The Trade in Lunacy

A Study of Private Madhouses in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

William Ll. Parry-Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415845809
• eBook ISBN: 9781135031411
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

First published in 2006. A private madhouse can be defined as a privately owned establishment for the reception and care of insane persons, conducted as a business proposition for the personal profit of the proprietor or proprietors. The history of such establishments in England and Wales can be traced for a period of over three and a half centuries, from the early seventeenth century up to the present day. This volume is a study of private madhouses in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

1

Introduction

A PRIVATE madhouse can be defined as a privately owned establishment for the reception and care of insane persons, conducted as a business proposition for the personal profit of the proprietor or proprietors. The history of such establishments in England and Wales can be traced for a period of over three and a half centuries, from the early seventeenth century up to the present day. In the course of their lifespan these institutions were referred to by a variety of terms, ranging from ‘houses for lunatics’, ‘madhouses’, ‘private madhouses’, ‘private licensed houses’ to ‘private asylums’ and finally, the ‘mental nursing homes’ of the present century. Other types of institutions for the insane were referred to only rarely as ‘madhouses’.

During the eighteenth century, an awareness of the need for public responsibility for the care of lunatics slowly emerged. A small number of hospitals and asylums were established with funds raised by voluntary subscription, but they afforded no relief to the large majority of patients and, with the increase in population, private madhouses flourished. The economic and social changes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries led to an increase in the numbers of the insane poor requiring some form of institutional care. The county asylum movement, as part of the overall humanitarian movement of the early nineteenth century, reflected the full assumption of public responsibility for pauper lunatics. However, the establishment of county asylums took place only slowly and very little provision was made in them for non-pauper patients, who continued to be catered for by the private madhouses and the public subscription asylums. The private madhouse made an important contribution until the middle of the nineteenth century, particularly with regard to pauper lunatics and retained considerable, although declining, influence until the close of the century. In view of this, it is surprising that the role of the private madhouse during the late eighteenth and the whole of the nineteenth century has been overlooked to such a degree by medical and psychiatric historians. Whilst a number of works on psychiatric history contain isolated references to private madhouses and a few short descriptions of individual houses have been published, there has been no consecutive study of the general role of these establishments. The constitution of the private madhouse, as an establishment run for profit, always exposed it to accusations of malpractice and its history was chequered by repeated disclosures of various infamous practices. The more disreputable aspects of the private madhouse system have received considerable attention and this has led, generally, to a biased conception of the private madhouse. The lack of a broad, objective appraisal of the functioning of these establishments motivated the researches upon which this volume is based.¹

One of the features of psychiatric historiography is the meagre use that has been made of manuscript material. The importance of original records in the writing of a reliable history of any aspect of psychiatry has been stressed by R. A. Hunter (1959)² and, in this work, an attempt has been made to extract as much information as possible from manuscript sources. It was decided, for several reasons, to concentrate attention on the private madhouses in provincial England and Wales. This decision was aided by the fact that an administrative distinction between provincial houses and those in the London area had been drawn by legislation of 1774. Moreover, preliminary research revealed that the metropolitan houses had always received greater publicity and documentation in the reports of parliamentary enquiries and in other publications. This decision to focus attention on the provinces was influenced, also, by a personal interest in the history of the two private madhouses in Oxfordshire. The scope of the research did not encompass either Irish or Scottish madhouses.

The research followed three main lines. Firstly, an exhaustive study was conducted into the total records extant relating to the private licensed houses in Oxfordshire, at Hook Norton and Witney. The records cover the period 1775–1857 and these dates have been used to delineate, broadly, the area for wider research, although the period considered in the greatest detail, because it is the best documented, has been the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The principal manuscript source relating to the houses at Hook Norton and Witney has been a large accumulation of documents comprising approximately 3,500 items, filed with the records of the Oxfordshire Court of Quarter Sessions. They are representative of the most comprehensive series which have survived in England and Wales.¹ No previous research has been carried out on these records, which include the reports of statutory visits by both the Visiting Magistrates and the Commissioners in Lunacy; plans of the two licensed houses; treasurer's accounts; miscellaneous correspondence and a series of documents concerning 745 consecutive admissions to the two licensed houses, during the period 1828 to 1856, and the corresponding discharges. By correlating and interpreting the data obtained from these records, an account is obtained of the life-history, the prevailing conditions and the therapeutic practice of these two establishments. Furthermore, these records are valuable for their illumination of aspects of the local application of national lunacy legislation. Secondly, an attempt was made to ascertain the extent and distribution of surviving manuscript material relating to private licensed houses elsewhere in England and Wales. In order to locate private madhouse records, a survey of lunacy records amongst catalogued collections in record repositories in England and Wales was carried out, by means of a circular letter in the form of a questionnaire. It was attempted, in addition, to trace surviving madhouse records held in non-official custody. Subsequently, a selective study was undertaken of some of the records located by these means. In this way, it was possible to examine a representative sample of all the categories of record available and also to study the records of private madhouses of varying character situated in widely different parts of the country. Thirdly, parliamentary papers and printed works published in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been investigated, with particular emphasis on those published in the first half of the nineteenth century. Material extracted from a number of lesser-known books, pamphlets and articles, located in record repositories and libraries in various parts of the country, has been incorporated.

From the outset, it was intended to assemble, as comprehensively as possible, facts relevant to an evaluation of the development, the character and the role of private madhouses. This volume embodies, therefore, both a systematic statement of facts collected in the course of research and a number of conclusions derived from their collation and interpretation. It is in no way claimed that this work covers the field exhaustively and, indeed, one of the delights of this kind of historical research remains the fact that new information can emerge at any time from the most unexpected sources.

