and Suburb - A study
of the geographic distribution of psychiatric pateients discharged to
Aackney, Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Enfields and Waltham Forest by the
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association.
April 1974 After this date, all hospital admissions for mental
illness were to units within the borough. (But existing patients remained
at Long Grove). St Lawrences,
Caterham, previously the catchment area hospital for mental
handicap, ceased taking Hackney patients in 1974
Friday 6.5.1974 First meeting of the
Hackney Hospital
Mental Patients Union
1980 and 1981 John Bligh's survey of patients in
hospitals outside Hackney revealed at least 80 mentally ill patients at Long Grove and about 200
patients dispersed in mental handicap hospitals in a ring around London,
including: St Lawrences:
161;
Farmfield: 2;
The Manor, Epsom: 13;
St Ebbas, Epsom: 2;
Darenth Park, Kent: 11;
South Ockendon,
Essex (the closest): 7; Harperbury, Hertfordshire: 1;
Leavesden,
Hertfordshire: 10. In 1980 Hackney's Director of Social
Services told councillors that mentally handicapped people were no longer
sent outside the borough "except in exceptional circumstances".
1981 There were 80 mental illness in-patient beds at Hackney
Hospital, 73 at the German Hospital and six at St
Bartholomews.
Winter 1984/1985
Hackney Day Hospital Patients Committee established
Wednesday 25.6.1986 Dr John Reed's farewell party in the Academic
Centre, Hackney Hospital.
1986 Homerton Hospital opened, but geriatric and psychiatric wards
remained at Hackney Hospital
March 1994
Hackney Patients Council founded
1995
"Hackney Hospital Closure Under Way"
Robin Farquarson House
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Mental Handicap Unit in Hackney
Eastern Hospital The Eastern Hospital, Homerton Grove, London, E9
6BY was demolished in 1982 to make way for the new Homerton
Hospital. Amongst its last residents were a group of severely disabled
children who moved to a hostel in Malpas Road, Hackney. The Eastern
Hospital had a long history as a fever hospital and as a hospital for
diseases of the skin. Its use as a home for children with learning
difficulties is not mentioned in the extensive historical notes on the
Hospital Database.
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Mental Handicap Hospitals North East of London
Royal Eastern Counties
South Ockendon Colony
Leytonstone House or Leyton House
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Brentwood
St Faith's Hospital, Brentwood
Edmonton
St David's Hospital
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Mental Handicap Hospitals North West of London 1971
Cell Barnes
Broomham and Fairfield Unit
Normansfield Idiot Asylum
Church Hill House
Click for Mental Handicap
Hospitals North East of London 1971
Mental Handicap Hospitals South of London 1971
Darenth Park Opened by the Metropolitan Asylums Board in 1878 as
Darenth Asylum and Schools, 1913: Darenth Industrial
Colony, 1920:
Darenth Training Colony. In 1930, passed to the London County Council. 1937:
Darenth Park
Hospital, Dartford, DA2 6LZ. Closed 1988
Leybourne Grange
Eastry
Princess Christian's
Botley's Park Hospital
Murray House was the Chertsey Workhouse.
See Peter Higginbotham's site
Royal Earlswood
Farmfield Originally an inebriates reformatory
Mental Handicap Hospital South of London after 1971
Grove Park Hospital Greenwich
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South East England
Hook Norton, Oxfordshire
External link to
Oxford Health Archives
Hook Norton (1725?) -
Witney (1823) -
Warneford (1826) -
Littlemore (1846) -
Borocourt (1933) -
Bradwell Grove
(1948) -
Oxfordshire
present
Compare with
Cambridgeshire, the other English university county
Licensed House
The asylum at Hook Norton and the one at
Witney are the subjects of a special study by
William Parry-Jones (1972 chapter six). Page
numbers below are to this.
About 1725: opened. The village of Hook Norton is near the edge
of Oxfordshire, near to
Warwickshire
1815
list: Hook Norton: Harris
1.1.1844 ??
Closed 1854
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Warneford Asylum, Oxford (Headington)
Warneford Hospital history in health authority archives not receiving paupers in 1844 Architect: Richard Ingleman Opened 1826 Before it opened (from 1821 to 1826) its was referred to as Oxford Lunatic Asylum 1826: Radcliffe Asylum (1826 - 1843 1843 Warneford Asylum 1844: Superintendent: F.T. Wintle, MD 1.1.1844: 42 private patients, 1881 Census:. Warneford Asylum, Headington, Oxford. Medical Superintendent: John Ward, married, born Leeds about 1844. Warneford Hospital Warneford Lane, Oxford, OX3 7JX 1909 Leaflet in book multi-map
Associated with:
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Oxfordshire and Berkshire County Asylum opened on 1.8.1846 at
Littlemore,
Oxford. This became the Oxford County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
May 1918 Ashurst War Hospital, Littlemore. - 580 beds (source) "for the care and treatment of soldiers and pensioners suffering from neurasthenia or loss of mental balance" (Hansard 12.4.1920) August 1920 Reverted to county asylum By 1922 it was the Oxford County and City Mental Hospital. It became Littlemore Hospital, Sandford Road, Littlemore, Oxford, OX4 4XN 1990 Oxford Survivors and Libellus Dementum 2003 use: "Gated housing development, business"
A separate asylum for Berkshire County, and boroughs of Reading and Newbury
was planned in 1867/1868: Moulsford Asylum opened in 1870.
(external link to asylum history).
(archive copy).
Broadmoor Criminal
Lunatic
Asylum
was opened at Crowthorne, Berkshire, in 1863.
4.11.1919: Beth Wood admitted. Dr Sullivan was Superintendent at this time. Beth was conditionally discharged to the care of her husband on 4.12.1921 1920 Rampton 10.9.1924 The Nation "W. C. Sullivan, Medical Superintendent of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in England, in his recent book, Crime and Insanity" 26.2.1926 Death of William Charles Sullivan (1869-1926) sometime superintendent at Broadmoor. September 1944 First issue of The Broadmoor Chronicle 1948 Criminal Justice Act section 62(3) moved Broadmoor from the Home Office to the Board of Control. The name was changed to Broadmoor Special Institution 1957: See Percy Report 1959 Mental Health Act sections 97-98: Broadmoor, Rampton and Moss Side became Special Hospitals under the Ministry of Health. English Heritage: Broadmoor, Berkshire, built 1860-63 as the state criminal lunatic asylum HSH Broadmoor Hospital The Terrace, Upper Broadmoor Road, Crowthorne, Berkshire RG45 7EG freedom campaign prison list
Buckinghamshire County Asylum opened 17.1.1853
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Mental Handicap Hospitals
Borocourt
Certified Institution
for Mental Defectives
Bradwell Grove Hospital
Manor House Hospital
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Chalfont Colony opened
1894
The National Society for the Employment of Epileptics, Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire Doctors from the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic , in London, were amongst the people who established the colony. It was run from London and visited regularly by doctors from the hospital. (an external link) |
As well as the asylums below, see the two "London" asylums at Stone (City) and Bexley
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See David Mapley on Fort Clarence, Rochester
(external link -
archive)
"
Fort Clarence is sited
across St Margarets Street in Rochester. Work commenced in 1808 and
completed in 1812 and was sited to prevent access from Maidstone Road to
the River Medway. After 1815 the fort served a variety of different
purposes. One use was as a military prison and lunatic asylum. After nearby
Fort Pitt became a military hospital the patients were moved
from Fort
Clarence to a new purpose built asylum, although the prison remained."
June 1804 military and naval lunatics "pouring" into
Bedlam
June 1815 Sir James M'Grigor appointed director-general of the army
medical department (based at Chatham).
Lockhart Robertson (1856) says "the old regulations drawn up by
him for the government of Fort Clarence breathe a spirit of scientific
humanity, which it required twenty years of progress to infuse generally
into the civil establishments for the insane. Throughout his long tenure of
office he was ever anxious to adopt into the Military Asylum every modern
improvement in the treatment of the insane... at his frequent personal
inspections at Fort Clarence he evinced a warm personal sympathy with its
afflicted inmates, which in after years I have often heard spoken of with
grateful remembrance."
Fort Clarence: Asylum opened 1819. "Fort Clarence, Chatham, was opened in 1819, as a military asylum. There were plans to build a new and larger asylum, but these were not fulfilled at the time" ( Parry-Jones, W.L. 1972 p.68) - The 1844 Report refers to "lunatic wards" at Fort Clarence (and Haslar) as well as to a "military hospital". Opened "for the reception of insane officers, soldiers, and women belonging to the army; and in that year four officers, sixty-two non-commissioned officers and privates, and two women were admitted into this hospital". (Lockhart Robertson 1856)
Andrew Smith
returned to England from South Africa in 1836 and was stationed at Fort
Pitt. He became staff surgeon and principal medical officer in 1841.
In 1844 its principal medical officer was Andrew Smith M.D., and it had 70 patients, 21 of whom were commissioned officers. "The Military Hospital at Fort Clarence, near Chatham, is well situated. The part of the fort which is appropriated to the residences of the officers is very gloomy, and ill suited for a receptacle for insane persons. Some of the sleeping-rooms for the private soldiers are sufficiently good, but others are dull and cheerless. The exercising grounds for the officers, and the yards for the soldiers, are cheerful, but are not sufficient in number or size. The buildings and grounds admit of great improvement; but we understand that the inmates of this hospital are about to be removed to a new asylum." (1844 Report p.31) "Most general military hospitals included wards for the mentally ill. In 1847, about 20 mentally ill soldiers were transferred from Fort Clarence in Rochester to a new house of detention or of observation at Fort Pitt. Morrison, K. 7.1996 The "new asylum" mentioned in the 1844 Report, "was to have been erected between Maidstone and Chatham, with a sum £60,000. A site was purchased but ultimately abandoned, and the Naval Hospital at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, selected to replace permanently for the benefit of the insane patients of the army, that establishment which the Commons had decreed should be built". (Lockhart Robertson 1856) Shorncliffe Barracks, Folkestone used as a temporary asylum. All patients moved in one day of October 1846 to Yarmouth Inmates were transferred to the new Army lunatic asylum at Netley in 1870, an attractive brick building now used as a police training centre" Morrison, K. 7.1996
Fort Pitt Built between 1805 and 1819 on the high ground of the
boundary between Chatham and Rochester. Became a hospital for invalided
soldiers in 1828, with an asylum added in 1849.
9.3.1855
Hansard £2,000 allocated to buildings
for military lunatics at Fort Pitt. "It seemed contrary to common sense
that a lunatic asylum for the whole army should be placed in the middle of
Fort Pitt, where unfortunate invalids were now experiencing comfort after
their return from the Crimea".
20.7.1855 House of Commons: Question about £60,000 allocated
"a few years since" for a military lunatic asylum. None had been spent (?).
"when military lunatics arrived at Chatham they were detained there,
pending an inquiry as to whether they were fit to be sent to their
respective homes, or to the military asylum". The accomodation being "very
imperfect... it had been determined to erect a separate house for the
temporary reception of the soldiers".
3.3.1856
Hansard: Masters Smith complained that "the lunatics, the moment
they were relieved from the discipline attached to the wards, were
permitted to have free communication in the area of the fort with the
invalided soldiers who had returned from foreign service... those lunatics
were subjected to no active surveillance". He was told that "a hospital had
been procured
near Southampton" were it
was hoped "a building would be erected there which would include a
hospital, invalid barracks, and a lunatic asylum".
Florence Nightingale
started the first Army Medical School there in 1860, but by the 1920s the
hospital was closed, and the site converted into a school. (John Bray
November 2003 Fortress UK) =
(archive source)
- (1867 List shows the Military Lunatic Hospital at
Fort Pitt).
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1905 Royal Naval Hospital, Chatham, opened
"Admissions for psychological disorders at the Royal Naval Hospital, Chatham, rose steadily throughout the First World War". (Jones and Greenberg 5.2006) |
Kent County Asylum
Barming Heath, near Maidstone
The term "barmy" (crazy) dates back to the 16th century, and was not
derived from this asylum.
Need for a county asylum first raised by the County Justices in
1825 (Administrative History)
7.7.1825 "a return made by order of the county magistrates
showed that there were 160 pauper lunatics and 50 dangerous idiots in Kent"
(Nick Hervey)
18.11.1828 Order made for its establishment. Committee of
Visitors established to oversee: "after difficulty had arisen over the
placement of a criminal lunatic from St. Augustine's prison". 37 acres site
bought from the parish of Maidstone, "situated at 200-300 feet above the
Medway on Barming Heath. The site overlooked a valley covered in hop
plantations and was faced by timbered and park-like hills".
(Nick Hervey)
Simon Cornwall:
Built: 1830-1833. Architect: John Whichcord Senior.
Corridor form "The first building consisted
of a central house of four stories, with two wings, or tiers of wards of
three floors, on each side. This front faced south, and at each end there
was a wing extending backwards at a right angle. There was an artificial
warming and ventilation system heated by a steam engine. The latter also
raised the asylum's water from a well".
(Nick Hervey)
Opened
1.1.1833
according to the
1844
Report and other sources. Built for 168 patients
First superintendant George Poynder MRCS LSA, previously at
Gloucestershire County Asylum
1836 Part added to asylum
1836 Richard Adams criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Kent".
(HO 20/13)
August? 1836 Publication by Charles Dickens of the fictional
A Madman's Manuscript
1837 Part added to asylum
1838 William Deane, criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Barming Heath, Kent".
(HO 20/13)
[Many other criminal lunatics listed for West Malling and the Lunatic
Asylum, Maidstone]
1842 Part added to asylum
1.1.1844: 249 patients. All pauper. 1844?
