Genealogy Chat

What were the sorts of reasons people were in lunatic asylums back in the day? Thank you in advance :)

Keeley.

many were placed in asylums for things they certainly wouldn't today

females for having a child out of wedlock was one reason

also people were committed for theft, or for being deaf and dumb

some were committed to "get rid of them" if their family had money or influence and wanted shot!!

thanks Ann.

"hysteria"

menopausal "madness"


sylvia

My G.G.Grandmother was put in to an asylum in 1911 because she was senile at the age of eighty nine by her eldest daughter. She died five years later and was recorded as being a tough, hardworking ,old Scots woman who was in the best of health. Luckily we were able to get fifty six pages of her medical history whilst she was there which included letters from her son who wrote regularly enquiring about her welfare and requests for her family to supply clothes. as well as regular health check reports. Not many clothes just two of everything and one shawl. Poor old soul she must have frozen in winter with just a blouse and skirt and shawl over her
under clothes. When she died the family asked for the death notice not to be put in the paper because of the shame of dying in an asylum. There was nothing wrong with her except that no one could be bothered with her. Being from Glasgow she had a very rich vocabulary apparently. She was weighed and measured on entry and was four feet eleven inches tall.
This happened in New Zealand and it was the practice to put away "people who couldn't control themselves" as politicians described them and included epileptics, idiots, the senile, alcoholics, diabetics and other sufferers of diseases less well understood as well as the clinically insane.

Just read an account of a nurse who worked in Storthers Hall assylum in Bradford from 1968. She was asked if there were long term patients sent there because the family didnt want them or couldnt cope.
She said there were young girls,sons with gambling debts or wouldnt toe the line.. Men who could get rid of their wives for whatever reason by getting them certified. To get them certified they needed an outside doctor and the hospital had to agree.
More recently 1980s young Asian girls being admitted because they hadnt done the dutiful dau in law bit and they couldnt speak a word of English. This was the BBC Bradford and West Yorkshire local history. I found it when looking for workhouses at www.workhouses.org.uk


You just cant imagine that happening in our time so imagine what flimsy excuse was made in earlier years. Especially if the family had money to pay them

My great grandmothers sister killed herself in an asylum at the age of 32. in 1888
She was suffering from what today would be called severe depression, and can be treated.

Thank God people are more understanding about mental illness these days but there is a long way to go yet - there is still stigma and sadly mental illness is at the bottom of the pile as far as the NHS coffers go - I worked in a psychiatric hospital for almost thirty years and speak from experience!!

I believe some women were admitted when suffering from post-natal depression too.

I have some one who died in an asylum. She was pregnant and had Eclampsia.

My Grandfathers first wife died in an asylum. She had always been a bit "odd" She was bullied by her family and my Grandad felt sorry for her. He thought that he would be able to offer her a better life.

They married with her families blessings. However, despite my Grandads best efforts her behaviour became more and more erratic.

He would come home after work and find that they had moved. She would just dissappear to new rented accomodation taking all their belongings. Grandad would be left wandering the streets trying to find where she had moved to.

Eventually she became violent and my Grandad had to admit defeat and after much soul searching she was committed to Brentwood Mental Hospital.


This happened in the early '30's.Now asylums in those days were not pleasant places. There were very few drugs available to treat the inmates and I don't believe there were mental health nurses. Psychiatric care was in it's infancy and subsequently anything that made life easier for the staff was accepted. Alcohol was freely available to subdue the patients. There was also a great amount of sexual promiscuity. (A friend of my Mother's worked as a nurse at Brentwood in the '80's and promiscuity was still an enormous problem)

At some point my Grandad's wife contracted Syphilis and subsequently died from it in 1945. I can only hope that she had contracted it through a consentual relationship.

RIP Beatrice Alexandra Archer nee Waters 1909-1945

If you get the chance, but you do have to preorder, you can look at the asylum books from Bracebridge Heath Asylum in Lincoln Archives and they are amazing, they also smell clinical. People were put in for all sorts of reasons, one thought he was the King of England, Things which were quite normal part of married life, locked up for that. Autism, depression, blind, and the list goes on. It was quite facinating as i was looking for a relative who was arrested and i found the original record from the police in 1888. If you get the chance go and read them, it made me and my sister gasp at some of things, and wondered if we could possibly have a bed for the weekend, as we looked at some of the things you were put in there for lol.

Believe it or not I was almost ashamed to ask for help in my search to find details of my Gt Gran.First of all I didn`t know her proper name name only that she had died when my Grandfather was 8 in 1888. It was a load of codswallop she was put in a mental home at the age of 36 suffering from PM. after the death of my grandfather`s younger brother and didn`t die `Til she was 81!!!!! Can you imagine how horrified we all were. I have to say that we had lots of friendly help from the Devizes Archives, Wiltshire and have since been able to obtain all her notes etc.I am still searching for her roots as ofcourse the family seemed so embarrassed about it that noone really knew her background.Roll on monday, I hope to have her Birth Certificate at long last.
Jay

I had sent for a certificate, dismayed to find he had ended his days in an asylum. but found out as I'd read on he was paralised, I presume a stroke, lived for a yr in there.
Thank god people who have a stroke today are not confined to the same fate.

It is interesting to read all these comments and I agree with everyone. Many people who were put in the asylums should never have even got as far as the front door. However, I am a learning disability nurse and many of my clients/patients I care for today would have been placed in an asylum many years ago because their parents were unable to cope with them. Let’s just pause for a minute though, in the 1800s and before and up to fairly recently, we did not have the understanding of the conditions that we do today, we also did not have the skills and training of the carers we have today and most of all they did not have the drugs we have today, in order for my client group to control their conditions and lead reasonable normal lives. In the past the client group I care for were treated in the possible the best way that was know at the time YES it was cruel and should not have happened, but since the current thinking is care in the community and the closure of all the asylums many of the people who are in these asylums are in a way even more isolated now living in the community, it is also I believe a little know fact that many of the individuals that had lived in the asylums for almost all their lives, very quickly died when they had to live in the community. Today many young people with learning disabilities end up in prison - which is where I work as a LD nurse, as the services are not out there for them once they leave school. Who's to say that in 50 -100 years’ time people will be condemning us for the way we treated this client group today - just a thought.

