Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Idiot or lunatic?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #21
    We must be talking about two different time-periods then.

    I know those institutions like the Magdalen ones existed in England too, and they closed shockingly late, yes.

    By the second half of the 19th century through to the first half of the 20ieth century, optimism about being able to cure lunacy wore off. It had started in York with Tuke and had spread like wild-fire, but 'cured' cases which were discharged returned and kept returning and the leading people in the business became aware that their 'methods' which they had deemed so effective at first were maybe not so effective after all to cure lunacy. So, institution became no hospitals where curing was the main object, but just maintaining.

    So, yes it could be that some people were put in there who did not really belong there in modern terms, like epileptics for example. But, on the other hand, it is possible that some people got rid of unwanted people by putting them there, though then there must have come either a lot of money into play (because, to be honest, which county wants to pay for a patient which is not one), and a corrupt doctor, or maybe severely lying relatives and disinterested personnel. Otherwise, who wants to occupy himself with a useless case? Even stronger, who wants to give his money to a merely bad case of bad morals? London was full of it in Whitechapel. Why try to treat it as insanity then?

    In those days insanity was not promiscuous behaviour merely. Certainly not. It was clearly identified, if even to us a little strange, still identified.

    Some may have got rid of famiy members by putting them in an asylum, but that was not the norm and was certainly not deemed insanity.

    Comment


    • #22
      I grew up in the late 1950s/early 60s in south Oxfordshire near a "mental" institution and my aunt was a nursing sister there. At that time, there were women in the institution who had been there many years and whose only "crime" was becoming pregnant outside of marriage.
      Jenny

      Comment


      • #23
        kiki

        On the contrary, the Victorian mental institutions were chock full of patients who would not be called insane today, and for whom there was no cure. Money did not come into it, the object of the exercise was to protect society from anyone who was an embarrassment. Evern vagrancy was sufficient cause to have someone incarcerated.

        Friern Barnet had upwards of 10,000 patients at one time. It - and many of the other Victorian institutions - was the size of a small town, was completely financially self-supporting and even had its own railway station.

        It appears to me to have been very easy to have someone committed to an asylum and extremely difficult for that person ever to be released. The ratepayers were very happy to have these places full to capacity as most of them were profit making or at least self sufficient, through their farms and laundries etc.

        OC

        Comment


        • #24
          Calderstones ?...would that be the one near me in Garston...that became a Boys Institution in the 1950`s when I was a lad...like an Orphanage but also unruly boys were sent there if their parents couldn`t control them...it`s 2 miles from Garston...comes under Liverpool now...is this the same one ?.....allan
          FORGET THAT ..just googled...Calderstones Asylum was in Whalley, outskirts of Manchester...sorry....allan
          Last edited by garstonite; 11-09-10, 09:49.
          Allan ......... researching oakes/anyon/standish/collins/hartley/barker/collins-cheshire
          oakes/tipping/ellis/jones/schacht/...garston, liverpool
          adams-shropshire/roberts-welshpool
          merrick/lewis/stringham/nicolls-herefordshire
          coxon/williamson/kay/weaver-glossop/stockport/walker-gorton

          Comment

          Working...
          X