11.6% of
patients
epileptic
1845 Part added to asylum: Now room for 443 patients.
1846 George Poynder retired and was succeeded by
James Edmund Huxley MD MRCS LSA. (aged 25), also previously at
Gloucestershire County Asylum.
(Nick Hervey)
1847 Part added to asylum
1850 Additional buildings added the Chronic/Additional Building)
Annual medical report of the Kent County Lunatic Asylum, for the
year ending July 4th, 1853. Presented to the Committee of Visitors,
10.9.1853 and to the Court of General Sessions, 18.10.1853.
24 pages and folded leaf of plates. Consists of statistical tables,
remarks on the tables and report of the superintendent, James E. Huxley
(Wellcome Library catalogue)
1857: Wet beds and the
threat to the British Constitution
Sixteenth annual medical report : for the year 1861-1862
("Thirtieth year") Consists of statistical tables, the 15th and 16th annual
reports of the superintendent (James E. Huxley), including the report of
the Commissioners in Lunacy (W.G. Campbell, S. Gaskell). Last with James
Huxley as superintendent.
About 1862-1869 William P. Kirkman Superintendent
1867-1872 (Third Asylum/New Building).
Accomodation problems eased by the opening of
Chartham Asylum
1881 Census: Kent County Lunatic
Asylum Barming Heath, Maidstone. Francis Pritchard Davies (married, aged
38) Superintendent.
1885-1902
imbecile patients from Westminster
Asylum no longer there. Part of site occupied by new Maidstone
Hospital.
Oakwood Hospital, Maidstone (formerly Kent County Lunatic
Asylum,
Barming Heath), East Barming, Kent and Maidstone, Kent. 1829-1986 records
in Centre for Kentish Studies, County Hall, Maidstone.
Simon Cornwall:
Closed. To be converted to housing.
West Malling Place, Kent
Licensed House
Established about 1770 by
William
Perfect
(1737-1809)
Lent 1830 Sarah Blunt
criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, West Malling, Kent". "felony"
(HO 20/13)
1.1.1844: 47 patients. 13 pauper and 34 private.
SEVERELY CENSURED IN 1844
REPORT
"Lunatic Asylum" shown near the remains of St Leonard's Chapel at St
Leonard's Street, on 1870 map.
From 1875 to 1948 there was a Malling Place Private Mental Nursing
Home, St Leonards Street, West Malling. Archives in Centre for Kentish
Studies, Maidstone.
1881
Census: St Leonard St Lunatic Asylum, West Malling, Kent.
Thomas H. Lowry, aged 63, born Maidstone, Kent, Physician. Elizabeth I.
Lowry, his wife, aged 50, born Chatham, Kent, and Mimie Lowry, there
unmarried daughter, aged 19, born West Malling
10.11.1912 William
Smart Harnett, a farmer, admitted under
certificate to Malling Place, West Malling, Kent, a licensed house owned
and managed by Dr George Henry Adam.
Hunter and McAlpine (1963) say that was "still in use"
Postcode ME19 6PD
(map to postcode)
The site of the asylum on old maps is close to the present Manor Homes
Elderly Residential Care at 96 St Leonards Street
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Kent County Asylum at Chartham
East Kent Lunatic Asylum Opened 1875. Architect: Giles And Gough - Corridor-pavilion 1885-1902 imbecile patients from Westminster Kent County Mental Hospital, Chartham from 1920 to 1948. Combined with St Martin's Hospital Canterbury and Canterbury City Mental Hospital in 1948. Then St Augustine's Hospital, Chartham Downs, Canterbury. April 1974 St Augustine's Hospital, Chartham Down, near Canterbury, Kent - A Critique Regarding Policy by Brian Ankers and Olleste Etsello "Drugs were given almost automatically to new admissions...ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy) was sometimes used as a punitive measure - although it was not openly admitted. I have heard the term 'punitive ECT' used in the hospital in reference to "that is what a patient needs". Some psychiatrists had a certain faith in ECT and at times patients were threatened with it" (page 14)31.3.1976 Report of the Committee of Inquiry at St Augustine's Hospital, Chartham, Canterbury "The consultants at St Augustine's readily admitted that they gave priority to the patients who were acutely ill. These tend to be younger than the chronic patients... the patients in the back wards often have intractable illness.." (Dr Tony Smith The Times 1.4.1976)
Simon Cornwall: Closed in 1992, demolished in 1997. Peter Cracknell: Admin block, villa, lodge, chapel and tower survive. Rest of complex cleared by 1997.
From 1902, Canterbury Borough had its own Mental Hospital (later St.
Martin's Hospital). Prior to this, Canterbury Borough patients were
reported as being in various location including Fisherton House, Wiltshire
and in 1896 at
Derby County Asylum.
Sevenoaks Workhouse
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The 1844 Report estimated the pauper lunatics of Sussex to be 251 in 1842, and reported the number chargeable to Unions in Sussex by August 1843 to be 278 (105 idiots and 173 lunatics. But there was no public or private asylum in the county that received paupers. Several were in asylums outside the county. Eight were in county asylum/s. [There is no column for "hospitals" so this may have included St Luke's Hospital]. Eighty Five were in licensed houses. Only 69 of those who remained in the county were in a workhouse, the other 116 were "with their friends or elsewhere".
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History of Haywards Heath -
Haywards Heath and its
Hospitals -
-
Brief history of Haywards Heath
(archive). Joe Hughes of the
Friends of St Francis has helped considerably
with the history below and on the
Charlotte Mew page (where the pictures are). He provided me with
a full copy of
A History of St Francis Hospital 1859 -
1995 by Jim Mable
Sussex Asylum, Haywards Heath was being erected in 1858
[West Sussex County Asylum?]
[The new] East Sussex County Asylum opened in 1903
(see above)
External links mechanised org tours derelict building and says "Further Reading: Hellingly is one of the most documented of asylums- and the sites below offer the most interesting interpretations. Sub-Urban has a fascinating "Then and Now" section comparing the hospital as it stands with images from the 1900s - Exploration Station has reminiscences of former staff, patients and local residents; also contains countless photos - Urbex is the most accessible tour of the hospital; an extended journey through all of the main points of interest - Abandoned Britain is a black and white tour that perhaps comes closest to capturing Hellingly's calm and stillness" (Mechanised Spring 2006) |
Maldon Lane, Witham, Essex
Licensed House
1.1.1844 ? patients. pauper and 17 private.
1834 Received
circular about cheap method of constructing an asylum
Michaelemas Session 1837: Q/SBb 529/47
Draft court order for [Thomas] Hopper [County Surveyor] to investigate
practicality and cost of providing lunatic asylum at Springfield.
1846 Great Dunmow, St. Mary the Virgin, Parish Overseer's
records: Circulars opposing erection of County lunatic asylum.
1849
County Lunatic Asylum: Treasurer's Account (Q/ALc 9). One volume
1849-1861
Diaries of Charles Gray Round of Birch Hall
(D/DR F68) 27.6.1849 - 3.7.1854, include consecration of St. Peter, Birch,
gift of C.G.Round, 25.10.1850; visit to Great Exhibition in Hyde Park,
London, 16.5.1851; laying of foundation stone of County Lunatic Asylum at
Brentwood, 2.10.1851, and appointment as chairman of Visitors,
16.1.1854.
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Essex County Lunatic Asylum opened
23.9.1853 at Brentwood.
Probably
built
for 300 patients, it had 450 patients in 1858. -
Too large for Conolly's ideal?
Architect: H. E. Kendall [Essex County Archives Catalogue has "Kendall and Pope" as "architects". H.E. Kendall and R.R. Pope: See initials in brickwork [try again] Simon Cornwall's website: "It consisted of two main blocks orientated north to south and facing east, with miscellaneous buildings dotted behind these to the west. The use of red and black bricks, the stone mullion windows, and the use of octagonal towers gave the hospital a medieval appearance." Corridor form 31.12.1853 307 patients 31.12.1860 666 patients 1863 Three "distinct houses with as much as possible the plain arrangment of a country home" were opened. They were Blocks A, B and C. 1864 Extension added 1870:model for a South Australian asylum 1870 Chloral hydrate tried as a sedative and ammonium bromide for epilepsy 1870 Extension added 31.12.1870 932 patients 31.12.1880 932 patients 1882 Gradual withdrawal of beer from patients' diet was completed by 1892. The brewery was converted into a laboratory and mortuary. 1884 Typhoid epidemic (leak of sewer gas from old rains blamed) 1889 Typhoid epidemic (leak of sewer gas from old rains blamed) 1889 Extension added 31.12.1890 1376 patients 1894 37 patients and 5 staff suffered smallpox. Thirteen of the patients died. 1895 Large outbreak of diphtheria. Thirty three "true" cases identified by bacteriological methods. Typhoid epidemic in 1900 led to two deaths 31.12.1900 2081 patients 1901 680 patients transferred to Goodmayes. All Essex patients "boarded out" in the asylums of other counties returned to Brentwood, occupying most of the beds vacated by the patients who went to Goodmayes. By 1913 there were several hundred more patients boarded out. 1901 Screens used to separate parts of the galleries (day space) of some wards as temporary dormitories. Some were still there in 1953. 31.12.1910 1875 patients "Pathological work, in the investigation of possible organic structural abnormalities as a cause of insanity, increased enormously from 1910 and a great deal of research was carried out" (1953 Centenary booklet) May 1913 The second Essex County Asylum at Severalls Hospital, Colchester opened. The boarded out patients went there. 1913-1914 Verandas added to some wards for "open-air treatment". [Not stated that this was for tuberculosis]
First World War: Patients received from
Norfolk and
Napsbury
Brentwood Mental Hospital
from about 1920 to 1953.
1953 Centenary. Renamed Warley Hospital 1953 G.S Nightingale, Warley Hospital, Brentwood. The first hundred years 1853 - 1953. Typed. Photocopy said to be available at the Essex Record Office, Chelmsford. This may be related to "the 1953 centenary commemorative booklet, printed by patients in the occupational therapy department" quoted from in the boredtown history. - online copy on Warley Hospital website - "From 1974 the hospital lay geographically within the Chelmsford District of the Essex Area Health Authority, but in common with other hospitals in Brentwood was administered by the Barking and Havering Area Health Authority." 1979: 1,025 beds Served people living in Brentwood, Havering and Barking and Dagenham. 1997 Year Joanna Moncrieff says the "long stay wards were finally closed" and "most patients who could not be discharged were transferred to a newly opened and staffed rehabilitation ward known as Woodside Villa". "At its inception, Woodside Villa was included in a research project about the fate of patients discharged from the asylums, the TAPS project. Involvement in this project meant the unit was staffed by a multidisciplinary team, including nurses, doctors, occupational therapists, and psychologists. Social workers were involved on a case by case basis". - As the first wave of patients were gradually moved on, other, mainly younger patients were admitted, usually after prolonged stays on the acute inpatient wards. June 2001. Warley Hospital closed. Patients, staff and support services moved into purpose built Mascalls Park accommodation. 2001 Joanna Moncrieff became consultant at Woodside Villa. This was about the time that the TAPS programme came to an end. April 2009? Woodside Villa due to close. Addresses Warley Hospital, Warley Hill, Brentwood, Essex, CM14 5HQ. Mascalls Park; Mascalls Lane Great Warley, Brentwood, Essex, CM14 5HQ Urbex (Simon Cornwall) map and photograph index - elements of Mascalls Park Brentwood history at boredtown Cofton Projects (all archives, that is 14.11.2002 to 24.2.2005) Now Clements Park, Warley, Warley, Essex, CM14 5UZ, and similar postcodes. Brentwood Borough Council Photo Album
Severalls Hospital, Colchester
The Save Severalls Group website seems to have closed. Visit the archive. This says: "The main hospital complex is a good and externally largely unchanged and intact example of an echelon plan hospital, The main hospital complex is surrounded by a variety of villas, accommodation blocks which were built between 1910 and 1935. This makes the site particularly interesting as it represents the changing attitudes of asylum design in the early 20th Century, away from the large hospital complexes so popular in the 19th century to the more 'homely' Colony Style where the wards where housed in smaller individual villas rather than large ward blocks." "dominating the site in the Northwest of the building there is a tall water tower and chimney." (picture) [See Enoch Powell's Water Tower speech] David Wright, engineer at Severalls for 16 years, explains the tower: "The tower at Severalls houses the lift pumps that abstract water from a bore hole. The water is lifted to the cistern at the top of the tower and supplies the Domestic Hot Water Supply and the Cold Water Downservice. All drinking water is taken directly from the public main as are the fire hydrants."
The Save
Severalls Group website is maintained by Ian Richards. It also
has information about other asylums Ian has visited. Ian has provided me
with information about asylum design in the between 1850 and 1950 that I am
using on this website.
