Migration, family structure and pauper lunacy in Victorian England: Admissions to the Devon County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1845-1900

Continuity and Change

Volumn 12, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 373-401

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

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

^b NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039385645     PISSN: 02684160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0268416097002981     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. An enormous literature now exists on literary images of madness and femininity, for example, partly summarised in H. Small, Love's madness (Oxford, 1996).
2. A. Digby, Madness, morality and medicine: a study of the York Retreat, 1796-1914 (Cambridge, 1985). An elegant survey of the field of asylum studies is provided in D. Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum: understanding the confinement of the insane in the nineteenth century', Social History of Medicine 10, 1 (1997), 137-55.
3. A. Digby, Madness, morality and medicine: a study of the York Retreat, 1796-1914 (Cambridge, 1985). An elegant survey of the field of asylum studies is provided in D. Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum: understanding the confinement of the insane in the nineteenth century', Social History of Medicine 10, 1 (1997), 137-55.
4. See M. Foucault, Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the Age of Reason (1964; New York, 1965) and Andrew Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England (London, 1979) and The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain 1700-1900 (London, 1993). For a survey of the relevant literary context for recent studies of insanity, see L. Jordanova, 'The social construction of medical knowledge', Social History of Medicine 8, 3 (1995), 361-82, and L. J. Ray, 'Models of madness in Victorian asylum practice', European Journal of Sociology 22 (1981), 230-31 and passim.
5. See M. Foucault, Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the Age of Reason (1964; New York, 1965) and Andrew Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England (London, 1979) and The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain 1700-1900 (London, 1993). For a survey of the relevant literary context for recent studies of insanity, see L. Jordanova, 'The social construction of medical knowledge', Social History of Medicine 8, 3 (1995), 361-82, and L. J. Ray, 'Models of madness in Victorian asylum practice', European Journal of Sociology 22 (1981), 230-31 and passim.
6. See M. Foucault, Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the Age of Reason (1964; New York, 1965) and Andrew Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England (London, 1979) and The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain 1700-1900 (London, 1993). For a survey of the relevant literary context for recent studies of insanity, see L. Jordanova, 'The social construction of medical knowledge', Social History of Medicine 8, 3 (1995), 361-82, and L. J. Ray, 'Models of madness in Victorian asylum practice', European Journal of Sociology 22 (1981), 230-31 and passim.
7. See M. Foucault, Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the Age of Reason (1964; New York, 1965) and Andrew Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England (London, 1979) and The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain 1700-1900 (London, 1993). For a survey of the relevant literary context for recent studies of insanity, see L. Jordanova, 'The social construction of medical knowledge', Social History of Medicine 8, 3 (1995), 361-82, and L. J. Ray, 'Models of madness in Victorian asylum practice', European Journal of Sociology 22 (1981), 230-31 and passim.
8. See M. Foucault, Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the Age of Reason (1964; New York, 1965) and Andrew Scull, Museums of madness: the social organization of insanity in nineteenth-century England (London, 1979) and The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain 1700-1900 (London, 1993). For a survey of the relevant literary context for recent studies of insanity, see L. Jordanova, 'The social construction of medical knowledge', Social History of Medicine 8, 3 (1995), 361-82, and L. J. Ray, 'Models of madness in Victorian asylum practice', European Journal of Sociology 22 (1981), 230-31 and passim.
9. See M. Finnane, Insanity and the insane in post-Famine Ireland (London, 1981). This concern with the impact of the family is reflected, for example, in the contributions to the recent Wellcome-funded research seminars on the social history of madness organized at the University of Exeter in April 1996 and at the University of Nottingham (the latter arranged by P. Bartlett and D. Wright) in July 1996.
10. M. Anderson, Family structure in nineteenth-century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971) and D. Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977) are obvious classics. See M. Anderson, Approaches to the history of the western family (London, 1980), 78-84, for comment on factory proletarianization in Lancashire textile districts and ibid., 40-2, for a critique of the 'sentiments' approach to family development.
