Thirteenth annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    67/76 page 67
    residents, and cannot proteet themselves or remove from any sources of danger to which they may be exposed, and from which they should be proteeted by the action of those who have their legal care and treatment under their direction. Of such cases as these, where mental disturbance and insanity arise in the course of some disease, or in consequence of diseased con¬ ditions of a chronic character, we may still expect uiany to be sent to us from year to year. We also find that they reach the Asylum in a very unsatisfactory state, from the fact of their removal having been delayed, either till death from exhaustion was imminent, or until they had become maniacal and violent in their conduct and actions, and their friends had found themselves incapable of retaining them longer under their management at home. The last class of the incurable, whose mental disease had existed for extended periods of time, consisted of 11 males and 13 females. Some of these were transfers from other Asylums, consequent on their settlement devolving upon Unions in this County. Some few were wandering vagrants, and were well known to the police and parochial authorities as frequent disturbers of the public peace, and who were found not to be answerable to the ordinary regulations for their own and the publicU protection. Many others had years ago broken down in life from various causes, and found their way into the Work- houses of their districts, whence their removal was rendered imperative, owing to changes in the character of their insanity requiring greater care and more extended means of treatment than such institutions have at their command. The rest were cases whose friends had for years retained them in their homes, and for various reasons were finally forced to commit their charge to the authorities of the Asylum. A few of these were sent by the constituted legal authorities in op])osition to the wishes of their relatives, who were found to be retaining their insane friends at home in a very neglected state, devoid of all personal care and comfort, with but few of the decencies or necessaries of life, and with an utter absence of all such
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3