See also Urbex (Simon Cornwall) map and photograph index Diana Gittins, 1998 Madness in its Place: narratives of Severalls Hospital, 1913-1997 London: Routledge, Memory and narrative series. 12 pages introductory, 242 pages. Oral history from patients and staff
Runwell Mental Hospital
5.3.1999
"Runwell lands big cash handout"
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Ingrebourne Centre in the grounds of St Geoge's Hospital, Suttons
Lane, Hornchurch, Essex, RM12 6RS
July 1951 Twenty bed Neurosis Unit set up in a building used before the war as an Observation Ward (for Brentwood Mental Hospital)? 1956 The Neurosis Unit became independent of Warley and was renamed the Ingrebourne Centre. Richard Crocket (born 1914) Consultant in charge of the Ingrebourne Centre in Hornchurch, Essex, from 1954 to 1979. "He saw an acute general hospital psychiatric unit evolve into a dynamic psychotherapeutic community". (external source) The unit was, physically, very unlike a hospital ward. It was a completely detached prefabricated quadrangular building in the grounds of the hospital. The ground floor had bedrooms that each accomodated two or three patients. However, it was called "Ward G3" until Richard Crocket changed the name to "The Ingrebourne Centre for Psychological Medicine". "I had this .. Jungian picture ... of a centre with ramifications amongst general practitioners and hospitals, and functioning as an exchange rather like the telephone exchange". The therapeutic community was established by a junior doctor, Hamish Anderson December 1961 Incentive - early stages of the patient led community? Valerie Argent a patient 28.5.1963 Ingrebourne Society June 1963 Incentive
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Suffolk County Asylum
Melton, near Woodbridge
Previous history (1765-1827) House of Industry for Looes and Wilford
Incorporated Hundreds.
Peter Higginbotham says many
incorporated
Hundreds were set up in rural Suffolk in the 25 years after 1756
Asylum opened 1.1.1829
Suffolk County Lunatic Asylum to 1906
1.1.1844: 213 patients. 206 pauper and 7 private.
1881
Census
Suffolk District Asylum from about 1906 to about 1930
Also known, from about 1917, as St Audry's Hospital for
Mental Diseases
Became St Audry's Hospital, Melton, Woodbridge, IP12 1QT
1979: 530 beds
Now closed
External link to a nearby walk
Felixstowe Museum has a room devoted to
it
[other museums]
Archives in
Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich Branch)
Belle Vue House, Ipswich, Suffolk
Licensed House
Opened 1835
1.1.1844 32
patients. 20 pauper and 12 private.
Licensed to James Shaw (surgeon)
"Belle Vue Asylum, Ipswich Pleasantly situated on the Woodbridge
Rd, is a private establishment, for the reception of persons afflicted with
insanity. It was commenced in 1835, by its present proprietor, Mr James
Shaw, surgeon, & has accommodations for 40 patients". White Directory 1844
- p 84 Submitted by Betty Longbottom to
Rossbret
1870 Belle Vue House, Ipswich, Suffolk
licensed to Miss S A F Walter
Eye workhouse
Charles Mott, 1837:
"the man at Eye ate potato
peelings...because he was an idiot"
Also see
Peter Higginbotham on Eye workhouse
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Ipswich Borough Asylum
Built: 1869-1870 Opened 1870. Architect: WR Ribbans It became Ipswich Mental Hospital about 1908, then St Clement's Hospital, Foxhall Road. Ipswich, IP3 8LS, about 1947. Autumn 2002: reported closed and empty, but in good condition. Still open, no plans to close. (Simon Cornwall) |
In 1700 Norwich was the second largest city in England. Its population approached 30,000. Its closest rival, Bristol, had a population of more than 20,000
Bethel Hospital, Norwich
[Following history based mainly on
Winston, M. 1994 "The Bethel at Norwich: an eighteenth-century hospital for
lunatics"
Established
1713.
The original house, known from its image on the seal of the Bethel and
from a written descnption, seems to have been a two-storey building with
two wings, set back from the road, then known as Committee Street.
8.1.1724 Death of Mary Chapman, founder of the Bethel.
1727: Six new wards
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For the trustees:
City & County of Norwich January 1730 We whose names are herein Subscrib'd being appointed Trustees for the Endowment of Bethel do require you on Sight hereof to take and Receive into the aforesaid House take due care of and provide for A B belonging to the parish of C aged about years He being Certify'd under the hand of our Physician to be under Lunacy and there being Security given for his maintenance by D_ _ E.. while he shall continue there to our Satisfaction.
To F G Robert Waller
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The Bethel at Norwich
For the applicants: Norwch Janry 1730 Having this Day receiv'd an order from the Trustees for the Endowment of Bethel directed to the Keeper to Receive & take into the aforesaid House, take care of & provide for A.. B of the parish of C aged about years. In consideration thereof we do hereby promise to pay to H J Treasurer of the aforesaid Endowment or to his order the Summ of Four Shillings per Week and to pay the Same Monthly for so long time as he shall remain in the aforesaid House and also to allow for all Damages and Wasts that shall be committed by the said A B and to Supply him with necessary Cloathing during his abode there, and if he shall dye there, do promise to remove the Corps or else to be at the charge of Burying him from the aforesaid House in witness whereof we now Set our Hand the Day and Year above written. |
1749 Existing bathroom to converted to a cell, and strawroom to a "Cellar for the worst of the Lunatics to be put in", and a new strawhouse, bathroom and wash-house were to be built.
The number of residents remained stable between twenty and thirty until 1750. There was then a steady increase which continued throughout the decade. By 1760 numbers had risen to almost fifty.
1765 Trust incorporated and trustees became governors.
1762 Bequest of £1,000 by Bartholomew Balderston in order that two persons from the Congregation of Independents in Norwich could be kept "on the foundation" from time to time. (archive) - Relates to Congregational Church, Old Meeting, Norwich (archive)
Patient numbers dropped from between forty and fifty resident before 1780 to little more than thirty in the early 1790s.
1792 - 1867 Members of the Gurney and Birkbeck families, Quaker bankers, amongst the Governors.
27.7.1807: Frederick Reeve Spalding criminal lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum". He had been tried for a felony at Norwich and was held on the order of Warner & Richard Car Spalding. (HO 20/13)
1814 On the opening of the County Asylum notice was given to parishes that certain pauper patients would be discharged. The parishes arranged their admission to the county asylum. For the next three decades, until the Lunatics Act of 1845, the number of patients at the Bethel remained between seventy and eighty, while those in the new asylum increased
1818 Letter from Samuel King, Bethel Hospital, Norwich, to Thomas Stimson, Emneth, stating that patient John Marshall of Emneth would be returned as the parish had ceased to pay for him - 'It will fall to my Lot...to take him home in a Post Chaise' (archive)
September 1828 Joseph John Gurney (a visiting governor) visited with his sister, Elizabeth Fry. Two days later a Middlesex magistrate visited and pronounced himself "much pleased"
June 1830 William J. Tuke accompanied Gurney to the house and suggested that the galleries might be opened up to provide a variety of exercise for the patients.
1831: Uriah Baldwin criminal lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norwich". He had been tried at Norwich.
July 1832: Thomas Iveson criminal lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norwich". He had been tried for murder at Kings Lynn. He also spent time in Bethlem (HO 20/13)
Superintendent 1844: -- King.
1.1.1844 66 patients. "It is believed that some of these are maintained partly at the charge of parishes" (1844 Report p.210)
1870 Superintendent C. M. Gibson (surgeon)
1881 Census: "Hospital For Lunatics Bethel" Bethel Street, Norwich St Peter Mancroft
1956 Sale of the five Bethel Hospital farms. (archive) [I think these were the source of investment income since the 18th century - But see national policy]
1962 (Hospital Plan) Grouped with Hellesdon. Bethel had 122 patients in 1960 and was expected to close by 1975
"the oldest surviving hospital in the country specifically founded for the care of the mentally ill and currently the oldest building in the UK to have been in continuous psychiatric use (though it has been threatened with closure for some time) Since 1974 when the in-patient facilities were closed, it has continued as the Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry." Medical Heritage
1979 The Bethel Hospital, Norwich, NR2 1NR (no beds) Child and Family Psychiatry
2005: Bethel Child and Family Centre (Child and Adolescent Services), Mary Chapman House, 120 Hotblack Road, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 4HN (NHS Direct)
Archives link
Norfolk County Asylum
at Thorpe, near Norwich
one and a quarter miles east of Thorpe village church
third oldest county asylum.
[A Sarah Rutherford case study]
11.10.1808
Resolved at Norwich Quarter Sessions that the next
General Sessions "take into consideration the expediency and propriety of
providing a Lunatic Asylum..." under the provisons of the
1808 County Asylums Act
July 1809 committee appointed "for the purpose of making inquiry
into the number of idiots and lunatic paupers...". It reported that there
were 153 lunatics in the county.
October 1810: A committee of nine appointed to look into
the
best means. It reported that the asylum should be near Norwich and that the
County Surveyor had prepared a plan for an asylum capable of receiving 180
lunatics which could be enlarged to hold 300. The estimated cost was
£20,000.
April 1811: Committee reported purchase of five acres of
land at
Thorpe at for £600
The earliest part of the building is by
Francis Stone and was constructed between 1811 and 1814.
Opened
18.5.1814
It was built for 102 patients, but by 1820 had averaged only 80.
1814
First patient escaped over the walls
4.8.1815
Cemetery consecrated
1816 F.H. Stone, Ground floor plan of Norfolk Asylum
[whereabouts unknown, copy in
RCMHE
file 100458,
NMR, Swindon].
Summer 1821: Elizabeth Baldry criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norfolk". She had been
tried for a felony at Norwich.
(HO 20/13)
1825
a lengthy description
1828
Andrew Halliday's description
April 1828: John Kenney criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norfolk". He had been
tried for murder at "Norfolk".
(HO 20/13)
April 1829: Richard Scott criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norfolk". He had been
tried for murder at "Norfolk".
(HO 20/13)
March 1832: John Rudd Turner criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norfolk". He had been
tried at "Norfolk" for murder
(HO 20/13)
April 1832: Mary Ann Pycroft criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norfolk". She (was to be?)
tried at Wymondham, and was held for "want of Bail"
(HO 20/13)
1839: William Gathercole criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Norfolk". He had been
tried at "Norfolk".
(HO 20/13)
Visiting commissioners stimulate changes
1.1.1844: 164 patients. All pauper.
1854
extra land
1857 Additions by John Brown, the County Surveyor.
(Peter
Cracknell) -
Sarah Rutherford
1858: 420 patients
1867/1868
Superintendent of Norfolk Thorpe near Norwich; Dr W.C Hills
April 1873
James Shaw (MD Queens) appointed Assistant Medical Officer in
the place of William Paynton, resigned
About 1878/1880:
an annex was designed by
Makilwaine Phipson:
Corridor-Pavilion?.
(Peter
Cracknell)
1881 Census: "Norfolk County Lunatic
Asylum, Thorpe Next Norwich, Norfolk". Superintendent William Charles Hills
Thorpe Lunatic Asylum 1891 census names
Served as a war hospital from 1915 to 1919. Some of the
patients went to Brentwood, in Essex.
1920 Patients returned from Brentwood
Was Norfolk Mental Hospital
from
1919 to 1923 and then St Andrews Hospital, Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR7
OSS.
"In 1939 340 beds were put aside for use by the Emergency Hospital
Scheme. On 30.6.1945 111 beds were handed back for normal use but the EHS
retained beds in St Andrew's Hospital until 1947"
Hospital database:
1953-1957 Cicely McCall Psychiatric Social Worker
1957 An Act of Parliament made the
Yarmouth Naval Hospital (re-named St Nicholas) a part of St
Andrew's.
1966
Norfolk and Norwich Association for Mental Health founded
31.12.1971: "St Andrew's and St Nicholas" 958 resident patients,
but 1,109 beds.
31.12.1975 "St Andrew's" 551 resident patients, but 646 beds.
31.12.1977 St Andrew's 647 beds. St Nicholas 211
It closed in 1998. The patients from the last ward to closed
moved to
Hellesdon
Looks intact. Grounds being redeveloped (Simon Cornwall)
Tuesday 20.6.2006 Radio 4 programme The Asylum Band by
violinist David Juritz. Traced the history of the asylum orchestra and
music in the asylum, back from the recovery of sheet music when the
hospital closed.
External link to archives
External link to online catalogue includes a
history
Norvic Clinic, Yarmouth Road, Norwich
First purpose built
Regional Secure Unit
Opened early 1980s?
"The Norvic Clinic (plus the associated rehabilitation units of
Meadowlands and Highlands) are the Trust Forensic service, providing a
local and Regional facility. They are situated on the east of Norwich,
close to the A47 southern by-pass, on the site of the former
St. Andrews Hospital, now the Broadland Business Park".
(source)
Norwich Infirmary Bethel
A Workhouse Asylum
"Wards exclusively appropriated to lunatics"
(1844
Report
p.10)
Norwich Incorporation of the Poor was established in 1712,
shortly before the
Bethel Hospital
"A separate infirmary, near St Augustine's Gate in the parish of St
Clement, accommodated up to 130 aged and infirm men and women aged 65 or
over. Adjoining it was a building erected in 1828, and enlarged in
1838, as an Asylum for Pauper Lunatics, with a ward for sick
patients.
Peter Higginbotham
1859 national
comparisons
In 1859/1860 a new workhouse was built north of Bowhill Road, which eventually gained an infirmary. The establishment of Norwich Borough Asylum appears to have followed the disappearance of the Infirmary Bethel.
