Volume 1

The care and cure of the insane : being the reports of The Lancet Commission on Lunatic Asylums, 1875-6-7 for Middlesex, the City of London and Surrey with a digest of the principal records extant and a statistical review of the work of each asylum from the date of its opening to the end of 1875 / by J. Mortimer Granville.

  • Joseph Mortimer Granville
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The care and cure of the insane : being the reports of The Lancet Commission on Lunatic Asylums, 1875-6-7 for Middlesex, the City of London and Surrey with a digest of the principal records extant and a statistical review of the work of each asylum from the date of its opening to the end of 1875 / by J. Mortimer Granville. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    347/382 (page 331)
    patients who drag along year after year in these establishments would be equally well placed in the so-called insane wards of any properly-conducted workhouse. Speaking roughly, we may say that quite one-third of the accommodation in the county and borough asylums of Middlesex and Surrey is wasted. It is in the face of these facts that boards of quarter sessions are striving to increase the number of asylums, on the general ground that lunacy is supposed to be increasing. We do not think it necessary to discuss the question how far the apparent increase may be due to greater vigilance in discovering cases, and perhaps some change of opinion as to what constitutes lunacy. Even assuming that the increase is real, and its magnitude as great as it is represented to be, we can only repeat the remark made at the outset, in the report on Brookwood: if the moment a new asylum is opened, with all the best modern appliances, it be filled with patients withdrawn from the licensed houses, and treated as an alms- house for the aged and infirm paupers who happen to be eccentric and troublesome in the neighbouring workhouses, it will be necessary to go on building asylums until no inconsider- able portion of the pauper population is returned as insane. No one carefully examining the inmates of asylums, generally, can fail to notice that a large part of the multitude is made up of individuals of all ages, who are either physically disabled or disinclined for work. Vicious young persons of both sexes, sullen middle-aged people with grievances and a grievous intolerance of laborious or sustained exertion of any kind, with poor old folk in whom the light of reason has begun to wane; a few idiots, more cheaply maintained in an asylum than at a suitable training institution, as the law directs;* and a crowd of confirmed epileptics, for whom little * The ages of the children under care and treatment [at special training insti- tutions] range from S}i to 16. At that maximum age, since all paupers (according to the view taken by the Local Government Board) then become adult, the boys and girls are transferred hence, and their special educational training, we believe, comes to an end. If this be so, we think it is to be regretted, especially in those cases where the past gives hope of such future improvement under training as would fit children, albeit of slow apprehension, ultimately to earn their own livelihood in the outside world. We trust that it may be found practicable to modify this practice of adhering strictly to the age of 16 as the time for removal. —Report of ihe Commissioners in Lunacy for 1875, Appendix M., p. 343.