Abstract
This article explores the responses of the Poor Law authorities, asylum superintendents and Lunacy Commissioners to the huge influx of Irish patients into the Lancashire public asylum system, a system facing intense pressure in terms of numbers and costs, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In particular, it examines the ways in which patients were passed, bartered and exchanged between two sets of institution—workhouses and asylums. In the mid-nineteenth century removal to asylums was advocated for all cases of mental disorder by asylum medical superintendents and the Lunacy Commissioners; by its end, asylum doctors were resisting the attempts of Poor Law officials to ‘dump’ increasing numbers of chronic cases into their wards. The article situates the Irish patient at the centre of tussles between those with a stake in lunacy provision as a group recognised as numerous, disruptive and isolated.
Highlights
By the late nineteenth century, the pressure of admissions on the Lancashire asylums was immense; the annexes at Rainhill and Prestwich and the new asylum at Whittingham rapidly filled with patients, often chronic, long-stay pauper lunatics many of whom were transferred from workhouses
Writing in the mid-1880s, the Commissioners in Lunacy reflected on the difficulties workhouse patients presented the asylum system; on the one hand, they argued, it was ‘undesirable’ to have asylum beds occupied by chronic, incurable cases while new cases could not be admitted; on the other hand, they insisted that dangerous and recent cases should not be retained in workhouses in the expectation that they would quickly recover
In spite of embarking on a massive asylumbuilding programme, nationally and in Lancashire, the asylum system was unable to withstand the pressures of admissions—Irish and non-Irish—in the late nineteenth century and medical superintendents and the Commissioners were forced to relinquish some control over pauper lunacy to the Poor Law and workhouses
Summary
Throughout the nineteenth century, the Lancashire Poor Law Unions contributed huge sums for the support of pauper lunatics—Irish and non-Irish—in asylums and workhouses. The Whittingham Committee held up Salford Hundred workhouse as an example of a union that had adopted ‘an enlightened policy’ by improving workhouse facilities for pauper lunatics and commended the Guardians at Bolton, Oldham, Manchester and Chorlton for introducing a similar policy They claimed that as a result Prestwich Asylum ‘was mainly filled with patients of the violent, or, at any rate, of the early stage of insanity’ and not with chronic cases all of whom had been transferred to workhouses.. Dangerousness to others and frightening physicality was reported in the admissions certificates and case books amongst Irish patients: ‘wild and furious’, ‘strikes anyone in his way’, ‘raging violently’, ‘threatens each person in charge of him’.111 This perception of the Irish as more disruptive, violent and in need of additional management and resources among asylum medical superintendents may have mitigated against the identification of them as ‘harmless’, ‘quiet’ and suitable for workhouse accommodation Dangerousness to others and frightening physicality was reported in the admissions certificates and case books amongst Irish patients: ‘wild and furious’, ‘strikes anyone in his way’, ‘raging violently’, ‘threatens each person in charge of him’.111 This perception of the Irish as more disruptive, violent and in need of additional management and resources among asylum medical superintendents may have mitigated against the identification of them as ‘harmless’, ‘quiet’ and suitable for workhouse accommodation
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