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Norwich Borough Asylum
Competition for the design of reported in
The Builder 1868 Volume 26, 7.11.1868
(Alan Longbottom on the Rossbret site)
Kellys Norwich 1883: "The corporation of Norwich have built a Lunatic asylum for the city, at Hellesdon, distant about two miles, to supersede the one formerly used in Infirmary Road: the new building was erected to hold 350 patients and the administrative portion is large enough to work an asylum for 500 or 600 inmates: the plan is on what is known as the "block system" -- detached buildings connected together by communicating corridors and surrounded by airing courts -- and there is one peculiar feature in the arrangements which has never been carried out in any other lunatic asylum: i.e. the upper floors are entirely empty during the day, and the ground floor during the night, thus giving perfect ventilation to each story every twelve hours: the cost of the works has exceeded £60,000, including the purchase of the site and furniture: the architect is Mr Makilwaine Phipson F.S.A.: there are about 50 acres of land attached to the asylum, the cultivation of which is entrusted to the patients, under direction, with very satisfactory results: the building is lighted by gas supplied from the Norwich gas works: the water is pumped up by steam from a well 100 feet deep on the premises: there are about 100 single room, and the other 250 inmates are associated together in dormitories containing from 4 to 16 patients each: in 1851 a mortuary and stables were built near the entrance lodge, also two semi-detached cottages for the artizans: the asylum was opened and organised by the first and present superintendent, Dr. William Harris FRCS."
1881 Census: "Norwich City Lunatic
Asylum, Sprowston, Norfolk"
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Yarmouth - Norfolk - (South Denes)
Royal Naval Hospital Yarmouth - 1811 Royal Barracks South Denes (before 1818) Yarmouth Royal Military Lunatic Asylum - 1844 Crimea and after - 1854 Yarmouth Naval Lunatic Hospital - 1863 Yarmouth Naval Hospital - 1931 (Act) St Nicholas Hospital - 1956
"Many military buildings have been built in Great Yarmouth over the years. One of the most striking is the Naval Hospital, which was originally for sailors wounded in the Napoleonic Wars. It then became a barracks, but was converted back to a hospital 40 years later and was used to accommodate sailors who were mentally ill. Hence the navy slang to describe those sailors who are showing signs of mental wear and tear is going to Yarmouth." (online leaflet - archive
"The naval hospital at Great Yarmouth had been constructed between 1809 and 1811 to treat the sick and wounded of the North Sea Fleet." (Jones and Greenberg 5.2006) - "It was completed in 1811 at a total cost of £120,000 and was built to receive 198 wounded in the Navy during the war with France, but no naval wounded ever arrived." (Hansard 3.3.1931)
From Crisp's History of
Yarmouth (1877?) -
archive copy -
offline text
"It was next turned into a barracks but was rarely used as such". (Hansard 3.3.1931) St Nicholas Gatt, the seaway approach between sandbanks, became shallower and unsafe for men at war. The Admiralty converted the hospital to a foot barracks. (History, gazetteer, and directory of Norfolk, 1845) April 1818 (passage written) Excursions in the County of Norfolk "The most splendid public ediface in Yarmouth is the royal barracks (originally intended for a naval hospital) on the South Denes." - "Nelson monument now building on the South Denes between the royal barracks and the haven's mouth" (page 117)
"In 1844 it became a military lunatic asylum and was used for this purpose for ten years." (Hansard 3.3.1931)
1844 The Naval Hospital converted into a Lunatic Asylum. "Taken over by the army in 1844, it housed a 'Military Lunatic Asylum' until the outbreak of the Crimean War when the Admiralty re-acquired the building." (Jones and Greenberg 5.2006) "The hospital was inspected by Commissioners during the period it was used as a military lunatic asylum-that is, in 1844 and 1845" (Hansard 3.3.1931) Dr Sillery was the staff surgeon initially in charge. October 1846 Patients moved from Shorncliffe to Yarmouth February 1847 Charles Alexander Lockhart Robertson (1825-1897) was Asistant Staff-Surgeon for five years. Previously at Dunston Lodge. Appointed after a short service as Assistant Surgeon in the Army. (1896 retirement notice) 18.5.1848 to 24.6.1852 Lunacy Commission Reports on the Royal Military Lunatic Asylum, Yarmouth numbers 72, 73, 74, 75, 76 in the National Archives at MH51/42
See also Royal Military Lunatic Asylum at
Fort Pitt
June? 1848 Volume seven of The half-yearly abstract of the medical sciences (January to June 1848) , edited by William Harcourt Ranking (of Norwich), included, for the first time, a "A Report on the Recent Progress of Psychological Medicine". This was written by Charles Lockhart Robertson. (offline) ["Assisted Dr Ranking, of Norwich, in preparing his 'half-yearly abstract', in which his thorough knowledge of French and German was of great service." (1896 retirement notice) 5.5.1849 Unsuccesful application by Charles Lockhart Robertson for the post of Resident Physician and Superintendent in the Glasgow Royal Lunatic Asylum
7.2.1851,
Andrew Smith promoted to inspector-general when
Sir James McGrigor retired as director-general. He had been
deputy inspector-general since 1845.
Lockhart Robertson (1856) says Andrew Smith "believes that the
insane patients of the army are best cared for by a frequent change of
medical officers, inexperienced as regards the treatment of mental
disease."
September 1851 Charles Lockhart Robertson resigned as he was refused permission to continue working at the Yarmouth Asylum. He wrote to the Secretary at War: " It cannot, I think, be "questioned by any competent member of the medical profession, that the practice of frequently handing over the insane patients of the army to the care of officers quite unconversant with the practice of this special department of medicine, is alike injurious to their interests, and to the scientific status of the Military Lunatic Asylum." - "His tenure of office at Yarmouth having expired, he resigned the Army service, entered at Cambridge, graduated as M.B. in 1853, and practised as an alienist physician for four years in London. In 1858 he was appointed Medical Superintendent of the Sussex County Asylum, then in course of erection. This post he held until 1870, when he was appointed Lord Chancellor's Visitor." (offline) Towards the close of 1852 George Russell Dartnell (1799-1878), Army surgeon in charge of the Military Lunatic Hospital, Great Yarmouth. He had returned to Britain in 1843. By 1854 he was Deputy Inspector-General, Army Medical Department. After retiring from the army in 1857, he operated Arden House Private Lunatic Asylum at Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire which he also owned from 1858 to 1876.
25.2.1853
Andrew Smith became Director-General of Army
Medical Services.
Crimea and after
The Naval Hospital Muster Books for Haslar finish in 1854 May 1854 "The Yarmouth Hospital ceased.. to be "occupied as a hospital for military lunatics, possession of it having been resumed by the Board of Admiralty for the purposes of a general hospital foi the sailors of the Baltic fleet... The lunatic patients at Yarmouth consisted of 19 officers, 69 soldiers, and 5 women... The Secretary at War having requested our opinion as to the best mode of providing for those inmates, we named Grove Hall, Bow, as a well-conducted asylum, and capable of affording proper accommodation for the soldiers and women; and ... Coton Hill Lunatic Asylum Hospital, (an institution under good management, near Stafford,) for the officers... But we trust the arrangements thus made are "merely of a temporary character". (May 1850 report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, quoted (Lockhart Robertson 1856)
"On the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 the Admiralty claimed the building. The military patients were removed and the place fitted to receive wounded from the Baltic, but none ever came". (Hansard 3.3.1931)
20.7.1855
Question in House of Commons subsequent to a leading article in the
Asylum Journal (No. 11) about the breaking up
of the Military Lunatic Hospital at Yarmouth, and (No. 12)
Charles Lockhart
Robertson writing "actuated by a natural sympathy with the
present sad state of my former patients."
3.3.1856 Hansard: Colonel Henry Boldero "had minutely visited the lunatic asylum at Chatham some years ago, and was disgusted and horrified with what he saw. After some considerable difficulty he had found a building, an unused barrack at Yarmouth exactly fitted for the purpose; he had reported this to the Government, who had sent down a medical officer, whose report was unfavourable. He was not discouraged; he obtained leave from the Government of the day to take down other officers, and at last he prevailed upon the Government to have the lunatics transferred to that place. He was astonished to find that they had been retransferred again to Chatham." Told "that the reason was simply this. The buildings in question belonged to the Admiralty, and as there was an expectation of a large number of invalid seamen during the war, the Admiralty had reclaimed the property, and the War Department had no choice but to give it up." "When peace was declared the War Office again took over the hospital and it was used by them as a convalescent hospital for soldiers." (Hansard 3.3.1931) July 1858 Fifty-seven invalids, mostly Indian sufferers, arrived at the Military Hospital on the South Denes from Chatham - (Crisp) 11.7.1859 Eighty invalids, mostly Indian sufferers,. arrived at the Military Hospital on the South Denes from Chatham. - (Crisp) The building was re-modelled in 1863, and 37 new wards added, by Mr. G. Tyrrell. Eighty inmates were received the same year (September) from Haslar, making a total of 169. [See Netley] "In 1863 the Admiralty again claimed the building, this time for the use of naval lunatics. Various alterations were then made. The boundaries were enlarged by taking in ground on the north and west sides and by the purchase in 1865 of about ten acres from the Corporation of Yarmouth at a cost of £10,982." (Hansard 3.3.1931) The eleven acres of ground on the east cost the Government £11,000 in 1875. The Twenty Second Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy (1867/1868) includes a "Report on Yarmouth Naval Lunatic Hospital" (See Rossbret site)
1914-1918 "During the War arrangements were made for the admission of a number of ex-naval patients chargeable to the Ministry of Pensions". (Hansard 3.3.1931)
3.3.1931 Hansard Yarmouth Naval Hospital Bill - House of Lords - Contains detailed history - "The hospital has been continuously used by the Admiralty as a mental hospital since 1863 and is still so used." - "The Ministry of Pensions are also anxious to increase the number of patients they have under treatment at Yarmouth by removing them from other institutions, and thus providing further accommodation for civil patients". Currently 119 patients. About ten new naval patients a year anticipated. Ministry of Pensions want to transfer between 100 1nd 130 patients. "There is normal peace accommodation for 213 patients, but this number could be increased to 260". Report of the Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency. 1954-1957, paragraph 880: "The Yarmouth Naval Hospital Act, 1931 Under this Act special procedures are laid down for the admission, detention and discharge of patients in the Yarmouth Naval Hospital. Persons who may be admitted as patients include officers of the Royal Navy or Royal Marines whether they are on the active list or not, and certain other categories of persons who are serving of have previously served in the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Royal Fleet Reserve, Royal Naval reserve or Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and also other war pensioners already detained elsewhere under the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts (except voluntary and temporary patients). The procedures for the compulsory admission, detention, visitation and discharge of patients in this hospital (other than voluntary patients) differ in many ways from those which apply to certified and temporary patients under the Lunacy and Mental Treatments Acts. We understand that the future of this hospital is at present under consideration, and that changes are contemplated which, if approved, would involve the abolition of these special procedures. It seems to us desirable that the procedures and safeguards which we have recommended for patients in other hospitals should also apply to patients in this hospital.
Paul P. Davies History of Medicine in Great Yarmouth, Hospitals and
Doctors (ISBN:0954450906), published by the author, Great Yarmouth,
2003. I am told that this has about 100 pages devoted to the Royal Navy
Hospital. This description is taken from an online bookseller:
718 pages of A4 size... history of all the Gt Yarmouth hospitals up to the
opening of the James Paget Hospital in 1981. It includes the General,
Escourt (Isolation), St Nicholas' (Naval), Gorleston Cottage, Gorleston and
Northgate (Workhouse) Hospitals. The various smallpox, cholera and military
hospitals, which at one time were in the town are also included. Details of
many of the past doctors of the town are given, dating back to the 18th
century and the well-established practices are traced back to their
origins. The book is well illustrated with photographs, advertisement and
health notices. Medicine is interlinked witrh local and social history and,
were appropriate, this is included.
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Bedfordshire County Asylum
Bedfordshire County Asylum
became Bedford and Hertfordshire County
Asylum in 1847.
A Bedford, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire County Asylum at Arlsey
(Arlesey) was
being erected in 1858. It may have opened in 1860 and was known as the
Three Counties Asylum (until 1928) and then Arlesey Three
Counties
Hospital.
1795-1796 Bedford House of Industry, a three storey red-brick
building, erected on the south side of Kimbolton Road (National Grid
Reference: TL055504). Architect John Wing
1835 Bedford House of Industry let on a perpetual lease to the
Bedford Union Board of Guardians. Became Bedford Union Workhouse
Early 1900s A chapel added at the east of the workhouse
1914-1918 An infirmary (later the maternity department) built to the
north of the workhouse, and lunatic observation wards to the north
of the chapel
"Between 1929 and 1948, the former workhouse was known as St Peter's
Hospital. After the inauguration of the National Health Service it
became the North Wing of Bedford General Hospital. Almost all of the
later buildings were demolished in 2007 leaving only the original 1795 main
building, now known as as Shires House".
1803 Bedford General Infirmary, "on the Ampthill
Road"
erected "with funds bequeathed chiefly from Samuel Whitbread esq".
(See Rossbret site)
Samuel Whitbread (1758-1815) Only son of Samuel who died in
1796. He did not share his father's strict religious views. He
married, in 1789, Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Charles (later 1st
Earl) Grey. Samuel Whitbread was Whig MP for Bedford. He was on the
1807 select committee on criminal and
pauper lunatics. A speech recorded in Hansard 14.6.1814 (A
governor of St Lukes)
On
1814-1816 Select Committee on Madhouses
, but
cut his own throat
6.7.1815, before the committee's third session.
He had three sisters including Mary his
step-sister who
married George Grey, the father of
the lunacy
commissioner.
William Henry Whitbread (4.1.1795-1867) The eldest son of Samuel
who
died in 1815, was MP for Bedford Borough from 1818 to the 1830s.
His votes recorded in the Annual Register for 1820 were radical.
Samuel Charles
Whitbread (1796 - 27.5.1879), the second son of Samuel who died in
1815,
was MP for Middlesex from 1820 to 1830.
Building commenced 1810
Architect: J. Wing.
