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Anyone know about Lunatic Asylums?

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  • Anyone know about Lunatic Asylums?

    ... and willing to admit it?

    Were deaths in asylums registered by the asylum, or by the next of kin?

    I'm trying to find the death of a man in an asylum, but the only one close was registered where he lived (and where his wife was still living).

    I'm assuming that if he was a lunatic in 1891, he wouldn't have recovered and gone home by 1893.

    Many thanks.

  • #2
    My lunatics didn't always have long stays and seem to pop in and out of the asylum. I have 4 generations on one branch.

    I have my mental health, I have my mental health, I have my mental health
    Click here to order your BMD certificates for England and Wales for only £9.25 General Register Office

    Do you have camera? Click here to see if you can help Places of Worship

    Jacob Sudders born in Prussia c.1775 married Alice Pidgeon in 1800 in Gorelston. Do you know where Jacob was born?

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    • #3
      One death was registered by his wife the other by someone at the asylum.
      Click here to order your BMD certificates for England and Wales for only £9.25 General Register Office

      Do you have camera? Click here to see if you can help Places of Worship

      Jacob Sudders born in Prussia c.1775 married Alice Pidgeon in 1800 in Gorelston. Do you know where Jacob was born?

      Comment


      • #4
        Really ................????
        I hadn't considered that.
        I thought once you were labelled "lunatic" - that was it, and he was pushing 70.
        Having said that, the previous census, he was a very unlunatic railway plate layer with a wife and family.

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        • #5
          Hi Bev

          The deaths were registered by someone in the asylum, the one I have is anyway.

          It reads "Signature, description & residence of informant" then "The acting chief Resident Officer" followed by the asylum name.

          Some asylums had their own burial site within the grounds too.


          Joanie

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          • #6
            Hi Bev and Kev,
            I don't know a great deal but can pass on my experience of the system in Scotland.
            My relative had her death registered by the hospital. In fact another, more distant branch, had two relatives who died in asylums and they were registered by the hospital.
            As a point of interest - I managed to get a copy of my relatives asylum notes including the admission forms and the daily ward reports. There is a 100 year closure but I got the notes from 1892, when she was admitted, up until 1907. This relative died in 1919 in the asylum so I will be able to get all her records by 2019. The records were held by a university.
            This was in Scotland so it may not be the same in all areas. It may be useful to try and find out if or where the archives are held and if they are available.
            Sorry but i don't know much more.

            Good luck.

            herky
            herky
            Researching - Trimmer (Farringdon), Noble & Taylor (Ross and Cromarty), Norris (Glasgow), McGilvray (Glasgow and Australia), Leck & Efford (Glasgow), Ferrett (Hampshire), Jenkins & Williams (Aberystwyth), Morton (Motherwell and Tipton), Barrowman (Glasgow), Lilley (Bromsgrove and Glasgow), Cresswell (England and Lanarkshire). Simpson, Morrow and Norris in Ireland. Thomas Price b c 1844 Scotland.

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            • #7
              Thanks everyone, I've had a google and I think I can get hold of admissions records. Discovered that this place was private - cost 10s a week when it opened in 1815 (I'm stunned!! That was a fortune!)

              I still can't find his death though - unless he died at home - or lived in the asylum until he was past 90!

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              • #8
                I was just looking here at my local one (to see if it had a place of Worship)then came back and saw your post

                County Asylums

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                • #9
                  Hi again,
                  The strange thing is I couldn't find my relative's death either until I wrote to the archives. She was registered as 10 years older than she actually was. I had done a search with a wide margin of age on SP but didn't expect her to be 10 years out.

                  Could funds have dried up for your relative and he have been transferred to another institution or even the poor house? - just a thought.

                  herky
                  herky
                  Researching - Trimmer (Farringdon), Noble & Taylor (Ross and Cromarty), Norris (Glasgow), McGilvray (Glasgow and Australia), Leck & Efford (Glasgow), Ferrett (Hampshire), Jenkins & Williams (Aberystwyth), Morton (Motherwell and Tipton), Barrowman (Glasgow), Lilley (Bromsgrove and Glasgow), Cresswell (England and Lanarkshire). Simpson, Morrow and Norris in Ireland. Thomas Price b c 1844 Scotland.

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                  • #10
                    Also for some odd reason one of mine is registered in the indexes a year after the event and the burial I know that there was an inquest so not sure if this was the delay?
                    Click here to order your BMD certificates for England and Wales for only £9.25 General Register Office

                    Do you have camera? Click here to see if you can help Places of Worship

                    Jacob Sudders born in Prussia c.1775 married Alice Pidgeon in 1800 in Gorelston. Do you know where Jacob was born?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      A bit off topic, but I was intrigued to find a 12 year old identified as an idiot, and again on the next census. By the following census though, when he is 32, he is a greengrocer!

