Idiocy Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society Caterham Asylum 1867 1911 1St Ed 2020 Edition Stef Eastoe Full Chapter

Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in
Victorian Society: Caterham Asylum,

1867–1911 1st ed. 2020 Edition Stef
Eastoe
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MENTAL HEALTH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Idiocy, Imbecility
and Insanity in
Victorian Society
Caterham Asylum,
1867–1911
Stef Eastoe
Mental Health in Historical Perspective
Series Editors
Catharine Coleborne
School of Humanities and Social Science
University of Newcastle
Callaghan, NSW, Australia
Matthew Smith
Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare
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Stef Eastoe
Idiocy, Imbecility
and Insanity
in Victorian Society
Caterham Asylum, 1867–1911
Stef Eastoe
Independent Scholar
London, UK
Mental Health in Historical Perspective

ISBN 978-3-030-27334-7 ISBN 978-3-030-27335-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27335-4
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to my Great Aunt Pat (1928–2017), whose story I
will one day write & my daughter Florence, who one day will write her own.
Acknowledgements
This book grew out of my Ph.D. research and thus is the product of
many fruitful conversations and the support given to me during my time
as a postgraduate student at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Dr. Julia Laite was a constant source of guidance, advice and inspiration
of how to both conduct and write history, but also how to be a generous
scholar and member of the academic community. Her ability to ask me
the right questions and to provide space to think allowed me to tease out
many stories and voices that would otherwise have remained hidden.
Thanks must also be made to Dr. Fay Bound Alberti for the many
discussions we have had not only about this book, but about scholarship,
academia and the nature of research.
I am also grateful to my fellow students, colleagues and peers at
Birkbeck Drs. Carmen Mangion, Louise Hide, Hazel Croft, Emma
Lundin, Barbara Warnock, Janet Weston, Susanna Shapland, Saul Bar
Haim and Simon Jarrett and also to my colleagues at Queen Mary, who
in the later stages of the book provided me with helpful advice, solidarity
and support, Drs. Jane Freeland, Charmian Mansell, Linda Briggs and to
Rhodri Hayward and Edmund Ramsden for their guidance. For all their
collective kindness, I am most grateful.
I am also indebted to those who have provided me with feedback and
comments at various conferences, seminars and workshops, p articularly
Drs. Leonard Smith, Katherine Rawling, Rebecca Wynter, Jennifer Wallis,
Steven Taylor, Beatriz Pichel and Rory Du Plesis, many of whom helped
me to untangle and unravel the richer, emotional and ethereal elements
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
of the book. My thesis examiners, Drs. Jane Hamlett and Rob Ellis, have
provided me helpful comments, insights and guidance over the years.
I am indebted to archivists at London Metropolitan Archives, City of
London and the Surrey History Centre, particularly Julian Pooley who
speaks so beautifully of the power of archives, and I felt emboldened to
tell the story of Caterham in a humane, kind and thoughtful way. The
staff at these archives and libraries have all been especially helpful in cart-
ing numerous dusty volumes of casebooks and committee minutes, pho-
tographs and maps, allowing me time and space to unearth the stories of
Caterham’s residents.
I have been incredibly lucky to have received much support and
counsel from a plethora of brilliant women and a few good men, who
became a village of support over the years, especially Julia, Sarah, Cat,
Kate, Eleanor, Margreet, Farhana, Amy, Jackie, Lucy (Dancer), Lucy
(Teacher), Karen, Anahita, Rebecca, Sharada and the indomitable Adam,
whose belief and insight knows no bounds and who has provided me
with many hours of advice, entertainment and joy. Particular thanks to
Salina for our many discussions of writing, of teaching, of telling sto-
ries and of laughing at life. To Claire, one of my oldest friends who has
always believed in me, her friendship and love has helped me soar in
many ways and she always knows the right thing to say. All have pro-
vided me with much good humour, excellent counsel and such wonder-
ful encouragement, and I am forever indebted to you all.
Finally, thanks must go to my family, especially my parents, Roger and
Jeannine, who have always believed in me and have never let me think I
was not capable.
A Note on the Text
Throughout Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity, much of the terminology is

based on the language used by contemporaries and is informed by the
medical, psychiatric and popular texts published on the subject of idiocy,
imbecility and insanity. Idiot and imbecile, regarded as forms of incurable
insanity, were terms used throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries for what some would nowadays refer to as
learning disability, which itself is an ever-expanding term.
Idiocy was reserved for those with severe intellectual deficiencies,
often present at birth. Imbecility was regarded as less severe condition,
with individuals believed to be capable of some form of education, learn-
ing or training. Weakminded was a common term, often used by lay
professionals, such as poor law medical officers, nurses and attendants,
and was also used by the staff at Caterham Imbecile Asylum. The terms,
alongside feebleminded, also used throughout the period covered in this
study, appear in the text without speech marks for reasons of historical
accuracy. When I use the term incurable insanity, I am referring specifi-
cally to idiocy, imbecility or weakmindedness.
When discussing historical actors, namely patients and staff members,
I refer to patients by their first name and surname initial. This is for rea-
sons of anonymity. Whilst I would like to refer to these people by their
full names, as I do for staff members, I have decided that to anonymise
them is not an act of silencing, but is an act of respect. Their lives are
theirs. I hope that by telling their stories, I am both resuscitating their
voices and doing so in a humanising manner.
ix
Contents
1 Introduction and the Roots of Caterham 1
2 Creating Caterham 27
3 Populating Caterham 59
4 Experiencing Caterham: Work, Occupation

and Asylum Life 97
5 Visualising Idiocy, Visualising Caterham 127
6 Geographies of Idiocy and Imbecility 159
7 Conclusion 191
Appendix A—Admissions 201
Appendix B—Deaths 203
Appendix C—Discharges 205
Index 207
xi
Abbreviations
AMO Assistant Medical Officer

LMA London Metropolitan Archives, City of London
MAB Metropolitan Asylum Board
PLB Poor Law Board
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Woodward ward (male side), c.1927, Surrey History Centre,
Ref 4209/3/38/10 47
Fig. 2.2 Baily ward (female side), c.1929, Surrey History Centre,
Ref 4209/3/39/2 48
Fig. 3.1 Patients admitted to Caterham 1870–1911 72
Fig. 3.2 Number of patients who died in Caterham per year,
1870–1911 86
Fig. 5.1 Patient Portrait Edward W. H., Male Casebook 13,
City of London, London Metropolitan Archives,
H23/SL/B14/030, 180 128
Fig. 5.2 Patient Portrait Honora S., Female Casebook No. 8,
H23/SL/B14/008, 95 137
Fig. 5.3 Patient Portrait Adolphus B., Male Casebook 11,
H23/SL/B14/028, 84 139
Fig. 5.4 Patient Portrait Emma E., Female Casebook 1,
H23/SL/B14/01, pt no. 38 141
Fig. 5.5 Patient Portrait Martha B., Female Casebook 1,
H23/SL/B/14/001/B, pt no. 1185 142
Fig. 5.6 Patient Portrait MaryAnn M., Female Casebook 14,
H23/SL/B14/012, 94 144
xv
xvi LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 5.7 Patient Portrait John W., Male Casebook 12,

H23/SL/B14/029, 1 145
Fig. 5.8 Patient Portrait Amy Eleanor D., Female Casebook 10,
H23/SL/B14/010, 57 147
Fig. 5.9 Patient Portrait of Annie M., Female Casebook 10,
H23/SL/B/14/010, 109 151
Fig. 6.1 Patient Portrait Emma J. Female Casebook 12,
H23/SL/B14/012, folio 26 177
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Number of idiot or imbecile persons, per million

of persons enumerated 75
Table 3.2 Ages of patients admitted to Caterham (total) 1870–1911 76
Table 3.3 Classification of patients resident 1872–1911 79
Table 3.4 Total numbers of patients discharged from Caterham,
1870–1911 88
Table 6.1 Patient addresses (census) grouped using Booth
classifications 166
Table 6.2 Idiot, Imbecile & Weakminded patients discharged from
Caterham 1871, 1875, 1881, 1885, 1891, 1895, 1901,
1905, 1911 178
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction and the Roots of Caterham
On a fine December morning in 1872, William Gilbert, secretary of the

