Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British IslesTuke, Daniel Hack
History
Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles
Tuke, Daniel Hack
Mental health laws -- Great Britain; Mental illness -- Great Britain; Mentally ill -- Care; Psychiatric hospitals -- Great Britain
Lastly, for the pauper class in the metropolis a school for imbeciles
has for some time been carried on, first at Clapton, and now at Darenth
(Kent), under the superintendence of Dr. Beach. The house will
accommodate five hundred. It should be stated that this institution, as
well as those at Caterham and Leavesden for incurable lunatics,
originated in the Act 30 Vict. c. 6, and that these establishments are
under the Metropolitan Asylums Board, subject to the Local Government
Board. There are sixty members, of whom fifteen are nominated by the
last-mentioned Board, the remainder being elected by the metropolitan
unions.
Taking the numbers under training in these three divisions, the
charitable or voluntary institutions, the private institution, and that
for paupers, we find the total to be somewhat about eighteen hundred.
Scotland and Ireland have various institutions for idiots and imbeciles,
which may be briefly enumerated. In the former an idiot school was
established at Baldovan, near Dundee, in 1853. It was on the estate of
Sir John Ogilvie. There are forty-seven inmates. In 1862 an institution
was opened at Larbert, Stirlingshire, by a society formed for that
object, called the "Scottish National Institution for the Education of
Imbecile Children." Dr. Brodie, who now, we believe, has a private
institution at Liberton, near Edinburgh, for ten pupils, was the first
superintendent. It was superintended by Dr. Ireland from 1870 to 1881.
In January, 1881, there were one hundred and twenty-four inmates.[226]
Thus only about a hundred and eighty idiots and imbeciles are in
training institutions in Scotland.
In Ireland the only institution for training idiots was founded in
1868, in consequence of Dr. Henry Stewart handing over his asylum at
Lucan, together with a donation (payable under certain conditions) of
£5000, to certain trustees. It is called the "Stewart Institution for
the Training, Education, and Maintenance of Idiotic and Imbecile
Children."
A large mansion at Palmerston, in the neighbourhood of Dublin, was in
1875, when we visited it, being adapted to the requirements of an
asylum, and to it the idiots have been removed from Lucan. It was
recently stated that in Ireland seventy per cent. of the idiots and
imbeciles are at large, twenty-one per cent. in workhouses, and only
seven per cent. in asylums.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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