                      It is definitely the same man living with his parents. Had everyone decided he was no longer an idiot or what?

                      I agree with Pippa, people could be in and out of the asylums. Mental illness was very poorly understood, and someone with an episodic type of illness might appear to have made a complete recovery and be discharged, only to return at the next outbreak. Not so likely for a female, who had to have someone (a male of course) to ask for her release.

                      OC

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                      • #12
                        I imagine it depends on circumstances. If relatives were living nearby they'd be contacted and would do all the sorting out, including registration. Or if the lunatic was ill, a relative might travel to be with him/her when they died.

                        I guess it just depends, you can't really generalise.

                        I know when my gt uncle was in Claybury Hospital and was ill, he was transferred to a non-lunatic hospital nearer his sister. I haven't got his death cert but I imagine she registered his death. I have a letter she wrote thanking her nephews (including my Dad) for the wreath they sent.

                        Oh and a salutary point about the duration of lunacy
                        Jacob Isenschmidt, father of my gt grandfather's 2nd wife, was once suspected of being Jack the Ripper. He had been wandering about the streets threatening violence. He had been sent to an asylum suffering from sunstroke and was released as "cured" 10 weeks later. After the arrest on suspicion of being JTR, he was readmitted to an asylum and eventually ended his days at Colney Hatch.
                        ~ with love from Little Nell~
                        Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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                        • #13
                          Elaine in Spain, Little Nell & Lyn A all helped me trace one of my great uncles recently. They found him in 1901 in the London County Lunatic Asylum, later known as Cane Hill. He was there for over 40 years dying in his 70's. He had a stroke at 7 years old which left him suffering from eccentricity & mental weakness. The sad thing is the hospital had lost track of his family & they dealt with the registration of death & burial. Croydon Local Studies Team were brilliant with providing info right down ton the GRO ref so I could get the death cert. Geraldine

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                          • #14
                            Thanks all, very interesting!!!

                            I had assumed, with my chap, that he probably had alzheimers, considering his age, but I now can see it is possible that he was in and our of the asylum for a while. Hopefully, I can get the records and find out.

                            Daft I know, but I was quite upset about this one! He was the only one of his family who didn't Agri Lab, and who left the village to head for the Smoke. Obviously it worked, he had a couple of servants at one point! I felt very proud of him - but look how he ended up! *tuts and dabs eyes*

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Bev

                              I hope you can get some records and find out a bit about how your chap ended up in the asylum. I have found a couple of elderly distant aunt/cousins in my Norfolk family, who were in the asylum. They were unmarried and I wondered if this was just a way of the family fobbing off responsibility for their upkeep, or whether there was something genetic. You know what they say about "normal for Norfolk"!

                              What was considered eccentric in some might be regarded as insane by others and we look on mental illness quite differently now from the way they were seen previously.
                              ~ with love from Little Nell~
                              Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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                              • #16
                                I have a death in the North Riding Asylum in Clifton (Yorks) and the death was registered by a member of staff at the Asylum and then family were notified by the asylum.

                                In my ancestor's records (who died 1892) it has listed who to notify in event of death.

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                                • #17
                                  I have a grand total of 6 lunatics so far, on both sides of the family: 3 in England and 3 in Australia.

                                  I only have a death cert for one of the English ones so far, and the informant was a person I've never heard of, "causing the body to be buried". She died in the City Lunatic Asylum, so I expect he was a member of staff.

                                  Two of the 6 were probably Alzheimer's cases, one was in hospital for short periods then died in childbirth, but the other three were admitted to the asylum in their 20s or 30s and never went home again.

                                  If the asylum records have survived, the local Record Office will have them. Leicester Record Office were really helpful with mine; as well as producing photocopies they allowed me to look at the original registers, which contained photographs of the patients.

                                  Comment


                                  • #18
                                    From somewhere I got

                                    From summary of details of Norfolk Lunatic Asylum:
                                    Dunt Patience 49 Cantley 25/03/1834
                                    Stupor
                                    Readmission; 'labouring under mental derangement for 25 years'

                                    Patience was my 3rd gt grand aunt. Keziah Bridget Dunt, who was Patience's great-niece, also spent time in this asylum.
                                    ~ with love from Little Nell~
                                    Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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                                    • #19
                                      The husband of one of my lunatics died at his daughter's home of "brain disease and paralysis". No idea what that would have been - presumably either syphilis or a brain tumour. What an unfortunate family, though. His wife was in the asylum for 2 years, and his granddaughter for 30 years.

                                      And the daughter whose home he died at married a man called Batty

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                                      • #20
                                        I have 2 who died in an asylum, but deaths were registered by the asylum.
                                        One had been there for a few years and the other a few weeks. in both cases the bodies were released back to the families for burial
                                        Vikki -
                                        Researching Titchmarsh and Tushingham

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