Mental Health History Timeline
|
lunacy
|
History of the Conceptualizations of Mental
Illness by
Jessie in Japan begins in
"prehistoric times"
History of Mental Illness at the
University of Derby begins some 10,000 years ago with
trepanning - possibly to let evil spirits out, but this was
before written records.
A history of Mental Health, by
an unknown
nursing student (1992), begins in "primitive times".
The Society of Laingian Studies'
Timeline in the treatment of
Madness begins
in 3,100BC when "Menes, the founder of the 1st Dynasty writes
The Secret
Book of the Heart, describing 3 kinds of healers, the
physician, the priest
and the sorcerer".
Ed Brown's annotated cases at Brown Medical
School
Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus (whichever), in the
6th century BC,
Indian medicine
S N Kothare and Sanjay A Pai's chapter on
Evolution of Psychology and Psychiatry
discusses
Ayurveda medicine
which derives from the compendiums of
Sushruta Samhita and
Charaka
[External links to Wikipedia], which date back to about the
6th century BC
Larry Merkel's History of Psychiatry, available from
his
University of
Virginia
seminars as a
pdf
file begins with a discussion of pre-classical
(Egyptian,
Middle-Eastern, Judaic) influences on classical Greek and
Roman theory and
practice.
Drama Therapy and Psychodrama
History begins
with plays of Sophocles in 404BC
Socrates (in
Plato's The Republic)
recommends that
"the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they
chance to be
deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place,
as they
should be"
355BC
Aristotle
said those "born deaf become senseless and incapable of
reason."
(Disability Timeline)
Galen, Greek physician
AD 129 Galen born in Pergamum, in what is now Turkey.
He died about
AD 216. His massive writings on medicine included the
theory of the
humours or body fluids (like blood) whose preponderance had a
marked affect
on a person's health and personality. (See
melancholy).
External link:
Hospitals in Islamic History by Dr Hossam
Arafa
"The first known hospital in Islam was built in
Damascus in
706AD". Social Science
History.
See also origin of word hospital.
Bagdhad Hospital after 750.
Al-Fustat Hospital, Cairo, 872.
From the late 11th
century, Hunain ibn Ishaq's Arabic translations
of Galen,
commentaries by Arab physicians, and sometimes the original
Greek, were
translated into Latin. These became the basis of medical
education in the
European universities that started in the late
12th
century
1188
King Henry 2nd bought land next to Newgate (the gate looking
west from the
City of London towards Westminster) for a
prison.
Newgate prison occupied
this site until 1881. The Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court)
now stands
there.
1201 St Nicholas Hospital in Carlisle claims to have
been treating
lepers in 1201 - to have passed to the City as a (general)
hospital in 1477
- Some local historians link this forward to the opening of a
fever
hospital in 1809 and the Cumberland Infirmary in 1828.
Frank Walsh in Union journal
1970
1284
Al-
Mansuri Hospital, Cairo opened. At some time,
1290 (See 1324: 17
Edward 2 cap. 9)
De Praerogativa Regis, the Act
giving the
King (or, possibly, regulating and already established)
custody of the
lands of natural fools and wardship of the
property of
the insane, may have been drawn up between 1255 and
1290. This is part of
feudal law
relating to the idea that all land is by
gift from the highest lord (in England, the King). Until the
English
civil war and interregnum, all
land reverted to the king on the chief tenant's death, to be
reclaimed by
any lawful heir on payment of a fee. The King's Officers,
throughout the
country, who regulated these affairs were called "Escheators"
(See external link). The
Escheators also held
the inquisitions to determine if a land holder was a lunatic
or idiot.
1292
1310 Date given for a German madhouse at Elbing near
Danzig.
Ackernecht, E. H.
1959 (ch.3 p.21-22) mentions 14th century German
mad houses at
Elbing, Hamburg and Nurenberg.
1371 Date given for royal licence to Robert Denton,
chaplain, to
use his own house in the parish of Berking, near the Tower of
London, as a
hospital "for the poor priests
and for the men and women in the sad city who suddenly fall
into a frenzy
and lose their memory, who were to reside there until cured;
with an
oratory to the said hospital to the invocation of the Blessed
Virgin Mary".
See
Tuke, D.H. 1882 pages 53-55 (source Stowe, Survey
of London,
1603 "written in 1598") and
Catholic Encyclopedia - source
Sir William
Dugdale Monasticon Anglicanum, London, 1655-1673
[Tuke also takes from Stowe a story of a madhouse near Charing
Cross which
"a king" took
objection to and had its lunatics removed to Bethlem - thus
starting that
hospitals connection with insanity]
The religious priory of
St Mary of
Bethlem, in London, was
confiscated by King Edward 3rd in 1375, and used for lunatics
from 1377.
(Jones
1972
p.12).
In 1403/1404 it had just
six insane patients and three who were sane.
(Scull
1972
p.19).
This old Bedlam was a
small institution
(on a site south of
what is
now
Liverpool Street
Station),
even in the 17th century when it had about 30 patients. Its
showy
replacement, the
Moorfields
Bedlam,
opened in
1676.
The priory of St Mary of Bethlem was founded in 1247 as a
priory in
Bishopsgate Street, for the order of St. Mary of Bethlehem, by
Simon Fitz
Mary, an Alderman
and Sheriff of London. The
Catholic
Encyclopedia says it was a hospital (place of
refuge) from the
begining 'originally intended for the poor suffering from any
ailment and
for such as might have no other lodging, hence its name,
Bethlehem, in
Hebrew, the "house of bread."'
