Thirty-fourth annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-fourth annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/76 (page 11)
    [Copy.] REPORT OP THE COMMISSIONERS IN LUNACY. County and City of Woecesteh Lunatic Asylum, Nov. 4th, 1886. Eight hundred and fifty-one patients are now on the hooks of this Asylum. Our colleagues last visited on October 27th, 1885. Neither of us had been here for some years, not since the Annexe was built, so that much is new to us and we can appreciate the improvements. The male patients are 369, the female 482. These numbers include 10 men and 31 women on the list of private patients, and one patient of each sex ol the criminal class. The only out-county cases are from Essex, 25 men and 30 women. These are admitted for 13s. weekly, per head. The charge per week for home cases of the pauper class is as low as 7s. 7d. The criminals are charged 14s. each. The private patients admissible here must either have a settlement in some Union in the County, or immediately prior to admission have been resident in the City or County. Three patients, all men, are absent on leave. The total number of absentees on trial since the Commissioners’ last visit have been 22 males, 25 females. Five of the former and four of the latter have had allowances from the Asylum during trial, and one patient discharged had an allowance or gratuity from the Strawson Fund. This Charity Fund, about £500, invested in East India Stock, was, it seems, the gift of a stranger for the patients’ benefit, applicable in such way as the Committee should think fit. £120 accumulations of the dividends was recently contributed, we think, not otherwise than judiciously, towards the purchase of an organ for the Asylum Chapel. The allowances to patients on trial were given pursuant to the provision in that behalf in the Lunacy Acts. These allowances often doubtless prevent a mental relapse and so obviate, perhaps, a life long burden on the rates. We wish that they were given in many Asylums where the practice does not prevail. The admissions since our colleagues’ last visit have been 203, including the 55 Essex cases ; they also include 21 relapses, if not more unknown to us. The discharges have been 53, of which 47 were recoveries, those