Advocacy or folly: The alleged lunatics friend society, 1845–63

Medical History

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 1986, Pages 245-275

  Hervey, Nicholas ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HISTORY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; MENTAL DISEASE; MENTAL HOSPITAL; UNITED KINGDOM;

COMMITMENT OF MENTALLY ILL; ENGLAND; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 18TH CENT.; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 19TH CENT.; HOSPITALS, PSYCHIATRIC; HUMAN; MENTAL DISORDERS; SOCIETIES;

EID: 0022749456     PISSN: 00257273     EISSN: 20488343     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300045701     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. This Society started life as the National Council for Lunacy Reform, and was founded following two private conferences on the issue of lunacy reform held at the Minerva Cafe on 29 April and 19 May 1920. Its objects were: to promote research into the causes of mental instability; to investigate the present system of care and treatment, and its results; to secure the provision of hostels for early cases; to safeguard the liberty of the subject; to reduce the burden of ever-increasing asylum expenditure; and to educate public opinion on the subject of mental disorder. It was clearly influential in securing a Royal commision in 1926, and was disappointed by subsequent legislation in 1929. It had branch organizations outside London, and included two members who wrote books on the asylum system, J. E. Parley and Dr. M. Lomax. (There are three minute books for this Society held at the offices of MIND, 22 Wimpole Street, London. It was based in London variously at 32/33 Avenue Chambers, Southampton Row; 90 Avenue Chambers; and 44 Wimpole Street.)
2. K. Jones, Mental health and social policy 1845–1959, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, p. 35.
3. William LI. Parry-Jones, The trade in lunacy: a study of private madhouses in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 89-98.
4. The cases of Turner, Leech, and Ruck in 1858 have been widely quoted, and also that of Frederick Windham in 1861. See J. L. and B. Hammond, Lord Shaftesbury, London, Constable, 1923, pp. 204–208. Also. P. McCandless, Liberty and lunacy: the Victorians and wrongful confinement, in A Scull (editor), Madhouses, mad-doctors and madmen: the social history of psychiatry in the Victorian era, London, Athlone Press, 1981.
5. D. Defoe, Augusta Triumphans: or, the way to make London the most flourishing city-group in the universe, London, 1728, pp. 30–34. The history of ex-patients campaigning against the practices of madhouses also started at this time. See A. Cruden, The London citizen exceedingly injured: or a British inquisition display'd, London, T. Cooper, 1739.
6. T. Smollett, The adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, London, 1762, vol. 2, pp. 228–230.
7. M. MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: madness, anxiety, and healing in seventeenth-century England, Cambridge University Press, 1981, passim.
8. For a description of this process see D. J. Mellett, The prerogative of asylumdom, New York, Garland Press, 1983, introduction and pp. 187–210. Also, A. Scull, Museums of madness: the social organisation of insanity in nineteenth-century England, London, Allen Lane, 1979, ch. 5.
9. P. McCandless, Insanity and society: a study of the English lunacy reform movement 1815-1870, PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1974. Also idem., op. cit., note 6 above.
10. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th earl of Shaftesbury (1801–85), chairman of the Metropolitan Lunacy Commission 1833–45 and of the Lunacy Commission 1845-85; commissioner on the Board of Health, 1848–54. See DNB; G. B. A. M. Finlayson, The seventh earl of Shaftesbury, London, Eyre Methuen, 1981.
11. For contemporary concern with this issue, see C. M. Burnett, Crime and insanity: their causes, connexion and consequences, London, 1852. Also, R. Smith, Trial by medicine: insanity and responsibility in Victorian trials, Edinburgh University Press, 1981, pp. 21–22.
12. See pp. 265–266 for a description.
13. Commissioners in Lunacy, Sixth report, pp. 17–18. The prosecution of attendant Samuel Hill was completed when Lord Justice Campbell agreed to accept the evidence of a patient, Richard Donelly. Campbell argued that, “the proper test must always be, does the lunatic understand what he is saying, and does he understand the obligation of an oath?”