11. M. Anderson, Family structure in nineteenth-century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971) and D. Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977) are obvious classics. See M. Anderson, Approaches to the history of the western family (London, 1980), 78-84, for comment on factory proletarianization in Lancashire textile districts and ibid., 40-2, for a critique of the 'sentiments' approach to family development.
12. M. Anderson, Family structure in nineteenth-century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971) and D. Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977) are obvious classics. See M. Anderson, Approaches to the history of the western family (London, 1980), 78-84, for comment on factory proletarianization in Lancashire textile districts and ibid., 40-2, for a critique of the 'sentiments' approach to family development.
13. M. Anderson, Family structure in nineteenth-century Lancashire (Cambridge, 1971) and D. Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977) are obvious classics. See M. Anderson, Approaches to the history of the western family (London, 1980), 78-84, for comment on factory proletarianization in Lancashire textile districts and ibid., 40-2, for a critique of the 'sentiments' approach to family development.
14. Thus Walton notes that madness was socially defined, and that the key variables in such a definition were 'migration patterns, family structure and economy, and the scale of urban living'; see J. Walton, 'Lunacy in the industrial revolution: a study of asylum admissions in Lancashire, 1848-50', Journal of Social History 13 (1979), 18.
15. B. Reay, 'Kinship and neighbourhood in nineteenth-century rural England : the myth of the autonomous nuclear family', Journal of Family History 21, 1 (1996), 87-104, provides a stimulating recent comment.
16. See M. Finnane, 'Asylums, families and the state', History Workshop Journal 20 (1985), particularly pp. 135-41. Finnane emphasizes the distinctive rural as well as urban complexion of insanity and asylum admissions in response to Scull, and to Ignatieff's emphasis on modern urban societies (M. Ignatieff, A just measure of pain: the penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1978)).
17. See M. Finnane, 'Asylums, families and the state', History Workshop Journal 20 (1985), particularly pp. 135-41. Finnane emphasizes the distinctive rural as well as urban complexion of insanity and asylum admissions in response to Scull, and to Ignatieff's emphasis on modern urban societies (M. Ignatieff, A just measure of pain: the penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1978)).
18. P. E. Prestwich, in 'Family strategies and medical power: "voluntary" committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876-1914', Journal of Social History (1994), 799-800 and passim, identifies the shift. For the wider literature on the welfare functions of the family, see R. Wall, 'Work, welfare and the family: an illustration of the adaptive family economy', in L. Bonfield, R. Smith and K. Wrightson eds., The world we have gained, 261-94. D. Wright, in 'Getting out of the asylum', persuasively advocates the wider adoption of demographic approaches to the social history of lunacy.
19. P. E. Prestwich, in 'Family strategies and medical power: "voluntary" committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876-1914', Journal of Social History (1994), 799-800 and passim, identifies the shift. For the wider literature on the welfare functions of the family, see R. Wall, 'Work, welfare and the family: an illustration of the adaptive family economy', in L. Bonfield, R. Smith and K. Wrightson eds., The world we have gained, 261-94. D. Wright, in 'Getting out of the asylum', persuasively advocates the wider adoption of demographic approaches to the social history of lunacy.
20. P. E. Prestwich, in 'Family strategies and medical power: "voluntary" committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876-1914', Journal of Social History (1994), 799-800 and passim, identifies the shift. For the wider literature on the welfare functions of the family, see R. Wall, 'Work, welfare and the family: an illustration of the adaptive family economy', in L. Bonfield, R. Smith and K. Wrightson eds., The world we have gained, 261-94. D. Wright, in 'Getting out of the asylum', persuasively advocates the wider adoption of demographic approaches to the social history of lunacy.
21. Scull, The most solitary, 1, 29, 31-45. Scull argues that the origins of the increased admission or pauper lunatics in the nineteenth century can be traced to the intrusion of new forms of rational calculation into personal and family relations as the demands of industrial employment, work disciplines and the pull of the labour market became more pressing during the nineteenth century.