Adding to Sarah's comments. I too worked in a care home for 27 years. Biggest problem was the ratio of staff to residents. The dementia patients needed more time and their behaviour could be very "difficult". It meant you had less time for the frail residents.
Eventually the dementia patients needed to be moved to a secure home/hospital that could provide better care for them and for the protection of the frail ones that were living in the same home
Government funding isnt usually enough as most of the care homes where I live are privately owned and the government will not pay the same rate for care as a private patient has to.
Sad really as many of our elderly are kept going with drugs but their quality of life just isnt there.
One resident who had all her mental faculties decided to stop taking her medication. She told me she couldnt walk to her toilet a few feet away without getting breathless and it was too hard for her. She did stop her medication and died 4 days later.
Sometimes keeping people alive on drugs isnt the kindest thing to do.
One family member living overseas who's mother had returned from hospital very low and expected not to live because of pneumonia insisted she be given antibiotics. This was done and she recovered. Sadly the mother had Alzheimers and the daughter overseas certainly didnt do her mother any favours.She wasnt there to witness how her mother was.
Having said that I dont agree with euthanasia but do think its a persons right to choose whether they want to continue with their medication

the sad fact is that we are all living longer and there will be more and more need for care homes as the years go by - something has to be done about it - care in the community as you say is a joke - lovely on paper but in reality a nightmare. The psychiatric hospital where I worked for nearly thirty years is due for closure shortly - existing patients are slowly being moved into the community. The majority of them have lived in the hosptal for years and although they are being moved to more modern premises it is an area they are not familiar with, there are no shops they can walk to and the main worry for me is will the local residents accept them or will they become the target of these feral gangs that seem to roam the streets these days. The hospital is in our village and has been here for over a hundred years - patients are accepted as an everyday part of life here but will they be so fortunate where they are going. I'd like to think so but doubt it very much.

In times passed there was very little expertise in mental health and those given the task to care for patients were badly equipped to deal with the task in hand. Whose to say that suppressing behaviour with alcohol is any different to using valium or largactil.

I know someone who is bipolar and is so grateful for the session of ECT that she had. She believes that without it she would have killed herself. It has left her with short term memory problems but she has learnt to live with it. She is on lithium and has led a relatively normal life for years.

The problem I have is with the people who were committed for the wrong reasons. When Leytonstone House closed in the early eighties a case was hhighlighted in the local paper of a resident who had been committed shortly after the war. She had not communicated since her arrival until one of the other patients received a Polish visitor.

It transpired that her Jewish family had somehow got her out of poland in the late 30's. She had worked as a maid in London. At the end of WW2 she received news from home that her entire family had been anhilated. She became deeply depressed and the family she worked for had her committed. (obviously she was expendable to them and no longer useful)

She had spent 35+ years in a mental hospital because no one had cared enough. It wasn't the hospitals fault, they had no background information and she had long since become institutionalised and would never have been able to survive in the outside world.

I often hope that her later years were spent in a home with people who cared for her.

As for all those who have contributed who work in the field of mental health, I take my hat off to you. You are a dedicated lot who deserve medals for your dedication. (As well as a decent salary!)

A friend of mine had a sister in an asylum she was admitted because she was sitting on the front doorstep of a terraced cottage when a local coucillor walked past, no-one really knew what actually happened but he insisted the young girl had deliberately tripped him up so he arranged for her to be admitted to the local asylum.


Regarding care in the community my parents, then in their late 70s', lived next door to a mentally ill gentleman, he regularly went round late evening saying the aliens were coming and he must hide, Dad humoured him at the door until one night when he pushed past him and refused to leave for ages, then they used to get him banging on their windows
One day Mum was getting out of their car on their own drive when he jumped over the fence and attacked my mother, luckily neighbours and a passer-by grabed him.

When I phoned his social worker she accused my parents of lying and as I hadn't seen any attack I couldn't say it had occured. The Police knew and accepted Mum was attacked but she wouldn't.

Best of it was it was my parents who had called social services in the first place to look after him as they were concerned he wasn't looking after himself after his mother died.

Keith and Ann I do agree taking people out of a place they know as home and putting them into the community is upsetting.
Thats why you see mental health people wandering the streets and causing problems because they no longer have someone to remind them to take the medication that helps them live a more normal life

Sorry Keith your brother is not getting the care he deserves. Im in NZ so cant speak for the care homes in England. I only know from the places I have worked that residents are not allowed to sit in urine all day. The incontinent or those who need help are toileted 2 hourly. They can also ring for assistance at any time and its given even though the staff are often rushed of their feet.
Most care workers I have met are caring and its not the wages that attract them to the work as here we are very poorly paid.Its dedication and knowing you are helping the elderly that counts.
I know sometimes care homes get bad press . There will always be those who are in it for the money as you say.
I would make your presence known at the care home as often as possible. Also to ring up the manager /owner if you have any concerns about your brothers care or those others if you feel there is neglect. You can report any neglect to aged concern and start the ball rolling if you dont want to get involved yourself.
Our elderly ones deserve better and so do our mentally ill.

One thing to point out is some residents dont come into the home until they are in their 90s. Having been cared for at home by family who could be in their 70s and not that well themselves.
We have to commend all family members husbands,wives.children who have looked after loved ones till it became too difficult and have had to resort to care homes.