14. Richard Powell, Observations on the comparative prevalence of insanity at different periods, London, Woodfall, 1813; Sir Andrew Halliday, A letter to Lord Robert Seymour: with a report on the number of lunatics in England and Wales, London, Underwood, 1829. The problem continued to puzzle commentators into the mid-nineteenth century. See John Thurnam, Observations and essays on the statistics of insanity, London, Simpkin Marshall, 1845; and W. A. F. Browne, What asylums were, are, and ought to be. Edinburgh, 1837, pp. 50–55.
15. Scull, op. cit., note 10 above; and Mellett, op. cit., note 10 above. Many contemporaries identified this process too, and not just libertarians. See the Annual Report of Kent County Asylum Superintendent, J. Huxley, in 1861/2, p. 20.
16. R. G. Hill, A lecture on the management of lunatic asylums, London, 1839, pp. 4-5; Commissioners in Lunacy, Further report, 1847, pp. 118–119.
17. Scull, op. cit., note 10 above; and David Rothman, The discovery of the asylum, Boston, Mass., Little Brown, 1971. Rothman's critique of Jacksonian society and attempt to separate the American experience from Europe's, are less convincing. See A. Scull, The discovery of the asylum revisited: lunacy reform in the new American republic, in Scull (editor), op. cit., note 6 above. The idea that causal links between the increasing “civilization” of society and the growth of insanity remained popular amongst alienists in America after its disappearance in Britain, is untrue. Civil libertarians including the ALFS, certainly posited a link between the two in nineteenth-century England.
18. Wilkie Collins, The woman in white, London, 1860; Henry Cockton, Valentine Fox, London, 1840; Charles Reade, Hard cash, London, Routledge, 1905 (1st ed., 1863).
19. Reade resented suggestions that he merely relied on sensationalized newspaper accounts for his novel. In an article to the Daily News, 23 October 1863, he stated that he relied “mainly on the private cases, which a large correspondence with strangers, and searching inquiry amongst my acquaintances have revealed to me… to show you how strong I am, I do not rely at all on disputable cases like Nottidge, Ruck and Leech.” From the range of cases he mentions in this article and a subsequent one to the Pall Mall Gazette (17 January 1870), he had evidently gathered a wide range of material.
20. See the case of George Boddington, MD, in PRO/HO45/0S/6686, mentioned in McCandless, op. cit., note 6 above. Also Br. med. J., 1857, i: 52, for an example of advertising for this kind of arrangement.
21. In 1807 and 1815 16.
22. The Times, 16 April 1846.
23. Richard Paternoster, described as “an uncorrected heartless ruffian… low in mind and coarse in language” by Shaftesbury, was only discharged by the Metropolitan Lunacy Commissioners on a split vote of 6 to 4. (Diaries of the 7th earl of Shaftesbury, National Register of Archives, SHA/PD2, 3 October 1838.) Paternoster subsequently wrote The madhouse system, London, 1841. For further details see Parry-Jones, op. cit., note 5 above.
24. See Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine, John Thomas Perceval (1803–76), patient and reformer, Med. Hist., 1962, 6: 22-26. Perceval was author of: A narrative of the treatment experienced by a gentleman during a state of mental derangement, 2 vols., London, Effingham Wilson, 1838 and 1840; Letters to Sir James Graham upon the reform of the law affecting the treatment of persons alleged to be of unsound mind, London, 1846; A letter to the Secretary of State for the Home Department upon the unjust and pettifogging conduct of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy in the case of a gentleman lately under their surveillance, London, 1844.
25. The Catholic Apostolic Church was founded in the late 1820s, and inspired by the teachings of Edward Irving (1792–1834). It developed from a revivalist circle which gathered round Henry Drummond (1786–1860), who built a church on his estate at Surrey. Drummond was a keen supporter of the ALFS.
26. Edward Long Fox 1761–1835. MD Edinburgh 1808, MD Oxford 1835. Physician to Bristol Royal Infirmary 1816-43; 1792–1804 proprietor of Cleeve Hill Madhouse; 1804–35 proprietor of Brislington House. For invitation to treat George III, see Bristol Evening Post, 23 March 1960, p. 8. Also Parry-Jones, op. cit., note 2 above, chs. 3 and 4.
