A Danger to the Public? Disposing of Pauper Lunatics in late-Victorian and Edwardian England: Plympton St Mary Union and the Devon County Asylum, 1867-1914

Medical History

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 1-25

  Adair, Richard ^a   Forsythe, Bill ^a   Melling, Joseph ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ECONOMICS; HISTORY; HUMAN; MENTAL DISEASE; MENTAL HOSPITAL; POVERTY; SOCIAL STATUS; UNITED KINGDOM;

ENGLAND; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOSPITALS, PSYCHIATRIC; HUMANS; MENTAL DISORDERS; POVERTY; SOCIAL CONDITIONS;

EID: 0031612629     PISSN: 00257273     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300063316     Document Type: Review

References (94)

1. A T Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England, London, Allen Lane, 1979; idem, The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain, 1700-1900, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993; J K Walton, 'Casting out and bringing back in Victorian England: pauper lunatics, 1840-70', in W Bynum, R Porter and M Shepherd, The anatomy of madness: essays in the history of psychiatry, vol. 2, Institutions and society, London, Tavistock, 1985, pp. 132-46; R Porter, Mind-forg'd manacles: a history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency, London, Athlone Press, 1987.
2. A T Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England, London, Allen Lane, 1979; idem, The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain, 1700-1900, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993; J K Walton, 'Casting out and bringing back in Victorian England: pauper lunatics, 1840-70', in W Bynum, R Porter and M Shepherd, The anatomy of madness: essays in the history of psychiatry, vol. 2, Institutions and society, London, Tavistock, 1985, pp. 132-46; R Porter, Mind-forg'd manacles: a history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency, London, Athlone Press, 1987.
3. A T Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England, London, Allen Lane, 1979; idem, The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain, 1700-1900, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993; J K Walton, 'Casting out and bringing back in Victorian England: pauper lunatics, 1840-70', in W Bynum, R Porter and M Shepherd, The anatomy of madness: essays in the history of psychiatry, vol. 2, Institutions and society, London, Tavistock, 1985, pp. 132-46; R Porter, Mind-forg'd manacles: a history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency, London, Athlone Press, 1987.
4. A T Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England, London, Allen Lane, 1979; idem, The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain, 1700-1900, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993; J K Walton, 'Casting out and bringing back in Victorian England: pauper lunatics, 1840-70', in W Bynum, R Porter and M Shepherd, The anatomy of madness: essays in the history of psychiatry, vol. 2, Institutions and society, London, Tavistock, 1985, pp. 132-46; R Porter, Mind-forg'd manacles: a history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency, London, Athlone Press, 1987.
5. K Williams, From pauperism to poverty, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, p. 214.
6. Scull, op. cit., 1993, note 1 above, p. 125 for discussion of significance of struggle over Poor Law and bourgeois rationality which paved the way for the centralization of control, institutional segregation of the insane, differentiation of deviant groups, and emergence of a professional personnel depicted. See also ibid., pp. 10-29.
7. Scull, op. cit., 1993, note 1 above, p. 125 for discussion of significance of struggle over Poor Law and bourgeois rationality which paved the way for the centralization of control, institutional segregation of the insane, differentiation of deviant groups, and emergence of a professional personnel depicted. See also ibid., pp. 10-29.
8. ibid., pp. 168-73, 263.