(on the Mind website) begins in
10,000 BC. She says "in
prehistoric times
there was, as far as historians can tell, no division between
medicine,
magic and religion."
Disability Social History Timeline
begins in
3,500 BC with an account of the
fitting of an
artificial limb the Rig-Veda (sacred poem of India written in
Sanskrit
between 3500 and 1800 B.C. It then jumps to
355 BC
begins with the
feigned madness of David who became king of the Jews
(9th century BC)
is the
earliest in
Michael Warren's
health in Britain chronology
begins in 1066
this had music
therapy for its mental patients.
Dave Sheppard's
Development of Mental Health Law and
Practice
begins in 1285 with a case that linked "the
instigation of
the devil"
and
being "frantic
and
mad"
"A lunatic who had burned a man's house was convicted by
the justices but released on their authority."
16.2.1312 at York: Pardon to Richard Sharpe of Malteby,
for the
death of Agnes his wife, as it appears by the record of John
de Insula and
the others justices of gaol delivery for York, that he was mad
when he
killed her. (Calendar of Patent Rolls
Reign of Edward
the
2nd p.431 5 Edward
II Part 2... Membrane 20 - From John Alan Longbottom)
1377
| Margery Kempe, who was born in Lynn, Norfolk, about 1373 and lived to 1438, dictated a book of her spiritual experiences (1436) which shows how she went "out of her mind" after childbirth, was bound in a storeroom to prevent her from self-harm, suspected of demonic possession, but escaped burning, had visions of angels and visions of men's sexual parts and was seen as both holy and heretic. Through hearing holy sermons and books, she "ever increased in contemplation and holy meditation, but learnt through divine visits to her during and after "cursed thoughts" and "pain" that "every good thought is the speech of God". (See Peterson, D. 1982) [External link to Margery Kempe pages on the Luminarium web] |
1403
Report of a Visitation which had enquired into the
deplorable state of
affairs at Bethlem Hospital (Michael Warren). There is a report of
a Royal
Commission, in 1405, as to the state of lunatics confined
there. (Catholic
Encyclopedia)
1464:
Examples of
people being granted custody of an idiot and his or her
property.
1494
Ship of
Fools.
Michel Foucault suggests that
the publication
of Brant's illustrated narrative poem marks a point in
European culture
where a dialogue between reason and unreason became central.
1495
Syphilis, possibly introduced
from the
new
world, broke
out
amongst troops in Italy and rapidly spread across Europe,
reaching England
and Holland in 1496. It reached India in 1498. In 1500 there
was an
epidemic of syphilis across Europe and in 1505 it reached
China.
The
connection between syphilis and general paralysis of the
insane was not
demonstrated until the 20th century.
| 1500- |
words
|
1518
1520
A small book by
Paracelsus,
written about 1520 and published 1567 was called (English
translation of
title) "Diseases which lead to a Loss of Reason". The
introduction makes it
clear that these are not caused by spirits, but are natural
diseases.
(Ackernecht 1968, pp 22-23)
Until the 1530s, Bethlem stood in open ground
1536
First Act of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Although the
religious
foundations were closed, any "hospital" (refuge for the
homeless poor)
attached might continue. (The hospital of St Bartholemews in
London, for
example, continued when the priory closed). Continued
existence would be
precarious, however, unless civic authorities sought to
preserve it.
1538
The City of London unsuccessfully petitioned the King to give
them five hospitals plus their endowments. The hospitals
included
Bethlem, St
Bartholomew and
St Thomas. They were needed to house:
27.12.1547 King Henry 8th signed a document giving
Bethlem
Hospital
and St Bartholomew to the City of London. The name "St
Bartholomew" being
changed to "the House of the Poor in West Smithfield".
13.1.1547
King Henry 8th signed a document giving the endowments of
Bethlem Hospital
and St Bartholomew to the City of London.
1557
From 1557, Bethlem was managed by the governors of the
Bridewell House of
Correction (established 1550). The governors were chosen by
the City of
London. Bethlem was controlled by the City of London until it
was
transferred to the National Health Service in
1948
In 1518 King Henry 8th, on the advice of his court
physician, founded
the Royal College of Physicians (London) to control who
practised as a
physician in London and so protect the public from quacks.
"the miserable people lying in the street,
offending every
clean person passing by the way with their filth and nasty
savours" [savour
here means smell]
1546
1547
1583 Philip Barrough (1560-1590) The method of
physic, containing
the causes, signs, and cures of inward diseases in man's body
from the head
to the foot.
1592 An account of a trial for conspiracy to kill the
King, written
by Richard Cosin, contains discussion and definitions of the
terms applying
to the various "degrees" of insanity. See furor, delirium and dementia
| The Elizabethan Poor Law |
|---|
|
1598
1598 Poor Law Act (39 Elizabeth chapter 3) Every parish was to appoint overseers of the poor to find work for the unemployed and set up parish-houses for poor people who could not support themselves. [See Blackstone on overseers] |
1601
1601 Poor Law Act (43 Elizabeth chapter 2) or Old Poor Law Act usually known as the Elizabethan Poor Law or Old Poor Law |
Mind's key dates in the history of mental health and community care
begins in 1601
1611 Authorised (King James) version of the Bible. The bible was a major source for ideas about virtually everything in the 17th century, and later. In her Notes of the history of mental health care (on the Mind website), Katherine Darton outlines some of its influences in her consideration of the Jewish tradition. (Scroll down from 2,000BC).
about 1615
Giles Earle His Booke, a manuscript collection of
lyrics in the
British Museum, contains the first known written version of
the English
Folk lyrics
"Tom o' Bedlam's Song" (see Bedlam
weblinks)
|
First edition of Robert Burton's The Anatomy of
Melancholy.
