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Making History
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Listen to the latest editionTuesday 3.00-3.30 p.m
Vanessa Collingridge and the team answer listener’s historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all ‘make’ history.
Programme 9
29ÌęMayÌę2007

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Wickham Psychiatric Hospital

A Making History listener came across some iron crosses marking the graves of former patients of the Wickham Psychiatric Hospital at Knowle near Fareham in Hampshire. The asylum was opened in the 1850’s and the graveyard is half a mile away from the hospital in a small copse. There are few stone memorials, just iron crosses with numbers and not names on them. “Were all inmates buried like this?”

Making History consulted Dr Susan Burt who wrote her PhD thesis on the Wickham Asylum.

Background

In 1827 there were 9 county asylums in England with an average of 116 patients each; private madhouses for the middle classes and rich still provided much of the care for the insane. Ratepayers sometimes used their local taxes (rates) to pay for poor people to go into a private madhouse but generally they were cared for at home, given a small dole. By 1910, there were 91 asylums, holding on average 1, 072 patients each. It is for this reason that the 19th century has been called the period of the ‘trade in lunacy’ (according to leading researcher Dr Andrew Scull) or the period of ‘total institutions’ (Erving Goodman’s view), a ‘convenient place for inconvenient people’.

The Lunacy Act 1862 empowered central and thus local government to transfer lunatics from the workhouse to an asylum and vice versa. London unions reorganised themselves into ‘asylum districts’, and they jointly paid for the care of the insane, the sick poor and established the first ambulance system in the capital. In 1909 central government reviewed welfare provision for everyone in A Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, it said of the insane:

‘The Local Health Authority should be granted compulsory powers of removal and detention, similar to that which it now possesses in respect of infectious diseases, with regard to all aged and inform persons who are found to be endangering their own lives, or becoming, through mental or physical incapacity to take care of themselves, a nuisance to the public’.

This embedded the science of psychiatry in the many asylums already constructed in the 19th century. At the same time, it noted that 18.2% of all deaths in England and Wales occurred in public institutions, a proportion that had doubled between 1879 and 1909. Of that 18.2%, by 1906 1.9% died in asylums. This reflected the fact that more people entered asylums, fewer left, and thus they died in care. Death, and its experience, was now removed from the home situation to the asylum or psychiatric ward.


Dr Susan Burt argues that patients at the Wickham hospital would have been well looked after. Indeed, places like this were built to prevent some of the abuses of the private system. The Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor 1847 (Appendix E) is evidence of the care taken when planning these places:

Rules to be observed with reference to the selection of the site of an asylum
..

1. The site of an Asylum should be of a perfectly healthy character. A chalky, gravely, or rocky subsoil isÌę most desirable; but it a clayey subsoil only can be obtained, an elevated position is indispensable, and the foundations must in that case be sufficiently low, not to be affected by the variation of the temperature.

2. The Asylum should be as central as possible to the mass of population in the county.

3. The site of the building should be moderately elevated, as respects the immediate vicinity, and 
.. undulating in its surface, and cheerful in its position with regard to the surrounding country.

4. It should not be near to any nuisances such as steam engines

.neither should it be surrounded, or overlooked, or be liable to be inconvenienced by the neighbourhood or public roads or foot-paths.

5. The airing courts, pleasure grounds, gardens and fields annexed to an asylum should be of such an extent as to afford the patients ample means of exercise and recreation, as well as of healthful employment out of doors and should as far as possible be of a ratio of one acre to ten patients.Ìę

The Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum was built as a result of the 1845 County Asylums Act, which made it compulsory for every county to build an asylum or to join with another county to do so. There were several quite large private asylums in Hampshire at that time and there had been legislation concerning ‘lunatics, idiots and persons of unsound mind’ since the beginning of the eighteenth century, but this was one of the first pieces of social legislation which had compulsory clauses as opposed to the permissive clauses of earlier legislation which had encouraged authorities to build asylums but had not insisted. County Asylums were not open to all comers.

They were built to accommodate pauper lunatics and patients could only be admitted by applying to the local Poor Law Relieving Officer and on the medical certificate of the Poor Law Medical Officer. However, the application of the Poor Law after 1834 especially in regard to medical necessity, was a very complex business and it was not necessary for the family to be admitted to the workhouse in order for one member to be admitted to the asylum. Some asylums took private patients if they had the space but there were very rarely any to be found in the Hampshire asylum.


Tips for those researching ancestors who may have been treated or sadly have died in an asylum.

Dr Susan Burt says that the Victorians kept good records and that those of the county asylums can usually be found in local record offices. The difficulty is not knowing that an ancestor had a mental illness. A clue is often if they are missing from their address on a census return. The reasons for them not being there are many – but some form of incarceration is always a possibility.

Further reading: 'Fit Objects for an Asylum': the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum and
its patients, 1852-1899. Susan Margaret Burt, University of Southampton 2004.
Life in London after the Romans

Francis Grew from the Museum of London revealed new finds which point to greater continuity between Roman and Saxon London. These finds are the subject of a new exhibition which is open until the beginning of August.

The extraordinary finds, from an archaeological dig at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, include a stone sarcophagus containing the skeleton of a middle aged Roman man, and exquisite Saxon grave goods. Ranging from AD410 to 600, the finds offer tantalising clues to a previously hidden period in London’s history. London’s story usually features a ghostly two hundred year silence between the end of Roman Londinium and the settlement of Saxon Lundenwic, further to the west.

The finds going on display at the Museum are challenging archaeologists’ long held belief that the two were unconnected. The stone sarcophagus contains a man who died around AD410. His limestone coffin suggests he was a man of considerable wealth and high standing. A kiln for making tiles found near to his grave points to Roman building work, well outside the walls of the city, at the very time when Londinium was falling into ruin. He appears to be a man out of time and out of place.

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Captain Pugwash and the Concertina

Has our understanding of the music played on board ship in the eighteenth and nineteenth century been clouded by the music of Captain Pugwash?

Making History spoke to traditional musician John Kirkpatrick. He confirmed that most music at sea (indeed most traditional singing) was unaccompanied. The concertina would not have been a good instrument on board ship: they are made of wood that swells when it gets damp, leather that is unpredictable and rots when wet and has brass or steel "free reeds" that either go out of tune quickly or corrodes respectively.

Furthermore, the instrument wasn’t invented until the 1820’s. It was the folk revivalists of the twentieth century who added musical accompaniments to traditional singing.

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Making History is produced by Nick Patrick and is a Pier Production
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Vanessa Collingridge
Vanessa CollingridgeVanessa has presentedÌęscience and current affairs programmes for ±«Óătv, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ±«Óătv Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìę

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Making HistoryÌęis a Pier Production for ±«Óătv Radio 4 and is produced by Nick Patrick.

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