9. Ibid., pp. 354-5: "So that, as the term itself would suggest, pauper lunatics were quite definitely recruited from only the poorer sections of the community." Scull goes on to note that many lunatics must have come from the respectable working class, beyond the ranks of the official pauper class, but "quite plainly, the division between the pauper and the private lunatic reflected accurately the basic class division of Victorian society." We suggest that such a sharp dichotomy of Victorian social classes seems to be a simplification of complex social and cultural identities.
10. Ibid., pp. 361-3. The key point for Scull is that poorer families lacked the resources to cope more adequately with those pressures which were perceived to cause difficult behaviour. Thus their members were disproportionately represented amongst the insane. This argument only underlines the paradox that a Poor Law system so repugnant to the respectable poor should have been used apparently so widely by those who do not (from our research) appear to have been in desperate circumstances.
11. Ibid., pp. 360-2; cf. R Adair, J Melling and B Forsythe, 'Migration, family structure and pauper lunacy in Victorian England: admissions to the Devon County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1845-1900', Continuity and Change, 1997, 12 (3).
12. Ibid., pp. 360-2; cf. R Adair, J Melling and B Forsythe, 'Migration, family structure and pauper lunacy in Victorian England: admissions to the Devon County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1845-1900', Continuity and Change, 1997, 12 (3).
13. B Crossley, 'Lunacy in Lancashire: a case study of Prestwich Hospital 1850-1948', MPhil. thesis, Salford University, 1989.
14. F Driver, Power and pauperism: the workhouse system, 1834-1884, Cambridge University Press, 1993; D J Mellett, The prerogative of asylumdom: social, cultural, and administrative aspects of the institutional treatment of the insane in nineteenth- century Britain, New York, Garland, 1982. We acknowledge that Scull does not devote a large amount of space to the workings of the Old or New Poor Laws, though we suggest that his argument rests on a view of the Poor Law workhouse as a complementary institution to that of the new county asylum. Our purpose is to demonstrate that Scull has underestimated the significance and complexity of Poor Law institutions.
15. F Driver, Power and pauperism: the workhouse system, 1834-1884, Cambridge University Press, 1993; D J Mellett, The prerogative of asylumdom: social, cultural, and administrative aspects of the institutional treatment of the insane in nineteenth-century Britain, New York, Garland, 1982. We acknowledge that Scull does not devote a large amount of space to the workings of the Old or New Poor Laws, though we suggest that his argument rests on a view of the Poor Law workhouse as a complementary institution to that of the new county asylum. Our purpose is to demonstrate that Scull has underestimated the significance and complexity of Poor Law institutions.
16. J Saunders, 'Institutionalised offenders: a study of the Victorian institution and its inmates with special reference to late nineteenth century Warwickshire', PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1983; P Bartlett, 'The Poor Law of lunacy: the administration of pauper lunatics in mid-nineteenth century England with special emphasis on Leicestershire and Rutland', PhD thesis, University College London, 1993.
17. J Saunders, 'Institutionalised offenders: a study of the Victorian institution and its inmates with special reference to late nineteenth century Warwickshire', PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1983; P Bartlett, 'The Poor Law of lunacy: the administration of pauper lunatics in mid-nineteenth century England with special emphasis on Leicestershire and Rutland', PhD thesis, University College London, 1993.
18. P Rushton, 'Lunatics and idiots: mental disability, the community, and the Poor Law in north-east England, 1600-1800', Med. Hist., 1988, 32: 34-50, provides an illuminating analysis of individuals in transit under the Old Poor Law.
19. The pauper lunatic was, of course, legally constituted by the certification of insanity. It is interesting that the requirement on magistrates to send the lunatic to the asylum was by no means followed through in all cases.
20. B Forsythe, J Melling and R Adair, 'The New Poor Law and the county pauper lunatic asylum: the Devon experience, 1834-1884', Soc. Hist. Med., 1996, 9: 335-55, p. 336.