Society for the Relief of Distress, visited Caterham Imbecile Asylum, which
had formally opened two years previously. He published an account of his
visit in the popular Victorian periodical Good Words, beginning the arti-
cle with an admission of his anxieties about the trip.1 ‘My fear, however,
was groundless…[whilst there were] instances of misery within the walls’,
Gilbert claimed that there were numerous instances of ‘humanity, skill and
discretion displayed in the management of the patients’.2 Upon his arrival,
he was met by Dr James Adam, the asylum’s medical superintendent and
was promptly taken on a tour of the kitchens, considered by many to be the
most important area of an asylum. In this cavernous space, full of huge cop-
per pots, heaving with staff and full of activity, Gilbert enquired how many
cooks were employed to prepare the 1600 meals consumed at each meal-
time. ‘About thirty’ was the reply from Dr Adam, ‘four or five are regular
cooks…the other twenty-six are patients’.3 Gilbert was amazed, inform-
ing his readers, that ‘[y]es…these well-cooked dinners were the handiwork
of twenty-six idiots (poor creatures, who at home would not have been
trusted to put a kettle on the fire)’.4 After this, he was taken to the asylum
laundry, where again he was surprised by the size, scale and amount of
work undertaken by the 80 patients who were assigned to this area, assist-
ing the six laundry maids who were all under the supervision of the laundry
matron. ‘Although the place, which is a large, lofty and well-ventilated hall,
© The Author(s) 2020 1

S. Eastoe, Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society,
Mental Health in Historical Perspective,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27335-4_1
2 S. EASTOE
was a scene of great bustle, yet the most perfect order and regularity pre-
vailed throughout’, which is why over 2000 articles a day could be washed,
pressed and dried.5 The quality of the washing was ‘excellent – certainly if
a snow white colour is any test’.6
Throughout his article, Gilbert was amazed by the skill and ability
demonstrated by the patients. One such individual may well have been
Mary B. She was the 21st female patient admitted to Caterham when she
arrived on the 3 October 1870.7 Mary was a servant before she was trans-
ferred from the workhouse to the asylum, after she lost her position due
to frequent fits and a nervous temperament. Following her admission to
Caterham, Mary was classified as being weakminded and imbecile. Perhaps
due to her skills and knowledge learned during her time working as a ser-
vant in London Mary was put to work in the laundry, and in later years on
the wards. She died in 1910, though the cause of death was not recorded
in the casebook. Aged 62 at death, Mary had been a patient at Caterham
for forty years. This lengthy residency was not untypical. Idiocy, imbecility
and weakmindedness covered a wide range of conditions, psychiatric and
physical. Many of them were considered to be permanent, incurable and
chronic states which were often identified in relation to intellectual and
developmental delay, such as the inability to count to twenty, to tell the
days of the week or know how many shillings were in a pound.
Designed and managed by the Metropolitan Asylum Board (hereafter
MAB), an offshoot of the Poor Law Board (hereafter the PLB), Cater-
ham was a unique site. It was, alongside its sister institution Leavesden,
one of the first state imbecile asylums built in England. It was intended,
from the outset, to provide suitable long-term accommodation and care
to the incurable insane paupers drawn from London, commonly referred
to as idiots and imbeciles. Located in a quiet Surrey village, overlooking
the verdant Caterham valley, the asylum at its height had over 2000 beds.
However, Caterham’s roots were in the workhouse, welfare and sanitary
reforms of the 1860s, in part a product of the limits of the mixed economy
of welfare and existing lunacy legislation which shaped the admission, and
conversely nonadmission, of certain patient groups to the various institu-
tions that made up this vast network.
Caterham’s founding and the experiences of the people like Mary are
the focus of this book, which represents the first monograph that considers
the history of a pauper imbecile asylum. It will not trace the history of the
medical theories or the evolution of the classifications of idiocy, imbecility
1 INTRODUCTION AND THE ROOTS OF CATERHAM 3
and mental deficiency, which have been ably explored by many histori-
ans of medicine, psychiatry and education. Indeed, the contributions to
the recently published Intellectual Disability: A Conceptual History, 1200–
1900 edited by Christopher Goodey, Patrick McDonagh and Tim Stainton
provide an excellent overview of the evolution of the concepts related to
idiocy, including mental deficiency and learning disability, considering the
social, cultural, political and medical factors that shaped these understand-
ings.8 Rather, the focus of this book is the asylum itself and the lives of the
people sent there. How a consideration of the inner world of the asylum,
from its design to its regime, its social geography and material culture,
can provide us an insight into life within Caterham, and how idiocy was
understood by staff, by families and by Victorian society more broadly.
The nineteenth century saw the passing of a spate of Acts which legislated
for the creation and building of various institutions, including workhouses,
asylums and madhouses. Some of these had greater impacts than others
for particular patient groups, especially the incurable insane. One of the
first key pieces of legislation was the 1808 Asylum Act, which empowered
local magistrates and authorities to build asylums for the pauper insane,
which included idiots, imbeciles and all those regarded as being of unsound
mind.9 The stimulus for this Act was the high costs of accommodation in
the private madhouses, and to create some form of checks and balances on
institutions which were found to be neglectful of their vulnerable charges.
Indeed, the popular press was filled with sensationalist articles of men and
women chained up and placed in dirty and dismal wards, at the mercy of
exploitative asylum managers who were only interested in making money
rather than treating the insane. This was quite the opposite of the ideals
and opportunities offered by the moral therapy, a system of treatment and
patient management that had emerged from the Quaker built York Asylum
at the turn of the century.10 In many of the new asylums, built following the
1808 Act, parishes and unions would pay for the care and accommodation
of their insane paupers, an administrative term for those in receipt of poor
law assistance. However, the main point being that costs would be much
less than in the private institutions, which were rapidly being seen as sites
of containment rather than cure.11 The main limitation of the 1808 Act
was that it was permissive; authorities could choose to build an asylum, and
thus as a result, few were actually built. Between 1808 and 1834, a total of
13 public lunatic asylums were erected in England.12
Despite this, as Leonard Smith suggests, the 1808 Act did create an
infrastructure and an important administrative foundation for the creation
4 S. EASTOE
of public institutions and spaces for the care, accommodation and man-
agement of the insane.13 Indeed, the Act represented something of a sea
change in attitudes and responsibilities of the state, authorities and commu-
nities in caring for their insane, idiot and mentally unsound members. As
Elaine Murphy has shown, many unions and parishes would pay for accom-
modation in public and private asylums, madhouses and in homes, as well
as accommodate the insane in the workhouse.14 Demand for such care,
which only increased over the following years, placed particular pressures
on the poor law, in terms of rates and space. Indeed, the process of board-
ing out was curtailed following the passing of the 1834 Workhouse Reform
Act, which focussed on the provision of indoor relief in an effort to cut the
spiralling costs of care and accommodation. Thus, many people considered
to be insane, curable and incurable, found themselves incarcerated in the
common and infirmary workhouse wards.
In an effort to remedy this, and the wider mistreatment of the insane,
the government passed the 1845 County Borough and Lunacy Acts. In
what has become something of a familiar pattern in the passing of insanity-
related legislation, much like the passing of the 1808 Act, Vieda Skultans
has shown that in the build-up to the 1845 Acts there was an outpouring
of moral outrage felt by many involved in the management of insanity,
‘upon the discovery of the revolting and inhumane conditions endured by
the insane’.15 This outrage was in part stimulated by the fact that moral
management, delivered in well-designed and well-appointed asylums such
as Hanwell which was run by the renowned Dr John Conolly, promised
effective therapy of the insane. Many who agitated for a change in lunacy
policy believed it to be a grave error on the part of a modern and forward-
thinking society to allow the insane to languish in outdated and badly
managed institutions, when cure and efficient treatment was possible. The
1845 Acts made county and borough asylums compulsory, and there fol-
lowed an explosion of large-scale asylums across the country, many of them
in urban areas such as London and Leeds. In 1850, there were around 24
public asylums providing accommodation to over 7100 patients. By 1860,
the number of beds reserved for the insane had more than doubled to
over 15,800 patients across 41 asylums.16 These institutions had grown
not only in number, but also in scale, from an average of 300–500 beds
per asylum to over 1500. Indeed, the second Middlesex County Asylum,
also known as Colney Hatch, opened in 1851 and was one of the largest
asylums in Europe with over 2500 beds. The 1845 Acts also created a
new national inspectorate body, the Commissioners in Lunacy (hereafter
the CIL). They were responsible for investigating and regulating the care
of the insane across this vast network of institutions and would visit all
sites where the insane were accommodated, including private madhouses,
asylums and workhouses.
Under the wording of the 1808 and 1845 Lunacy Acts, idiots and imbe-
ciles were included under the term insane.17 However institutional author-
ities and managers frequently made a distinction between the curable and
incurable insane, for financial, administrative and medical reasons.18 Magis-
trates and Poor Law medical officers involved in the certification and com-
mittal of the insane focussed on the dangerous and troublesome, rather
than the quiet and harmless insane who proved to be much less bother-
some than their violent brethren. This saw many of the incurable insane
be retained in the workhouse, which as Peter Bartlett and Elaine Murphy
have shown, operated as an informal clearing house for the curable insane
and a warehouse, to some degree, for idiots and imbeciles.19
This issue was raised by the CIL in their 1859 annual report. They
highlighted the large numbers of idiots and imbeciles in the workhouses,
claiming it to be an evil act to keep them there.20 They called for better
classification and certification of the insane, stressing the need to ensure that
the curable were sent to lunatic asylums so they could receive appropriate
medical attention and treatment. Importantly, they made the claim for the
creation of auxiliary asylums specifically for the care and accommodation
of pauper idiots and imbeciles. Alas, their recommendations were ignored.
Rather than see a reorganisation of the workhouse population, the 1862
Lunacy Laws Amendment Act was passed which effectively allowed for
the detention and retention of the ‘non-dangerous’ insane, namely idiots
and imbeciles, within the workhouse.21 The Act was an attempt to ease the
overcrowding in public lunatic asylums and as a result saw large numbers of
harmless insane discharged from these institutions, which were predicated
on care, cure and discharge and thus saw the incurable as undesirable, back
to the workhouse.
However, workhouses were also institutions which were temporary in
their nature and intention, and the large numbers of incurable and chronic
cases were placing significant strains on the system. There was also a rise in
destitution following widespread unemployment in London due to various
socio-economic factors, which put increased pressures on workhouses and
led to high degree of overcrowding. Indeed, the increase in demand did not
see a rise in provision or the building of new workhouses. By 1865, around
15% of the workhouses in England and Wales had separate wards for the
6 S. EASTOE
curable and incurable insane.22 Whilst we could view this spatial provision
as an act of care, it was more often an act of necessity and a realisation
that these inmates required space, accommodation and attention that was
markedly different to the wider workhouse population. Quite often, these
areas were carved out of existing wards or buildings, many of which fell far
below acceptable standards of sanitation and ventilation, thus placing ever
more pressures on an already overstretched system.
The issue of the pauper idiot became an ever more pressing concern,
especially in the Metropolis where the concentration of so many incurable
and chronic insane across these urban workhouses saw them be described as
‘asylums in everything but attendance and appliance which ensure proper
treatment’.23 Indeed, a number of exposés, reports and investigations,
highlighting the deplorable conditions in many London workhouses were
published across the popular press. In response to growing agitations, and
increasing calls for the reorganisation of welfare provision, the Metropolitan
Poor Act was passed on the 14 March 1867, ‘for the establishment in the
Metropolis of asylums for the sick, insane and other classes of the poor…’.24
These new institutions, which included Caterham, its sister asylum Leaves-
den and a number of fever hospitals, were to be built and managed by the
MAB. These institutions and services were financed by the Metropolitan
Common Poor Fund, a pot of money to which Metropolitan unions and
parishes would pay a certain amount based on the annual rateable value
of property within their area. This money would fund the building and
furnishing of the new asylums, infirmaries and dispensaries and pay for the
medicines, running costs and staff salaries.25 Parishes and unions were also
able to claim back expenses for the maintenance of sick, infirm and imbecile
patients housed either in the MAB asylums or other public institutions.26
Caterham’s roots spring from two institutional sources, asylums and
hospitals, and two systems of provision, health and welfare. This study
contributes to the growing social history of asylums and of idiocy and
imbecility more broadly. As well as being the first major study of a pauper
imbecile asylum, Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity also represents an impor-
tant contribution to the history of the MAB, a body which represents a
‘decisive shift in terms of medical provision for the sick poor’ and, as Keir
Waddington states, was a ‘systematic effort…to provide public institutions
to the sick poor’.27 Yet, it is an organisation that has been little studied
by scholars of welfare, workhouses and asylums in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.
Asylums, Idiocy and Scholarship