What it is,
with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics and several
cures of
it... Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically opened and
cut up. By
Democritus Junior published in Oxford. The
1628 edition
had a ten
picture engraving that was explained by a poem in the
1632 edition. The
verse for the engraving of the maniac is:
But see the Madman rage downright With furious looks, a ghastly sight, Naked in chains bound doth he lie, And roars amain, he knows not why. Observe him; for as in a glass, Thine angry potraiture it was. His picture keep still in thy presence; 'Twixt him and the there's no difference. |
| Origins of la Pitie-Salpetriere and le Bicetre |
|
|---|
|
External link
Histoire de la Pitie-Salpetriere
1612 In place of an old tennis court, Marie de Médicis created a beggars' hospice: l'hospice Notre Dame de la Pitié 6.6.1636 Purchase of land under Louis 13th for the Petit Arsenal or Salpêtriere to make gunpowder. Closed after fifteen years, Louis 14th offered it to the duchesse d'Aiguillon to set up a hospice for beggars with the help of Vincent de Paul. A pdf file at http://www.ifrns.chups.jussieu.fr/ifrns.pdf contains The History of the Neurosciences at La Pitié and La Salpêtrié in French and English. 1633 to 1642 Building the Hôpital Bicêtre in Paris The Bicêtre was originally a military hospital. It was incorporated into the Hôpital Général in 1656 and used successively as an orphanage, a lunatic asylum and a hospital. external link |
October 1636 Commenting on the physics of Galileo, Thomas Hobbes wrote "the motion is only in the medium and light and colour are but the effects of that motion in the brain". Hobbes was to apply the idea of studying motion in matter to the study of light meeting the eye and ideas in the mind. In Leviathan he laid the foundations for assocationist theories of thought.
30.1.1649: English king beheaded
Working with the
Bible, it was possible to
calculate that
something spectacular was likely to happen in the 1650s. For
example, it
could be calculated that the great flood that destroyed all
life not in the
Ark took place 1,656 years after the creation - So 1,656 years after the birth of Christ
could be
equally significant. (Usher's
chronology put the creation in 4004 and the flood
in 2349. 4004-
2349 = 1655). The
execution of a King was woven into
speculation that
Christ could be due to return to establish his kingdom.
October 1650
Rapturous quakers
1651
Winter 1651 George Fox's
vision of blood in the streets of Lichfield
1654
Petition respecting John Pateson at Ormskirk Quarter Sessions,
who had
fallen into a sullen, sad, melancholie and would not go
indoors or eat or
wash himself. [Described
in more detail]. The churchwardens and overseers
were ordered to
make an assessment and provide out of
poor rates for
his care
until
he recovered or died.
compare
America
|
Meric Causaubon's Treatise concerning enthusiasme, as it is an effect of nature, but is mistaken for either divine inspiration or diabolical possession.
1656
Alleged internment of
Rev. Mr George Trosse
(Account not published until 1714)
October 1656 James Nayler
(Quaker)
entered Bristol on a donkey as if he
was Jesus Christ. (see enthusiasm)
He was in prison until 1659. Conflict between Quakers
over performances like this was a stimulous to the creation of
a collective
discipline that,
over a century
later,
made
them the pioneers in the control of insanity.
The 5th Monarchy Men believed that 1656 could be the year
when Christ
would return to earth. The year after, and again in
1661, the 5th Monarchy Men
undertook an armed
uprising to bring about his kingdom.
|
|
Opening of Hôpital Général, Paris: hospital, poorhouse and factory |
|---|
| The hospital (as it was spelt in the 17th century) was the putting together of a number of buildings for the relief of the poor. These included La Salpétrière (for women) and Le Bicêtre, which later became the Paris asylums for the insane. | |
|
meaning of
hospital
Foucault: The Great Confinement |
external link (scroll down for
English
translation
external link |
1657
5th Monarchy rising headed by Thomas Venner.
1660: Restoration of English
Monarchy In 1661, the
Royal prerogative over idiots and lunatics
moved from the Court of King's Wards to the Lord
Chancellor.
Charles 2nd's Lord Chancellor was Edward Hyde, Earl of
Clarendon.
The papers of the
Clerk of the Custodies of Lunatics and Idiots
went back to the days of Lord Clarendon. (J. Lowry Whittle,
Registrar
of Lunatcs in
1882 - who inherited the papers)
From
November 1660
(arrested) to 1672, John Bunyan, a
Baptist
preacher,
was imprisoned
almost continuously in Bedford Gaol for preaching outside the
established
church. In prison he wrote Pilgrims Progress and his
religious
autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.
Grace Abounding
described religious
experiences
that sound like diseases mad doctors were soon to
identify.
1.1.1661 to 4.1.1661 Venner's Rising. 5th Monarchy rising suppressed and
Veneer and the
other leaders executed on 19.1.1661. A hundred 5th Monarchy
Men and some
4000
Quakers were imprisoned. "The first
official declaration of absolute
pacifism
was made by the Quakers in 1661, after a number had been
arrested after
Venner's unsuccesful rising". (Hill 1972, p.241)
May 1665: First case (St Giles, Cripplegate) of the London
Plague.
By the end of July, more than 1,000 Londoners were dying each week. During
August it reached many provincial towns. In London, it got worse in
September, but then lessened as the weather became cooler. London returned
to some degree of normality during the winter. Many provincial towns were
badly stricken in 1666. (external link)
[Solomon Eccles may, or may not, have run naked as a sign during
the plague]
Sunday 2.9.1666 for five days: Great Fire of London.
