Thirty-third annual report of the Somerset and Bath Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the 1st January to the end of the year. 1880.

  • Somerset and Bath Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-third annual report of the Somerset and Bath Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the 1st January to the end of the year. 1880. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ADMISSIONS, DISCHARGES, DEATHS, The following analysis gives the chief points of interest in these returns : ADMISSIONS. The number of admissions during the year has been 181 (79 males and 102 females). The youngest cases admitted were those of a boy, aged seven years, and two girls, aged nine and eleven years. A passing comment seems necessary on the absurd system of sending, year after year, imbecile children to Lunatic Asylums. They are sent with no defi¬ nite object in view, except safe custody and unlimited deten¬ tion. Scientific instruction is never attempted, and even if taken in hand in the usual way would most certainly end in utter failure, while bad habits are only too easily learnt from watching the lunatics, and thus these idiot children simply come to swell the number of incurables already in the Asylum. From GO to 70 years of age there were admitted twenty-four patients; 13 males, and 11 females. From 70 to 80 years of age seven cases; 3 males and 4 females, The bodily health of some patients brought to the Asylum was feeble in the extreme, and a large number of very hopeless cases came in of all ages. On the subject of Admissions attention must again be drawn to the case of Criminal Lunatics. Two belonging to this class [Military Prisoners] were admitted in the year from Taunton Gaol, and both persons were considered to be feigning insanity. They were dangerous men, powerful in build, and threatened to “ brain ” any of the attendants who prevented their escaping. After a tedious delay, they were eventually removed on a Warrant from the Home Secretary to Taunton Gaol, and discharged as u malingerers.” Since the Asylum has been opened in 1848, 86 Criminal