Studies into the history of asylums have shown that these institutions were
not the static, monolithic or totalising sites as described in the works of
Andrew Scull, Michel Foucault or Erving Goffman.28 These important
texts, which have been challenged and critiqued over the past forty years,
laid the groundwork for how we might want to think about the roles of
various agencies and the impact of urbanisation, industrialisation and med-
ical professionalisation in the process of confinement and the emergence of
institutions in the Victorian period. With the growth of the social history
of medicine, scholars have taken up Roy Porter and Bill Luckin’s pleas to
consider the people, the places and the rituals involved in the history of
asylums and the management of the insane.29 Research by John Walton,
Steven Taylor, Cathy Smith, Joseph Melling and Cara Dobbing, to name
just a few, has highlighted the role of the family in the identification of
lunacy.30 Collectively, their work has shown that the certification of insan-
ity was frequently a social act and contributed to the circulation of the
insane across the mixed economy of welfare in numerous ways. Moreover,
such studies further support the claim that the medical superintendent, and
indeed the psychiatric profession, was often at the periphery of the path-
way to the asylum. Scholars across the humanities have also turned their
attention to the experience of the asylum itself, in an effort to create more
nuanced institutional histories that reflect their multifaceted natures, draw-
ing on various aspects in the management and administrative regime, such
as patient dress, work, exercise and sport, as well as the architecture, design
and geography of these sites to open up the inner worlds of the asylum.31
Within these studies, which use asylum patient populations as their
focus, are people who were considered to be idiots, imbeciles, and as the
nineteenth century wore on, weak- and feeble-minded. As much of the
research on asylums has been on the curable insane, the experiences of
the incurable insane have been overlooked. This is a result of academic
focus and trends in scholarship, which have been shaped by contemporary
texts, the development of Victorian psychiatry and an institutional net-
work that tended to prioritise the study of insanity, lunacy and madness.
Before discussing some of the key themes in the wider history of asylums, to
which this book speaks, it is important to understand how contemporaries,
and historians, have understood the various conditions that fell under the
broad umbrella term idiocy. As Patrick McDonagh states, idiocy is a slip-
pery term, now and in the past. Idiocy and imbecility emerged as distinct
8 S. EASTOE
areas of medico-psychiatric study at the turn of the nineteenth century.32

For some doctors, physicians and psychiatrists, idiocy and imbecility were
a form of developmental delay evidenced by poor social skills, for others
it was a form of intellectual impairment, often identified in relation to an
inability to recount the days of the week. William Wotherspoon Ireland
stated in his 1877 book that ‘idiocy is mental deficiency, or extreme stu-
pidity, depending on mal-nutrition or disease of the nervous centres’.33
These could be caused by environmental, hereditary or pathological fac-
tors, or physical deformities which began in utero due to the poor nutrition
of the mother or the unsanitary environment in which the family lived.
Historians of medicine, of psychiatry, and of learning disability have
sought out the roots of these ideas and understandings of idiocy, including
Edgar Miller and German Berrios who suggested that many ideas surround-
ing idiocy were shaped as much by contemporary scientific understandings
as they were by broader social anxieties.34 Miller and Berrios’s work, much
of which was published in the early 1990s, represents the first considered
assessment of medico-psychiatric attitudes and theories regarding idiocy
and imbecility. Tracing the ideas and biographies of key nineteenth-century
psychiatrists, including Philippe Pinel and Édouard Séguin, they were able
to show that despite a lack of a concise definition of idiocy and imbecility,
as evidenced by numerous classification schemes and terms that emerged
in the nineteenth century, there was a significant consistency of certain
attitudes and understandings. Indeed, it was broadly agreed that both
idiocy and imbecility were permanent conditions, incurable and chronic,
but could, in certain cases and with a certain degree of focussed training,
be improved, educated and most significantly, cared for.
Focussing on the early modern period, Peter Rushton and Jonathan
Andrews explored the identification, treatment and responses to idiocy,
using a wide range of sources, such as theological texts, poor law documents
and parish records, to unearth popular lay understandings.35 Collectively,
their work has highlighted the visibility of idiocy, stressing the need to pay
attention to the ‘meaningfulness of contemporary language about mental
disability in its own context’.36 Importantly, Andrews shows that there were
coherent and meaningful distinctions made between different groups of the
‘disorderly poor’, which included idiots and imbeciles. He has shown that
compared to some, idiots and imbeciles were often provided with levels of
care and compassion which was not necessarily granted to other groups.37
As the seventeenth century progressed, there was a growing consistency
in how parish officers described the incurable insane, with a distinct shift
occurring at the turn of the eighteenth century. The term innocent, regu-
larly used to record those recognised as having an intellectual delay from
birth or in early childhood, was eventually replaced by the term idiot, an
expression more frequently used in scientific and legislative circles. This
change in language reflected a rejection of more metaphorical terms such
as ‘natural fool’ or ‘innocent fool’ and was indicative of a desire by parish
authorities to employ standardised language in part to appear more profes-
sional.38 However, despite this standardisation of language, popular per-
ceptions of idiots and imbeciles saw them continue to be discussed and
regarded as ‘harmless, manageable and irredeemable’.39
This perception, as harmless and irredeemable, was a double-edged
sword. Whilst they were not treated with the fear and disdain reserved
for the mentally ill, the perceived incurability of idiocy and imbecility effec-
tively permitted parish officers to make no attempts to provide ‘extravagant
arrangements for their care’, especially given the high costs of institutional
care.40 The same could be said for Poor Law officers, asylum managers and
welfare administrators well into the nineteenth century, who experienced
similarly limited financial resources to their eighteenth- and seventeenth-
century forbearers. Even in the Victorian mixed economy of welfare, the
priority, economically and institutionally, was the curable, dangerous and
violent insane.41 Both Andrews and David Wright have suggested that the
perception of the idiot and imbecile pauper as a less serious or pressing
problem in terms of welfare reserves effectively led to them occupying an
‘impoverished ontological’ position in contemporary thought.42 Wright
contends that the lack of separate institutional provision or specific legisla-
tion regarding the incurable insane resulted in idiot and imbecile paupers
occupying ‘a devalued position in the psyche of Victorian lunacy reform’.43
He goes on to state that
[t]he emphasis on controlling ‘dangerousness’ and treating ‘curable lunatics’