22. Ibid.; Finnane ('Asylums, families', 135) provides a qualification to Scull's model.
23. Ibid.; Finnane ('Asylums, families', 135) provides a qualification to Scull's model.
24. Walton, 'Lunacy in the industrial revolution', 6-7; Anderson, Approaches.
25. Walton, 'Lunacy in the industrial revolution', 6-7; Anderson, Approaches.
26. Walton, 'Lunacy in the industrial revolution', 18.
27. Ibid., 7 (Table 2).
28. Ibid., 16. Walton recognizes that rural communities were at least as willing as textile towns to send family members to an asylum, and develops a four-fold typology of economic-demographic settlements within Lancashire to explain the clear propensity of an established rural area to send family members to a lunatic asylum as compared with an industrial urban area. Walton indicates the existence of pressures within the extended agrarian family to employ all members in productive activities and therefore an inability to tolerate awkward relatives. In this respect he is drawing on (and apparently adapting) H. Medick's ' The proto-industrial family economy : the structural function of household and family during the transition from peasant society to industrial capitalism' (Social History 3 (1976)), which contrasted the redistributive function of the 'extended' proletarian family with the property-conservation concerns of the extended peasant family. Medick emphasizes the latter's caring role in regard to the elderly. A sensitive recent working of this theme is found in Reay's 'Kinship and neighbourhood', 91-2.
29. Ibid., 16. Walton recognizes that rural communities were at least as willing as textile towns to send family members to an asylum, and develops a four-fold typology of economic-demographic settlements within Lancashire to explain the clear propensity of an established rural area to send family members to a lunatic asylum as compared with an industrial urban area. Walton indicates the existence of pressures within the extended agrarian family to employ all members in productive activities and therefore an inability to tolerate awkward relatives. In this respect he is drawing on (and apparently adapting) H. Medick's ' The proto-industrial family economy : the structural function of household and family during the transition from peasant society to industrial capitalism' (Social History 3 (1976)), which contrasted the redistributive function of the 'extended' proletarian family with the property-conservation concerns of the extended peasant family. Medick emphasizes the latter's caring role in regard to the elderly. A sensitive recent working of this theme is found in Reay's 'Kinship and neighbourhood', 91-2.
30. Ibid., 16. Walton recognizes that rural communities were at least as willing as textile towns to send family members to an asylum, and develops a four-fold typology of economic-demographic settlements within Lancashire to explain the clear propensity of an established rural area to send family members to a lunatic asylum as compared with an industrial urban area. Walton indicates the existence of pressures within the extended agrarian family to employ all members in productive activities and therefore an inability to tolerate awkward relatives. In this respect he is drawing on (and apparently adapting) H. Medick's ' The proto-industrial family economy : the structural function of household and family during the transition from peasant society to industrial capitalism' (Social History 3 (1976)), which contrasted the redistributive function of the 'extended' proletarian family with the property-conservation concerns of the extended peasant family. Medick emphasizes the latter's caring role in regard to the elderly. A sensitive recent working of this theme is found in Reay's 'Kinship and neighbourhood', 91-2.
31. Scull, Most solitary of afflictions, 361, footnote 79; Walton ('Lunacy in the industrial revolution', 14) does indeed state that the 'evidence suggests that asylum inmates were much more likely to have migrated long distances, and thereby isolated themselves from kin, than the population at large.' See also page 15, Table 6 in the Walton article.
32. Scull, Most solitary of afflictions, 361, footnote 79; Walton ('Lunacy in the industrial revolution', 14) does indeed state that the 'evidence suggests that asylum inmates were much more likely to have migrated long distances, and thereby isolated themselves from kin, than the population at large.' See also page 15, Table 6 in the Walton article.
33. See J. Walton, 'Poverty and lunacy: some thoughts on directions for future research', Bulletin for the Society for the Social History of Medicine 38 (1986), 65: 'we must have thorough empirically-based studies of patients, their families and their relationships in the outside world'. A significant amount of subsequent research has been undertaken. See also, for example, Finnane, 'Asylums, families' ; Prestwich, 'Family strategies', and Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum'.
