Royal Albert Asylum for the care, education, and training of idiotic, imbecile, and weak-minded children and young persons, belonging to Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland : thirty-fifth annual report.

  • Royal Albert Asylum (Lancaster, England)
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Royal Albert Asylum for the care, education, and training of idiotic, imbecile, and weak-minded children and young persons, belonging to Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland : thirty-fifth annual report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PROSPECTUS. THE ROYAL ALBERT ASYLUM has been established for the care, education, and training of Idiots and Imbeciles of all classes belonging to the Seven Northern Counties, viz.:—Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham, and Northumberland. The number of Idiots and Imbeciles in England and Wales, returned at the Census of 1881 was 32,717. Of these, 8,764 belong to the Seven Counties, 2,422 being between Five years of age and Twenty, But accurate statistics as to the prevalence of idiocy or imbecility are difficult to obtain, and there is no doubt that the foregoing returns are considerably below the actual number, owing to the general ignorance on the subject, and the natural desire in families to conceal the existence of the malady. Idiocy being generally accompanied by an abnormal or imperfectly developed physical organisation, which retards the growth of the intellectual and moral powers, Idiots require a distinctive treatment in separate Institutions, where the resources of the skilful physician can be best employed for the modification or correction of those defects which obscure the mind. The Commissioners in Lunacy, and the medical pro¬ fession generally, condemn the association of Idiots with Lunatics, as in all respects very objectionable and mutually injurious. In their Report for 1865, the Commissioners observe: “ It has long been our opinion, as the result of extended experience and observation, that the association of Idiot children with Lunatics is very objectionable and injurious to them, and upon our visits to County Asylums we have frequently suggested arrangements for their separate treatment and instruction. It is always to us a painful thing to see Idiot children, whose mental faculties and physical powers and habits are capable of much development and improvement, wandering, without object or special care, about the wards of a Lunatic Asylum. The benefits to be derived, even in idiot cases apparently hopeless, from a distinctive system, and from persevering endeavours to develop the dormant powers, physical and intellectual, are now so fully established that any argument upon the subject would be superfluous.” Again, in their Report for 1874, the Commissioners state: “ We should be glad to see the noble example of the Northern Counties in this direction followed in other parts of the king¬ dom, since Idiots form a large proportion of the mentally afflicted, and require peculiar treatment, distinct from that applicable to the Insane.” Referring to the Royal Albert Asylum, the Lancet (June 20th, 1868) says :—“ We hail the establishment of this Asylum as another proof of the more scientific therapeutics to which the insane are now subjected. Till within the last few years the Idiot or the Imbecile child was invariably accommodated, not only in the same building, but in the same ward, with the victims to dementia, melancholia, or chronic mania. The effects of this indiscrimi¬ nate classification and treatment were most pernicious. The young Idiot or Imbecile, at the impressible and plastic period of his life, suffered from daily and nightly contact with those confirmed or aggravated cases of lunacy, and the only opportunity available for his rescue was then allowed to slip, until his case also became aggravated or con¬ firmed. The benefits of the new system have been signally satisfactory.” That much may be done to render the poor Idiot’s life more tolerable to himself and less burdensome to his friends, has been abundantly demonstrated by the success of existing asylums. Dr. Langdon Down, speaking from his long experience as the Superintendent of the Earlswood, calculated that of the cases admitted into that Institu¬ tion, “10 per cent, become self-supporting ; 40 per cent, become so far improved as to cease to use up a sane life in their care, and become contributors to the common stock ; and the remainder, all but 6 per cent., are invariably improved in their habits, and become