After the Great Fire, Robert Hooke was appointed city
surveyor and
designed the new
Bethlem
(Bethlehem Hospital) in Moorfields. This opened in
1676. It was replaced by the
St George's Fields
Bethlem in
1815. The Moorfield's Bethlem had 130 patients in 1704.
|
| At the door of the new Bedlam the visitor was confronted with sculptures commissioned from the Dutch artist Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630-1700). One (above) of mania or raving madness, the other of melancholy. Those who pass a theatre or a strip-joint today are tempted in by photographs of the performance. This drama had a hundred year run and its actors were involuntary exhibits. |
The new Bethlem was a place for display, set in gardens and modelled on the Tuileries, the palace of the French King. This is the Bethlem where the lunatics were displayed to visitors for a fee (until 1770). Londoner's on holiday could visit the zoo animals at the Tower of London and then stroll up to Moorfields to see the humans. Thomas Tryon complained in 1695 about the public being admitted on holy-days:
"It is a very undecent, inhuman thing to make... a show... by exposing them, and naked too perhaps of either sexes, to the idle curiosity of every vain boy, petulant wench, or drunken companion, going along from one apartment to the other, and crying out; this woman is in for love, that man for jealousy. He has over-studied himself, and the like."
|
In Salem, a Quakeress known for
signing with her nakedness,
is found to have a distempered mind |
|
1670
In England the earliest records of private madhouses on a
regular basis
are from 1670 onwards. [See Clerkenwell, below -
Hoxton House (1695) -
Irish's (1700)].
From the beginning, madhouses were
automatically
subject to the
common
law
of England. One could apply to the
courts for
redress against wrongful imprisonment in a madhouse as
anywhere else. When
inspection of madhouses was introduced
(in 1774), it
was mainly
to
assist
the courts.
1679
1690
In his
An Essay Concerning
Understanding,
John Locke said there is a
degree of
madness in
almost everyone. This is because emotions force us
to persist in
falsely or
unreasonably associating some ideas. Madness is the inability
to let reason
sort out ideas by relating them correctly to our experiences.
Locke's ideas set a pattern for 18th century English views of
reason and
unreason. Madness was seen as a persistent inability to
associate ideas
correctly.
1692
6.3.1682 John Moore, Bishop of Norwich, preaches before the
Queen a sermon
afterwards published as
Of Religious Melancholy
1695
Hoxton House became a private madhouse
1696
Bristol Poor Act established a Board of Guardians who
used a
building near St Peter's Church, Bristol as a workhouse for
100 boys.
The addition of "infants, the aged, infirm, and lunatics" (by
1700?)
changed its character and it became
St
Peter's Hospital. In the 18th century this had
lunatic wards. In
the 19th century (1832?) it became a lunatic asylum.
English asylums in the eighteenth century were small and they
were not run
by the state. The best known and the largest was Bedlam or Bethlem in the
city of
London. This had 130 patients in 1704. There was a growing
number of
private
madhouses -
Probably
about 40 in 1800. After 1774
private madhouses had to have a licence and it is from the
surviving
licence records that we can estimate how many there were.
Charitable
asylums were opened in the eighteenth century in eight English
towns:
Norwich (1713),
London (1751),
Manchester
(1766),
Newcastle
(1767),
York (1777),
Liverpool
(1792),
Leicester (1794)
and
Hereford (1797).
The ninth
opened in Exeter
in 1801.
Eighteenth Century
Psychiatry
Ackernecht (1968, p.) argues
that psychiatry
"reached the status of an independent science" in the
eighteenth century.
But not due to "developments in medicine but to the philosophy
of
enlightenment which pervaded the whole century".
Reasons were:
Belief in
"possession by evil spirits" came to be regarded as
"superstition".
Reason was the highest good for
the
philosophers, so they sympathised especially with
those who lost
their reason. He argues that:
1700
David Irish
in his madhouse
near Guildford, Surrey, claimed to cure by
good food and
comfort, and would care for those who were not curable for
life, if paid
Quarterly:
"Since the concept of
the immortal soul was of no importance in this philosophical
system, mental
disorders could be viewed as disorders of the mortal brain or
thinking
apparatus and as such could now at last be studied on a
scientific basis.
At the same time it became possible to give up a purely
somatic viewpoint
and to introduce
psychology deliberately into psychiatry.
Cartesian philosophy, no doubt, played a part in
this
development."
"allowing them good fires, meat, and drink, with good
attendance, and all
necessaries far beyond what is allowed at Bedlam, or
any other place
that he has yet heard of and cheaper, for he allows the
melancholy,
mad, and such whose consciences are oppressed with a
sense of sin,
good meat every day for dinner, and also wholesome diet for
breakfast and
supper, and good table-beer enough at any time."
Irish, D.
1700
pp 53-4, quoted
Hunter and Macalpine 1963 p.279)
| Norwich Bethel opened. The first known charitable madhouse in England (apart from the special case of Bethlem). It is also has the longest history in one place. Norwich was then England's second largest city. The Bethlem was established by an individual private bequest. It had 28 patients in 1753. The Norwich Incorporation of the Poor had been established by Act of Parliament in 1712. |
1714
The
1714 Vagrancy Act is
thought to
have
been the first English statute to provide specifically for the
detention of
lunatics, but Blackstone
argues that it was based
on common law. [See also my introduction to Mental Health and Civil
Liberties and
Valerie Argent's discussion of the law on confinement]
| Lunatic Wards to Guys Hospital opened |
1724
Trial of Arnold for the murder of Lord Onslow established the
wild beast
test
1725
Richard Blackmore's
Treatise of the Spleen and
Vapours
1728
James
Monro
was resident physician at
Bethlem
Hospital
from 1728 to
1752
Wednesday 31.5.1738:
Alexander Cruden escaped from
Wright's
madhouse,
Bethnal Green,
and successfully applied to the Lord Mayor to prevent his
recapture. He
published an account in 1739
(The London-Citizen Exceedingly
Injured)
"as plainly showing the absolute necessity of regulating
Private Madhouses
in a more effectual manner than at present"
May 1738 Conversion of Charles and John Wesley. See
Evangelical
Revival - Methodist
Hymns -
Enthusiasm
13.12.174?