34. See J. Walton, 'Poverty and lunacy: some thoughts on directions for future research', Bulletin for the Society for the Social History of Medicine 38 (1986), 65: 'we must have thorough empirically-based studies of patients, their families and their relationships in the outside world'. A significant amount of subsequent research has been undertaken. See also, for example, Finnane, 'Asylums, families' ; Prestwich, 'Family strategies', and Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum'.
35. See J. Walton, 'Poverty and lunacy: some thoughts on directions for future research', Bulletin for the Society for the Social History of Medicine 38 (1986), 65: 'we must have thorough empirically-based studies of patients, their families and their relationships in the outside world'. A significant amount of subsequent research has been undertaken. See also, for example, Finnane, 'Asylums, families' ; Prestwich, 'Family strategies', and Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum'.
36. See J. Walton, 'Poverty and lunacy: some thoughts on directions for future research', Bulletin for the Society for the Social History of Medicine 38 (1986), 65: 'we must have thorough empirically-based studies of patients, their families and their relationships in the outside world'. A significant amount of subsequent research has been undertaken. See also, for example, Finnane, 'Asylums, families' ; Prestwich, 'Family strategies', and Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum'.
37. The themes of modernization and industrialization remain compelling even as reappraisals of earlier scholarship are under way. Wright, drawing on a range of work, argues strongly for viewing the evolution of the asylum in a longer-term perspective and a more complex social milieu whilst stressing that the conditions underlying the pattern of admission to asylums were created by 'broader social forces at work in the emergence of modern society' and 'closely associated with the rise of industrial society' ('Getting out', 155).
38. Walton, 'Lunacy in the industrial revolution', 16.
39. R. Adair, B. Forsythe and J. Melling, in 'A danger to the public? Disposing of the pauper lunatic in Victorian and Edwardian England: the Exminster Asylum, 1845-1914', Medical History 42 (1998), 1-25, discuss the complexities of the admission processes and the numerous instances in which families reclaimed individuals from the Union workhouse before they were dispatched to the Devon County Asylum. It remains difficult to assess with certainty the precise distribution between lunatics sent from the workhouse as compared with those dispatched more directly from the family home or the physician's house, though the minutes of Union Guardians occasionally instruct their officers to ensure that the lunatic should be brought to the workhouse first for examination, indicating concern at the numbers sent directly. Calculating from our large sample of 4,000 inmates and multiplying by 13/4 to capture the whole Asylum inflow of 13,000 people for 1845-1914 we reach a figure for the largest parish in our sample, Plympton St Mary, of 465 individuals, of whom 101 went to the Asylum via the Union workhouse (21.7%). Of this group 40 resided at the Plympton workhouse for no more than a fortnight before transfer to the Asylum, leaving 65 (14%) who resided in the workhouse for a significant period immediately prior to their committal. An alternative calculation was considered, using the whole 13,000 sample and extrapolating from the 346 known admissions in the period 1867-1914. This translates into the higher workhouse constituency of 29.2%, but since the exact links between the previous place of abode and the chargeable Union are rather less clear and direct than for our 4,000 sample we have preferred the first estimate.
40. E. A. Wrigley ('Men on the land and men in the countryside: employment in agriculture in early-nineteenth-century England', in L. Bonfield, R. Smith and K. Wrightson eds., The world we have gained (Oxford, 1986), Tables 11.2, 11.5, 11.7) provides evidence of the widespread importance of handicraft as compared to modern industrial and factory employment in the earlier nineteenth century.
41. That is, until the cities of Exeter and Plymouth set up their own borough asylums at Digby (1886) and Moorhaven (1892) respectively. In principle, it might appear that the restriction of admissions to the county itself would exclude the possibility of long-distance migrants figuring in the data. Two factors, however, should be borne in mind. First, the possession of a settlement - which could be obtained after a fairly short residential period - would give entitlement to treatment in the Devon Asylum. (The 'settlement' (or 'right of settlement') established an individual's right to Poor Law relief as a settled member of a particular parish and thence of its Union. Under the Poor Law of 1834, the right to relief, including relief as a pauper lunatic, depended on recognition that the individual was legally resident or 'settled' in a particular parish. This right was acquired either by birth or by a period of residence in a parish.) Secondly, the usual procedure for patients who were transferred to other asylums because of non-Devon settlement was to admit them to the Devon Asylum prior to transfer.