Landscape designer unknown. "Limited grounds
reminiscent of earlier charitable asylums".
Archive at Bedfordshire Record Office.
Opened June or August
1812
Ampthill Road, Bedford from 1812 to 1860
National Grid Reference SP 047 485
Dr Grant David
Yeates, physician to the Duke of Bedford, helped to establish
both the
Bedford Infirmary and the County Asylum. He was the infirmary
physician and visiting physician to the County Asylum from 1813 to 1814. He
tried to convince the Bedfordshire magistrates that they should concern
themselves as much with the cure of asylum inmates as with their safe
custody. (Munk
and Scull, A.T.
1979 p.
155)
27.4.1812 William Pether and his wife appointed "the Governor
and Matron of the Lunatic Asylum".
May have provided for 52 patients at opening. Twice enlarged before
1844. The second enlargement being with a view to taking paupers from other
counties, to reduce the cost of the asylum to Bedfordshire.
1825:
Copied mounds in yards from Brislington House
1844 (and long before) Superintendent J. Harris,
Surgeon
1.1.1844: 139 patients. All pauper. It had accommodation for 180.
Weekly charge for paupers 7/6. For out-county paupers 8/6
Demolished in 1860
Corridor form -
Too large for Conolly's ideal?
From 1964: Fairfield Hospital, Stotfold, Hitchin, SG5
4AA. It
closed in 1999. The
Rossbret Asylums Website has history and
photographs under "Three Counties Asylum".
GenUK on Bedford has 1831 information
about
Bedford, including the asylum. The site has now been developed.
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Leavesden Asylum was
one of two
asylums for chronic patients opened by the Metropolitan Asylums Board in
October 1870.
Probably 60% of the patients I dealt with (about 60-80 altogether I think)
would have been considered mentally handicapped by today's standards, but
not enough to be institutionalised, better dealt with in a special needs
educational class. There was one woman who was referred to as a "burnt out"
psychopath who had been transferred from
Rampton, and did have violent
tendencies. There were a few who had been caught for various kinds of
sexual misconduct when they were kids. and then there were a few who seemed
perfectly normal intelligence-wise, but just a bit "off" or easily
agitated. I think there was probably some truancy or what would now be
considered attention deficit and/or hyperactivity disorder. It was really
hard to tell, given that these people had been locked up for 40 years or
more.
By the way, "high grade" was a term used by the patients themselves. I seem
to remember some of the "high grades" reading the paper, and they were
certainly capable of carrying on a conversation, although often
repeptitive. Probably bored half to death!
I remember the staff doing the best they could mostly. Our patients didn't
get, or seem to need, much in the way of psychiatric help other than some
antipsychotics here and there, so the day was spent keeping an eye on them,
providing some sort of entertainment, three meals a day plus snacks, and
the bathing routine which involved three or four patients at a time, all in
very large bathtubs in a huge bathroom, and a lot of clothes-darning and
repair done by the staff. It seems really archaic looking back..."
1971 listed a
Mental Handicap Hospital with 2,164 beds,
111
in locked wards.
Hertfordshire County Mental Hospital
In 1939, Middlesex had three mental hospitals and two
institutions for mental defectives, all but the smallest of
these (Bramley House, Enfield)
were outside the county. The oldest was in Surrey. The others were in Hertfordshire: Napsbury, Shenley Mental
Hospital and
Shenley
Colony. Between
them they had "approximately 7000 patients, and the care of these
unfortunate people requires the services of a very large staff."
Napsbury Asylum, Hertfordshire opened in
1905.
It was a Middlesex
County Council Asylum from 1905 to
1948
Shenley Mental Hospital
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Middlesex Colony
Opened 1934 and known as that until 1949. Later known as Harperbury Hospital, Harper Lane, Shenley, Radlett, WD7 9HQ. See Shenley "awaiting immediate development" in Autumn 2002 "Harperbury, previously Harperbury Hospital, is still in existence, but with only about 60-90 residents on the site. They live in purpose built bungalows on two locations called Bowlers Green (beside the still-used bowling green) and Forest Lane. Other services on the site include wheelchair assessment and continence services, but the site is now largely used for training purposes such as IT training, inductions, and postgraduate medical education. Owned by Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust and previously by Horizon NHS Trust. There is a booklet on the history of Harperbury in the possession of both Hertfordshire Archives and the London Metropolitan Archives." (Christine Lawes) |
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Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridgeshire served Huntingdonshire after
1939. Cambridgeshire was slow to build an asylum. In 1852 they "counted up
the
lunatics in Huntingdonshire to try to bring them in". Then they tried to
combine with Bedfordshire, and were stopped by the Lunacy Commission.
Eventually, they began to build in 1856. The Pauper Lunatic Asylum for
the
County and Borough of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely - opened at
Fulbourn in
November 1858
See David Clark's "Fulbourn - The asylum years". [A story of a Mental Hospital, Fulbourn is the memoirs of a former Superintendent until 1983. The following history of Cambridge psychiatry is taken from the Cambridge University psychiatry website: "Addenbrooke's Hospital used to be situated in Trumpington Street: a psychiatric clinic was established in the nineteenth century." In 1934 "a child guidance clinic was established at the previous Addenbrooke's Hospital."
1960s: "Fulbourn rose to international prominence for its pioneering
therapeutic community under the leadership of Dr David Clark,
the last
holder of the title of Medical Superintendent and later Consultant for the
Cambridge Psychiatric Rehabilitation Service. Subsequently the early
community psychiatric work in Fenland and in general practice by Dr A R K
Mitchell became well known nationally. The psychiatric outpatient clinic
was established at 2 Benet Place on the edge of the old
Addenbrooke's site. 1966: The
Ida Darwin
Hospital
opened on an adjacent site to Fulbourn. Dr Gwyn Roberts was subsequently
appointed from it to become the first Professor of Mental Handicap in
Nottingham. 1970: Child and adolescent inpatient units were
established in Douglas House. 1970s and 1980s: The Hospital
gradually transferred to its new site on Hills Road at the southern edge of
Cambridge. 1989: The first psychiatric ward in Addenbrooke's (R4)
was opened by transfer of the Professorial Unit from Fulbourn Hospital.
1992: The outpatient clinic, the Psychotherapy Unit and Young
People's
Psychiatric Service moved to Addenbrooke's on the closure of Benet Place.
Further facilities have since been opened on the Addenbrooke's site.
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Mental Handicap Hospital
Ida Darwin Hospital, Fulbourn, Cambridge, CB1 5EE
see above
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South West England
Dorset and Hampshire
Dorsetshire County Asylum (Forston, near Dorchester)
A new hospital (Charminster) was opened in 1864, but both
remained
in operation. They were close to one another and were administratively
interrelated.
A hospital for private patients, known as Herrison was
opened in 1904.
Dorset County Mental Hospital from 1920 to about 1940
In 1844, the Poor Law Unions in Hampshire had more pauper lunatics in
licensed houses those of any other county apart from Middlesex.
The 1844 Report, appendix F shows 452 pauper lunatics and idiots
chargeable to Hampshire unions; 3 in county asylum/s; 199 in licensed
houses (compared to 245 for Middlesex); 135 in a workhouse and 115 with
friends or elsewhere. Appendix D makes an estimate of 43 pauper lunatics
not in unions, which it adds to 405 (yes) in unions to give 448 as the
estimated total. As far as one can tell from the figures, Hampshire paupers
were in Hampshire licensed houses and the Hampshire houses catered for
Hampshire patients.
The truly private Hampshire pauper houses were at Lainston, near Winchester, and Nursling, near
Southampton.
In the Portsmouth area and, across the Solent, on the Isle of Wight there
were smaller institutions connected with workhouses. Two of these, Carisbrooke and
Hilsea were licensed.
Portsea Workhouse was
not licensed.
Planning a Hampshire County
Asylum (in the Portsmouth area) did not begin until 1849. It
opened at the end of 1852. The pauper houses were no longer licensed in
1867.
Portsea Island and Portsmouth
In the 1830s, Portsmouth was the area now known as Old Portsmouth. Portsea
was the area around the Portsmouth Naval Base (previously the Dockyard).
Both areas were surrounded with massive wails, and gates, so that at that
time Portsmouth was the most heavily defended town in Europe.
(Terry Swetnam). See also
Tim Lambert's Brief History of Portsmouth
(archive of old site)
Jump to Potsmouth Borough
Asylum
Dorset County Lunatic Asylum
National Grid Reference ST 667 953
Erection 1827-1832
Opened
1.8.1832
Sarah Rutherford:
"A small manor house was incorporated at the centre of a much larger
asylum bsuilding"
Reported in 1843 that patients had previously been subject to dysentery
"from the floors being damp". Patients admitted since the floors were
replaced had not suffered dysentery.
(1844 Report p.17)
1834: Circular letter from George Wallett medical superintendent
of Dorset County Lunatic Asylum promoting cheap method of constructing
Lunatic Asylums; with testimonial of
Suffolk Magistrates (29 November).
[In
Essex County Archives: Reference Q/SBb 518/79]
1.1.1844: 107 patients. All pauper.
Superintendent:
G.P. Button
Simon Cornwall:
Originally: Second Dorset County Lunatic Asylum. Built: 1859-1863
Architect: HE Kendall Junior
Corridor form - extended often.
1881 Census: "Dorset County Lunatic Asylum, Charminster"
Surgeon Medical Superintendant: Joseph Gustavus Symes, married, age 56,
born Crewkerne, Somerset.
1890: enlarged by
George Thomas Hine -
Compact Arrow
1895 New female annexe and Chapel added.
(Peter
Cracknell)
1900
"None of the doors were locked"
8.1.1902
Private Patients at Dorset County Asylum
(external link)
[About 1940? Herrison Hospital was adopted as the name for the whole
hospital]
1.1.1927:
902 patients, including 206 who were not Rate Aided.
365 were men, 535 women. In 1926 the
proportion of recoveries to admissions was 31.6%. The proportion of deaths
to the asylum population was 5.1%
1940? Herrison Hospital, Herrison, Dorsetshire, [DT2 9RL]
1962 (Hospital Plan) On 31.12.1960 there were 1,186
staffed beds. In 1975 there were expected to be only 860.
"Patients in Herrison psychiatric hospital in Dorset, which
opened in 1863,
were locked in at night and left unsupervised until morning. It closed in
1992, and is being redeveloped by Bellway Homes and Charlton Down
Developments, which has turned the three main buildings into luxury
apartments" (Anne Caborn, The Observer Sunday 18.8.2002)
1842-1844
Inquiry
link to other Hampshire asylum
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1702
Sick and Hurt Board established
See naval lunatics summary on timeline
"The Haslar site was bought in
1745. It is a glorious 55-acre site
overlooking the mouth of Portsmouth harbour, and it became the first
purpose-built hospital for the Royal Navy. It was opened in 1754 and took
some 1,800 patients. Its distinctive high walls were there to prevent the
patients from escaping should they wish to do so, having been press-ganged
into the Navy initially. It is historically very interesting. The
expression "up the creek" refers to Haslar creek, which is not a good place
to be. It was for years the main home of the Royal Naval Medical Service,
but following changes it eventually became the only military hospital in
the United Kingdom, and was renamed the Royal Hospital Haslar. That was the
position on 10 December 1998. On that date, the Government announced they
were proposing that the military forces withdraw from Haslar, and it was
stated that the hospital would close in about two years. In fact, some 10
years later the Royal Hospital Haslar is still there." (Peter Viggers, MP,
Gosport, Conservative,
Friday 20.3.2009
Haslar Hospital: "from its opening in 1753, the Royal Hospital at Haslar had admitted psychiatric patients" Jones and Greenberg 5.2006 Asylum part opened 1818 The Hospital Muster Books for "Haslar (Lunatics)" begin with a book for 1818 to 1819 (ADM 102/356) and continue to 1854 (ADM 102/373). Naval lunatics were moved from Hoxton House in 1818. However, there is also ADM 305/35 "Governor's orders; with (at back) list of Haslar lunatics 1813-1817". Possibly a list of insane patients in the general naval hospital who had not (yet?) been moved to Hoxton. 1822 William Burnett a member of the victualling board as colleague of Dr Weir, then chief medical officer of the navy. Later he became physician-general of the navy. In this capacity... he introduced a much more humane treatment of naval lunatics at Haslar than had been previously practised." (DNB 1886) 1826 Dr James Scott (1785-1859) apointed first medical lecturer at Haslar. He resigned (as lecturer?) due to ill-health in 1838. 1828 Behind the south wing are the wards for the lunatics, with large enclosures for their proper exercise, &c.: there are also baths for patients with infectious diseases. (Chronicles of Portsmouth by Henry Slight, Julian Slight. 1828).
"To the south of the Hospital were
wards designed for insane
patients who had their own
secure Airing Yard enclosed by
walls at either end. These walls
remain in large part and form
an important historic feature of
the grounds to the Hospital." (conservation plan March 2007
National Archives ADM 305/102 is listed as Journal of lunatic asylum Covering dates 1830-1842. Jones and Greenberg 5.2006 list as James Scott, Journal of the Lunatic Asylum of the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, 11 Nov 1830 to 28 Feb 1842. 22.3.1838 Letter from Dr James Scott, LL. B., Surgeon and Lecturer to the Royal Hospital at Haslar ; Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London ; Surgeon and Medical Superintendent of the Royal Naval Lunatic Asylum ; President of the Hampshire Phrenological Society, &c. &c. (external link) In 1844 Haslar's principal medical officer was Sir W. Burnett, M.D., and it had 98 patients, 29 of whom were commissioned officers. (Sir William Burnett (1779 - 16.2.1861) was a Fellow of the Royal Society) "The part of the Naval Hospital at Haslar which is set apart for officers of the Navy and seamen afflicted with insanity, is admirably adapted to its purpose. The rooms are lofty, spacious and airy; and they command a view of the entrance to Portsmouth harbour. There are excellent exercising-grounds between the hospital and the shore, and the patients are frequently taken out in boats" (1844 Report pages 31-32) The Haslar Muster Books finish in 1854, which is when the hospital at Yarmouth ceased being used for military lunatics. However, Yarmouth did not become a Naval Lunatic Asylum until 1863 1863 to 1908 Not clear what provision Haslar made for lunatics.