meant that the English state devalued learning disability and regulated it
to an ancillary concern within the expanding Victorian asylum system. The
concentration on ‘lunacy’, rather than ‘idiocy’ was a legacy of the Victorian
period that continued to have a great impact on the provision of health and
social services well into the twentieth century.44
Whilst there is some value to these claims, both Wright and Andrews are
judging the responses to idiocy through the lens of lunacy, a perspective
which can create a distorted picture and uneven reading of the history.
10 S. EASTOE
To chart the institutional reaction to idiocy and imbecility purely through

a lunacy lens is problematic and at times unrepresentative. Indeed, Wright
ends his research just before the passing of the Metropolitan Poor Act
1867. As many studies on the history of lunatic asylums, workhouses and
the mixed economy of welfare have shown, idiot and imbecile patients were
constituent members of these patient groups.
As the evolution of lunacy legislation shows, idiocy was regarded as a
form of insanity, but there were important distinctions, which at different
points in time and in different contexts came to hold greater adminis-
trative, medical and cultural weight. With the growth of institutions and
the professionalisation of psychiatry and medicine, idiocy and lunacy were
being presented as two diverse conditions, the main division resting on
the notion of curability. It was this belief, in the opinion of Wright and
Andrews, which led many asylum managers and medical superintendents
to discharge or obstruct the admission of these individuals to their insti-
tutions. Indeed, as Mathew Thomson has suggested, the 1886 Idiot Act
saw the distinction between idiocy and lunacy formally recognised, but this
had little impact on the institutional provision for the incurable insane.45
The challenge to their presence in the buildings and sites which formed the
mixed economy of welfare was as much to do with their being undesirable
as it was to do with the ‘a humanitarian concern that idiots should not
suffer the stigma of being placed alongside the mad or indigent poor’.46
Thus, the decision to not admit idiots, imbeciles and the incurable insane
was not necessarily a manifestation of their devalued status in the Victo-
rian mind, and to claim so is to overlook many important nuances in the
creation and working of the mixed economy of welfare, and the so-called
circulation of lunatics. Indeed, several studies have shown that many groups
were denied access to the limited resources of the overstretched and under-
financed poor law workhouses and infirmaries, such as the aged, the poxed
and even the curable insane, at different points in history.47 This exclusion,
often based on financial and administrative matters, has not led historians
to conclude that these patient groups had a lesser ontological status. Mak-
ing the claim that the incurable insane were regarded as having a lower
social capital only serves to perpetuate the negative narrative that contin-
ues to surround idiocy and imbecility, and such a view is at the cost of more
nuanced discussion of their experience and place in society.
In understanding the development of the Edwardian and twentieth-
century institutional terrain, Thomson picks up on these subtle differ-
ences. He explores the debates and discussions that shaped the policies
behind the various solutions to the ‘problem’ of what was, following the
passing of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, referred to as mental defi-
ciency, including community care, sterilisation and residential institutions.
Importantly, Thomson is careful to not make too much of the supposed
strength and influence of the eugenics movement in the development of
residential institutions in the twentieth century.48 Rather than read the rise
of these schools, colonies and homes as agents of social control, Thom-
son’s insightful reading of the reform debates and legislative policies has
shown that there was a marked humanitarian aspect to this institutional
provision and development.49 Despite many well-meant intentions, due
to lack of funds and competing professional and administrative interests,
the attempts to entirely realise these safe therapeutic communities were
never fully realised.50 This is a familiar pattern of events, which occurred
in the years before the founding of Caterham. However, writing off a lack
of dedicated care and accommodation as a form of lower ontological status
of the idiot, the imbecile or the weakminded is to ignore these important
views and attitudes. Indeed, many in the twentieth century believed that
the mentally deficient required support, care and protection.
Importantly, these were ideas which had their roots in the nineteenth
century. Moreover, Caterham and the MAB can most certainly be regarded
as seeds of these ideas and networks. That this support, care and protection
was eventually delivered through what some would term segregative prac-
tices was—in the view of contemporaries—as much to shelter the mentally
deficient from society, as society from the mentally deficient. Many discus-
sions about the geography, the design and even the need for Caterham as
an asylum highlighted the need for specific care for adult idiots and imbe-
ciles, hinting at the failings in other sites and spaces reserved for the insane.
This is a particularly different, and significant, reading of the social status
of the mentally deficient to that offered by the wider and established his-
tory which viewed the lack of institutional provision as evidence of their
devalued status in the wider mixed economy of welfare. Acknowledging
these motivations and how they shaped the legislative landscape of the
twentieth century, Thomson paints a more multifaceted picture of popular
attitudes to idiocy, imbecility and the feebleminded, and the place of these
individuals in society.
Mark Jackson explores similar themes in his research on the Sandle-
bridge School, set up by educational reformer Mary Dendy, whose ideas
were shaped by the eugenic debates which emerged in the early years of
the twentieth century.51 Dendy was a keen advocate of using science to
12 S. EASTOE
legitimise and justify her aims, and with the support from the eugenicists
movement, was a lead campaigner in the calls for the social segregation of
the mentally deficient. Through careful and detailed analysis of Dendy’s
claims, and the agitations of her fellow reformers who readily espoused
the merits of the ‘scientific morality of permanent care’, Jackson sketched
out the emergence of feeblemindedness as a political and medico-social
phenomenon, and the particular attitudes to which this condition spoke.52
Importantly, like Thomson and Andrews, Jackson’s research has shown the
presence of the incurable insane across the mixed economy of welfare and
society more broadly. Indeed, across the work of Walton, Smith, and Dob-
bing, all have illustrated the diverse range of agencies and actors involved
in the management of the insane, be they classified as idiots, imbeciles
or as feebleminded, such as families, administrators and medical profes-
sionals.53 Their attitudes, understandings and motivations concerning the
care, admission and committal of an idiot to an institution were a com-
plex act, shaped by wider social, cultural and political factors. Ideas in the
nineteenth century about the value of training were different to those held
by educators, such as Dendy, in the Edwardian period. Caterham was an
institution which provided numerous forms of care, some of it long-stay,
some of it temporary, some of it educative, some of it pastoral. It straddled
these ideas and to some degree remained broadly unchanged despite the
debates and theories of campaigners like Dendy. Charting the pathways
of certain individuals, recreating their lives through the patchwork that is
the asylum casebook allows us to consider how these ideas may, or may
not, have impacted the lives of people identified as idiots or imbeciles and
admitted to Caterham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
In markedly different ways, Jackson and Thomson’s work illustrates the
visibility of idiocy. This is a history which has often been presented through
the lens of marginalisation. Indeed, in a 1995 article concerning the phys-
ical characteristics of the ‘feebleminded’ recorded in photographs taken
by Charles Paget Lapage in the early twentieth century, Jackson focussed
on narratives of deviance.54 In a special issue of Area published in 2004,
Edward Hall, a geographer, claimed that the social and institutional geog-
raphy of learning disability was best explained by an overriding ‘will to seg-
regate’.55 Contributors to the issue took up this claim, asserting that the
nineteenth century saw a distinct shift from inclusive to exclusive responses
to learning disability, as they referred to it, with the institution acting as
a definitive spatial, architectural and geographical marker of this ‘will to
segregate’. This will to segregate was stimulated by ‘the spread after the
1850s of ‘degenerationist’ fears, closely allied to
…‘eugenicist’ plans for countering any diminution of the qualities of national