27. Perceval (1838), op. cit., note 35 above, pp. 12–22. Perceval also claimed he was denied paper for the privy, and saw keepers half-strangling another patient.
28. PRO/MEPOL3/20. Raglan to R. Mayne, Commissioner of Police, 44 May 1850. Perceval had admitted as much in 1846 in a letter to Peel, stating that he had expressed his opinions “without respect to persons or to my future prospects-and this is my only merit.” (British Museum, Add.MSS, Peel Papers, 40, 582, f 91.) He continued the school allusion in 1861, remarking of Shaftesbury's Commission, which allowed the withholding of patients correspondence: “I feel so indignant at this under the plausible superintendence of Lord Shaftesbury—that I sometimes can scarcely believe that he is the man that was educated with us at Harrow—that gentlemanly and public spirited school.” (PRO/HO45/OS/7102, Perceval to George Clive, 9 May 1861.)
29. For an account of William Bailey, see his petition to the Commons, HC, Supplement to the Votes 1845, Vol. 2, pp. 1144–1145. Also Perceval (1846), op. cit., note 35 above, letter concerning a Mr B[ailey]. Bailey was also an overseer in the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields and as such was involved in care of the pauper insane.
30. Richard Saumarez 1791–1866. (Son of Richard 1746–1835, the surgeon and prolific polemical writer on medical education and the duties of medical corporations.) Town Councillor at Bath; guardian of St Luke's, Chelsea; FRS. Author: An address on the laws of lunacy for the consideration of the legislature, London, 1854; The laws of lunacy, and their crimes, as they affect all classes of society, London, 1859.
31. John Parkin MRCSE 1822, Fellow Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, London; surgeon in the East India Co., surgeon to the General Annuity and Endowment Association, fellow member of Perceval's at the Parthenon Club, Regent Street. Author of papers and books on tropical disease and the state of the profession.
32. Thomas Wakley (1795–1862) MRCS 1823. Founded the Lancet in 1823. MP Finsbury 1823–62. Middlesex Coroner 1839–62. Wakley had a particular interest in this subject, because he had a nephew, Mr Townsend, who had been confined at Southall Park asylum. (Diaries of Alexander Morison, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 24 April 1849.)
33. Perceval (1846), op. cit., note 35 above, letter dated June 1844. Perceval wrote, “for my own part I do not approve of Commissions of this kind, for the administration of the laws of this country, more particularly where they interfere with the ordinary channels of government.”
34. PR0/H045/OS/7102 Perceval to George Clive, 2 May 1861, appeal to Magna Carta and the universal meaning of laws as found in Montesquieu. For comparison, see the petition of William Morgan to the House of Lords in 1847 (JHL, LXXIX, 1847, p. 159). There is an interesting discussion of the appeal to traditional constitutional rights, especially in the context of opposition to central government, in William Lubenow, The politics of government growth: early Victorian attitudes toward state intervention, 1833–48, Devon, David & Charles, 1971, passim.
35. Perceval (1846), op. cit., note 35 above, 1 August 1845; Cf. Foucault, op. cit. note 23 pp. 241–278.
36. ALFS, 1st report, Origin, progress and expenditure of the Society, with its laws and regulations, London, W. McDowell, 1846, pp. 1–4.
37. For removal from home, see E. J. Seymour, Thoughts on the nature and treatment of several severe diseases of the human body, London, Longman Green, 1847, pp. 170–220. Seymour opposed this, but made it clear it was axiomatic amongst his contemporaries. For discussion, see Scull, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 90–102. Perceval, (1840), op. cit., note 35 above, pp. 18.
38. See N. Walker, Crime and insanity in England, Edinburgh University Press, 1968 ch. 2; and Smith, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 70–74, for discussion of the exemption of madmen from the consequences of the criminal law, which was linked to the age of discretion in children.