1905: Royal Naval Hospital Chatham
1905: Asylum at Royal Naval Hospital, Stonehouse
1908-1910 "a purpose-built psychiatric unit, 'N [now G] Block', was constructed at Haslar, comprising two wards of 12 beds and a padded cell. G Block acted as an assessment centre and sailors who required long-term treatment were transferred to a psychiatric unit at Great Yarmouth." Jones and Greenberg 5.2006
During the interwar period the navy employed two regular psychiatrists - one at Haslar and the other at Great Yarmouth. Their focus was on the treatment of major mental illness. Jones and Greenberg 5.2006
Principle Royal Naval Psychiatric Units To the Royal Naval Hospitals at Haslar and Great Yarmouth (and later Lancaster) were added Royal Naval Auxiliary Hospitals at Barrow Gurney, Bristol - Kingseat, Aberdeenshire - Knowle, Hampshire - Cholmondeley Castle, Malpas, Cheshire - Wraxall Court, near Bristol, Somerset - Jones and Greenberg 5.2006
Haslar Peninsula Conservation Area Appraisal, Gosport Borough
Council, March 2007 -
(external link) -
(offline)
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Portsea
Workhouse, near
Portsmouth, Hampshire
[St Mary's Road]
A Workhouse Asylum
Portsea Island Poor Law Union was formed 18.7.1836. It include the two
parishes of Portsea and Portsmouth, population 1831: 50,389 (Portsea
- 42,306, Portsmouth - 8,083).
Visited 28.8.1843:
"26 Lunatics; 15 Females and 11 Males ... 7 were Epileptics and 2 Idiots. Many of the Patients, although not strictly speaking, imbecile persons, were individuals of weak intellect. Some of them, however, were decidedly Insane, and occasionally violent and unmanageable unless restrained, and some of them were labouring under delusions." (1844 Report p.234)
1881 Census: Union Work House, Portsea
Island, Portsea, Hampshire. Master of Workhouse: John Quintrell
There is a separate entry:
1881 Census: Portsea Island Borough
Lunatic Asylum, Milton, Portsea, Hampshire: Medical Superintendent:
William Charles Bland, married, surgeon, aged 33.
I think this is the separate building that became St James Hospital
(see below). St Marys, St James and the
Prison all seem to be in what was
the village of Milton. [See map. St Marys south of the prison. St James
to the east by the creek]
1898 Portsea Island Union Infirmary
1928St Mary's Infirmary
1930 St Mary's Hospital
by 1969 St Mary's General Hospital
by about 1980 St Mary's Hospital, Milton Street, Portsmouth, PO3
6AD
A
Licensed House
1844: Proprietor G.J. Scales (Surgeon) who appears to have
recently taken over, his predecessor having died as a consequence of a bite
from an inmate.
1.1.1844: 35 patients. 29 pauper
and 6 private.
Weekly charge for paupers:
9/- to 9/6 a week. "established
and carried on" in connection with a workhouse (not named) which sent
unmanageable patients and took them back when tolerably tranquil.
(See quotations from 1844
Report)
Hilsea was in the area of the
Fareham Union (not
Portsea Union)
(links are to Peter Higginbotham's
workhouse site).
Portsea had a workhouse asylum.
1868
Lunatic asylum in the hamlet of Hilsea mentioned in National Gazeteer
. However, Hilsea was not a licensed house
by 1867
(see Rossbret)
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Portsmouth Lunatic Asylum
28.3.1868 The Builder 1868 Volume 26 p.235: "Proposed Lunatic Asylum for Borough of Southampton - The County Asylum getting more crowded, pauper lunatics from Southampton and Portsmouth have been removed from it, and the lunatic commissioners have intimated to the Town Council of Southampton that they will require the borough to erect an asylum of its own, or conjointly with Portsmouth. The estimated cost of the new asylum is stated at £16,000." (Submitted by Alan Longbottom to asylums.org ) Simon Cornwall: Built 1875 Opened 1879 Architect: George Rake Peter Cracknell classifies it as Corridor form. First superintendent William Charles Bland 1880: Many patients moved back from Fisherton House (Judith Kennerdale, email 14.7.2003) see above for 1881 census 1896 Dr Bland retired and was succeded by Bonner Harris Mumby as superintendent. Mumby was born in Alverstoke, Hampshire in spring 1856. He had been Medical Officer of Health for Portsmouth since 1884 and was "appointed unanimously" to his new post by the Portsmouth "borough county council". 1904 Postmark on fancy postcard - 02 in Stephen Pomeroy's collection. This has more pictures than 01, but they are not labelled. They include two group pictures of staff and pictures of the church. A used postcard. No publisher details. "Used cards just say a view from nearby not from an inmate!" 1905ish Unused postcards in Stephen Pomeroy's collection: 03 is a front-view coloured - 04 is a black and white photogarph labelled "Milton Asylum Female Side" (outside) - 05 is similar to 03? but black and white. Postcards (02?) and 03 are labelled "Postsmouth Boro' Asylum. Milton" - 03 was published by Lawrence of Gosport
The two pictures of staff both feature the superintendent,
Bonner Harris Mumby, in the centre.
1907: picture postcard on Stephen Pomeroy's web"Greetings from Portsmouth Borough Asylum" - 01 in Stephen Pomeroy's collection The Postcard 01 pictures are "Ward Three" - "Milton Asylum Laundry" - a front view - "Ward 5" - "Milton Asylum Ball Room" - "Milton Asylum Dormitory" - "Milton Asylum Kitchen" - It is a used postcard 1907, no publisher. 1919 Post Office Directory: [out of date - see below] Portsmouth Borough Lunatic Asylum, Asylum Road, Milton, Portsmouth. Bonner Harris Mumby MD medical superintendent; Frederick Ernest Stokes MB, Ch B. Glasgow, DPH Cambridge and Edward Hope Ridley, MD Edinburgh, assistant medical officers; Rev Joseph Fowler, MA, chaplain; Arthur E. Bone, treasurer; Edward W. Rogers, clerk 29.4.1914 Bonner Harris Mumby, "medical superintendent of Milton Asylum, Portsmouth" died (Journal of Mental Science obituary) 1914 Henry Devine appointed Medical Superintendent of the Portsmouth Borough Asylum Known as Borough of Portsmouth Mental Hospital from 1914 to 1926. an external link Dr Marjorie Franklin, "as a young junior medical officer in the Portsmouth Borough Mental Hospital in the early 1920s, became intensely interested in the relationship between mental illness and the patients' environment. She observed not only the often-noted improvements that occurred in response to a cheerful, encouraging environment and sympathetic nursing but also, in some cases, the dramatic improvement of the psychotic condition with the onset of severe physical illness. The latter phenomenon she attributed not only to a change in the location of the cathexis but also to the greatly increased attention and care which the ill patient received. The improvement was seldom maintained but Dr Franklin considered that with skilful psychoanalytical intervention and support it might have been" 1.1.1927: 866 patients of whom all but 184 were Rate Aided. 331 were men, 535 women. In 1926 the proportion of recoveries to admissions was 31.3%. The proportion of deaths to the asylum population was 6% After 1926: uncertainty about its name until it became St James' Hospital in 1937. By 1930 Thomas Beaton (1888-1964) had succeded Henry Devine 1946 "St James' Mental Hospital, Portsmouth" given glowing praise by Carlos Blacker (page 62) for its success in educating the local population in removing fear. "Out-patient sessions are attended by all social and diagnostic classes with as little qualms as might be provoked by a visit to a Voluntary hospital". "Without an afterthought, parents bring their children for advice and guidance" 1960s Postcard 06 in Stephen Pomeroy's collection is a black and white aerial view labelled "St James' Hospital, Portsmouth" - not used, no publisher. 6.12.1973 Portsmouth Mental Patients Union founded 1970s Stephen Pomeroy's postcard collection begun The hospital was in Asylum Road until the name of the Road was changed to Locksway Road, Portsmouth (PO4 8LD). (map) Simon Cornwall: "Grounds preserved as city park. Some rebuilds and regeneration going on". Peter Cracknell: "Asylum building in NHS use" |
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Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight History Links
Peter Higginbotham's site: The Isle of Wight had control over its own poor law administration under a local Act of Parliament of 1771. It had the power "to manage the poor persons incapable of providing for themselves in the parishes of the island; to let out poor to harvest work" and "to apprehend idle persons not maintaining their families in the island". It did not adopt Poor Law Union status under the 1834 Act until 1865. The island's workhouse was to the north of Newport (see map). It was a large two-storey L-shaped building in red brick. Also see Rossbret site
modern maplink Newport and
Carisbrooke
Eric F. Laidlaw's 1994 A History of the Isle of Wight Hospitals (Newport: Cross, 207 pages: illustrated, with maps and plans) is currently out of print. See review on the Isle of Wight Family History Society website. It includes The House of Industry - Whitecroft (mental hospital) - Military and Naval hospitals - and Parkhurst Prison Hospital.
House of Industry,
Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight
[St Mary's Hospital, Newport, developed in three parts: The lower (south)
part, which is the House of Industry (later workhouse) discussed below. The
upper, north part, which developed from the infirmary of the House, and the
new buildings recently constructed between the two parts]
1865 Poor Law Union 1867 35 insane, idiotic, and imbecile inmates. 16 men, 19 women. 1896 Opening of Whitecroft Known as Forest House, because it was in the forest of Parkhurst 1935 St Mary's Hospital (not a mental hospital) Address Parkhurst Newport PO30 5TB (Since 1771) Closed 1999 [Hospital database:, but I think that has to be wrong - See below] Woops! new hospital - remedial work - (archive) 1990 Patients from Whitecroft transferred to Newcroft. Newcroft, although a modern building, did not allow staff to keep patients under observation effectively and high levels of violence developed. A new purpose built unit, Sevenacres, was designed to clinical specifications. Building began in July 1999 and was completed in 22 months. The cost was 5.2 million pounds. Whilst attempting to get away from an "institutional feel" and be "homely", the unit seeks a "balance of observation and privacy". There is a central point (the doughnut) from which the staff can see both wings (male and female). In the intensive care unit, staff can see into bedrooms. There is a "seclusion room", although the design of the building has meant it has not been used much. Patients have gardens and an opportunity to garden. (Video about Newcroft and Sevenacres) Sevenacres appears to incorporate many design principles that would have been approved by Jeremy Bentham and John Conolly. An analysis of the similarities and differences between the ideal early 19th century model and the ideal early 21st century model of a mental health unit would be interesting.
"Sevenacres, which houses the Mental Health Unit, is also on this site and is the base of the administration and management of the Mental Health and Learning Disability Services. Also based here is the Island Crisis Intervention Services and the Mental Health Assertive Outreach Team. Other parts of this service are delivered from 17 properties across the Island." (The Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Trust)
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Lainston House, Winchester
zoom in on the house
The first map also shows Andover (north west), where the
Andover workhouse
scandal
took place.
(see Peter Higginbotham's site) and Alton
(north east) where Harriet
Warner and her family lived.
Licensed House
A mansion and outhouses
asylum
"A fine brick house of about 1700, with something older and something a
little younger"
(Pevsner's Buildings)
"There is a private lunatic asylum, situated in an ample
demesne of 40
acres, and approached by three avenues of trees. The house was built in the
reign of Charles 2nd, and was once the seat of Lord Bayning". (1868
Gazeteer)
1825 Leased to Dr Twynham - continuing so until 1847
(Pelham Warner citing a Sparsholt Village History book). [The
name is Twynam, without an h, in all original sources consulted - Apart
from one entry in the 1844 report as Twyman]
"From 1825-1846 Lainston was rented out as a lunatic asylum, Mr John
Twynham was the resident physician who lived in the house with his wife and
staff and about 80 patients were housed in huts around the grounds. Sadly
it was after this episode in the in the history of Lainston that when these
huts were being demolished, the workmen, using horses, pulled the roof from
the Chapel, which by now was in a bad state of repair - in order to sell
the lead."
(source)
2.10.1828 John Twynam of Bishopstoke, age 29, bachelor,
married Mary Read of St John cum St Lawrence, Southampton, aged 30,
spinster, at St Lawrence.
July 1831: Thomas Miles criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Lainston House". He had been
tried for murder at Winchester.
(HO 20/13)
1836: John Marchant
criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Winchester". He had been
committed from "Winchester".
(HO 20/13)
1839: William Fizzard
criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Lainston House". He had been
committed from "Hampshire".
(HO 20/13)
6.6.1841
Census: John Twynam, aged 40 living at the Lainston House
Lunatic Asylum. Married to Mary, aged 50 [HO107 404 1/3 Page 2] 42 female
and 39 male "patients". Ten female and three male staff. The female staff
included four nurses, a kitchen maid, two house maids. The male
staff were two keepers (one also a cordwainer/shoemaker) and a
groom. (Information from
Pelham Warner).
