Reports of the superintendent and chaplain of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, for the year 1868.

  • Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports of the superintendent and chaplain of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, for the year 1868. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    these women, have, in addition to personal depravity, been taught the worst lessons or prison life ; while the amount of remaining intelligence possessed by some of them allows of their exerting an injurious influence over others. Personal recollection, however, and information received from others, enable me to state that congregations in asylums for insane persons generally include many patients bordering upon the imbecile class. In this asylum this class of patients, from absence of previous religious influence, are less inclined to comply with the forms of religion, or they are less to be trusted. Here the number who join intelligently in the services is large in proportion to the whole congregation, and although the aggregate attendance is small, probably the number of conscious worshippers is not much fewer, propor¬ tionally, than in other asylums. I have thought that it might be your pleasure that I should lay before you the results of my observation upon this matter somewhat fully, since it has been made the subject of comment in their official report by the Commissioners in Lunacy. Perhaps I may be permitted to avail myself of this delinea¬ tion of the more marked moral features of this asylum, to direct attention to the depressing conditions under which the duties of its chaplain have to be discharged. It has been my lot for nearly twenty eight years to labour in asylums and prisons, but it never fell to my lot before to witness depravity and unhappiness in forms so aggravated. In other asylums, when the mind resumes anything like healthy action, there is hope of discharge. In prisons the period of detention, however long, has some definite duration ; but here the fear of relapse, and the terrible acts to which relapse may lead, render the conditions of release rarely attainable; for many the period of detention is indefinite, and hope is almost excluded. In prisons, whatever may be the depravity it is kept under some restraint by reason, and by fear of consequences; but here there are patients with passions depraved to the utmost, upon whom neither reason, nor shame, nor fear, impose any restraint. The contemplation, day by day, of so much demoralization, and of so much sorrow, would be unbearable, if there were not some patients upon whom the offices of religion are seen I am, Sir, Your most humble servant, J. T. Burt, The Chairman of the Council of Supverision Chaplain»
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