42. See Adair, Forsythe and Melling, 'A danger of the public?', for a discussion.
43. J. Wallon, 'Casting out and bringing back in Victorian England: pauper lunatics 1840-1870', in W. Bynum, R. Porter and M. Shepherd eds., The anatomy of madness: essays in the history of psychiatry, volume 2: Institutions and society (London, 1985), 132-46.
44. Devon Record Office, Exeter (hereafter DRO), Quarter Sessions-County Council Asylum Visitors Committee Minutes, DRO QS-CC 147/4, February 3 1891, March 3 1891, March 7 1893, June 6 1893 are examples of decisions on the discharge of inmates to their relatives.
45. The methodological problems inherent in using the kind of census data we are handling are well known, including the point that we can only chart the net migration history of individuals at census points. This is, however, less of an obstacle when the purpose is to compare the behaviour of two groups rather than to establish an absolute measure of migratory behaviour. One confidence test for the robustness of our data is the proportion of missing values. It is not uncommon for these to constitute one-third of the total in comparable exercises. In fact they constitute less than 10 per cent of our sample.
46. Demographic researchers are familiar with cases of the same person being given different birthplaces in different censuses. This problem affected only an insignificant number of cases here and these were excluded from the analysis if the inconsistency could not be resolved. Since the difficulty exists for both patients and non-patients the results should be unbiased.
47. Except Okehampton, for which the 1881 census used-in 1871 the town was full of itinerant railway workers which would have distorted the results. The five Poor Law Unions and 27 parishes are as follows: Axminster: Axminster, Beer, Colyton, Dalwood, Seaton, Stockland, Uplyme; Barnstaple : Bishops Tawton, Bratton Fleming, Braunton, Lynton, Swimbridge, Tawstock ; Okehampton : Chagford, Drewsteignton, Hatherleigh, North Tawton, Okehampton, South Tawton ; Plympton St Mary : Ermington, Plympton Maurice, Plympton St Mary, Plymstock; St. Thomas: Exminster, Kenton, Lympstone, Woodbury. As indicated, there was a roughly equal spread of parishes between the five Unions. The actual parishes were chosen from those which sent a large enough number of paupers to Exminster to make analysis worthwhile whilst not being so large as to make the tracing of their inhabitants' migration patterns in 1881 too difficult to complete. These constraints effectively excluded the very smallest and very largest parishes of the Unions from our survey. The numbers of lunatics sent to the Asylum ranged from the 12 dispatched by Bratton Fleming (250 Devon parishes sent fewer but this rendered them very difficult to study) to the 103 of Plympton St Mary (which ranked 24th of Devon parishes in the numbers of lunatics dispatched). In terms of population size, the parishes ranged from the 478 inhabitants of Dalwood (again with 230 smaller Devon parishes in 1871 ruled out as unusable) to the 3,491 of Plympton St Mary - the 26th most populous Devon parish in 1871. Whilst the very smallest parishes were almost inevitably excluded from the study, there appears little reason to believe that the results would be significantly biased by our selection procedure.
48. This analysis covers the period 1848 to 1898. The start and end dates were determined by the availability of census information. The age ranges of 16-50 and 51+ were chosen, children not being included because so few entered the Exminster Asylum in these years.
49. Based on the 27 parishes but assuming the same results if all 500 Devon parishes had been included.
50. In all the tables in this article there are four broad categories of residents: those born in the parish; those born outside the parish but within the Poor Law Union; those born outside the Union but within Devon; and those born outside Devon.
51. See note 22 above.
52. J. Melling, R. Adair and R. Turner, Occupations, gender and insanity: the Devon County Lunatic Asylum', unpublished paper given to the Wellcome Colloquium on Social History of Insanity, April 1996, University of Exeter (available at the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter).
53. Since there was an influx of railway workers in Okehampton during 1871, which distorted the population profile, we have selected the 1881 returns for that town.
