Fifteenth report of the Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1867?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fifteenth report of the Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/26 (page 8)
    mind, and to usefulness, is beyond the reach of art, yet, perhaps, in no cases does the Asylum fulfil a more beneficent work than in pro¬ viding a home for them. The presence of a restless, idiotic, and epileptic child, in a small cottage, is a perpetual misery to its parents, and to the other children. Its destructive habits, its want of cleanliness, and its recklessness of danger of every kind, absorb, in a large degree, the care and time of the mother, and prevent her from attending properly to the other duties of her household, while by disturbing the peace and rest of the toiling husband, its presence reacts, in many painful ways, on the comfort of the whole family. With no spare room in the cottage, the poor idiot, with all the degrad¬ ing habits inseparable from its condition, has to associate day and night with the other children, to share in their meals, to partake of their bed, with some of them, it may be younger than itself, so young, indeed, that their undeveloped minds may [through the imitative faculty so active in childhood,] be led to adopt its de¬ grading habits long before the true character of such habits can be recognised or appreciated. By the removal of such cases to an Asylum, society is spared many evils, and the poor idiot himself is shielded from much misery which he would otherwise endure from the teasings and scoffings of thoughtless children, who always per¬ ceive in him not a subject for compassion and sympathy, but an object for ridicule and sport. This is a sorrowful fact, but it is a universal experience. A few weeks since I saw an idiot boy beset by a crowd of children on the outskirts of Derby, and on going to his rescue, and remonstrating with his tormentors, a little girl said to me, with great simplicity, “ 0, Sir, he is only an idiot; we tease him to see him in a passion.” It may be, and is, disheartening to observe, in the wards, many of such poor creatures, with their mind¬ less faces, limping gait, and often deformed bodies, but to them the place is what its name implies, an Asylum, a refuge, moreover,