Report on lunatic asylums / by Fredc. Norton Manning.

  • Manning, Frederick Norton, 1839-1903.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on lunatic asylums / by Fredc. Norton Manning. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    The inaiu forms of building ^vhieh are founi to exist, on ;m exauiiuatioti of European and American Asylums, are— 1. The corridor or ward form. 2. The house form. 8. The block or pavilion form. 4. The cottage. 1. The Corridor Form.—-Thia, under various modifications, is the moyt general form ado[)ted ia asylum construction. The insane in almost all countries were originally housed iu dilapidated prisons or nnused monasteries ; and these buildings have left their image on, and given, a style to, the structures which were subse(inently erected for the special accommodation of the insane. The first asylums which were erected consisted of a central corridor with small moms opening from it along each side ; the corridor itself serving as dining and day nxnn, and the small cells on each side serving as slee})ing rooms for the inmates. Each floor was thus a complete asylum, and a nnmber of such fiooi's placed end to end and story above story—either in a linear, in some modification of the H fonn, or as a Q— constituted the asylum, which was always under one continuous roof. This form may still be seen at the Bootham Asylum, York, and at St. Luke's, two of the earliest Englisli institntions specially built for the accommodation of the insane ; and it is the one which— though almost extinct in England—with certahi minor modifications, is still adhered to in the large majority of American institutions. The best modern exam])les of this, the corridor plan with rooms on each side, are the Government Asylnni at AVashington, the Hospital for the Insane at Plnladelphia, and the State Asylums^ of IJtica, Trenton, and ..th ers. In Appendix G, No. 1, will be found a plan of the Washiugton Asylum, and from an examination of this ])lan the peculiarities of tliis form Avill be understood. In England the asylunis so constructed were found dark and gloomy, Avhilst the ventilation was e'xtremelv unperfect. The modifications introduced by American architects have served to overcome these ditticulties. Instead of appropriating all the rooms leading from the corridor to sleeping accommodation, som(> of large size have been made into cheerful dining and dav rooms, which command views of the surroundi'.ig country. By means of end windows, and by occasionally doing away with the dividing wall between room and corridor, and so maknig the former, lighted by a large window, a recess from the latter, the corridors have been made fairly light; and by the employment of an elaborate and expensive system of artificial vent ilation, tlie whole buildings are, as a rule, well ventilated and healthy. But, even with all ^the improvements, the corridors used as places for promenade are less <'heertul than the corridors Avith rooms only on one side, most frequently seen in Enolish asylums : and the cost of the system of ventilation is sufficient to destroy the chief argument m favor of the plan—that of diminished cost of construction in comparisonVith those asylums in which the corridor has rooms on one side only. In England and on the (.ontinent, m all modern asylums in which the corridor plan is adopted,' the small rooms are placed on one side only, whilst on the other are large windows Avhich make the corridor remarkably light and cheerful. Eecesses with bav windows are sometimes formed in which the patients can sit and work-. The Essex County Asvlum (see Appendix G ^o^ and .^}—IS a fair example of this plan, the essentials of Avhich are that each ward is a complet e a^yfum—the corridor serving as day and dining room, and the sleeping rooms opening from it. ihe objections to this system are, that the asylum is spread over an immense area is costly m construction trom the immense length of corridor and consequent roofin- required, and that there is m it an absence of all those domestic and social arramrc I?on v^ri''-'il/^^ ' '^1 ^ ^^^^•'^^ P^^°Pl^'- Tlie peculiar combina- tion ot day and night accommodation is without analogy in any house ; whilst the sittin- working, reading, and taking meals in a corridor-a place used also for exercise a d fo the passage ot persons from one part of the asylum to another-represent conditioi s f lite without parallel among the domestic arrangements of any class of the eommunhy n.nf Plan-Is more modern in its idea ; and whilst the asylum is still continued under one unbroken roof, and presents the outline of an ordinaiT ccnTil.r or * S/afe of Lvnaci/: Arlidge, p. 203. •
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