Report of the County Lunatic Asylum at Prestwich : presented to the Court of Adjourned Annual Session holden at Preston, December 30th, 1869 with an account of the receipts and payments of the treasurer of the said asylum.

Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum at Prestwich

Date:: 1870

Credit: Report of the County Lunatic Asylum at Prestwich : presented to the Court of Adjourned Annual Session holden at Preston, December 30th, 1869 with an account of the receipts and payments of the treasurer of the said asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

12/64 page 12

$val 116 patients, or 71 males and 45 females, have died. There were seven innuests, four of which were held on patients found dead P' I( disorders of the heart and apoplexy ; the fifth and sixth were cases of which the circumstances have been under con¬ sideration at Whitehall, the patients having died, the one from injuries which appear to have been received in falling’ through a window, the ofAer from severe fractures which appear to have been received in the Workhouse at Chorlton, from which he was sent; and the seventh was a suicide by hanging, the facts of which our Board had before them at the time. The rest of the deaths were from causes ordinary in Asylums, the principal being general paralysis, epilepsy, and other diseases of the brain (79 being so accounted for); disorder of the heart and lungs, and general decay. “ The numbers on the books to-day are 1000, on the men’s side 477, and on the women’s 523, of whom, at our visit to-day and yes¬ terday, we have seen all but five men and one woman, now absent on trial. This leaves in each division only three vacant beds, for nearly all of which application has been made and promise given ; and here, as at Lancaster, the similar applications made and re¬ fused during the last eleven months, 56 in the men’s division, and in the women’s 81, or 137 cases altogether, show how urgent had become the need for the fourth Lancashire Asylum. In connec¬ tion with it we may remark, that, subject to points of detail which matter will be for consideration at Whitehall, we see much to ap¬ prove in a suggestion of Mr. Holland’s, for which plans were shewn to us to-day and will immediately be forwarded to White-$