racial stocks, the idiot institutions—complete with their set-apart geogra-
phies—acquired a wholly new rationale as key spaces in the pursuit for positive
mental and physical hygiene.56
There may well be some truth to these claims, however as Thomson and
Jackon’s research has shown, it was the Edwardian period that saw a con-
siderable growth in specialist institutions following the passing of the Men-
tal Deficiency Act 1913. Before this point, the development of such sites
had been slow. Indeed, by 1913 the MAB itself had four idiot asylums,
Caterham, Leavesden, Darenth (for children) and Tooting Bec (for aged
patients). Alongside this, there were a small handful of charitable asylums
for children like Earlswood and Normansfield, both managed at certain
points by the infamous John Langdon Down. Indeed, as Steven Taylor
has shown, idiot children were routinely dealt with in the existing mixed
economy of welfare.57 This limited growth does not speak of a wave of fear
sparked by anxieties around degeneration, especially when we compare it
to the growth of lunatic asylums. These readings of the geography of idiocy
have transposed early twentieth century views retrospectively onto the nine-
teenth century sites.58 Whilst it is undeniable that individuals considered
inconvenient, such as the sick, the fevered and the insane, were increasingly
removed from society and placed in institutions, the topography, presence
and visibility, is more nuanced. Teasing out these geographies is a central
aim of Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity, not least to challenge some of these
negative narratives, but also to interrogate the notion of degeneration and
deviance in relation to idiocy in Victorian society.
Many contributions to Pamela Dale and Joseph Melling’s 2006 edited
collection Mental Illness and Learning Disability since 1850: Finding a Place
for Mental Disorder in the United Kingdom, and Anne Digby and David
Wright’s edited collection From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency highlighted
the range of responses to, and the management of, idiots, imbeciles and
the weakminded, including the links between the Poor Law and lay profes-
sionals in the creation, development and maintenance of the institutional
and care networks reserved for the incurable insane.59 Through a range
of essays, researchers examined the attitudes towards idiots and imbeciles
14 S. EASTOE
across the past three centuries, charting the changes in legislative, medico-
social and administrative terminology. Whilst the notion of segregation
and stigma is an ever-present theme, there is also acknowledgement of the
humanitarian ethos that was an equally important feature of institutional
developments, as revealed by the works of Kathleen Jones, Leonard Smith
and Thomson.60 Analysing idiot asylums within the same ideological con-
text as lunatic asylums is problematic, not least as there were significantly
different sets of assumptions, understandings and expectations which lay
behind the founding, design and management of each institution. It is these
particular sets of assumptions and beliefs, shaped by the language, politics
and culture of the time, that scholars must pay attention to in order to tease
out the character and purpose of a particular institution and the experiences
of those who were admitted to such sites.
Aims and Scope

To understand Caterham and the experiences of its residents, it is impor-
tant to consider the activities, debates and campaigns that led to its found-
ing. This provides insight into how idiocy was understood in the minds
of campaigners, of administrators and of members of the medical profes-
sion. Asylums were built for specific purposes and to provide specific forms
of medical, therapeutic, and educative attention to certain patient groups.
Indeed, as mentioned, Caterham was born of a different set of debates to
those that created the more familiar lunatic asylums. A key feature of these
debates, from reformers, campaigners and welfare administrators, was the
idea that it was inhumane to house idiots and imbeciles alongside the vio-
lent and dangerous insane in lunatic asylums, or the indigent poor in the
workhouse. This hints at how idiocy was understood before the passing of
the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, not least that it was a social evil to sub-
mit them to the gloomy outlook offered in the workhouses, or the injury,
psychological and emotional, that could result from being accommodated
in a lunatic asylum.
The aim of Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity is to consider these ideas,
the founding of Caterham and how it formed part of the Victorian and
Edwardian mixed economy of welfare. The geographical focus will be on
London, as this was the area where many people sent to Caterham lived,
be it at home or the workhouse, before admission. At the time it was
built, Caterham was the first state imbecile asylum in England, alongside
its sister Leavesden which was located in Hertfordshire. In part due to the
limited archival sources for Leavesden, and in order to provide an in-depth

analysis and history of a single institution, I decided to focus on Cater-
ham, the sources for which were more extant. As well as providing the first
comprehensive history of a pauper imbecile asylum, Idiocy, Imbecility and
Insanity also seeks to challenge some of the negative narratives that have
surrounded such institutions and idiocy more broadly, through a nuanced
reading of its design, its regime, daily life and the experiences and demo-
graphics of its patient population. As historian Douglas Baynton claimed
in an article published in 1998, ‘disability is everywhere in history’, it is
just a question of acknowledging its presence and of actively seeking it out
in the texts, sources and documents that make up institutional, organisa-
tional and public archives.61 The voice, personal testimony and experience
of socially marginalised groups are often difficult to uncover, and in the
case of the incurable insane, the lack of direct archival presence has been,
at times, interpreted as an illustration of stigma, exclusion and isolation.
However, as the work of Christopher Goodey, Simon Jarret, Jan Walmsley
and Dorothy Atkinson have shown, there are ample traces of idiots, imbe-
ciles and the learning disabled across a diverse range of documents, textual,
visual and oral across time and place.62
Whilst I do not wish to argue that life for idiots, imbeciles and the insane
in the nineteenth century was devoid of stigma, shame, and neglect, I do
wish to suggest that these responses and experiences were not inevitable,
nor the general experience of all persons so identified. Caterham’s history
and the records it has left behind, charting the admission, classification and
experiences of patients, suggest that there are ample possibilities for dis-
cussing the lives of these supposedly ‘disappeared’ people: lives that should
not necessarily be explained by notions of shame, abuse and abandonment.
Thus, I shift the focus out from the institutional archive and draw on con-
temporary social surveys, such as the census and the Charles Booth maps,
to offer an insight into how individuals labelled as idiots and imbeciles lived
within, and as part of, Victorian society. By doing so, it is possible to ask
questions related to social presence and visibility, rather than explain how
those deemed to be idiots and imbeciles were physically removed from
society and rendered invisible. Where and with whom did the patients live
prior to their committal to Caterham, how long did they remain within the
home and what was the composition, environment and character of the
surrounding neighbourhood? What can such an exploration tell us about
the experiences of people identified as mentally deficient and what can the
answers to these enquiries tell us about contemporary attitudes?
16 S. EASTOE
Much of the recent rich history of idiocy and idiot asylums has been
focussed on institutions reserved for children, and the attitudes and expe-
riences related to their care, treatment and management.63 The language,
expectations and assessments levelled at adults perceived to be idiots or
imbeciles were significantly different to the ways in which idiot and imbe-
cile children were discussed. Training and educability were routinely used
to frame and explain the purpose of the idiot asylums which catered to chil-
dren, such as Earlswood. No such claims were made in the justification for
the building of Caterham, which was to be a long-stay institution and pro-
vide suitable care and accommodation to adult idiots, namely those aged
16 and over. The demands and indeed the experience of caring for an adult
with physical, mental or intellectual deficiencies were significantly different
to the care and management of an idiot or imbecile child. What was consid-
ered to be suitable in terms of care, accommodation and therapy for adult
idiots in a pauper asylum drew on established ideas regarding moral therapy,
but also considered the issues of sanitation, health and hygiene which had
come to dominate the management of institutions in the second half of the
nineteenth century. By considering these factors, and exploring the lives of
adults identified and certified as idiots and imbeciles who were admitted to
Caterham, Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity opens up several overlooked areas
in the wider history of welfare, asylums, incurable insanity in the Victorian
and Edwardian eras.
Sources and Methodology

