Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Idiot or lunatic?

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

  • Idiot or lunatic?

    I downloaded some documents yesterday from the National Archives relating to an annual return from a Lunatic Asylum.
    There was one column which was entitled "Lunatic or Idiot" - with some names being shown as lunatic, others as idiot.

    What is the difference between lunatic and idiot?
    Elaine








  • #2
    See Chapter I of "A practical treatise on the law concerning lunatics, idiots, and persons of ...Great Britain" 1833


    It is discussed in legal terms with various definitions used in the 19th century.

    Have fun.
    Phil
    historyhouse.co.uk
    Essex - family and local history.

    Comment


    • #3
      Hi - this is useful as well http://studymore.org.uk/mhhglo.htm - has lots of info about asylums, workhouses etc etc in the 19th centur (lunatic is of unsound mind..idiot, a person of very low intelligence)

      Comment


      • #4
        Thanks Phil and Naomi. I'll take a look at both links.
        Elaine







        Comment


        • #5
          A lunatic is mentally ill (so theoretically can recover); an idiot is mentally handicapped. I think there's an exact IQ range for what were termed "idiots".
          ~ with love from Little Nell~
          Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

          Comment


          • #6
            I once found someone described as 'idiot from birth' which I thought was very cruel, as well as non-PC.

            Comment


            • #7
              Hi there, I had a Great Uncle listed on the 1871 Census as an Imbecile aged 25yrs. then found him with his name misspelt on 81&91 housed at the District Asylum Godstone Surrey, he died in 1897 makes you wonder what sort of life he had in that place. Alan.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Velma Dinkley View Post
                I once found someone described as 'idiot from birth' which I thought was very cruel, as well as non-PC.
                It's just a word. It wouldn't have been "cruel" back in the day, it's the condition itself which is cruel and that doesn't change, however people try to wrap it up in euphemisms. Whatever words or phrases are chosen eventually become debased through being used as insults.

                It's true that there were fairly distinct definitions of imbecile, lunatic, idiot etc, but they're not much use in the censuses as the people giving the information may not have known the distinctions. However, a return from a Lunatic Asylum may be more reliable.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Thanks everyone for the replies.
                  Elaine







                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I agree with Blackberry - I have one poor chap who is described variously as imbecile, idiot, lunatic........then he is miraculously cured and becomes a greengrocer, lol!

                    Definitely the same person. I think his father may have been fed up of trying to describe his son's condition to nosey parkers, so for his final appearance on a census, he became "normal".

                    OC

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Elaine - can I ask which asylum that is please and whereabouts on the site you downloaded it. All I can see on there is poor law records...

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Velma Dinkley View Post
                        Elaine - can I ask which asylum that is please and whereabouts on the site you downloaded it. All I can see on there is poor law records...
                        It was from the Poor Law Union collection - referred to Newport Pagnell Union, Bucks.

                        It isn't actually personal to my research - I had just downloaded a couple of documents for my genealogy group to show them the type of content they might find. This actual document was a two or three page listing of
                        "A True List of Insane Persons, Lunatics and Idiots chargeable to the Parishes within the Newport Pagnell Union, specifying the names, sex and age of each and whether dangerous or otherwise and for what length of time they have been supposed to be of Unsound Mind and where confined or how otherwise disposed of"

                        I just found it interesting!
                        Elaine







                        Comment


                        • #13
                          It makes you cringe when you hear of teenage girls who were `hidden away` to stop the shame of the family , because they were pregnant. Just how many totally sane girls were inmates at these asylums because they got pregnant. In many cases they were basically raped by rich employers who forced servant girls into sex.I have read a couple of instances were girls went in and didn`t come out for 40-50 years. ....allan
                          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


                          • #14
                            Perhaps it should also be mentioned that when the terms idiot, imbecile and lunatic appear in census returns they do not always conform to the true medical definition.
                            Remember census returns are normally filled in by family or "friends" and not qualified people.
                            Cheers
                            Guy
                            Guy passed away October 2022

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Elaine ..Spain View Post
                              It was from the Poor Law Union collection - referred to Newport Pagnell Union, Bucks.

                              It isn't actually personal to my research - I had just downloaded a couple of documents for my genealogy group to show them the type of content they might find. This actual document was a two or three page listing of
                              "A True List of Insane Persons, Lunatics and Idiots chargeable to the Parishes within the Newport Pagnell Union, specifying the names, sex and age of each and whether dangerous or otherwise and for what length of time they have been supposed to be of Unsound Mind and where confined or how otherwise disposed of"

                              I just found it interesting!
                              Thanks Elaine

                              Comment


                              • #16
                                Allan

                                You do the rich employer a disservice, lol! Many of these unfortunate girls were "put away" by their own fathers, nothing to do with being raped by a rich man, everything to do with being pregnant.