Susannah Wesley wrote to her son John (founder of
the
Methodists) about a man with "more need of a spiritual, than
bodily
physician" who was sent to
a Chelsea madhouse by "that wretched
fellow Monroe",
the physician to Bedlam. The letter is reproduced in
Hunter and Macalpine 1963 p.423
with the
date
13.12.1746, but G.E. Harrison in "Son to Susanna" (p.119) says
she was
buried in Bunhill Fields on 1.8.1742.
1744
Construction of
naval hospitals at Gosport (Haslar), Plymouth and
Chatham
authorised. [Plymouth was built 1758-1762, Chatham, not until 1827-1828]
The Haslar hospital was built between 1745 and 1761.
"The hospital catered for a full range of illnesses and
included wards for medical, surgical,
fever,
flux,
smallpox, consumptive,
scorbutic and recovery as well as lunatics. In the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, Haslar was one of the most important naval hospitals in the
country. It became the
main lunatic asylum for the navy as well as providing for
infectious diseases between 1898-1902"
(PAPHE external link) - The navy placed
lunatic patients in
Hoxton House, at least
until 1818, but also had insane patients
at Haslar
8.8.1746 George 2nd granted a Royal Charter to St
Patrick's
Hospital,
Dublin, Ireland, founded from the legacy of
Jonathan
Swift. Swift
had been
found of unsound mind by a Commission of Lunacy in 1742.
"St Patrick's was built by architect George Semple following Dean Swift's detailed and painstaking instructions. It is now the oldest, purpose built psychiatric hospital continuously functioning on its original site in these islands and one of the oldest in the world." (external link) |
1749
David
Hartley's
Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his
expectations linked the
association of
ideas
theory of human mind to the nervous system. Sensations set up
vibrations
in our nerves which move rather like sound waves through air.
Thought is
the association of these vibrations (ideas) when they meet.
Hartley's
theory, although rarely accepted without critical
modification, was
influential in philosophy, in the scientific study of mind,
and in
medicine. Some connection of thought to the body was necessary
(at this
time) for it to be
considered a medical issue, and considering the nerves as
conductors along
which thought waves run provided a possible connection of mind
and body.
At the turn of the
nineteenth/twentieth
century,
theories such as those of
Sigmund
Freud
provided a means for medicine to include psychological
"functional"
disorders as well as "organic" ones.
1750
The Gentleman's Magazine reported that a Dr Newton
"keeper and
physician to
a private
madhouse, near
Islington turnpike" had died. About this time,
William Battie
acquired premises in Islington Road for private patients and
in 1754 took
over Newton's madhouse in Wood's Close.
(Hunter, R.A. and Macalpine, I.
1963 pp 200-201 and 402-403). (See below and
1776)
| Saint Luke's Hospital for Lunatics opened in Upper Moorfields, opposite [??] (see sketch map) Bethlem Hospital on the north side of what is today Finsbury Square. William Battie was its physician to 1764. He also acquired premises for private patients. Saint Luke's had 57 patients in 1753. It moved to Old Street in 1786 |
1752
John Monro was
physician at
Bethlem
Hospital from 1752. He also opened a private asylum
at
Brooke
House
Hackney in 1759 and took over the house at Clerkenwell
in
1776
Sometime in the mid 1750s: a magistrate secured the release of
Mrs Gold's
daughter
from Hoxton House (madhouse), where she had been confined by
her husband.
1754
In December 1754, The Royal College of Physicians
declined a
suggestion
that they should be an authority for regulating madhouses in
London.
1755
"Pourquoi l'homme seul est-il sujet
à
devenir imbécile?"
Rousseau
asked in his
discourse on the origin of inequality.
Cole translates
imbécile
as
dotard:
"Why is man alone liable to grow into a
dotard? Is it not that he returns to his primitive state; and
that, while
the brute, which has acquired nothing and has therefore
nothing to lose,
still retains the force of instinct, man, who loses, by age or
accident,
all that his perfectibility had enabled him to gain,
falls by this
means lower than the brutes themselves?"
[See
degeneration theory]
| Madhouses for the Rich: When the very rich were lunatic or idiot, their relatives could afford to confine them as single lunatics - as the British Royal Family did in 1788, 1801, 1811 and 1916. One motive for this was secrecy. Madhouses for two or more inmates were more vulnerable to the risk of exposure, because more people were involved, and because the registration of inmates was required from 1774, but they might provide more humane custody at a lower price. Physicians and others who arranged single confinement, would also refer people to private madhouses, in which they would have some financial stake. Some of these catered especially for the rich. Irish's in Guildford, already advertised good conditions in 1700 . (We can trace a continuous line from Irish to Stilwell's in Hayes in the mid-19th century). Whitmore became a madhouse in 1757. Thomas Warburton's association with Willis, building up its aristocratic clientele, probably dates from the 1790s, before the second episode of the King's madness. Rev Willis became Dr Willis in 1759 - which gives some indication of the start of his business. John Monro opened Brooke House in 1759. Ticehurst may have opened in 1763, Cleve Hill (later Brislington) in 1794. Sidney House (later Manor House) admitted its first patient on 1.8.1829. An article by Harriet Martineau in 1834 argued that rich lunatics would be better cared for in asylums than singly. The case for the "domestic" (single) treatment of some patients was argued by Dr Edward James Seymour (1831/1832). Those who managed asylums for the rich usually also provided single houses as an option. |
1761
1762
5.9.1762 to 4.10.1762:
Mrs
Hawley
confined in
a Chelsea madhouse. Her release was secured by a
writ of habeas
corpus.