39. Report of the Select Committee on Lunatics, PP 1859, Sess. 2, VII, p. 20.
40. Morning Post, 3 February 1859.
41. PP 1859, Sess. 2, VII, p. 43. For a description of the system of single lodgings, see N. Hervey, A slavish bowing down: the Lunacy Commission and the psychiatric profession 1845-60, in Bynum et. al. (editors), op. cit., note 38 above.
42. The Society worked on many cases in county asylums and workhouses, appointing their own visitors to investigate charges. It supported the foundation of charitable funds like the Queen Adelaide's at Hanwell (to which both Cabbell and Saumarez contributed) and it provided ex-pauper patients with references for jobs. ALFS, 1st annual report, pp. 1–2.
43. Samuel Gaskell (1807–96) supported the idea of voluntary admissions (J. Ment. Sci., 1860, 6: 321-327), as did Bryan Waller Procter (1797–1874). See V & A, Forster MSS, 48 E 32, Procter to Forster 5 September 1869. W. G. Campbell (1810—81) also agreed with many of the Society's proposals, notably the idea that a relative signing the order for an admission should have seen the patient within the recent past. (PP, 1859, Sess 2, VII, p. 62).
44. They included Wakley; George Alfred Walker, a notable writer and campaigner on the Metropolitan Burials issue; Robert Barnes, an authority on the diseases of women and children, and translator of Baillarger's Lectures on mental diseases; Henry Walker, who petitioned Parliament in 1845 about the lunacy bills; Thomas Dickson, Superintendent of Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, Cheadle, Cheshire, and author of Observations on the importance of establishing public hospitals for the insane of the middle classes, 1852; John Parkin, see footnote 44 above. Also used by the Society were Dr Wm. Buchanan MD (retired) of Cheshunt, Herts, and a Dr Pearce.
45. PP, 1859, Sess 2, VII, p. 46.
46. Duncombe and Crawford also opposed retiring pensions for Commissioners and suggested a reduction in their proposed salaries. The language used by these men and other members of the ALFS reflects many of the preoccupations of Joshua Toulmin Smith (1816–69), the lawyer, phrenologist, and localist champion. See Government by commission, illegal and pernicious: the nature and effects of all commissions of inquiry.and the importance of local self-government London, Sweet. 1849.
47. Hansard, HC, 3S, LXXII, 16 July 1845, pp. 14–15. Also, JHC, vol. C, 2, 15, and 16 July 1845 for split votes.
48. Shaftesbury diaries, loc. cit., note 34 above, SHA/PD/4, 5, 22, and 23 July 1845.
49. Francis Offley Martin, the Charity Commissioner, made some acknowledgment, An account of Bethlem Hospital: abridged from the report of the late Charity Commissioners, London, William Pickering, 1853. The book was dedicated to Duncombe for his opposition to the exemption of Bethlem from the 1845 Act, and Martin sought to obtain the continuing support of the radical Metropolitan MPs to secure further reforms.
50. The protection of patients property automatically once admitted, the establishment of half-way houses with voluntary confinement, written justification for a detention by the signer of an order of admission, and increased visitation. Perceval (1846), op. cit., note 35 above, letters V, VI, and 8.
51. J. T. Perceval, Hints for the abolition of private lunatic asylums and for a reform of the laws respecting the seizure and confinements of persons alleged to be of unsound mind, London, 1853, p. 4. (Found in PRO/H045/0S/7102.)
52. The Soc et. al. obtained several clauses in the Scottish Lunacy Act 20 and 21 Vict c71 (1857) through its contacts with the Lord Advocate, notably the suggestion that clergy should visit local asylums on a regular basis. Also the enactment that before an admission, the relatives should sign a statement about the case, which, together with two certificates, would go to the local sheriff, to make an order. (It is interesting to note that in 1983, MIND was opposed to relatives being allowed to sign for the confinement of patients.) The above measure also permitted the voluntary confinement of nervous patients for up to six months.
