Inconvenient People (69 page)

Anne Monroe, daughter of Georgina Weldon’s biographer Edward Grierson, has generously allowed me to quote from the material he gathered, and to reproduce images from his book,
Storm Bird: The Strange Life of Georgina Weldon
. I am grateful to Dr Helen Nicholson, of Manchester Metropolitan University, for helping me to make contact with Ms Monroe.

Stefan Dickers, archives supremo at the Bishopsgate Institute, has given his time freely in assisting with picture research, and I am indebted to him for many of the images that appear in this book, courtesy of the wonderful Bishopsgate Library, London.

Clare Fleck of Knebworth House Archives allowed me to work through the holdings at the Lyttons’ ancestral home. Rod and Celia Fitzhugh kindly offered me the use of their archive pictures of the Agapemone, reproduced in
Chapter Four
. Paul Lewis, founder of the website
www.wilkiecollins.com
, was similarly generous in permitting me to use his archive illustrations from
The Woman in White
.

Maisie Brown of the Barnes & Mortlake History Society gave me the co-ordinates of the younger Dr Winslow’s last resting place, but I still couldn’t penetrate the ivy.

History should consist of a mass of local histories, said someone – I forget who. In this country, we have a multitude of small treasure houses to help us write these tales: Francesca Anyon, of Wirral Archives Service,
tracked down the fate of Mary Jane and Charles Turner. Dr Jonathan Oates, of the Ealing Local History Centre, provided background on Lawn House in Hanwell. I would also like to thank: Tudor Allen and Lesley Marshall at Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre; Jane Baxter of Richmond upon Thames Local Studies; Carolynne Cotton of Uxbridge Local Studies and Archives; Valerie Crosby of Haringey Local History Library and Archives; Patricia Fallon, Cecilia Alvick and Alison Kenny at the City of Westminster Archives Centre; Carol Futers and all the staff at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies; Carolyn Hammond, Mary Blyth and Janet McNamara of Chiswick Local Studies Library; Isabel Hernandez and Tim Reid of the Local Studies Department at Kensington Central Library; Rhian James of Powys County Archives Office; Kate Jarvis of Wandsworth Heritage Service; Ruth McAuley of the Archives and Local History department at Explore York Library; Kai Michael of Gwent Record Office; Ann Nix of Somerset County Records Office, and Esther Hoyle at the Somerset Heritage Centre; Fiona M. Price of the Lambeth Archives; the staff of Staffordshire Archive Service and the William Salt Library; Janice Sullivan of Sevenoaks Local Studies; Liz Wigmore of the Bury Record Office.

By sad coincidence, of all the local archives that I have consulted the one that is most under threat is the Hammersmith and Fulham Local Studies Library – my own nearest library when I was growing up in West London and where I used to go to get peace and quiet when revising for my A-levels. These days: slashed opening hours, volunteers replacing professional staff, a precarious future. Thanks to Wendy Hawke, LMA senior archivist, and all the rest of the team who battle on in Hammersmith in these less than propitious circumstances.

Thanks also to Dr Lesley A. Hall, Helen Wakely and the staff at the library of the Wellcome Collection; the staff at the British Library and the Newspaper Library in Colindale; the staff of the Westminster Reference Library; the V&A National Art Library, V&A Theatre & Performance Enquiry Service and V&A Prints Department; The National Archives; the London Metropolitan Archives; the British Museum Prints Room; Sally James of Benjamin Franklin House; Colin S. Gale of Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives; Lambeth Palace Library; Peter Hopkins of the Roderic Bowen Library and Archives at the University of Wales Trinity St David; Jacque Roethler of the Archives
Department of the University of Iowa Libraries; Debra Longley, Tamsin Cook and Jonathan Butler of English Heritage; Dr Anne Mouron and the staff at the Bodleian Library; Betty Nixon of the Galton Institute; Professor Malcolm Andrews, editor, and Dr Tony Williams, associate editor,
The Dickensian
, and Elizabeth Velluet of The Dickens Fellowship; and Andrew Roberts for his wonderful Studymore online resource.

Thank you Will Sulkin, Jörg Hensgen, Katherine Ailes, Kay Peddle, Anna Cowling, Beth Humphries, Chloe Johnson-Hill and Ruth Waldram at the Bodley Head; and Kate Pool at the Society of Authors.

I have chewed the (Victorian) fat with Dr Michelle Johansen, Lee Jackson, Elizabeth Tames and David Clifford. Thanks especially to Peter, Debbie, Lucia, Caroline and Michael, Tina, Sindy, Diane, Sharon and Matt, Prue, Mandy and Rob, Leigh and Alex, Wanda and Roland, Katie, Lis, Clive, Eve, Sian, Lily, Pauline and Phil; and all the Neishes, big and little.

Lunacy legislation affecting wrongful confinement

Successive Acts of parliament included clauses addressing the prevention of the incarceration of the sane. The list below excludes minor amending Acts and legislation concerning other aspects of lunacy care.

This, the first legislation to regulate private lunacy care, laid down that madhouse keepers could accept a paying patient only upon the signed certificate of a medical man. No certificate was required if a patient was to be confined in his/her own home.

Every madhouse accommodating more than one lunatic required a licence. Five Lunacy Commissioners, elected by the College of Physicians, granted the licences within a seven-mile radius of London and inspected premises. Beyond, licensing and inspection were undertaken by local magistrates.

