Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles

by Daniel Hack Tuke

That a state of things in which such an occurrence was possible should be described as on the whole satisfactory, is somewhat remarkable, and in reading this paragraph we cannot but contrast with it the very different result of the investigation made by the Committee of the House of Commons in 1877.

Again, nothing more strikingly marks the change which has taken place in the inspection of asylums than the contrast between the last Report of the Lunacy Commissioners, consisting of a bulky volume of more than four hundred pages, and that of 1841, of a page and a half. In fact, the Reports of the Commissioners form the best evidence to which I can refer of the progress made from year to year in the provision for the insane, and the gradual but uninterrupted amelioration of their condition.

An important advance was made in 1842 by the Act 5 and 6 Vict., c. 87, which provided that provincial houses were to be visited by the Metropolitan Commissioners, as well as those in their own district. They were also to report whether restraint was practised in any asylum, and whether the patients were properly amused and occupied. Not only was a great step forward made by thus extending the inspecting power of these Commissioners to the provinces, but their memorable Report on the state of the asylums in England and Wales in 1844 led to the highly important legislation of the following year (introduced by Lord Ashley)—the Act 8 and 9 Vict., c. 100, which along with the Acts of 1853 (16 and 17 Vict., cc. 96, 97)[297] and 1862 (25 and 26 Vict., c. 111) form, as you are well aware, the Code of Lunacy Law under which, for the most part, the care of the insane is determined and their protection secured.

I should like to have been able to state the number of recognized lunatics in England and Wales forty years ago, but no return exists which shows it. The nearest approach is to be found in the Report just referred to of the Metropolitan Commissioners (1844), in which the number of ascertained lunatics in England and Wales is stated to be about 20,000, of whom only 11,272 were confined in asylums, whereas now there are nearly 55,000. It is difficult to realize that there were then only some 4000 patients in county asylums, these being 15 in number, and that there were 21 counties in England and Wales in which there were no asylums of any kind, public or private. At the present time, instead of 20,000 ascertained lunatics and idiots, we have 73,113—an increase represented by the population of the City of York—instead of 15 county asylums we have 51, with scarcely less than 40,000 patients, instead of 4000; while the provincial licensed houses have decreased from 99 to 59, and the metropolitan increased by 2. The total number of asylums in England and Wales in 1844 was 158,[298] now it is 175—excluding those (3) erected under Hardy's Act. I need not say that these figures do not necessarily point to an increase of lunacy, but may merely represent the increased accommodation which ought to have been provided long before. Into the general question of the spread of insanity I feel that it would be impossible to enter satisfactorily now.

Recurring to the Metropolitan Commissioners' Report, I must observe that while an immense advance took place between 1828, when they were appointed, and 1844, the subsequent advance between the latter date and now is such that we cannot but recognize the extremely beneficial operation of the legislation which has marked this period. It must also be gratifying to Scotch asylum superintendents, knowing as they do the satisfactory condition of the insane in their country in 1881, to be able to measure the progress made since Lord Ashley, in his speech in 1844, moved for an address to the Crown, praying her Majesty to take into consideration the Commissioners' Report, for he there observes, "I believe that not in any country in Europe, nor in any part of America, is there any place in which pauper lunatics are in such a suffering and degraded state as those in her Majesty's kingdom of Scotland." I need not do more than chronicle the fact, in passing, that the reform in Scotland dates, to a large extent, from the appointment of a Royal Commission in 1855, and the action of the Board of Lunacy Commissioners which was established in consequence. Legislation for Ireland and the appointment of inspectors have likewise proved very beneficial in that country. But restricting my remarks to England and Wales, I would observe that the establishment by the Act of 1845 of the Lunacy Board as at present constituted, and the rendering it compulsory upon counties to provide asylums for pauper lunatics, are the chief causes of the improvement to which I have referred, so far, at least, as it has been brought about by legislation.

I will not dwell in detail on the lunacy legislation of these years. To have said less would have been to overlook the salient and most important facts of the period. To have said more would have been to travel over the ground so ably occupied by Dr. Blandford in his Presidential Address three years ago. He, by-the-by, complained of the ever-increasing difficulty each President finds in selecting a subject for his discourse, and then immediately proceeded to effectually lessen the chances of his successors. What the last occupant of this Chair will be able to discover new for his address I do not know. I can only think of the funeral oration over this Association at its obsequies—when its "dying eyes are closed," its "decent limbs composed," and its "humble grave adorn'd,"

"By strangers honour'd, by survivors mourn'd."

On the Board of the Commissioners in Lunacy have sat two members of our profession (one still living), to whose services I wish more especially to refer. I allude to Dr. Prichard and Mr. Gaskell.

Apart from his official work, the former will always be remembered in the republic of letters by his learned contributions to anthropology and the literature of mental diseases, in which he is more especially identified with the doctrine of Moral Insanity. Chronicler of the period in which he enunciated or rather developed it, I cannot avoid a brief reference to a theme which has caused so much heated discussion. As an impartial historian I am bound to admit that his views are still by no means unanimously adopted, and that I am only expressing my own sentiments when I avow that what Latham says of Prichard's "Researches into the Physical History of Mankind"—"Let those who doubt its value, try to do without it"—applies to the teaching contained in the remarkable treatise entitled "Different Forms of Insanity in relation to Jurisprudence," published in 1842. We may well be dissatisfied with some of the illustrations of the doctrine it supports. We may express in different terms the generalization he has made as to the relation of intellect and emotion; but I am greatly mistaken if we shall not from time to time be confronted by facts which instantly raise the question which presented itself with so much force to his acute mind, and which does not appear to me to be successfully met by those who controvert the conclusions at which Prichard arrived. The necessity of admitting in some form or other the mental facts in dispute, is well illustrated by the recent work by Krafft-Ebing on mental disorders. For what does this practised mental expert do? He, although the supporter of mental solidarity and the integrity of the Ego—adverse, therefore, to the psychology in which the theory has been enshrined—feels that he must admit into his classification some term which describes certain emotional or volitional disorders, and can discover none better than "moral insanity"—a practical, though reluctant, admission of the value of Prichard's views after their discussion for forty years. I might also refer as an indication of opinion to a most excellent article in the last number of the Journal by Dr. Savage, who, while recognizing the abstract metaphysical difficulty of conceiving moral as distinct from intellectual insanity, fully admits as a clinical fact the form of mental disease for which Prichard contended, and had he been living he would doubtless have claimed this article as a striking proof of the vitality of his opinions.

One is certainly disposed to exclaim, if observation on the one hand compels us to admit certain mental facts, and the metaphysician on the other declares them to be unmetaphysical, so much the worse for metaphysics!