53. Sir William Tite 1798–1873. Architect; MP Bath 1855-73; FRS 1835. (SeeDNB.)
54. For information on the Gheel system, see John Webster, Notes on Belgian lunatic asylums, including the insane colony of Gheel, J. psychol. Med. ment. Path., 1857, 10: 50–78 and 209-247; Henry Stevens, Insane Colony of Gheel, J. ment. Sci., 1858, 4: 426-437; W. L. Parry-Jones, The model of the Gheel lunatic colony and its influence on the nineteenth-century asylum system in Britain, in Scull (editor), op. cit., note 6 above, ch. 8.
55. Morning Post, 24 February 1848.
56. The Times, 28 August 1864; Morning Post, 27 August 1864; Morning Chronicle, 27 August 1846.
57. Lancet, 1847, ii: 56.
58. Lord Dudley Stuart is a good example. He had a personal interest in the subject, having a son who was a patient of Drs A. Morison and E. J. Seymour. Stuart looked after his own son in private lodgings. (RCPE, Morison diaries, 16 and 17May1849). In 1848, he canvassed the Lord Advocate concerning the Scottish Lunacy Acts (Morison diaries, 18May1848). In 1853, he was instrumental in obtaining an inquiry into abuses at Colney Hatch, primed by the Society (HC Accounts and Papers 1852–3 (44) Vol C, pp. 45-50); and in 1854, he brought up the case of the Rev. Edmund Holmes at Heigham Retreat (PRO/H045/0S/5521).
59. PP 1859, Sess 2, VIII, p. 15.
60. The Times, 18 June 1848, p. 7. The case of Manuel Pimental, heard in the Central Criminal Court.
61. For details see, J. L. and B. Hammond, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 205.
62. See A. Scull, John Conolly: a Victorian psychiatric career, in Bynum and Porter (editors), op. cit., note 38 above, vol. 1, p. 45.
63. In An address on the laws of lunacy, 1854, p. 9, Saumarez attacked the way doctors generally denied that lunatics were responsible for their actions in court, and yet were prepared to punish them for minor misdemeanours in the asylum.
64. PP 1849 XLVI, p. 381. Copy of the letter to the Lord Chancellor from the Commissioners in Lunacy concerning their duties and practice under the Act 8 and 9 Vict c 100; Also J. Conolly, A remonstrance with the Lord Chief Baron touching the case Nottidge versus Ripley, London, Churchill, 1849.
65. For a more detailed instance of this type of criticism, see the complaints made by Bethlem's governors about the Commission's inquiry there in 1852. Bethlem Hospital, The observations of the Governors upon the report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Secretary of State on Bethlem Hospital. London, David Balten, 1852.
66. Charles Pelham Villiers 1802–98. Barrister. Contemporary at Lincoln's Inn of the Lunacy Commissioners Lutwidge and Mylne. MP Wolverhampton 1835–1885. (SeeDNB.)
67. James Russell 1790–1861. Barrister with large practice in Chancery. To the probable embarrassment of the Commission, he had been a close colleague of Mylne's, co-editing several books on Chancery with him. (SeeDNB.)
68. Report of the Committee on Equity on the Law Respecting Lunacy, London, 1848.
69. PRO/HO44/52 Perceval to Sir George Grey, 21 December 1848.
70. Report of the Committee on Equity, pp. 15–16.
71. William Carpenter 1797–1874. Writer and editor. Carpenter was appointed Hon. Sec. of the Chancery Reform Association 1851–3. (See DNB.)
72. Dickens described it as having “its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, its worn out lunatic in every madhouse, and its dead in every churchyard.” His lampooning of the proliferation of complex administrative procedures was entirely accurate. Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 1.
73. Saumarez, op. cit., note 43 above. p. 14.
74. PP 1859, Sess. 2, VII, p. 4.
75. PP 1859, Sess. I, III, p. 3.
76. PP 1859, Sess. II, VII, p. 44.
77. Perceval had previous contacts with the Gloucester bench, having worked with the Rev. Edward Leigh Bennett, a visiting magistrate, to secure the discharge of William Bailey from Fairford House in 1842.