Like many historical studies of asylums, the main sources to be used in
this study are the archival documents of Caterham, which include patient
casebooks, management committee minutes and annual reports.64 With
each record type, there are particular opportunities and challenges. Annual
reports can be considered to be the bread and butter of many institu-
tional histories. They contain both qualitative and quantitative informa-
tion regarding the operation and management of an asylum, providing
a glimpse of its particular administrative character, as well as important
statistical information concerning the demographic qualities of the patient
population. These include tables reporting the annual admission, discharge
and death rates, patient ages on arrival to Caterham, as well as their occu-
pation and marital status before committal. By the end of the nineteenth
century, these annual reports became much less qualitative and consisted
of a brief introduction from the medical superintendent, followed by pages
of charts and data. This echoes the professionalisation of psychiatry, which

saw impartial quantitative information be prized over subjective and objec-
tive qualitative information. Importantly, up until the end of the nine-
teenth century, the Caterham annual reports also had contributions from
the Matron, Steward and Resident Engineer, alongside the standard and
expected musings and reflections of the Medical Superintendents. These
also provide a window into the day-to-day workings of the asylum from
a range of perspectives, be they circumscribed by the limitations of the
institutional annual report.
Despite the diverse range of information, annual reports can present a
rather myopic picture of the asylum. As Anne Digby has suggested, his-
torians need to be aware of the nature and role of these annual reports
in the ‘competitive world of asylumdom’.65 As well as being promotional
materials, annual reports could also massage certain statistics and selec-
tively present information that would not necessarily provide an accurate
depiction of the asylum. All these claims can be made of Caterham’s annual
reports, which as a poor law institution did not need to advertise for sub-
scribers or donations, but did need to satisfy the PLB and the rate payers.
However, even with the lack of critical awareness and their tendency to
present the institution in the best possible light, annual reports remain
invaluable sources of information to the historian.
It is the patient casebooks which form the core of this study. Within
the numerous volumes, which cover the entirety of Caterham’s opera-
tion from 1870 to the early 1990s when it closed, are the biographical
details of patients, such as name, address, age, poor law union and address
of nearest known relative. They also contain medico-psychiatric informa-
tion such as the patient’s institutional classification and notes concerning
their condition on arrival to the asylum, distinguishing marks or physical-
ity, and a medical history.66 Asylum casebooks are, as Sally Swartz states,
‘complex discursive sites’ and provide insight into a range of experiences
and understandings which can ‘notwithstanding the power relations which
frame them…offer the potential to give voice to previously silenced sto-
ries’.67 As well as being administrative and medical accounts containing the
voices and opinions of the asylum medical staff, the information recorded
in the casebooks also captures the recollections and experiences of patient’s
family members. How patients were described by the medical staff or poor
law officer, the latter often going on information provided by the patient’s
18 S. EASTOE
relatives, provides us with the opportunity of seeing what people were con-
fronted with when dealing with, managing, and treating adult idiots and
imbeciles.
The Caterham patient casebooks are an incredibly rich resource. They
are a snapshot of past lives lived, traces of voice and echoes of experience.
Nestled within the hastily written notes, which more often than not claimed
that patients were ‘going on as usual’ or that there was ‘no change’, are pho-
tographs of patients. Or rather patient portraits as Dr Adam, Caterham’s
first Medical Superintendent, liked to call them. The portraits are emotive
and complex sites of memory. They provide a visual record of people whose
lives were often recorded in quick standardised sentences and phrases that
became, in and of themselves, formulaic. Some of these images are, like the
notes that surround them, formal and follow the conventions we have come
to expect of asylum photography, especially in pauper institutions. Patients
are sat three-quarters to the camera, the omnipresent mirror behind them.
Others are less formal and have the air of a family snapshot about them. In
recent studies of asylums, scholars have used patient and asylum photog-
raphy in a number of ways, moving beyond narratives of deviance and the
power of the medical gaze, in early works such as Jackson. In her mono-
graph exploring the professionalisation of science in Victorian asylums,
Jennifer Wallis used a wide array of asylum photographs, including patient
photographs and pathological images to explore how psychiatrists devel-
oped knowledge of the body and mental illness. Katherine Rawling has
explored the myriad purposes of patient photographs in public and private
asylums, how they were used as tools to communicate information about
insanity between doctors, patients and their families and how patients used
them to communicate their own identity and experience.68 Jane Hamlett
and Lesley Hoskins used patient photographs to explore dress and agency
within asylums. Collectively, their work shows the value of going beyond
the notion of medical gaze, power and narratives of deviance to show that
these images can provide insight into lives, into the experience of the asylum
and the wider experience of insanity. Indeed, as Caroline Bressey states in
her work using photographs from the Stone Asylum, these are visual records
of people; they are to be looked at as images of lives lived and importantly
show us what people looked like which is not something that can always
been successfully conveyed by the written word.69
However, the documents that make up asylum archives are also heavy
with silences. These are institutions that were undoubtedly sites of sorrow,
the process of committal a distressing experience, which asylum staff were
keenly aware of. Dr Adam made a number of references to the strain the
journey from London could have on patients, that removal from their famil-
iar, and indeed familial, surroundings could prove to be injurious mentally,
physically and emotionally.70 There are also hints of the violence that was
an inevitable feature of asylum life. Many of the people admitted to Cater-
ham were suffering from a range of often debilitating conditions, mental
and physical. These could be brought on or exacerbated by the institu-
tional setting and could manifest through violent and fractious behaviour.
It was not unknown for patients to attack fellow residents or staff members.
They would also observe and hear aggression, cruelty and brutality within
the asylum wards. Indeed, one patient was transferred from Caterham to a
lunatic asylum after he smashed a window, struck an attendant and threw
a spittoon at Dr Adam.71
Staff could also be violent and abusive towards patients, though the
recording of this is limited in the committee minutes and the wider asylum
archive. Reference to such behaviour is completely omitted in the patient
casebooks. Indeed, in my reading of the annual reports which cover a 43-
year period, I have found one direct reference to a staff member being
abusive to a patient. The case involved a male chimney sweep who was
found to have had sex with a female patient.72 The asylum management
committee and Dr Adam wished to press charges of rape against the man in
question. However, it was reported that as the patient had stated she was a
willing participant and gave her consent the charges could not be brought.
The unnamed staff member was dismissed immediately.
Within the annual reports and committee minutes are references to the
staff being dismissed for disorderly conduct; code for a number of mis-
demeanours which one can suspect included abusive behaviour. Whilst I
have an intuition that the case referred to above was not an exception, and
that violence and neglect occurred regularly in such a large institution, I
cannot invent it. I can, however, acknowledge the silences. Whilst the three
Medical Superintendents of Caterham would repeatedly state, with a hint
of pride, that seclusion had not been used, during their annual inspections
of the asylum, the CIL would note that restraint, by way of strong clothing
or restrictive chairs, was regularly used at Caterham. Staff would claim that
restraint through these measures was for the safety, security and benefit of
patients, to stop them hurting themselves or others, or destroying their
clothes. Yet, as I am fully aware, restraint could also be used to control
troublesome individuals and be used as a form of punishment. However,
to focus on unspoken abuses and neglect would be to dismiss the instances
20 S. EASTOE
of positive experiences, care and humanitarian responses that are as much

part of the institutional regime as the negatives: negatives which we are
bombarded with and which further neglect and stigmatise the asylum and
the idiot in history. Whilst I fully acknowledge the silences, hints and whis-
pers of neglect and violence, the answer is not to ignore the instances of
positive response and care with Caterham.
Overview of the Book