21. D J Mellett, 'Bureaucracy and mental illness: the Commissioners in Lunacy 1845-90', Med. Hist., 1981, 25: 221-50, p. 228, reveals the rift between Bucknill and the Lunacy Commission in 1857 over the appointment of non-specialist medical Commissioners. This was compounded soon after by a dispute between the Exminster Superintendent and the Commission, documented in the Lunacy Commission Minutes: Public Record Office [hereafter PRO] Lunacy Commission series MH50, 17.6.1857, 23.9.1857, 9.6.1858.
22. Forsythe, et. al., op. cit., note 13 above, pp. 342-6.
23. Cf. A Scull, Social order/mental disorder, London, Routledge, 1989, p. 245: "A wide range of nineteenth-century observers commented on how much laxer the standards were for judging a poor person to be insane, and how much readier both local poor-law authorities and lower-class families were to commit decrepit and troublesome people to the asylum".
24. Walton, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 140-1.
25. Adair, et al., op. cit., note 7 above, provides further discussion of migration patterns.
26. The sample numbers for various analyses of this population may seem to jump around alarmingly: this is usually because the information available for each individual is lacking in some respects and therefore many persons can be used in only some of the analyses.
27. For a variety of reasons the strict principles of 1834, as is well known, were modified in practice even in the rural districts. See A Digby, Pauper palaces, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, for discussion mainly of East Anglia.
28. There was certainly a large influx of admissions to the Exminster Asylum in the 1890s, at a time when recovery rates were rising and death rates (after 1900) were to rise noticeably.
29. If the lunatic remained in the community itself then an individual could of course reach Exminster by a different route.
30. Up to 1853 the doctor was not to be a Poor Law medical officer but after that date he almost invariably was. For the "hybrid agglomeration" of the "medical profession" in early Victorian England see M J Peterson, The medical profession in mid-Victorian London, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978, p. 38.
31. Bartlett, op. cit., note 10 above, pp. 140-1.
32. Ibid., pp. 63-4 note 69.
33. For the complexity of the role of the workhouse medical officer as "sanitarian, surgeon, psychiatrist, midwife and disciplinarian as well as physician" see M A Crowther, The workhouse system, 1834-1929, Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press, 1981, p. 164.
34. In one case we find the opinion of a policeman who brought Samuel L. to Exminster, that he "had Brain Fever" soberly noted in the certificate. Devon Record Office (hereafter DRO), Devon County Lunatic Asylum Admission Certificate (hereafter EAC), 1870 January 18. Case: 3769A/H2/26. These bundles form part of the major Exe Vale deposit at the Devon Record Office, Exeter. In order to avoid embarrassment to living relatives we have suppressed the full names of all individuals who appear in the records. They are usually indicated by first name and initial.
35. Article 19 of the General Order for Accounts issued by the Poor Law Board in January 1867 specified that records of admissions and discharges should be recorded, though very few of these documents have actually survived.
36. Forsythe, et al., op. cit., note 13 above, pp. 335-8 and passim.
37. West Devon Record Office (hereafter WDRO), Plympton St Mary, Guardian Minute Book, (hereafter GMB), WDRO 1576/10, 9 June 1882.
38. GMB, 1 February 1884.
39. GMB, 24 October 1884.
40. GMB, 9 April 1886, 26 April 1886.
41. There were two Starcross (i.e. Western Counties Idiots' Asylum) patients who came from the workhouse but these appear to have been the only exceptions. See J Melling, R Adair and B Forsythe, '"A proper lunatic for two years": pauper lunatic children in Victorian and Edwardian England. Child admissions to the Devon County Asylum, 1845-1914', J. soc. Hist., 1997, 30 (4): 371-405.
42. No one under eighteen went to Exminster from Plympton workhouse and only a moderate number of elderly people.