78. MH50/4, 9 August 1849. See also PRO/HO34/9, 19 December 1849.
79. Medical Times, 28 January 1851. For the advertisement itself, see The Sun, No. 17, 972, 1 May 1850.
80. MH(51/44A, Letters from J. B. Player to the Commissioners dated 10 February and 11 May 1851.
81. Kent CRO, the Marsham Papers, U1515/OQ/L2, Perceval to Marsham, letters dated 10Mayand 19 June 1858.
82. PP 1859, Sess. I, III, pp. 230/1 and p. 216.
83. Lancet, 1847, i: 82; 1848, i: 433, 678; 1852, ii: 13.
84. Peter Borthwick 1804–52. MP Evesham 1835–47. Barrister 1847. Editor, Morning Post, 1850–52. (See DNB.)
85. E.g. the meeting held on 28 March 1848 at the British Coffee House to prepare a petition asking for a Select Committee. See advertisements in The Times, 25 and 28 March 1848; Also meeting on 1 February 1859 at Exeter Hall. SeeMorning Post, 3 February 1858; and Br. med. J., 1859, 1: 116–117.
86. MH50/3. Entries between 19 May and 27 July 1848 for Mr Pulverstoft.
87. This was true of both Hanwell and Colney Hatch, as well as Northampton Hospital. For Colney see PP, HC, Accts and Papers, 1852–3, (44), vol C, pp 45–50, and MH50/10, 1 August 1860.
88. Dudley Montagu 1856, Spencer 1859, and Frederick James in 1861. Charles Spencer was Dudley's eldest son. The connexions of the Perceval family with the subject of lunacy seem quite endless. In 1870, Spencer's widow sold Elm Grove Asylum, Ealing, to the East India Company. It is not clear how long she had owned the asylum. (India Office Library and Records, Hailebury Records J-K, L/Mil 9.)
89. PP 1859, Sess. 2, VII, p. 22.
90. This patient was removed by the Commissioners following Perceval's allegations of neglect, MH50/10, 17 November 1858.
91. Compare entries in the Board's Minutes, MH50/8, 11 March 1857, and MH50/9, 30 March 1858.
92. In April 1854, William Conolly claimed that Bolden's frequent visits and correspondence were upsetting Captain Childe, and interfering with his treatment at Hayes Park. One might ask though why the Commission allowed such an unsavoury character to practise at all? Three years earlier, they had refused to renew Conolly's licence because he had taken unwarrantable sexual liberties with a female patient. (MH50/7, 27 April 1854, and MH50/5, 17 December 1851.)
93. MH50/5, 10 April 1851. Also PRO/H045/0S/5521. Correspondence re the Rev. Holmes. In fact, the Board was aware of previous irregularities, as a doctor was forced to leave in 1849 after getting one patient pregnant and assaulting another, MH50/3, 11 January 1849.
94. Ogilvie had been forced to move asylums several times, because he kept voluntary patients illegally. In 1851, he was refused a licence for Blythe House, Turnham Green, by the Commissioners. See PP 1859, Sess. II, VII, p. 35. Also MH50/5, 12 June 1851.
95. J. Ment Sci., 28 February 1859, 5: 392.
96. For a description of Shaftesbury's views, see Hervey op. cit., note 64 above, pp. 181–184. Also Finlayson op. cit., note 13 above, pp. 559–609.
97. In 1859, Perceval remarked that they had never taken a liberal view of their duties, proceeding by remedies of cure rather than those of prevention. See Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, ch. 10.
98. MH50/9, 14 September 1858.
99. MH50/10, 5 and 15 October 1858. See also MH50/13, 6 September 1864.
100. Saumarez complained in 1859 to the Select Committee that criminal patients who were transferred from prison to asylums were often kept there after their sentences had expired, sometimes for up to fifteen years. He felt they should have regular medical reviews of their condition and complained that the Home Secretary and Board refused him access with a doctor to assess patients and yet would not discharge them without medical evidence. (PP 1859, Sess. 2, VII, pp. 11-12.)