begins
by discussing attitudes before and
after
the industrial revolution
| The 1774 Madhouse Act was based on the recommendation of the 1763 Select Committee of the House of Commons on Madhouses that |
|
"the present state of the private madhouses in this kingdom, requires the interposition of the legislature."
A large part of their report was an examination of the issues raised by the (eventually successful) attempts of a Mr La Fortune to secure the release of a Mrs Hawley (confined in a Chelsea madhouse 5.9.1762 to 4.10.1762) by writ of habeas corpus. They were specifically concerned with the extent to which madhouses were used to confine people who were not lunatics.
1764
William Battie retired as visiting physician to St Lukes,
becoming, in the
same year,
President of the Royal College of Physicians (for
just one
year).
1765
1765 to 1769
William
Blackstone's
Commentaries on the
Laws of
England
published by the Oxford University Press.
| Manchester Lunatic Asylum opened |
| Newcastle Lunatic Asylum opened as a Subscription Hospital for patients from Newcastle, Northumberland and Durham. It became a licensed house in which Newcastle Corporation maintained a financial interest. |
September 1767: English Prime Minister described as "a lunatic brandishing a crutch" by Junius, the anonymous author of letters to the Public Advertiser. William Pitt (the elder), Lord Chatham, was physically incapacitated by gout and, from about March 1767, was in a state of mental withdrawal described by Daniel Hack Tuke (p.106) as a "dismal and complete eclipse" for "upwards of a year" of his "mental powers". There was no morbid illusion of the fancy, but there was utter prostration of the intellect". [As the first Junius letter was published January 1769, and the last in January 1772, I assume the reference is to a letter that made public Chatham's state in September 1767.]
|
|
The
1774 Madhouses Act
established a
commission of the Royal College of Physicians |
|
Each September, from 1774 to 1827, Royal
College of Physicians appointed five of its Fellows
commissioners for the year. They met in October to grant
licences. They
could not refuse or revoke a licence.
(see law)
At least once in the year they visited each madhouse,
making a minute
of its condition. Any keeper refusing admission forfeited his
licence.
(see law)
A Secretary to the Commissioners was to be sent a notice
of the
admission of
every lunatic who was not a pauper to any licensed house in
England and
Wales. He kept registers of these in which he also entered
commissioners'
visiting minutes and those sent to him by the clerks of the
county visitors
(County Clerks).
(see law)
The RCP President, in the name of the Treasurer was to
prosecute
anyone
(in the London
area)
who kept an unlicensed house, admitted any
patients without a medical certificate or failed to notify the
Secretary of
the admission of a non-pauper.
(see law)
The commission could not release a patient improperly
confined. This
was the traditional role of the High Courts at Westminster,
for whose
benefit the registers were principally kept. The Westminster
courts could
also order special visits and reports, and examine those
engaged in the
execution of the Act.
(see law)
Private individuals could apply to the commission to
find out if someone was registered as a patient and, if so,
where he or she
was detained.
(see law)
The commission was financed entirely from fees charged for
licenses, from which the Treasurer paid every commissioner one
guinea for
each house visited (irrespective of the time taken) and the
Secretary an
annual salary.
(see law)
Outside London, houses were to be licensed and visited by the
Justices of
the Peace.
(see law)
Medical cartificates were required for the detention of a
person as a
lunatic.
(See law)
| 1776 The Olney Hymns published. Written by John Newton and William Cowper. Cowper was deeply melancholic and had periods of insanity. In his best known hymn, he pleads for "a closer walk with God, a calm and heavenly frame". But he has lost it: "What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void, The world can never fill". Cowper's life and poetry were influential in suggesting associations between mental distress and creativity. For me his most beautiful poem is one he wrote in the autumn of 1793 To Mary (Mrs Unwin) who cared for him for many years and who, being herself reduced to dependency, Cowper cared for in turn. (See Ashley's 1845 assessment and Rossetti's 1870s assessment) ... and visit the Cowper and Newton Museum |
William Battie died in 1776, and the Clerkenwell madhouse was taken over by John Monro. His son, Thomas, relinquished it in 1803, when it became a boarding school. (Hunter, R.A. and Macalpine, I. 1963 pp 200-201). The site was used in the 1890s to build the Northampton Institute (external link) (Now part of City University).
| York Asylum opened |
lunatic sent to madhouse for matricide
1780
"In the sultry, early June days of June 1780, the Lord George
Gordon No-
Popery Riots rolled through town". On Tuesday 6.6.1780,
William Blake was
caught up in the riot, and witnessed the sack of Newgate
prison. On
12.6.1780 William Cowper wrote to John Newton congratulating
him "upon the
wisdom that witheld you from entering yourself a member of"
[George
Gordon's] "the Protestant Association". When Charles Dickens made a novel of the riots,
his leading
character combined lunacy and weak-mindedness.