54. See M. Finnane, Insanity and the insane, 162: 'what does stand out in this evidence is the centrality of the family as the context of madness'.
55. See L. Stone, 'Family history in the 1980s: past achievements and future trends', Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12, 1 (1981), particularly pp. 64-73, and D. Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum', for recent comment.
56. See L. Stone, 'Family history in the 1980s: past achievements and future trends', Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12, 1 (1981), particularly pp. 64-73, and D. Wright, 'Getting out of the asylum', for recent comment.
57. Some 90 patients (comprising 31.8 per cent of the total number of entrants to the Asylum in 1851 and 1881) were searched for and not found, so have been excluded from our analysis. It is possible that this may exclude the most mobile individuals from the study, but in fact the reason for an inability to trace an individual in a census was often errors in spelling in one or both sources, causing nominal mismatches, or uncertainty about the individual's identity amongst several possible candidates with similar common names in the census returns - particularly in 1851. There seems little reason to doubt that our patient group is representative of the whole patient body. Our cautious approach to the time span used was guided by the possibility that changes in domicile or domestic circumstances may have precipitated admission and we were reluctant to move far from the census year.
58. We have considered the possibility that patients moved in the period (i.e. up to a year) between the census and their entry to Exminster. The lodgers, boarders and servants were the most likely itinerant characters and 6 out of 15 for whom data are available did indeed move between the census and their entry to the Asylum, whilst another individual went to the local workhouse and a further 2 were found wandering at large. Of the first 6 mobile characters 1 male (whose nearest relatives were in Glasgow) removed to new lodgings, and 4 of the other 5 went back to their families - 2 to their parents and 2 to the households of siblings. All but one were said to be insane for several months before their incarceration and it seems likely that their household move occurred after the perceived onset of their insanity. This information suggests that even the most mobile individuals tended to gravitate back to their closest families when insanity struck. It is difficult to characterize them as abandoned.
59. The sampling strategy used was simply to trace patients in the appropriate census and then compare their household form with the households two before and two after in the enumerators' list (excluding institutions). Although this runs a slight risk of bias because of potentially differing social status, in practice the loss of comparability is small. For instance in the 1851 samples, only 8 out of the 112 heads of the non-patient household sample had occupations which suggest that they were too affluent to qualify as pauper lunatics. However, it is also interesting that the proportions of heads of households who were classified as paupers or land labourers was very similar in the two samples (15 out of 52 = 29% in the patients and 30 out of 112 = 27% in the non-patients). One of the findings of our research has been that many of the patients were not in fact 'paupers' in the sense of being destitute and in periodic receipt of relief.
60. It is difficult to known precisely whether the Poor Law itself played a part in engineering residential arrangements such as these in the interests of economy. For an interesting discussion of this and other points, see R. Wall, 'Historical developments of the household in Europe', in E. van Imhoff, A. Kuijsten, P. Hooimeijer and L. van Wissen eds., Household demography and household modeling (New York, 1995), 36,46-7. In our own sample of patients, there were eight servants, six lodgers, five boarders and one visitor. In addition, one future Exminster patient's relationship to the head of household was left blank. On close examination the one 'visitor' turned out to be the daughter of the head of a household, and one of the servants, Elizabeth S., was working in a household which it turns out was headed by her own daughter. A simple comparison with our non-patient sample (standardized for age and sex) revealed that 16 of the 162 in the non-patient group belonged to this category of servants, boarders, lodgers or visitors, as against 20 of the 162 patients. The frequency with which kinsfolk were used as servants has been clearly pointed out by Di Cooper and Moira Donald in 'Households and "hidden" kin in early-nineteenth-century England: four case studies in suburban Exeter, 1821-1861', Continuity and Change 10, 2 (1995), 257-78, particularly pp. 270-3.
