The evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons, respecting the Asylum at York / with observations and notes, and a letter to the Committee, &c. ... ; by Godfrey Higgins.

Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee appointed to consider of provisions being made for the better regulation of madhouses in England.

Date:: 1816

Credit: The evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons, respecting the Asylum at York / with observations and notes, and a letter to the Committee, &c. ... ; by Godfrey Higgins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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$been recently required in the house ?—No; nor do I believe they had. Have any new laws been made ?—Yes. Bearing what date ?—The new laws were passed last August. * Dr. Best, the Physician, has resigned, has he not ?—He has. So that at this moment there is not an officer belonging to the Institution, who was there during the time the abuses you have been detailing existed ?—Yes; there is one, Mr. Brook, the Treasurer, who I believe every body thought had conducted liimself with very great honour to himself, and advantage to the Institution ; Dr. Best resigned lately, assigning ill health as the cause. Have you any reason to believe that the food of the patients was bad ?—Yes ; Mary Beckwith, who was examined in the case of Martha Kidd, one of the cases of abuse I laid before the Governors, told me, that she was faint for want of something to eat, when attending as a witness, and she was ordered some bread and cheese, that the bread was of the vilest and worst description she ever saw in her life. I asked Mr. Ridsdale, a respectable linen-draper, in Pontefract, who was there at that time, if he saw any thing of that bread, and he said he had, and he was ready to make oath of it if necessary, and that it was in his opinion of the worst quality he ever saw in his life; and therefore I think they would have hardly given the witnesses upon such an occasion such bad bread, if they had not fed their patients with it. Were the servants of the Institution in the practice of taking fees from any of the patients, or of exacting money from them, upon one pretence or another ?—A respectable man of the name of Hanson told me, that when he was a patient in the house, he was shut up in a dark cell naked, sometimes with another patient, and sometimes by himself, for a week at a time or more; that he was obliged to obey the calls of nature in a corner of the room; that the straw was not changed for a considerable number of days ; and that at one time when he was there, when the keeper brought him his meat, he promised him five shillings when he went out, if he would get him a shirt; and when he did come out and left the Institution, he gave the keeper five shillings according to his promise. I understood this gentleman, that when he gave him the five shillings he was recovered, and on that account, I conceive, he is a credible evidence as to the fact. The physician and apothecary also took fees in one case ; a Mr. Mandall, of Doncaster, paid the physician five guineas, upon which occasion Mr. Atkinson also received two, as was stated to me by the relations of the patient who paid them,$