1782
The Royal College of Physicians was
advised by the
Attorney
General that its funds were at risk if it
prosecuted
someone for running a madhouse without a licence.
1784
William Walker, a pauper who murdered his
wife
1786
Margaret Nicholson
attacked the
king with a knife
Saint
Luke's Hospital
moved from
Moorfields
to Old Street. Thomas and Mrs Dunston were Master and Matron.
The visiting
physician was Samuel Foart Simmons. St Luke's had 298 patients
in 1815. On
an 1832 London map it stretches along Old Street from Bath
Street to
City Road. Simmons resigned as physician in 1811 and was
succeeded by
Alexander Robert Sutherland,
also licensee of
two
private houses:
Blacklands House, Chelsea. and
Fisher House, Islington.
John Warburton, another private
asylum owner,
was also physician from 1829 and Sutherland was succeed by his
son
AlexanderJohn Sutherland from
1841 to 1860.
Henry
Monro, also a private asylum owner,
was a physician from 1855 to 1882. In
1881 the address was
St Lukes
Hospital For Lunatics, Old St, City Road, London, and the
Resident
Medical Superintendent was George Mickley
1787
William Perfect M.D., proprietor of
West Malling asylum, published
Select Cases in
the Different Species of Insanity, Lunacy or Madness, with the
modes of
practice as adopted in the treatment of each.
Mathew Clay, insane burglar, discharged to
the care of
his father
1788
Wedneday 5.11.1788 Newspaper article revealed that
George 3rd, who
was ill, had been
"delirius". That
evening, the King's
personal physician,
Sir
George Baker, found him "under an entire alienation
of mind".
Other physicians called in to advise included: William
Heberden,
Richard Warren
,
Henry Revell
Reynolds and
Lucas
Pepys.
Most of the doctors had experience in the Royal College of
Physicians'
Commission for
Visiting Madhouses, but they were not specialists
in mental
disorder. At the end of November, Dr Anthony Addington, a
society doctor
who had treated William Pitt the elder's disorder and had once
run a
private madhouse, was called in to advise.
The King was removed from Windsor to Kew, for a more
therapeutic
confinement and to be closer to London doctors, and was there
(Friday
5.12.1788) introduced to Rev. Dr Francis Willis, the owner
of
a
private
madhouse
in Lincolnshire, who took control of the King's
treatment.
10.12.1788: The House of Commons published a Committee
report
containing
the evidence of Royal Physicians on the state of the King's
mind.
1789
23.4.1789 Services of thanksgiving throughout the
country to
celebrate the recovery of King George 3rd from
insanity.
"Britons Rejoice.
Your King's Restored"
|
March 1790: Decree that within six weeks "all persons detained in fortresses, religious houses, houses of correction, police houses, or other prisons, whatsoever...so long as they are not convicted, or under arrest, or not charged with major crimes, or confined by reason of madness, will be set at liberty". The mad were to be examined and either set at liberty or "cared for in hospitals indicated for that purpose". In Paris: arrangements were made for insane men to be sent to the Bicêtre and insane women to the Salpétrière (200 insane women moved there in 1792). After an initial period of confusion, the two institutions became reserved for the insane.
|
|
|
|
Philippe Pinel was appointed physician superintendent of the Bicêtre in 1793. He decided to unchain the lunatics. He was put in charge of the Salpêtriere in 1795 |
1790
John Frith tried for
treason
(penalty hanging, drawing and
quartering) for throwing a stone at the King's coach. He was
found
unfit to plead.
|
1791
Jeremy Bentham published Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in which Persons of Any Description Are to Be Kept Under Inspection. |
|
| Although Bentham's star plan was not much used, the principle of the "all seeing eye" of the superintendent was. It was the basic principle, for example, of John Conolly's The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums in 1847 - See also asylum forms - Bevans 1815 | |
| Liverpool Lunatic Asylum opened |
Liverpool Royal Lunatic Hospital, which was associated with the Royal Infirmary and Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, associated with its Royal Infirmary, York Lunatic Hospital, Bootham; St Peter's Hospital, Bristol; Fonthill-Gifford, Hindon, Wilts; Droitwich Asylum, Belle Grove House, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Bethel Hospital Norwich
In London or the surrounding counties: Bethlem Hospital, St Luke's, The Lunatic Ward of Guy's Hospital. Plus private houses: Brooke House, Clapton (Dr Monro's); Hoxton Asylum. To these we should add Bethnal Green, Whitmore House, Holly House (just opened). Possibly Fisher House. There would have been other private houses, many very small (two or three lunatics). The list of London houses licensed in 1815 was 25.
Surrounding counties: Lea Pale House, Stoke, near Guildford; Ticehurst, Sussex.
Claims for poor relief increased
as a result of the war (see
Speenhamland and
St
Marylebone). The authorities sought to reduce
social unrest by
responding generously to the claims of the dependent poor and
harshly to
any form of insurrection.
| Leicester Lunatic Asylum opened |
Susanah Millicent steals a petticoat
1795
Miss Broadric, who murdered her
lover
1796
June 1796
The
Retreat, a hospital for insane
Quakers
and those they
recommended, opened by the Religious Society of Friends in
York. The
Society of Friends had developed a powerful collective
discipline of its
members. At the Retreat, this was adapted to the control of
insanity,
replacing many physical restraints with moral restraints. In
the 1830s, the
Tuke family, who founded the Retreat, went on to reform the
internal
discipline of the Society of Friends.