61. It is difficult to known precisely whether the Poor Law itself played a part in engineering residential arrangements such as these in the interests of economy. For an interesting discussion of this and other points, see R. Wall, 'Historical developments of the household in Europe', in E. van Imhoff, A. Kuijsten, P. Hooimeijer and L. van Wissen eds., Household demography and household modeling (New York, 1995), 36,46-7. In our own sample of patients, there were eight servants, six lodgers, five boarders and one visitor. In addition, one future Exminster patient's relationship to the head of household was left blank. On close examination the one 'visitor' turned out to be the daughter of the head of a household, and one of the servants, Elizabeth S., was working in a household which it turns out was headed by her own daughter. A simple comparison with our non-patient sample (standardized for age and sex) revealed that 16 of the 162 in the non-patient group belonged to this category of servants, boarders, lodgers or visitors, as against 20 of the 162 patients. The frequency with which kinsfolk were used as servants has been clearly pointed out by Di Cooper and Moira Donald in 'Households and "hidden" kin in early-nineteenth-century England: four case studies in suburban Exeter, 1821-1861', Continuity and Change 10, 2 (1995), 257-78, particularly pp. 270-3.
62. All the servants were female, with only one aged over 45. They were distributed across a range of household types (four simple, and one each of solitary, extended and multiple) and one was accompanied by her husband, forming a household within the household. Of the lodgers, boarders and visitors, eight were female and four male, with half being over 45, and these were again spread across a range of households, though eight out of twelve were in simple households, thus displaying similar proportions both to servants and to the patients as a whole.
63. The patients in this group comprised 26 or 13.8 per cent of 162 + 26. Only 2 of the 1851 patients gave the workhouse as their previous place of abode, suggesting recent arrival for the remainder.
64. We are suggesting that certain kinds of household members may have been more 'visible' to the Poor Law than others. Single householders without dependents may have been less likely to come within the purview of the Relieving Officers and also less likely to have members of established families advocating relief for them. Alternatively, where single people formed part of a family household then they were still unlikely to qualify for Poor Law relief on standard scales unless they had dependent children or were classed as 'lunatics or idiots'. The scale of relief for both deserted mothers and lunatics and idiots was often at the discretion of the Guardians. See Devon Record Office, Minutes of the St Thomas Board of Guardians, 5 July 1850, Scale of Relief, for example. Families might therefore have been more inclined to present single people to the Poor Law authorities and the latter might have been more disposed to send them on to Exminster (and less anxious to retrieve them) than with family members who occupied a more central role within the family economy of the household, particularly where the dependent relatives were being maintained by the Poor Law in the absence of the breadwinner or principal carer.
65. This second possibility appears to require two assumptions to hold true. The first is that the onset of an attack of insanity would become apparent to family, neighbours or others who would then be willing to arrange for the individual to be placed within some kind of household. The second is that such an attack should be serious enough to require intervention to break up the solitary household but hardly ever serious enough to demand early admission to the Asylum, since there would have to be a sufficient period for the person to be effectively resettled within the household that the Asylum records as their place of residence. Large numbers of widowed people entered the Devon Asylum in our period and we must conclude that remarkably few of these were also living on their own at the time of admission. Since we know that many of the admission entries which appeared in the Exminster records describe a short duration of attack prior to admission there appear still to be outstanding issues which deserve further analysis.
66. Evidence from the Devon Unions of Poor Law Guardians show that the individual parishes continued to bear financial responsibility for their paupers and it seems likely that arrangements affecting the admission of individuals to the workhouse as well as the county asylums began in discussions between families and the parish Overseers of the Poor. In this sense there may have been a dialogue within 'communities' rather than a sharp alternative of family versus institutional relief. Almost no evidence of any parochial financial arrangements affecting pauper lunatics appears in the Union Guardians' minutes.
67. One other multiple household combined both elements and was excluded from the analysis. Given the significant numbers of patients whose attack of insanity was recorded as of relatively short duration, there still appears to be a problem to explain.
