Genealogy Chat

I just want to say that my cousin's great grandmother was a nurse at a Lunatic Asylum in Essex from about 1880 to 1900, and the patients there probably had a lovely time, cos she was a caring and kindly nurse. We have a testimonial from the head of the asylum when she left to get married, stating her sympathy to the inmates. So I hope some of you got her in your asylums, or people like her.

They weren't all beasts.

Margaret

If one reads some of the books written about the care delivered in the asylums especially in the years before they were closed and of course depending in what part of the country they lived many were in fact reasonable well treated, yes these may have been the acceptations. As Keith and others have pointed out the residents had their own shops, own grounds to walk around in (in fairly safe environments), many of the asylums/hospitals even grew their own food giving the residents the skills required to garden vegetables etc. It’s a shame that people we care for today still end up sitting in urine stained under clothing. I also worked in a nursing home and the level of care was excellent, there was none of that usual smell one get when they enter a nursing home. Recently it was sold and I returned to visit a few residents I once cared for I was ashamed of what I saw. As someone else pointed out many elderly care home do take resident requiring dementia care, but should in an ideal work be in a separate part of the home for the safety of those who are frail. It’s a shame that money could not be found to care both for the elderly and those who are physically and mentally ill. It used to really annoy me when people who had worked all their lives had to sell their homes to pay for their care.

Sadly mental illness does not stir up the same emotions as cancer say - everyone gives to cancer charities but people tend to shy away from mental illness even though it is estimated that one in four of us will suffer some sort of mental illness during our lifetime

Another thought..did you know that 150 years ago a husband could have his wife committed to an asylum as long as he had a doctor's signature? This could be for the shallowest of reasons, for example she might voice her own opinion in a time when women were supposed to be meek and uneducated or question what he decided [remember men were in control in those days]. What a perfect way to get rid of an annoying wife or get your hands on her inheritance!! Read Wilkie Collins 'The Woman in White'. it is complete fiction apart from the fact that it shows how easy it was to commit someone to an asylum for the flimsiest of reasons!

My great grandmother spent her last days as Storthes Hall Hospital (Incidentally, Margaret, it is near Farnley Tyas, on the outskirts of Huddersfield, rather than Bradford.

This was in 1919, just after WW1 She was 71, there was nothing wrong with her mentally, but we believe the reason she was sent there was that there was nowhere else in the area for her to go.

The family were never told anything and didn't really understand how she died. It was only after I ordered her death certificate that we found Cause of Death was Chronic Nephritis, in other words, Kidney Failure.

The Huddersfield University Halls of Residence are now located at the Storthes Hall site.

A husband could have his wife committed for voicing her own opinion, as Samantha said

............ but it could also be for refusing his requests to do things (in the house or ...), refusing marital relations, for PMT, for depression (after birth of a child or otherwise), or because of some made up story because he wanted control of her money or he was tired of her.


If the husband died, she was left to the tender mercies of her eldest son ........ and he might make up a story to get her committed because he didn't want to spend the money on her upkeep, or his wife didn't want m-i-l living with them, or mother was being stubborn and refusing to go live with son, or he wanted control of the part of the money/estate that husband might have left her.


Girls could be committed because of some minor mis-deed ............ tlaking to a boy on the stree, kissing a boy (as said earlier), family member wanted control of money left to the girl.



and ...... if they then protested their treatment while in the asylum, this was just taken as evidenc eof their "sickness"



It really was a very hard life for women and girls in those days.



sylvia

What an interesting and informative thread this is, I have read it through,I don't know much about the subject myself but find all your comments and stories fascinating, thanks everyone and Christine for starting it.
Gill

While researching my family history there were was one couple that had 3 daughters with medical problems 2 were blind and one was a cripple. Their mother died and all 3 girls were admitted to an asylum. Can you imagine what it must have been like for those children after coming from a caring home and then put in a place like that. I understand that their father had to work and take care of the other children but it really upset me to find out what happened to these sisters. Irene

In the 1970's I worked on a ward where there was a lovely old lady who had been put there when she was young because she had a child out of wedlock There was a younger one as well placed there for the same reason but a few times a year she went to a hospital for the mentally submormal to see her daughter who had been placed there as a child

Bren

My great-great grandfather (who was originally born near Warrington and whose wife lived near Ormskirk in 1901 with their small daughter) died in Lancaster Lunatic Asylum in 1903 - the census records suggest he was admitted somewhere between 1891 and 1901.

His death certificate says that he died of an aneurysm and there was some problem with his aorta which he had had for "years unknown" - he was only 53, but I have since spoken to a relative of my neighbour whose father died of an aneurysm, too.

From what she described, her father's behaviour completely changed because of it and I wonder if this is why my great-great grandfather ended up in the lunatic asylum - when he died he had a small child and perhaps it was thought that his daughter would be upset or scared by his behaviour? Or perhaps his wife couldn't cope with looking after them both?

I doubt he was "mad", but his behaviour could have been interpreted that way 100 years ago.

On a different note, as someone said before, PMT was sometimes considered to make the sufferer "deranged" - an old medical book in our house described the symptoms of PMT in the sort of way that makes the woman with it sound mentally unhinged, and I think all they are actually describing is hormonal changes. But they probably didn't know that then.