43. West Devon Record Office, Workhouse Admission and Discharges Book (hereafter WADB), 31 March 1874. Exminster admission certificate, 1874, WDRO H2/30a, 1 April 1874. Workhouse admissions and discharge books for the Plympton Union between 1867-1916 are referenced WDRO 1576/84-95.
44. EAC, 1886, H2/42, 31 July 1886, for the case of Henry B., who was described as having been an epileptic for many years "but lately the Fits have been increasing sometimes having as many as six a day, which leaves him in a very violent state."
45. EAC 1871, H2/27, 13 November 1871; 1903, H2/59d, 23 November 1903; 1905, H2/61a, 29 March 1905; 1895, H2/51d, 19 October 1895; 1897, H2/53d, 18 October 1897.
46. EAC, 1873, H2/29, 1 September 1873.
47. EAC, 1870, H2/26, 28 November 1870.
48. EAC, 1872, H2/28, 13 July 1872.
49. EAC, 1873, H2/29, 1 September 1873.
50. EAC, 1907, H2/63a, 28 February 1907; 1899, H2/55c, 29 September 1899. M. may have resided temporarily in a private mad-house since the medical certificate was signed by Dr Langworthy, presumably of the famous Plympton House dynasty, who ordered his removal to the Plympton Workhouse "under guard".
51. EAC, 1880, H2/36b, 27 November 1880.
52. EAC, 1899, H2/55c, 29 September 1899.
53. The median length of workhouse stay for patients classified as suicidal on their subsequent admission to Exminster was 23 days, as compared with 33.5 days for those clearly classified as non-suicidal. Of this latter group, slightly less than two-thirds (64%) remained less than six months in the workhouse. This compares with more than four-fifths (82%) of the "suicidal" patients who were dispatched to the Devon Asylum within that time.
54. EAC, 1872, H2/28, 16 October 1872.
55. EAC, 1888, H2/44, 11 August 1888.
56. EAC, 1909, H2/65d, 2 December 1909.
57. EAC, 1870, H2/26, 22 October 1870; and 1874, H2/30b, 5 December 1874 for Elizabeth A.
58. EAC, 1877, H2/33, 12 January 1877.
59. EAC, 1883, H2/39, 10 August 1883.
60. EAC, 1874, H2/30a, 26 March 1874. Her details noted that she had "always appeared half an idiot".
61. EAC, 1871, H2/27, 18 March 1871, for the case of William T. who was blind on admission to Exminster, where he died within weeks, and was reported to have been "searching for things with mischievous intent".
62. EAC, 1900, H2/56d, 21 December 1900; 1879, H2/35a, 5 April 1879; 1912, H2/68d, 23 October 1912.
63. EAC, 1904, H2/60d, 21 November 1904.
64. EAC, 1909, H2/65c, 20 July 1909.
65. EAC, 1881, H2/37b, 23 August 1881. This woman had seemingly evaded registration in Devon at the census earlier that year. She may of course have been living outside the county, but it is equally likely that she had slipped through the net via vagrancy or homelessness.
66. EAC, 1879, H2/35a, 19 May 1879.
67. EAC, 1905, H2/61c, 19 August 1905.
68. EAC, 1895, H2/51b, 20 July 1895.
69. It is fair to note that both Scull and Showalter emphasize the impact of diminishing family tolerance of difficult members on the rate of admissions to the county asylums, implying scope for variations in tolerance. See also D Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum: understanding the confinement of the insane in the nineteenth century', Soc. Hist. Med., 1997, 10 (1): 137-55, for a recent appraisal.
70. EAC, 1884, H2/40, 3 July 1884.
71. EAC, 1905, H2/61a, 26 January 1905.
72. EAC, 1905, H2/61c, 31 August 1905.
73. Certificate of Elizabeth A., No. 4708, H2/30b.
74. EAC, 1870, H2/26, 9 September 1870.
75. EAC, 1880, H2/36a, 8 March 1880.
76. EAC, 1883, H2/39, 10 August 1883.
77. EAC, 1906, H2/62b, 29 June 1906.
78. WADB, 3 October 1893, 7 October 1893; 22 February 1911, 24 February 1911.
79. WADB, 12 April 1906, 19 April 1906.
80. WADB, 28 January 1903, 8 June 1903.
81. WADB, 22 July 1912, 16 May 1913.
82. WADB, 13 November 1895, 24 August 1898.
83. WADB, 13 July 1872, 22 July 1872.
84. WADB, 9 October 1869.
85. WADB, 21 December 1911; 4 January 1909; 13 October 1903; 14 April 1892; 8 May 1911.
86. WADB, 15 July 1914; 21 January 1893.
87. EAC, 1898, H2/54b, 6 June 1898.
88. EAC, 1879, H2/35b, 24 October 1879.
89. WADB, 7 November 1904, 9 November 1904.
90. WADB, 16 December 1905, 26 December 1905.
91. WADB, 22 September 1908, 26 September 1908.
92. Bartlett, op. cit., note 10 above.
93. Saunders, op. cit., note 10 above, p. 313.
94. Walton, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 140-1.