The book begins with the events and activities that led to the founding
of Caterham, focussing on the welfare reforms, public health and sani-
tary improvements of the 1860s to contextualise both the passing of the
Metropolitan Poor Act 1867, the creation of the MAB, the organisation
responsible for the building and management of Caterham. The follow-
ing chapter offers a detailed examination and exploration of the Caterham
patient population from a number of angles, beginning with an assessment
of the demographic characteristics of the people admitted, discharged and
who died within the walls of the asylum. Attention will also be paid to the
classifications of patients, and this is where we will see the sociocultural
understanding of idiocy, imbecility and insanity, the diagnostic similari-
ties with other conditions, the differences and how medical staff sought to
manage this, at times, frustrating situation of dealing with so-called curable
insane patients in an institution for the incurably and chronically insane.
Chapter 4 considers the experience of the asylum, how patients lived
within Caterham and how they interacted with staff through various activi-
ties, from work, occupation and entertainment. As Louise Hide and Wallis
have shown in their recent works, we cannot imagine the asylum to be
made up of two neatly segregated and isolated sides, staff on one side and
patients on the other.73 In many asylums, staff and patients remained for
lengthy periods of time, especially senior staff. At Caterham, each of the
medical superintendents, as well as living on-site, worked at the asylum for
upwards of ten years. Similarly, the matron and steward worked at Cater-
ham for over two decades and a lived in houses that were on-site with
their families, who often participated in extra-curricular aspects of daily life
in the asylum. The asylum regime, in terms of medical treatment, work
and occupation, afforded numerous opportunities for patients and staff
to interact, within and outside the formal institutional relationship, from
sport to theatrical performances. Caterham will be shown to be a diverse
and multifaceted site, with an equally diverse population, staff and patients
alike. In line with this, the chapter will also consider the material culture
of Caterham. It will explore how staff and patients lived within the site,
how occupation, entertainment and exercise were used both as therapeutic
tools for patients, and were also opportunities for staff to engage with their
charges beyond the formal regime relationship.
The final chapters of the book explore the lives of people admitted to
Caterham, and the geographies and wider visibility of idiocy, imbecility and
insanity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a number
of Caterham patients had their photograph taken, we are provided with
a visual record of these individuals. Whilst patients were described with
varying detail by the medical staff and relatives in the casebooks, a pho-
tograph is an incredibly powerful record.74 These photographs are used
in two ways to further understand and explore the history of idiocy. In
Chapter 5, they provide a window into the material and experiential world
of Caterham. How were patients dressed, how were patients presented and
how were they visually recorded. Asking and answering these questions
provides more opportunities to discover how the daily life in the asylum
and the wider regime were experienced by the hundreds of people who
were committed to Caterham.
These questions and explorations are built on in the final chapter; when
using the photographs alongside the biographical data and geographical
information, I am able to illustrate the visibility and social presence of peo-
ple identified as idiots and imbeciles in Victorian London in a number of
contexts, not solely as individuals admitted to an asylum, but as people,
as family members, as sons, daughters, sisters and brothers and as indi-
viduals who were cared for and cared about. Stitching all of these facets
together, from the founding of Caterham, the patient pathway, their biog-
raphy and particular geography, the structure and composition of their
family and the nature of their neighbourhood, we are able to see how
they lived within society. Such a detailed approach afforded by nominal
record linkage between a diverse range of sources challenges the idea that
the geography of idiocy can be explained by a will to segregate and that
the institutional terrain of the nineteenth century was shaped by proto-
eugenicist debates and concerns regarding degeneracy, moral and mental
weakness. Whilst these may have been hotly debated in some circles, at the
lay, popular and administrative level these ideas did not filter down, nor did
they to the so-called front line of asylum care, nor, indeed, to the families
who identified their kin as idiots, imbeciles or incurably insane.
22 S. EASTOE
Notes
1. William Gilbert, ‘The Idiot Colony at Caterham’, Good Words Magazine 13
(1872): 271–277.
2. Gilbert, ‘Idiot Colony’, 271.
7. Female Casebook (admissions 1870–1875), LMA H23/SL/B/14/001/B,
folio 22.
8. Patrick McDonagh, Christopher F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton (eds.), Intel-
lectual Disability: A Conceptual History, 1200–1900 (Manchester: Manch-
ester University Press, 2018).
9. David Wright, ‘Learning Disability and the New Poor Law in England,
1834–1867’, Disability & Society 15.5 (2000): 731–745.
10. Anne Digby, ‘Changes in the Asylum: The Case of York, 1777–1815’, The
Economic History Review 36.2 (1983): 218–239.
11. Wright, ‘Learning Disability’, 734.
12. Leonard Smith, Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody: Public Lunatic Asylums in
Early Nineteenth-Century England (Leicester: Cassell, 1999), 82.
13. Smith, Cure, Comfort, and Safe Custody, 6.
14. Elaine Murphy, ‘Mad Farming in the Metropolis. Part 2: The Administration
of the Old Poor Law of Insanity in the City and East London 1800–1834’,
History of Psychiatry 12.48 (2001): 405–430.
15. Vieda Skultans, Madness and Morals: Ideas on Insanity in the Nineteenth
Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 103.
16. Louise Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914 (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 16–17.
17. Wright, ‘Learning Disability’, 731–745, 736.
18. Jonathan Andrews, ‘Identifying and Providing for the Mentally Disabled in
Early Modern London’, in Digby and Wright (eds.), From Idiocy to Men-
tal Deficiency: Historical Perspectives on People with Learning Disabilities
(London: Routledge, 1996), 65–92.
19. Peter Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy: The Administration of Pauper
Lunatics in Mid-nineteenth Century England (London: Leicester Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 44–50; Elaine Murphy, ‘The Lunacy Commissioners and
the East London Guardians, 1845–1867’, Medical History 46 (2002): 495–
524.
20. British Parliamentary Papers, Copy of the Supplement to the Twelfth Report
of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, 1859 (228), Volume
IX.1
22. Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy, 44.

24. Cecil Austin, The Metropolitan Poor Act , 1867 , with Introduction, Notes,
Commentary, and Index (London, 1867), 1.
25. William Andrews Holdsworth, The Handy Book of Parish Law, 3rd ed. (Lon-
don, 1879), 183.
26. Gwendoline Ayers, England’s First State Hospitals and the Metropolitan Asy-
lums Board, 1867 –1930 (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of
Medicine, 1971), 21.
27. David Green, Pauper Capital London and the Poor Law, 1790–1870 (Lon-
don: Ashgate, 2010), 238; Keir Waddington, Charity and the London Hos-
pitals, 1850–1898 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 10.
28. Andrew Scull, Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in
Nineteenth Century England (London: Allen Lane, 1979); Michel Fou-
cault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason,
trans. Richard Howard (London: Tavistock, 1985); and Erving Goffman,
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968).
29. Roy Porter, ‘The Patient’s View: Doing Medical History from Below’, The-
ory and Society 14 (1985): 175–198; Bill Luckin, ‘Towards a Social History
of Institutionalization’, Social History 8.1 (1983): 87–94.
30. John K. Walton, ‘Lunacy in the Industrial Revolution: A Study of Asy-
lum Admissions in Lancashire, 1848–1850’, Journal of Social History 13.1
(1979): 1–2; Steven J. Taylor, ‘“All His Ways Are Those of an Idiot”: The
Admission, Treatment of and Social Reaction to Two “Idiot” Children of
the Northampton Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1877–1883’, Family & Com-
munity History 15.1 (2012): 34–43; Cathy Smith, ‘Family and Commu-
nity and the Victorian Asylum: A Case Study of the Northampton General
Lunatic Asylum and Its Pauper Patients’, The Journal of Family and Com-
munity History 9.2 (2006): 144–157; and Cara Dobbing, ‘The Circulation
of Pauper Lunatics and the Transitory Nature of Mental Health Provision in
Late Nineteenth Century Cumberland and Westmorland’, Local Population
Studies 99.1 (2017): 56–65.
31. Rebecca Wynter,‘“Good in all respects”: Appearance and Dress at Stafford-
shire County Lunatic Asylum, 1818–1854’, History of Psychiatry 22.1
(2011): 40–57; Jane Hamlett and Lesley Hoskins, ‘Comfort in Small
Things? Clothing, Control and Agency in County Lunatic Asylums in
Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England’, Journal of Victorian
Culture 18.1 (2013): 93–114; Steven Cherry and Roger Munting, ‘Exer-
cise is the Thing? Sport and the Asylum 1850–1950’, The International
Journal of the History of Sport 22.1 (2005): 42–58; Rob Ellis ‘Asylums and
Sport: Participation, Isolation and the Role of Cricket in the Treatment of
the Insane’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 30.1 (2013):
24 S. EASTOE
83–101; Dolly McKinnon, ‘“Amusements are Provided”: Asylum Enter-

tainment and Recreation in Australia and New Zealand c.1860–c.1945’, in
Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz (eds.), Permeable Walls: Historical
Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting (Amsterdam and New York:
Rodopi, 2009), 267–288; Leslie Topp and James Moran (eds.), Madness,
Architecture and the Built Environment: Psychiatric Spaces in Historical Con-
text (London: Routledge, 2007), 241–263; and Carla Yanni, The Architec-
ture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2007).
32. Patrick McDonagh, Idiocy: A Cultural History (Liverpool: Liverpool Uni-
versity Press, 2008), 5.
33. William Wotherspoon Ireland, On Idiocy and Imbecility (London: Churchill,
1877), 1.
34. Edgar Miller, ‘Mental Retardation: Clinical Section Part I’, in German. E.
Berrios and Roy Porter (eds.), A History of Clinical Psychiatry: The Ori-
gin and History of Psychiatric Disorders (London: Athlone Press, 1995),
212–224; German Berrios, ‘Mental Retardation: Clinical Section Part II’,
in German. E. Berrios and Roy Porter (eds.), A History of Clinical Psychia-
try: The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders (London: Athlone Press,
1995), 225–237.
35. Peter Rushton, ‘Lunatics and Idiots: Mental Disability, the Community,
and the Poor Law in North-East England, 1600–1800’, Medical History
32.1 (1988): 34–50; Jonathan Andrews, ‘Identifying and Providing for the
Mentally Disabled in Early Modern England’, in D. Wright and A. Digby
(eds.), From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency (London: Routledge, 1996), 65–92.
36. Andrews, ‘Identifying and Providing’, 68.
38. Jonathan J. Andrews, ‘Begging the Question of Idiocy: The Definition and
Socio-Cultural Meaning of Idiocy in Early Modern Britain: Part 1’, History
of Psychiatry 9 (1998): 65–95.
42. Andrews, ‘Begging the question’, 66.
45. Mathew Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy
and Social Policy in Britain c.1870–1959 (London: Clarendon Press, 1998),
12.
46. Thomson, Problem, 12.
47. Elaine Murphy, ‘Mad Farming in the Metropolis. Part 1: A Significant Ser-
vice Industry in East London’, History of Psychiatry 12 (2001): 245–282;
Felix Driver, ‘The Historical Geography of the Workhouse System in Eng-