The selection of the particular chapter grouping adopted was influenced by the need to overcome the difficulties inherent in integrating material of local and national significance. The historical development and background of the private madhouse system, from the early seventeenth century to the present day, is outlined in Chapter 2, with special reference to lunacy legislation and to the prevailing social conditions. The number of private licensed houses, their geographical distribution, their capacity, lifespan and the provisions available for the various categories of the insane are discussed in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, the range and quality of private-madhouse proprietors is examined and reference is made to the published works of a number of the more notable individuals. Some contemporary descriptions of provincial private licensed houses are considered in Chapter 5, with particular reference to four houses which achieved prominence in the nineteenth century. A detailed account is given in Chapter 6 of the private licensed houses at Hook Norton and Witney, Oxfordshire, utilizing the entire scope of the surviving records. General statistics concerned with admissions and discharges to the two houses are presented. Aspects of the care and treatment of the insane in madhouses are discussed in Chapter 7, with particular reference to the use of mechanical restraint. The outcome of treatment is considered, together with some of the clinical data extracted from the Oxfordshire MSS. In Chapter 8, the principal abuses and defects of the private-madhouse system as a whole are reviewed, together with an evaluation of the various sources of information utilized. Finally, Chapter 9 attempts a summary of the main themes and findings of this work.

Particular attention is drawn to the contents of Appendix A. This contains a breakdown of the various categories of manuscript source relating to lunacy and to private madhouses in particular, from the late eighteenth century onwards. The changes in the format, content and volume of the documents relating to private madhouses are considered in conjunction with a detailed interpretation of the legislative developments of the period.

¹ The research presented in this book formed the basis of a thesis for the degree of M.D. of the University of Cambridge in 1968.

² Hunter, R. A. (1959), ‘Some Notes on the Importance of Manuscript Records for Psychiatric History’, Archives IV, pp. 9–11.

¹ A catalogue of these documents is included in Appendix B.

2

The ‘Trade in Lunacy’¹ in its Historical and Legal Perspective

WHILST there is little information regarding the precise treatment of the insane in medieval times, there is evidence that the mentally afflicted were accommodated at times alongside the physically diseased in the infirmaries of the period.² In addition, monastic houses often gave shelter to lunatics in company with vagabonds and vagrants. The priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, London, founded in 1247, was one such establishment, and by the beginning of the fifteenth century it was functioning as a receptacle for lunatics. In 1547, it was given by Henry VIII to the city of London as a hospital for poor lunatics and, until the early eighteenth century, Bethlem Hospital was the only public institution for the insane, although the numbers admitted were small. From a legal viewpoint, a distinction was drawn, at an early period, between lunatics and idiots, and legislative provision for the protection of their estate was made in the Statute de Prerogativa Regis, of uncertain date, but usually printed as a statute of 17 Edward II, c. 9 & 10, 1324. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the emphasis was placed on the protection of the estate rather than on the treatment of the insane person concerned. The Poor Law Act of 1601,43 Eliz., c. 2, served to focus attention on the poor and unemployed, but no separate provisions for the insane were made and harmless lunatics and idiots continued to be left at liberty as long as they were not considered to be dangerous and caused no social disturbance. However, a change in social attitudes towards lunatics in the community was to take place in the seventeenth century.¹ This marked the beginning throughout Europe of the period of ‘The Great Confinement’² of the insane in company with criminals, vagrants and the unemployed, a process that was reflected in England in the increasing use for this purpose of houses of correction and, later, the workhouses. The Act of 1714, 12 Anne, c. 23, distinguished, for the first time, between impoverished lunatics and ‘Rogues, Vagabonds, Sturdy Beggars and Vagrants’. It was enacted that two or more justices of the peace could authorize the apprehension of lunatics who were ‘furiously mad, and dangerous’, by the town or parish officials, and order their confinement, ‘safely locked up, in such secure place . . . as such justices shall . . . direct and appoint’, where, if necessary, the lunatic could be chained. Apart from such restraint, which was to be applied only during the period of madness, no treatment was provided for, although the lunatic was exempted from whipping. The cost of detention, in the case of pauper lunatics, had to be paid out of the funds of the lunatic's parish of legal settlement. The charge for ‘curing’ such persons was added to these expenses by the Vagrant Act of 1744, 17 Geo. II, c. 5, which was essentially a re-statement of the Act of 1714. It is likely that the provisions of the latter reflected the prevailing practice during the late seventeenth century. One of the methods which had become adopted by the parishes for the disposal of lunatics placed in their charge was to board them out, at the expense of the parish, in private dwelling houses, which g...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The ‘Trade in Lunacy’ in its Historical and Legal Perspective
• 3 The Madhouse System: the Range and Development of its Provisions
• 4 The Private-Madhouse Proprietor
• 5 Some Contemporary Descriptions of Nineteenth-Century Private Licensed Houses
• 6 The Private Licensed Houses at Hook Norton and Witney
• 7 Aspects of the Care of the Insane in Private Madhouses and the Outcome of Treatment
• 8 The Principal Abuses and Defects of the Private-Madhouse System: a Review of the Evidence
• 9 Summary and Conclusions
• Appendix A Manuscript Sources
• Appendix B A Summary of the Results of the Survey of Private-Madhouse Records extant in Record Repositories in England and Wales
• Appendix C Explanatory Notes on the Coding Methods Employed in the Statistical Analysis of Data extracted from the Admission and Discharge Documents
• Appendix D Case Histories referred to in the Text, derived from the Oxfordshire MSS.
• Appendix E Abstracts of Published Statistics relating to Hook Norton, Brislington House and Duddeston Hall
• Bibliography
• Index of Private Madhouses
• General Index