SEVERELY
CENSURED IN
1844
REPORT
Dr Twynam was
unresponsive to national or local efforts to improve his house:
Friday 14.10.1842: First visit of the commissioners who found
the "buildings appropriated to the paupers consisted of stabling and
out-houses
converted to that purpose, and were quite unfit to be used as an asylum".
They
called attention to the urgent need for a county asylum.
No date given: "these evils were so manifest, that the visiting
commissioners expressed a hope that means would be found to put an end to
them, either by refusing the license, or otherwise"
Local magistrates visited the house several times
Tuesday 22.8.1843 Third visit:
1.1.1844: 94 patients. 84 pauper and 10 private.
Weekly charge for
paupers: 9/- including clothes.
Proprietor J. Twynam, M.D. (page 213) - J. Twyman (page 260)
April 1844 Another visit
1846/1847 Harriet Warner (aged 41) first attack of lunacy. Possibly
at this time that she was "previously confined at Lainston House"
(Knowle case notes)
. Information on Harriet from
Pelham Warner.
16.10.1846 Dr Twynam to quit Lainston House. He had offered it
to the visiting justices. (Lunacy Commission minutes Friday 9.10.1846)
Parry-Jones,
W.L.
1972 (p.254) says that Lainston House had closed by 1847
March 1849 quarter death of Mary Twynam recorded Winchester
1851
Census: John Twynam MD, aged 51, widower, 63 Nuhill Lane,
Bishopstoke,
Winchester. Head of household. Born Bishopstoke. Occupation: "graduate of
the University of Edinburgh as physician", so I am fairly certain this is
"our" John Twynam. Living with a cook and a groom. (Information from
Pelham Warner).
December 1855 quarter death of John Twynam recorded Winchester
Not a licensed house by 1867
(see Rossbret), although
1868 Gazeteer still mentions.
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Lainston House is now a hotel. Its old web site - (archive) - did not discuss its history. The new website does not seem to mention its asylum history, but the proprietors provided material for a website that does. |
Grove Place,
Nursling, near Southampton
Licensed House
A mansion and outhouses
asylum
Present building probably erected between 1565 and 1576. It is on the
site of an older house.
"In 1831 the manor was bought by Dr. Edward Middleton who
transformed it into a lunatic asylum" But: Epiphany 1823 James
Banting,
criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Grave Place". He had been
tried for assault and sent from "Hampshire".
(HO 20/13)
February 1832 Thomas Randall criminal
lunatic, recorded "Lunatic Asylum, Southampton". He had been
previously held in a "Lunatic Asylum, Dorset". He had been tried for
murder at Winchester.
1844: Proprietor Mrs H. Middleton.
1.1.1844: 72 patients. 53 pauper and 19 private.
Weekly charge for paupers not stated.
Severely censured in 1844
Report:
summary of
criticisms
Parry-Jones,
W.L.
1972 p.247: In 1853 "the Hampshire Visiting Magistrates
recommended the discontinuation of the licence granted to the proprietor of
Grove Place, Nursling, largely because of substantiated evidence of the
cruel and severe treatment of a patient.." (Eighth Report (1854) Lunacy
Commission, pp 19-20)
Parry-Jones,
W.L.
1972 p.88: In 1854 Dr James Baillie bought Grove Place,
paying a large sum of money for the good will. In their 1855 Report
(pages
20-21) the Lunacy Commissioners considered "A payment of this nature...
offers a strong temptation to those who purchase to curtail the comforts
and accommodation of the patients... in an attempt to reimburse themselves
out of the profits of the asylum". However, Parry Jones says "This
statement was contradicted in the next report and the licence was not
renewed". [I do not understand that]
"There is a private lunatic asylum, called Grove Place, which was
formerly a hunting-seat of Queen Elizabeth, and is approached by an avenue
of lime trees"
(1868 Gazeteer). In fact, it was not a
licensed house by 1867
(see Rossbret). The avenue of lime trees may
be the trees framing the top picture on the Grove Place Prep Schools site
(below)
used as a farmhouse from 1867
Now The Atherley & Grove Place Prep Schools, Grove Place,
Upton Lane, Nursling, Southampton SO16 0AB
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Hampshire County Asylum
Situated near the hamlet of Funtley in the parish of Fareham [map] This being a little north of Portsmouth and east of Southampton. [map] Hospital database: "The first minute book of the Committee of Visitors for erecting a County Lunatic Asylum is dated 1849 - 1853 (18M93) but is not with the main collection". See 1842-1844 Inquiry Simon Cornwall: Built: 1850-1852 Architect: J. Harris Opened 13.12.1852 First Medical Superintendent: Dr Ferguson 20.8.1853 to 3.9.1861 Harriet Warner a patient in Knowle Lunatic Asylum. Her case notes say she was "previously confined at Lainston House". 1868 Overcrowding had led to the removal of Portsmouth and Southampton patients 1879 Portsmouth Borough Asylum opened 1881 Census: Hants County Lunatic Asylum, Knowle, Fareham, Hampshire. Medical Superintendent: John Manley, Physician, married, age 56. 1896 Isle of Wight County Asylum opened 1911: A child born to RN Stoker of Hants Lunatic Asylum 1919 Post Office Directory: Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum. Knowle, Fareham, Henry Kingsmill Abbott BA, MD superiintendent; William John MacKeown BA, MB, B,Ch, senioar assisstant medical officer; Joseph William Rodgers, LRCS and LRCP Ireland, second assistant medical offcer; Wilfred Metcalfe Chambers, LRCS and LRCP Edinburgh, third assistant medical officer; Rev William Richard Williams chaplain; John Railton Wyatt, clerk to the asylum and visitors; Frederick Joyce, storekeeper; Miss Mary Heading, housekeeper. Knowle Mental Hospital about 1923 1948: became Knowle Hospital 1976: R. Bursell, History of Knowle Hospital (Hampshire County Asylum), 1852-1884 Duplicated typescript. Southampton University Library Closed 1996 2003 Susan Margaret Burt: "Fit objects for an asylum" : the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum and its patients, 1852-1899 Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Southampton, Department of Sociology and Social Policy. Simon Cornwall: Proposals for conversion to housing. Probably all housing now. weblink to plans for Knowle Village Jess Knowles: "the old site is not quite all houses. Ravenswood House, the regional medium secure unit, is still there and thriving. Originally the secure unit moved into Ravenswood Ward the one time admission ward for Knowle Hospital. The medium secure unit has grown, but the old building is still there in the middle of it all."
Park Prewett Hospital, Aldermaston Road, Basingstoke
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Royal Victoria (Military) Hospital:
Southampton SO3 5GZ Opened 1863
26.7.1866 Hansard question As there were 195 male and six female military service lunatics at Bow, would 60 places be enough at Netley? The "building now being erected", for insane soldiers was placed at Netley in "consequence of the Report of the Committee that sat in 1863, on the removal of the establishment from Chatham. It could hardly be called an asylum, because the patients were only placed there for the purpose of observation, and would after a short period be removed to their friends, or to private asylums". 1870 Asylum for insane soldiers opened: D Block. 1908 An extension built (E Block?)
1914 During the first world war the asylum had beds for 3 officers and 121 others. (external link). Major Charles Stanford Read (born 1871), Royal Army Medical Corps, was the Officer in Charge of D Block for the greater part of the war. In 1920 he published Military Psychiatry in Peace and War (London: H.K. Lewis, 168 pages) The average stay in D Block was five or six days. Soldiers were moved on. Read, C.S. 1920 (preface) calls it a "Clearing Hospital" and refers to "3,000 cases which were dispersed over various parts of the United Kingdom". Many went to the War Mental Hospitals at Liverpool - Napsbury - Warrington - Cardiff - Paisley - Crookston - Perthshire - Newcastle - Nottinghamshire - Belfast - Dublin -
16.6.1917 Wilfred Owen admitted to the Welsh Hospital, Netley,
diagnosed with Neurasthenia. On 25.6.1917 he was transferred to
Craiglockhart War Hospital for Officers, near Edinburgh
Read, C.S. 1920, page 42, says that in 1918 there were 4,470 War Hospital "beds available in the British Isles for mental cases. These War Mental Hospitals were: The County of Middlesex, Napsbury (350 beds); Lord Derby's War Hospital, Warrington (1,000 beds); Welsh Metropolitan War Hospital, Cardiff (450 beds); Dykebar War Hospital, Paisley (500 beds), and Auxiliary Hospital at Crookston (350 beds); Murthly War Hospital, Murthly, Perth (380 beds); Northumberland War Hospital, Newcastle (100 beds); Notts County War Hospital, Nottingham (540 beds). From the above Irish cases could be transferred to Belfast War Hospital (500 beds) and Dublin War Hospital (300 beds)."
World War 2 D block, Victoria House at Netley treated over 15000 patients, including Rudolf Hess 1950 an E block was added and the army psychiatric facility was renamed Albert House. It continued to treat army personnel with psychiatric illnesses and alcohol dependency problems. From 1960 Navy personnel was also treated at Netley. 1953 to 1983 Godfrey Dykes' naval service. He says: "Our mess-mates who had 'thrown-a-wobly' or who had witnessed giant flesh eating monsters climbing onto their beds because of DT's, were sent to Netley and not, emphatically not in naval speak terms, to BLOCK 'D' or to Victoria House. Netley was the 'nut-house' and the butt of our jokes and teasing. The word NETLEY was used in everyday speech by all sailors and its applied meaning was universally understood." 1958 Royal Victoria Military Hospital Netley closed - But not the psychiatric hospital. June 1963 Empty main hospital badly damaged by fire. 16.9.1966 Demolition of main building 4.8.1975 Hansard question about closure 21.12.1976: Hansard: Planned closures: Queen Alexandra's Military Hospital, Millbank: 1.4.1977 - Military Hospital, Colchester: by 1.1.1978 - Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley: by 1.2.1978. Functions of all three to be transferred to the new Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital at Woolwich, due to be commissioned on 1.4.1977. 1978 Closure of psychiatric hospital. |
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Department of Psychiatry - Southampton
1970 Opened at the Royal South Hampshire Hospital |
Alton Union Workhouse
1881 census shows 104 "inmates" of whom twelve are
recorded as "Idiot" and three as "Lunatic". The ages of those shown as
lunatic are 67 and 70.
1891 census
Harriet Warner shown as "lunatic, many
years". Her age is given as 84.
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Mental Handicap Hospitals Wessex
Sherbourne House
Darlington House
Coldeast Hospital
Tatchbury Mount and White House 556 beds on
31.12.1971
Coldharbour Hospital
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Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset
In 1720 the three largest towns in England were
London (half a million
people?), followed by
Norwich, followed closely by Bristol, each of which
had probably no more than 30,000 inhabitants.
(Cole, G.D.H. 1938
p.63). Public asylums developed early in Bristol and
Norwich. Bristol was still the sixth largest British city in
1801.
Bristol was the second port (after London) at the start of the 18th
century, but was eclipsed by
Liverpool during the century.
(See John Penny
Is the Economic History of the Bristol Region between 1780 and 1850 a Story
of Relative Decline?). The roads between
London and Bristol,
were, therefore, amongst the busiest in the country. The roads passed
through
Wiltshire, which, although mainly rural (it had a woollen
industry), developed a number of large private madhouses receiving patients
from a
wide area. Following a line from Bristol to London (1844): Bristol itself
had
Fishponds and
Brislington, Bath had
Bailbrook, Box had
Kingsdown and mid-Wiltshire had
Belle Vue and
Fiddington. Further south in Wiltshire, the
Finch family had
houses near Salisbury which were linked with
houses in West London. Apart from the mid-Wiltshire houses, all
these asylums had a long history.
St Peter's Hospital, Bristol
1: Near Bristol or Bath
For the history of St Peters and Bristol Lunatic Asylum, visit the
Glenside Hospital Museum
(see also)
and
Peter Higginbotham's workhouse site and
Ray's Bristol History -
article on Glenside Hospital Museum
(archive of an old Glenside menu)
timeline
[other museums]
This 17th century building was destroyed by bombs in 1940. It stood
between St Peter's Church and the River Avon. The area is now Castle Park
Used as a workhouse from
1696.
Kathleen
Jones
says that "almost from its inception" the original building (The Mint) was
used for the "impotent poor" and other premises used as a "manufactuary".
An "early regulation" (Jones) recommended "the lunatic wards be floored
with planks".
Local physicians and surgeons attended patients without fee. In April
1768 a regulation said they should visit the "Frenzy Objects" once a week,
and also "such Objects as shall from time to time be brought in by Warrants
of Lunacy"
29.2.1814:
James
Cowles
Prichard a physician to to St Peters, which is described as
"having a
ward for lunatics"
1832 Due to overcrowding following cholera, most pauper patients moved
to Stapleton workhouse. Lunatics remained in Bristol.
Made a
"County
Asylum" under a local
Act (date not known, but before 1844)
1.1.1844: 72 patients. All pauper.
Treatment
praised
but
building criticised in 1844 Report
|
The Bristol Lunatic Asylum was opened in 1861 immediately to
the north-west
of Fishponds workhouse in Stapleton.
Corridor form - Close to Conolly's ideal?
"By 1915 the Hospital became the Beaufort War Hospital, when
patients
were moved to other hospitals in the West, and the premises taken over by
the War Office to provide general hospital care for wounded soldiers."
(Glenside history)
"The hospital was handed back to the City of Bristol on the 28th February 1919". "By 1921 the name was changed to the Bristol Mental Hospital, originally designed for 250 patients, it became very overcrowded, resulting in the building being enlarged until its bed capacity reached 800. Many improvements followed including, Out-patient departments, Pathology Dept. Occupational Therapy, etc."
