Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles

by Daniel Hack Tuke

CONCLUSION.

In completing the task which the author has attempted in the foregoing chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles, he is only too conscious that, in the endeavour to be concise as well as comprehensive, he has made many omissions. With every desire to be fair to all who have been engaged either in originating or in advancing the improved treatment of those who, suffering cruelly from a malady involving their very nature and being, have also been treated cruelly by their fellows, the writer fears that some names which ought to have been recorded and some institutions which ought to have been honourably mentioned, have been passed over in silence. Apart from unintentional oversight, it is not always easy to find in the Temple of Fame the precise niche in which to place the figure that would rightfully fill it, and the consequence is that the pedestal, as in some of our great public edifices, remains unoccupied. It may be said, however, in extenuation of any such omission, that it did not fall within the scope of this book to chronicle all the establishments which, in more humane methods of treatment, have been in advance of others, still less to complete the history up to the present day of those which have been mentioned. As it proceeded, the work has entered more into detail than was originally designed; thus, in the chapter on Scotland the sketch is filled in with particulars somewhat out of proportion to that attempted in the earlier chapters.

Again, in crediting various asylums, as Lincoln, Hanwell, and Lancaster, with introducing non-restraint, the author has not found space for more than a reference to the meritorious course pursued at an early period at the Suffolk Asylum, the Gloucester Asylum, and at Northampton from its opening (1838), and at the Haslar Hospital.[314]

The writer would have been glad, had the proposed limits of the book admitted of it, to describe much more fully the rise and growth of those charitable institutions, the endowed or registered hospitals for the insane, which have in England formed so important, and, on the whole, so successful, an experiment in providing care and treatment for the insane of the poor but non-pauper class, supplemented as they have been by the payments of the rich. At the present moment, the principle and the method by which these institutions are governed attract much earnest attention, and appear to not a few to afford the best alternative provision for the middle and upper classes, as against asylums carried on by private enterprise. It may be so. Abuses which in former days were possible, could not occur under the legislative restrictions of our time; but it must not be overlooked that their annals have disclosed, in some instances, abuses as great and inhumanities as shocking as any that have disgraced the history of private houses. How abominably even such institutions have been managed, has already been depicted in a notorious example; how admirably, might have been shown, had space allowed, as regards the same institution in the hands of men who, like Dr. Needham, have maintained the reforms previously introduced within its once dishonoured walls, and carried forward that humane system of treatment which, Phœnix-like, arose from its ashes. The author would have liked to do justice to other hospitals—as that at Northampton, which under Dr. Bayley's remarkable power of organization has proved so great a success; that at Cheadle, which under Mr. Mould's exhaustless energy has shown how the various needs of different phases of mental disorder may be met by various modifications in the provision made for their care outside the walls of the asylum, thus combining cottage treatment with the control of the central establishment; and, lastly, that at Coton Hill, Stafford, which now and for many years has been superintended by Dr. Hewitson—an institution due to a wave of public feeling in favour of an institution for those in reduced circumstances, which bore this practical fruit after some temporary discouragement.

Of the work done by county asylum superintendents it is impossible to speak too highly; in fact, it would be difficult to know when to stop, were one to be mentioned. Superintendents of the vast asylums of Middlesex, Lancashire, and Yorkshire deserve the recognition of services performed day by day with faithful diligence, not always sufficiently appreciated, and not always without peril, as instanced in the case of the late superintendent of Brookwood, Dr. Brushfield.[315]

As of those whose hourly labour is performed in these and other institutions, so of those who were labourers, however humble, in the early days of asylum reform at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century, it must never be forgotten that work unobserved by the public eye, but conscientiously performed for the unfortunate class which, to a large extent, is unable to appreciate or thank the kindly hand which shields them from cruelty or saves them from neglect, will find its reward in the conscience; and also in the increased happiness of those whom it benefits, though it may not set the worker on any pinnacle of fame. It is to such that the author of "Romola" refers when speaking of the "valiant workers whose names are not registered where every day we turn the leaf to read them, but whose labours make a part, though an unrecognized part, of our inheritance, like the ploughing and the sowing of past generations."