Two certificates of lunacy, each signed by a different doctor following a separate interview (the interviews to be undertaken within fourteen days of each other), were required for private patients; no physician could sign a certificate if he owned, co-owned or was a regular medical attendant at the receiving madhouse. A lunacy order, with an accompanying statement, was to be filled in by the individual alerting the doctors to an alleged lunatic. No certificate was required if a patient was to be confined in his/her own home or otherwise kept not for profit.

The Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy replaced the College of
Physicians inspectorate. Local magistrates retained their licensing and inspection powers in the provinces.

Notifications of admission and discharge of patients in all asylums/licensed houses were to be sent to the Metropolitan Commissioners within seven days.

For pauper patients, only one doctor’s certificate was required, with the second being signed by a magistrate, clergyman, schoolteacher, Poor Law officer or other civic figure.

Patients seeking to sue for false imprisonment had to commence any legal action within six months of liberation.

A Private Register of patients confined as single patients was created, but legislation of 1832 required that this was destroyed.

The Commissioners in Lunacy replaced the Metropolitan Commissioners and comprised three medical men, three lawyers and up to five unpaid laymen.

The two certifying doctors were not to be in partnership with each other, and must separately interview the alleged lunatic within seven days of each other The doctor must not be in any way related to, or in the pay of, the asylum proprietor.

Single patients were now required by law to be notified to the Commissioners, and the Private Register was reinstated.

Patients seeking to sue for false imprisonment had to commence any legal action within twelve months of liberation.

Only the Commissioners in Lunacy could prosecute asylum proprietors and doctors for contravening the Act.

All hearsay evidence was now forbidden on a certificate of lunacy, with doctors required to state the observations they themselves had made of the alleged lunatic’s behaviour.

Chancery inquisitions were made less expensive, and a jury trial was no longer required, if a private hearing with a Master in Lunacy was preferred.

No certificate was to be signed by any medical man receiving a percentage from an asylum’s profits; or who had not seen the patient within the previous month.

Exact copies of the certificates and lunacy order/statement were to be sent to the Commissioners within one day of admission.

Chancery inquisitions were made even cheaper and faster.

In private cases, a magistrate was to examine all paperwork before an asylum admission, following the established procedure for a pauper alleged-lunatic. Two certificates from wholly disinterested doctors were required. The magistrate then either granted the admission order, dismissed it, or adjourned the decision for no longer than fourteen days. Paupers still required just one doctor’s certificate, and a statement by a Poor Law official, plus the magistrate’s order.

In an acute, homicidal or suicidal case, an Urgency Order admission required just one certificate, valid for seven days, pending full certification. Lunacy certificates were now finite, with re-examinations on a one-, two- or three-yearly basis.

Local authorities took over from the magistracy the inspection and licensing powers for provincial private asylums.

Only the Commissioners, the Attorney-General or Director of Public Prosecutions could prosecute misdemeanours under the 1890 Act.

Anyone could now request permission from the Commissioners to have a medical man examine an inmate, and if after two separate examinations the patient could be certified as not likely to cause injury to him/herself or to others, s/he could be discharged no less than ten days later.

Any proprietor could now, with the written permission of two Commissioners, receive an uncertified boarder for a specified finite period.

The concepts of ‘moral defect’ and ‘feeble minded’ were introduced. Youths appearing at juvenile courts could be sent to newly constructed ‘colonies’ for indefinite periods; parents could request their local authority to assess and confine ‘defective’ or ‘mentally deficient’ children; local authorities were, in addition, required to identify, classify and make provision for ‘defectives’.

Any ‘defective’ allowed out of the colony on licence was forbidden from forming any attachment to a person of the opposite sex.

The Board of Control replaced the Commissioners in Lunacy.

Two new categories were introduced for patient admission: voluntary and temporary. By 1938, more than one-third of psychiatric admissions were voluntary.

Regional mental health review tribunals were created to oversee individual cases and decide on discharge. The magistrate’s role in lunacy admissions was ended.

Compulsory admissions were now either upon: an ‘observation order’, lasting twenty-eight days and requiring two certificates; a ‘treatment order’, valid for one year and also requiring two certificates, and extendable if required; or an ‘emergency order’, on the notification by a relative or welfare officer, lasting three days and requiring one certificate.

A relative could give the hospital seventy-two hours’ notice of intention to remove a patient but had to have the permission of either the medical officer or the tribunal.

The category ‘moral defective’ was no longer recognised.

The ‘observation order’ was now an ‘assessment order’, with provision for treatment as well. The validity of ‘treatment orders’ was halved to six months (from one year), to one year (from two) and so on. ‘Emergency orders’ permitted seventy-two hours’ detention in genuine emergencies only. The right to a tribunal became automatic for all, rather than by application, as in 1959.

Official lunacy statistics

Extreme caution should be exercised with these figures. They relate only to those people who were certificated, and therefore exclude the unknowable number of ‘hidden’ mentally ill; but they include many who were certificated while suffering no more than, for example, nervous exhaustion, melancholy or delirium tremens, as well as the eccentricities or character quirks of most of the subjects in this book.

The chief interest of these statistics is that they were used at the time to discuss the size and likely scale of the issue.