1938 New Barrow Hospital "..following the inauguration of the National Health Service in 1948, the large 120 bedded wards were divided into more manageable units, and an Industrial Therapy Unit was established.
It became Glenside Hospital, Blackberry Hill, Stapleton,
Bristol, BS16 1DD. [Name changed 1959]
April 2002 Report of Bristol Mind User Focused Research Project: "Blackberry Hill has one acute psychiatric inpatient ward and is based on a site that acts as a teaching campus for Health and Social Care students, including nurses. The site used to be called Glenside and was an old Victorian asylum which was wound down and closed in the 1990s. The site also has a forensic medium secure unit called 'Fromeside' and a recently opened 'Low secure -rehabilitation unit'. There are extensive plans to expand forensic services on this site in the near future. The site also has several outpatient facilities specialising in substance misuse and a more general psychiatric outpatient facility. The nearest shops are about a 15-minute walk and the site is surrounded by new build housing developments. It is serviced by local public transport."
Barrow Hospital
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Mental Handicap Hospital Farleigh Hospital, Flax Bourton, Bristol, BS19 3QX, was the Bedminster Workhouse from the 1830s to 1929. It then became Cambridge House It closed in 1993, but the building remains as it is listed. See Peter Higginbotham's site: "The Bedminster Union was renamed Long Ashton in 1899. Between 1929 and 1956, the workhouse became Cambridge House, a mental deficiency colony run by Somerset County Council. It subsequently became known as Farleigh Hospital, which was the centre of a scandal in 1971 when two members of the nursing staff spoke out about the appalling treatment being meted out to the vulnerable patients. The former hospital site has now been redeveloped for other uses although much of the original building has been preserved."
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Bath Union Workhouse
A Workhouse Asylum
"Wards exclusively appropriated to lunatics"
(1844
Report
p.10)
Visited 20.10.1843
(1844
Report
p.233)
"...there were twenty-one insane persons, of whom one female was constantly under restraint; another was under excitement, and secluded in a cell; and one man had been in the house four months without any medicine, although his case appeared susceptible of benefit from medical treatment." (1844 Report p.98)
Kingsdown House, Box, Wiltshire
Licensed House
may have been a madhouse since about 1615 as it was claimed in
1815 that there had been a madhouse in Box for 200 years. (map showing Box)
On
1815 list
Place: Kingsdown. Name: Changworthy (Langworthy?)
1.1.1844 137 patients. 101 pauper and
36 private.
Weekly charge for
paupers: 8/- to 9/-
SEVERELY CENSURED IN 1844
REPORT
Proprietor 1844: C.C. Langworthy M.D.
The proprietor, Dr R.A. Langworthy, became a patient in Fishponds
(below) on 23.3.1847. In May 1848 it was alleged to the Lunacy Commission
that the interested motives of his wife were keeping him there, although he
had recovered. (MH50
3.5.1848)
1881
Census: Kingsdown Asylum, Box.
Charles Knight Hitchcock, aged 32, born Market Lavington
see Fiddington
House, Physician and his wife, Alice, aged 25, born Bottisham,
Cambridge, with six month baby son, Humphrey K., born Market Lavington.
Matron of Asylum (Hospital), Jane Elliott, unmarried, born Box.
Visitor: Harriett Elliott, widow, aged 59, also born Box. All but one of
the inmates are described as "Insane Patient". M. W., unmarried famale
born Warminster, Wiltshire, is described as "Boarder"
Early 20th century:
external link to photograph -
archive
"The postal address of Kingsdown, Box, Chippenham, Wiltshire for at least a hundred years have been known almost world wide For Kingsdown House became one of the very best nursing homes for the very rich people of the land that had mental trouble. In fact Kingsdown House was called an asylum and it was run by a Doctor Mac Bryant who had a large staff of high-class nurses of both male and female also doctors on hand, and of course, there were a very large staff of servant girls and the very best cooks and kitchen maids" (from The Kingsdown Memories of Victor Painter (born 1906, died 2002). See part eight)Asylum remained open until November 1947
| Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office have patient records for Fiddington House, Market Lavington, Laverstock House and Kingsdown House, Box. However, the catalogue is marked "Not to be produced before 2006" Reference A1/565 |
Fishponds, Stapleton, Bristol
Bailbrook House, near Bath
Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset
Fairford Asylum, Fairford, Gloucestershire
Licensed House
Originally (1738) opened as Mason's Madhouse by
Joseph
Mason in Stapleton, it moved to Fishponds in 1760.
1779 Death of Joseph Mason, the founder
Until 1788, Mason's married daughters, Elizabeth Cox and Sarah
Carpenter, continued the asylum.
1787 A birth in the Bompas family who worshiped at
Broadmead Baptist Church, Bristol. George Gwinnett Bompas senior
and his wife
(born Selina Carpenter in 1767, died 1809) had a daughter, Sarah, who died
in 1810.
6.6.1789 Birth, in Bristol, of George Gwinnett Bompas(s)
(junior), who became a doctor and Superintendant of Fishponds Lunatic
Asylum. He died in 1847.
1788 Joseph Mason Cox (1763-
1818), a grandson of Joseph Mason, took Fishponds over. His Practical
Observations on Insanity in 1806 propounded the theory that
insanity can be cured by inducing the symptoms of severe physical illness
in patients.
15.2.1791 Birth of Charles Carpenter Bompass (Son of George
Gwinnett senior and Selina). He became Serjeant-at-Law and is thought to be
the inspiration for Charles Dickens's Serjeant Buzfuz in Pickwick Papers.
Henry Mason Bompas was his son.
2.6.1793 Birth of Joseph Cox Bompass, later Joseph Cox Cox,
Physician of Park St Bristol, who died in 1851. (Son of George Gwinnett
senior and Selina). Not long before he died, he took over Fishponds from
his nephew.
About Spring 1806 the Baptist minister Robert
Hall became a patient of Dr Cox. He spent about a year here,
before returning to his relatives in Leicestershire. Robert Hall spoke his
mind. He would speak openly of the necessity of ameliorating the condition
of the insane. At a large party he showed people the scars on his head to
illustrate his point, saying "for these are the wounds that I received in
the house of my friends". His biographer thinks they were the result of a
blow from a keeper. However, Cox in 1806 recommended shaving a patient's
head and rubbing in a powder that produced a "crop of eruptions, very
similar to those of small-pox...Blisters, issues, setons etc"
By 1812: George Gwinnett
Bompas(s), surgeon, Superintendent of Fishponds Lunatic Asylum. He was the
cousin of the proprietor, Joseph Mason Cox, and took over Fishponds after
his death. He was
married to Frances Henrietta Smith (daughter of Joseph Smith) who was born
in 1792 at Bath Easton, and died in 1863.
6.9.1812 Birth of George Joseph Bompas (died 23.6.1889), (eldest
child?) of Dr George Gwinnett junior and Frances. He became MD and
Schoolmaster in Fishponds House.
4.10.1816 Birth of Mason Cox Bompas, another
son of Dr George Gwinnett junior and Frances.
1818 Death of Joseph Mason Cox
24.1.1823 Birth of Joseph Carpenter Bompas (died 1855), another
son of Dr George Gwinnett junior and Frances. He became MD and proprietor
of Fishponds. He married Ruth Conquest Bompas (born about 1823), who was
head of a school in Middlesex in 1881.
19.4.1835 Birth of Charlotte Shay Bompas, a daughter of Dr
George Gwinnett junior and Frances.
By
1881 she was a patient in
the
Warneford Lunatic Asylum, Oxford
1.1.1844 49 patients. 1 pauper and 48
private. Proprietor G.G. Bompas MD.
1847 Death of George Gwinnett Bompas senior
1848 Gloucester JPs Inquiry: Proprietor, Dr Joseph Carpenter
Bompas accused of numerous misdemeanours such as receiving patients without
certificate.
Evidence presented of harsh and neglectful treatment.
The evidence taken on the inquiry into the management [by J.C.
Bompas] of the Fishponds Private Lunatic Asylum Ordered by the last
Court of Quarter Sessions to be printed, and sent to every acting
magistrate in the County of Gloucester. 1848. 139 pages. It included
illustrations.
Dr J.C. Bompas was
eventually prevented from holding a licence and the asylum was managed by
other members of the family, including Dr J.C. Cox "late of Naples". Joseph
Carpenter Bompas died in 1855 "late of Adelaide, Australia".
1851 Death of Dr Joseph Cox Cox
1852 Fishponds taken over by Dr J.D.F. Parsons, previously
proprietor of
White Hall House, near Bristol
1859 Closed. Parry-Jones, (1972) (p.277) links the closure to
the opening of Bristol
Borough Asylum in the Fishponds district of Bristol
1871 The Best Means of Evangelising the Masses, a paper read
at the annual meeting of the Baptist Union by Henry Mason Bompas.
An 18th Century Mansion designed by John Everleigh
Opened as an asylum in 1831
Licensed House
1.1.1844 94 patients. 66 pauper and 28
private.
A mansion and outhouses
asylum
A Registered Mental Nursing Home under the 1959 Mental Health Act?
Now a Conference Centre: Bailbrook Road House, London Road West, Bath,
BA1 7JD
2: Away from Bristol
Licensed House
external link to history by Shelagh Diplock
Daniel Iles was a yeoman farmer of Kempsford
12.3.1792 Daniel and Ann Iles christened a son, Alexander Iles,
at Fairford.
Alexander Iles worked in asylums in London
28.9.1816 Mary Anderson married Alexander Iles at Spitalfields
Christ Church, Stepney, London
26.5.1815 John Hitchman born Northleach, Gloucestershire. He
learnt Greek and Latin, but had to go elsewhere for English and
Mathematics.
about 1818 Mary Ann Iles born Hackney
19.9.1819 Alexander and Marianne Iles christened a son, Daniel
Iles, at Fairford.
23.9.1819 Charles and Anne Cornwall christened a son, Charles
Philip Durell Cornwall, at Fairford.
22.10.1820 Charles and Anne Cornwall christened a son, James
Cornwall, at Fairford.
5.3.1823 Alexander and Mary Iles christened a son, Alexander
Iles, at Fairford.
1823 Alexander Iles obtained a licence for ten patients and took
patients into his own house.
1827 Thirteen patients
1829 Forty patients
1832 John Hitchman was apprenticed to Dr Charles Cornwall of
Fairford for five years to learn his profession. Shelagh Diplock says that
Charles Cornwall was the first physician to the asylum.
1834 Poor Law Amendment Act "increased the intake of pauper
admissions and Alexander quickly started to build to accommodate them."
Before 1835? John Hitchman married Mary Ann Iles
September 1836 John Hitchman "went to London and gained some
qualifications (MRCS, LSA)"
(source)]
1838 John Hitchman obtained the diploma of M.R.C.S. and the
L.S.A.
"He then returned to Fairford to act as assistant to his former master, and
shortly afterwards became the resident medical officer of the Fairford
Lunatic Asylum, now known as 'The Retreat'.
1841 census over 119 patients
1.1.1844 140 patients. 119
pauper and 21 private.
ON 1844 LIST OF BEST CONDUCTED.
Commended, along with
Fiddington House and
Belle Vue, in Wiltshire,
and Dunston Lodge, in
Durham, because it had a farm.
1845 John Hitchman at
Hanwell
1850 Fairford Retreat (Lunatic Asylum) Fairford --- Messrs
Alexander Iles & Sons, proprietors and managers ; Mr James Cornwall,
resident surgeon.
Slater's Directory of Gloucestershire
1856 Alexander Iles died. Succeeded by his eldest son, Daniel
Iles and his wife Susan. [Their eldest son also Daniel. Younger son Albert,
married to Ellen Matilda.]
1859 national
comparisons - 77 patients: 25 paupers and 52 private.
1861 49 patients.
Albert Iles moved back to Fairford from his doctor's practice in
Cirencester. He bought Croft House and had hoped to join Dr Charles
Cornwall's practice.
July 1863 Albert Iles killed in an accident, leaving Ellen
pregnant with their eighth child.
1864 Daniel Iles junio qualified as a surgeon and joined the
family businees shortly afterwards.
Before 1870 Ellen Matilda Iles set up a small female private
asylum in Croft House.
1872 Retirement of John and Mary Ann Hitchman from
Derby County Asylum. "Leaving Mickleover, he went to reside at
Cheltenham for a short period" (BMJ Obituary)
1875 "for family reasons" John and Mary Ann Hitchman moved to
Fairford.
1881
Census "Fairford Retreat Lunatic Asylum". Daniel
Iles (age 62) Proprietor of Fairford Retreat - Farming 215 acres and
Employing 9 Men, 4 Boys and 2 Women. Susan, his wife, age 65, is the
matron.
1881
Census for Daniel Iles surgeon
1881
Census for Ellen Matilda Iles
1881
Census for John and Mary Hitchman in retirement
1881
Census for Charles Cornwall
March 1884 Death of Mary Ann Hitchman, aged 66, registered
Cirencester
1883 Death of Susan Iles
1887 Death of Daniel Iles
Wednesday 5.4.1893 Death of John Hitchman, aged 77, at his home,
the Laurels, Fairford. Registered Cirencester in June 1893.
22.4.1893 John Hitchman's
Obituary in British Medical Journal
1901 The Retreat sold to Dr A C King Turner
1944 The Retreat closed. Building later became
"Coln House School - a special school with fifty five... pupils with
behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, aged nine to sixteen."
| Gloucester Public Asylums and Hospitals |