68. DRO, Exminster Asylum Collection (hereafter DRO EAC), Admission certificate 5904, 3769A/H2/37b.
69. DRO EAC, Admission certificates 5785 (Emma) and 5910 (Eliza), 3769A/H2/37a and 3769A/H2/38.
70. DRO EAC, Admission certificates 5876, 3769A/H2/37b, for the case of William S., living with his uncle and aunt in Devonport rather than his mother; and 5941, 3769A/H2/38, for John L. of Tawstock, living with his brothers rather than his mother who was residing in the same parish. Isaac Q. of Sherford's certificate noted that he had been violent to his parents and lived with his sister and her husband (Admission certificate 5782, 3769A/H2/37a).
71. This comprised 3 brothers-in-law, 2 mothers-in-law, 1 father-in-law, 1 'relation', 2 brothers, 1 sister, 1 nephew and 1 father.
72. This larger group included 13 heads of households and 8 wives. The remainder comprised 3 sons and 2 daughters.
73. E. Showalter's The female malady: women, madness and English culture, 1830-1870 (New York, 1987) remains extremely influential. For a critique see J. Busfield, 'The female malady? Men, women and madness in nineteenth-century Britain', Sociology 28, 1 (1994), 259-77, and J. Melling, R. Adair and B. Forsythe, 'The female malady? Women and the lunatic asylum in Victorian England', unpublished paper presented to the Colloquium on the Social History of Madness held at the University of Exeter in April 1996 (available at the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter).
74. E. Showalter's The female malady: women, madness and English culture, 1830-1870 (New York, 1987) remains extremely influential. For a critique see J. Busfield, 'The female malady? Men, women and madness in nineteenth-century Britain', Sociology 28, 1 (1994), 259-77, and J. Melling, R. Adair and B. Forsythe, 'The female malady? Women and the lunatic asylum in Victorian England', unpublished paper presented to the Colloquium on the Social History of Madness held at the University of Exeter in April 1996 (available at the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter).
75. E. Showalter's The female malady: women, madness and English culture, 1830-1870 (New York, 1987) remains extremely influential. For a critique see J. Busfield, 'The female malady? Men, women and madness in nineteenth-century Britain', Sociology 28, 1 (1994), 259-77, and J. Melling, R. Adair and B. Forsythe, 'The female malady? Women and the lunatic asylum in Victorian England', unpublished paper presented to the Colloquium on the Social History of Madness held at the University of Exeter in April 1996 (available at the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter).
76. As father, brother, nephew or father-in-law and two as brothers-in-law.
77. It is not true in all cases that these women had no resident kin. For instance in one case a servant lived with her husband within a wider household and two of the workhouse inmates had family with them, for example Maria S., an unmarried 27-year-old pauper servant who was in Barnstaple Workhouse along with her five-year-old son, William. Nevertheless, in general these individuals do not appear to have had the support available from a familial network.
78. The classic (and only) solitary household was that of Sarah S. of Stoke Fleming in 1881.
79. This is compared from all patients in the 1851 and 1881 samples for which ages are given, 141 in all.
80. Although they represented only a limited proportion of total admissions, this group of future inmates who were neither in the workhouse nor in settled family units contributed to the sizeable element of single people amongst the intake at Exminster. This may especially apply to servants. Out of the 5 servants in the sample whose marital status was traceable, 4 were unmarried, although as we have seen it is dangerous to assume that they were all unrelated to any members of the household in which they worked.
81. The diminishing numbers in these samples are obviously a problem as the figures for single people in extended, multiple and Category 2 households are 7, 4 and 6 respectively.
82. Of the 8 individuals in this category, 7 were aged 30 or more.
83. It makes sense to include Category 2 households with the extended and multiple households since these are all examples of household structures involving patterns different from those of simple households, and all include the co-residence of individuals beyond the immediate nuclear family. Clearly, many such individuals would have lived in simple households at an earlier stage of their lives but this does not alter the fact of their current status.
84. Reay, for example, returns to Anderson's study of Lancashire as the focal point for debate ('Kinship and neighbourhood', 100).
85. We might expect that those families with 'idiot' children and elderly, incapable relatives might have been restricted in their mobility as compared with similar kinds of household which did not possess such members. Families with relatives identified as insane or mentally incapable in some respect may have been particularly hampered. The greater association of lunacy admissions with more 'complex' family formations may be partly explicable in these terms.