                                MOST of them never came out, not just one or two. Until the 1960s, a female patient in a mental hospital or home, had to be signed out by a MALE relative.

                                It makes my blood boil to even think about the thousands of women who spent most of their adult lives in an institution for the sin of "moral imbecility".

                                OC

                                Comment


                                • #17
                                  Originally posted by Olde Crone Holden View Post
                                  Allan

                                  You do the rich employer a disservice, lol! Many of these unfortunate girls were "put away" by their own fathers, nothing to do with being raped by a rich man, everything to do with being pregnant.

                                  MOST of them never came out, not just one or two. Until the 1960s, a female patient in a mental hospital or home, had to be signed out by a MALE relative.

                                  It makes my blood boil to even think about the thousands of women who spent most of their adult lives in an institution for the sin of "moral imbecility".

                                  OC
                                  I see your point OC...I have one in my family who was made pregnant by her married Houseowner...she was a servant there ...she was sacked and dropped like a hot potato...anyway , evidently my g grandad went to his posh house....and beat the sh*t out of him...and my g grandad brought the son up as his.....allan
                                  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


                                  • #18
                                    I believe, as far as I have figured out, that lunatics were people who were deemed 'mad'. This could be untreated depression which results in halucinations, confusion, aggression, suicidal tendencies etc. They could also be schizophrenics and people with that kind of conditions. Curable or not curable did not really matter in those days, as people thought 'lunacy' or 'madness' came up in spurts. So anything could be cured. But people could be deemed 'a lunatic' for a while.

                                    Idiots were people who were mentally handicapped. So, Down Syndrome for example, but also people with reduced IQs, people maybe with brain damage because of accidents or lack of oxygen at birth, early births that survived, autists possibly etc. People we would now put into homes as well, but of course not classified in living groups and with appropriate schooling. Just classified according to 'violent' or 'non-violent', and for the rest vegetate.

                                    Through the ages, other names started to crop up because certain conditions were identified. For example 'melancholy' as a term for 'depression'. I don't know when more or less that came about, but people, before the term was coined, just called them 'mad'. 'Imbecile' is also such a term, I think. Maybe for someone who is less affected (poor soul) than an idiot.

                                    But, yes, those terms seem a little bit cruel if they are read in a contemporary context...

                                    There is a site with a lot of info on madhouses, lunacy, perception of it, in the 18th and 19th century:

                                    Comment


                                    • #19
                                      I think that is an exaggeration. Moral imbelcility has nothing to do with 'putting girls away' because they got pregnant or displayed promiscuous behaviour. I think you are thinking of those houses run by nuns in Ireland (shocking as it was, they were not deemed mad, fortunately). As far as I know there were no lunatic asylums who amued themselves with the re-education of promiscuous women. Otherwise, half of Whitechapel would have been put in Bedlam if it had depended on the council.

                                      Moral madness, the term really existed, was madness induced by bad behaviour. Not only by sex in this case, but drinking for men, drugs etc. As morals went down in a person, he descended into a fiendish state called moral madness. People suffering from it were really deemed mad. They were not normal. (Who would be if he was addicted to opium f.e. ;)) Although that was not naturally because they had had bad habits in the past, but they had just become depressed, schizophrenic, had started to suffer from paranoia, delirium tremens and things like that. They were genuinely 'gone', to put it cruelly, but of course not because of the reasons that were thought to be the ones in the 19th century.

                                      Comment


                                      • #20
                                        Kiki

                                        No, I am not thinking of Magdalen Laundries - these also existed in England, not just Ireland, and the last English one closed in the late 1960s, in Highgate in London. The advent of cheap domestic washing machines did for it.

                                        I am talking about ordinary mental institutions, which had many a long term female inmate, incarcerated for moral imbecility or some other euphemism to describe her sexual morals, as seen by the great and the good who put her there.

                                        I can give you two examples and I am sure there are more instances.

                                        1. Friern Barnet Asylum in North London had many female inmates who had been there since the 1920s,30s,40s and so on, simply because they became pregnant out of wedlock.

                                        2. Calderstones Asylum in Lancashire. This was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary some 20 years ago, which followed the lives of four elderly female inmates as they prepared to go out into the "normal" world. They had been there for over 40 years, three of them because they had had illegitimate babies, the fourth because she was a "moral degenerate". According to her story - which was not corrected by anyone in authority - she had entered the asylum in the late 1920s at the behest of a Vicar. She was his housemaid and he had "caught" her making sheepseyes at his youngest son.

                                        You are quite correct, no lunatic asylum bothered itself with the re-education of pregnant girls. That was not the point of the asylum, the point was to punish the wrong-doer and protect the rest of the community (respectable men and women) from these evil degenerate women, who were quite clearly insane, according to some man or other, with an axe to grind.

                                        OC

                                        Comment

                                        Working...
                                        X