Sixteenth annual report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the 1st of January to the end of the year 1863.

  • Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sixteenth annual report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the 1st of January to the end of the year 1863. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sharpening nails with which to injure others. He once opened a man’s temporal artery by wounding him with a sharp nail. For the assault committed on the woman he met on a public footpath in the fields, near his home, he was committed to prison, and there found to be insane, and sent to the criminal asylum, where he remains. Whilst here as a pauper lunatic he was chargeable to the common fund of the union. Now, as a criminal lunatic at double the cost, it has been stated that he is chargeable to the parish, if so, it is a hard case. When pauper lunatics were taken from the parish charge and placed to the common fund, the pauper criminal lunatics ought to have been included. It is to be hoped that this will be corrected in the measure to be introduced into Parliament next Session, by the Chairman of another county asylum, for the consolidation of the Lunacy Acts, which so much require revisal, and that the honorable member will be supported and assisted in the difficult task he has undertaken. Inquests. Two coroner’s inquests have taken place during the year. On a fe aale, two weeks after admission, who had a severe wound m her throat, which extended completely across, severing the windpipe, penetrating the gullet back to the spine itself, the injury to which appeared to be the cause of death, as she had intense inflammation of the spinal marrow, which was covered throughout with recent lymph and pus. The medical man who attended her at home in a distant part of the county, for a fortnight before she was brought to the asylum, was obliged to feed her daily, as from the extent of the wound she was totally unable to swallow. She had also to be fed three times a day by the stomach tube during the fortnight she lived in the asylum. At her death, which was rather unexpected, as the wound had half closed, she had gained in flesh, made not the slightest complaint of pain, sat up in bed, and there was no suspicion of the serious mischief going on in the spine. The second inquest was that of a male epileptic of plethoric habit, who was found dead in bed from apoplexy and suffocation; he was found on his face. By the New Lunacy Act, 25 and 26 Viet., c. Ill, s, 44, notice of death, in every case, is to be sent to the coroner, to which he always sends a reply, and has seen three bodies at the asylum, on none of which, in his opinion, was an inquest requisite. c
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