[
External link to Retreat
website]
words
|
September 1796
Mary Lamb murdered her mother in a fit of insanity. She was confined in Fisher House, Islington for a period and lived in the care of her brother for the rest of her life, sometimes being cared for in a licensed house or a single house. |
| Hereford Lunatic Asylum opened as an offshoot of Hereford General Infirmary (founded 1776). Founded as a public subscription hospital, it became a licensed house in 1802. It was the centre of Parliamentary enquiry in 1839 and closed in 1853. Hereford General Infirmary became Hereford General Hospital. |
1798
|
Nineteenth Century Asylums
The nineteenth century opened dramatically with a pistol shot, and the gun fingers of Hadfield and McNaughton were to trigger the opening of many asylums. The state entered the field in a big way. By the end of the century there were 74,000 patients in public asylums. The early period of state asylums was custodial, out of it developed a period of therapeutic optimism that reached its height in the 1840s, and declined into therapeutic pessimism in the second half of the nineteenth century. 1800 15.5.1800 The ball of a pistol fired at George 3rd by James Hadfield just missed by a foot. Hadfield was detained as a criminal lunatic. 28.7.1800 The 1800 Criminal Lunatics Act aimed at the safe custody of criminal lunatics, especially any who threatened the king. The consequent long term detention of lunatics in county gaols triggered the 1808 County Asylums Act. [[Fear of lunatics, heightened by the publicity about Hadfield and the Act, may be reflected in the life of Mary Lamb] |
| St Thomas's Hospital, Exeter, Devon opened. This was the last of the series of asylums constructed in the eighteenth century by voluntary subscription, as the 1808 County Asylums Act provided the opportunity to combine money raised by rates with subscriptions. |
February to June 1801 The second crisis over King George 3rd's sanity. The Willis family held the king captive with the assistance of keepers from Thomas Warburton's aristocratic Hoxton madhouse business.
Referring to about 1806,
John Haslam said that naval and army lunatics were "pouring
into" Bethlem as a result of the war. In 1808 the Navy's lack of
provision for clothes at
Hoxton House meant (some of?) its lunatics wore only a piece of
blanket.
1806
January 1806 The short lived Ministry of All Talents (1806-1807)
shifted the
political landscape enough to allow in lunacy legislation in
1808. After
that, however, changes were blocked by the Lords until
1828.
1807
Before renewing the licence for
Great Foster
House,
Egham, Surrey County magistrates required a pledge
from Richard
Browne, surgeon
that he would remove chains used to chain disturbed patients
to the floor
in the bedrooms and other rooms when keepers were absent. They
suggested
more attendants and "less violent means". (see
law)
External link on the threat of
invasion -
archive.
Work began on Fort Pitt, between Chatham and Rochester, in
1805 and
on Fort Clarence in 1808
(external link). Which, in
retrospect,
seems rather
late - Coastal defence of Britain seemed unnecessary after
1812.
After the war,
Clarence, and then Pitt, successively became
military
lunatic asylums.
|
23.6.1808
The
1808 County Asylums Act
was
the first
Act
permitting counties to levy a rate to build asylums. It was
promoted by
Charles Watkins Williams Wynn.
Its main
purpose was to remove lunatics from gaols and workhouses to
buildings where
they would be easier to manage. I found nothing in the
preparation of the
Bill referring to asylums as places for cure.
5.10.1808: Order of Bedfordshire Justices that a notice be placed in the Northamptonshire Mercury and County Press of their intention to provide a lunatic asylum for the County. (Quarter Session Rolls, Bedfordshire and Luton Archives) Nottingham (already planned) opened 1811, Bedford in 1812, Norfolk in 1814, Lancaster in 1816, Stafford and Wakefield in 1818, Lincoln and Cornwall in 1820, Gloucester in 1823. See also 1827. |
1810
1811
June 1811 The Royal College of Physicians considered
that the
1774 Madhouse
Act
needed
revising, but appears to
have been deterred by the expense of private
legislation. The
cause was picked up by George Rose in
1813
See Clapham (London)
example
1828
|
The General Lunatic Asylum for the Town and
County of
Nottingham, at Sneinton, opened
"It was the first institution that came under the Asylum Act of 1808 and Sneinton was notable in being the first public mental hospital in the country to be created from monies raised by rates. The original Sneinton asylum opened for 60 patients... and it is still possible to see part of the original wall near Sneinton Market" Dave Ogden |
5.12.1811 George, Prince of Wales, became Regent, after the final descent of George 3rd into insanity. For the rest of his life (he died 29.1.1820) George 3rd remained in confinement at Windsor under the control of Dr Robert Darling Willis. The King's own physicians (including Henry Halford) were unable to see him without the permission of Dr Willis. The Prince Regent became the patron of the planned Cornwall County Lunatic Asylum.
|
"I heard the unanimous blessings... bestowed by Englishmen upon a murderer... the act was unjustifiable... but, the people did not rejoice because a murder had been committed... but because his act...had ridded them of one whom they looked upon as the leader amongst those whom they thought totally bent on the destruction of their liberties"
Much more substantial funds went to the support of the Perceval family. Spencer Perceval junior, the eldest son of the assassinated Prime Minister, became an MP and an honorary lunacy commissioner. His religious enthusiasm led to a description of him as having "gone mad" in the House of Commons in March 1832. John Thomas Perceval, a younger son, was confined as a lunatic in 1831 and helped to found the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society in 1845.
| June? 1812 Bedfordshire County Asylum opened. The intention to provide was announced in 1808. The first county asylum for paupers only. Its first superintendent (to 1818) was a house painter with experience of caring for a lunatic. The House Surgeon at the Bedford Infirmary attended to the occasional medical needs of asylum patients. From June 1823 this was a Mr Harris. James Harris was licensed to ope |