land and Wales, 1834–1883’, Journal of Historical Geography 15 (1989):
269–286; and David R. Green, ‘Workhouses Pauper Protests: Power and
Resistance in Early Nineteenth-Century London Workhouses’, Social His-
tory 31.2 (2006): 37–41.
48. Thomson, Problem, 19–23, 297.
49. Thomson, Problem, 26–27.
50. Thomson, Problem, 147.
51. Mark Jackson, The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society and the Fab-
rication of the Feeble Mind in Later Victorian and Edwardian England
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
52. Jackson, Borderland, 53.
53. Mark Jackson, ‘Images of Deviance: Visual Representations of Mental Defec-
tives in Early Twentieth-Century Medical Texts’, The British Journal for the
History of Science 28.3 (1995): 319–337.
54. Walton, ‘Lunacy in the Industrial Revolution’, 13–16; Smith, ‘Family and
Community’, 118–121; Dobbing, ‘Circulation of Pauper Lunatics’, 58–62.
55. Chris Philo and Deborah Metzel, ‘Introduction to Theme Section on
Geographies of Intellectual Disability: “Outside the Participatory Main-
stream”?’, Health & Place 11.2 (2005): 77–85, 80. For more on this
see Edward Hall, ‘Social Geographies of Learning Disability: Narratives of
Exclusion and Inclusion’, Area 36.3 (2004): 298–306.
56. Philo and Metzel, ‘Introduction’, 81.
57. Steven J. Taylor, Child Insanity in England, 1845–1907 (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016).
58. Pamela Dale, ‘Implementing the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act: Competing
Priorities and Resource Constraint Evident in the South West of England
before 1948’, Social History of Medicine 16.3 (2003): 403–418.
59. Pamela Dale and Joseph Melling (eds.), Mental Illness and Learning Disabil-
ity Since 1850, Finding a Place for Mental Disorder in the United Kingdom
(London: Routledge, 2006); David Wright and Anne Digby (eds.), From
Idiocy to Mental Deficiency (London: Routledge, 1996).
60. Kathleen Jones, Asylums and After: A Revised History of the Mental Health
Services: From the Early 18th Century to the 1990s (London: Athlone Press,
1993); Leonard Smith, Cure, Comfort, and Safe Custody: Public Lunatic
Asylums in Nineteenth Century England (London and New York: Leicester
University Press, 1999); and Thomson, Problem, 27–28.
61. Douglas Baynton, quoted in Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umanksy (eds.),
The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York and London:
New York University Press, 2001), 2.
62. Christopher Goodey, A History of Intelligence and ‘Intellectual Disability’:
The Shaping of Psychology in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2011); Simon
26 S. EASTOE
Jarrett and Jan Walmsley (eds.), Intellectual Disability in the Twentieth Cen-
tury Transnational Perspectives on People, Policy, and Practice (Policy Press,
2019); Dorothy Atkinson, Mark Jackson, and Jan Walmsley (eds.), Forgot-
ten Lives: Exploring the History of Mental Deficiency (Kidderminster: BILD,
1997).
63. David Wright, Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asy-
lum, 1847 –1901 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Steven J. Tay-
lor, Child Insanity in England, 1845–1907 (London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2016).
64. All of the primary source documents relating to Caterham from patient case-
books to the MAB committee minutes are held at the London Metropolitan
Archive. From 1887 onwards, the asylum annual reports were reported in
the MAB Statistical Reports, which are held at the Wellcome Library.
65. Anne Digby ‘Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives in the Asylum’, in
Roy Porter and Andrew Wear (eds.), Problems and Methods in the History of
Medicine (London, 1987), 153–174.
66. Historians have used patient case notes in a variety of ways to draw out
both qualitative and quantitative information. See Jonathan Andrews, ‘Case
Notes, Case Histories, and the Patient’s Experience of Insanity at Gart-
navel Royal Asylum, Glasgow, in the Nineteenth Century’, Social History of
Medicine 11 (1998): 255–281; Rick Rylance, ‘The Theatre and the Gra-
nary: Observations on Nineteenth-Century Medical Narratives’, Literature
and Medicine 25 (2006): 255–276.
67. Sally Swartz, ‘Lost Lives: Gender, History and Mental Illness in the Cape,
1891–1910’, Feminism and Psychology 9.2 (1999): 152–158.
68. Katherine Rawling, ‘“She Sits All Day in the Attitude Depicted in the Pho-
to”: Photography and The Psychiatric Patient in the Late-Nineteenth Cen-
tury’, Medical Humanities, Special Issue on Communicating Mental Health
43.2 (2017): 99–110.
69. Caroline Bressey, ‘The City of Others: Photographs from the City of Lon-
don Asylum Archive’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth
Century 13 (2011): (n.p.).
70. MAB Committee Minutes, Vol. VIII (1874–1875), 360.
71. Caterham Male Casebook 11, LMA H23/SL/B14/28, 136.
72. MAB Committee Minutes, Vol. XIII (1879–1880), 880.
73. Wallis, Investigating the Body, 13; Hide, Gender and Class , 156–157.
74. Bressey, ‘The City of Others’.
CHAPTER 2
Creating Caterham
[there is an] abundance of light and air, and, above all, a cheerful, “sunny
aspect” (as the architects call it) is given in every case.1
In 1892, Sir Henry Charles Burdett, a leading authority on the design of

Victorian hospitals, infirmaries and asylums, described Caterham Imbecile
Asylum as ‘well arranged (and we use the word advisedly) for the storage
of imbeciles’.2 Burdett’s comment could well be viewed as a precursor to
Andrew Scull’s oft-referenced quote that asylums were effectively ware-
houses for society’s residuum; isolated and punitive institutions created to
provide effective segregation of the insane, curable, incurable, troublesome
and chronic, from wider society. However, Caterham was neither a county
or borough asylum, nor was it a site of cure or restoration. It was a new
form of poor law institution, built following the passing of the Metropoli-
tan Poor Act in 1867. This Act saw the sick, fevered and insane paupers,
who were regarded as undesirable and costly patients in the overcrowded
workhouses, redistributed across new institutions, designed, created and
managed by the MAB.
Caterham was born of a particular set of debates that shaped its remit, its
role in the mixed economy of welfare and the wider institutional landscape
of the nineteenth century. These debates were influenced by contemporary
ideas and understandings of the asylum’s intended residents, namely adult
© The Author(s) 2020 27

S. Eastoe, Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society,
Mental Health in Historical Perspective,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27335-4_2
28 S. EASTOE
pauper idiots and imbeciles. They were also shaped by the attitudes of
campaigners concerned with the failings of the existing poor law system.
At the time of writing this description of the asylum, Caterham had
been in operation for two decades. The asylum had grown in size and in
scale during this time. Several new ward blocks had been built on the male
and female sides of the asylum, and more land had been purchased which
increased not only the size of the all-important farm which provided food to
Caterham’s resident population, but also increased the outdoor areas used
for sport and exercise. However, it was not these spatial or environmental
factors that led Burdett to consider Caterham to be well arranged for the
hundreds of idiot and imbecile paupers transferred from the numerous
workhouse and infirmary wards of south London. In fact, he felt that ‘no
good word can be spoken’ of its ‘enormous size’.3 Rather, it was the design
of the building, the arrangement of the site and the layout of the asylum
that merited his paradoxical compliment.
It is these factors that will be explored in this chapter. Indeed, as sug-
gested by Burdett’s quote, and his publication on the subject of institutional
structures, buildings are not neutral. As sociologist Thomas Gieryn notes,
they are symbols and reflections of attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of their
designers and their managers, and the societies which they serve.4 In the
case of asylums, as James Moran and Leslie Topp have stated, these sites
were ‘important formative factors in changing modes of care for the physi-
cally ill’, physical representations of shifting ideas and considerations.5 Sig-
nificantly, Topp highlights the overzealous emphasis placed on the apparent
‘spatial separation’ and isolation of asylums, an emphasis which can obscure
the nuanced nature and history of these sites.6 Indeed, it is undeniable that
the asylum as a structure, a form of accommodation and as a site of treat-
ment and care took on particular meanings in the nineteenth century. In
the past two decades, research has considered the architecture, geography
and spatiality of asylums in a broader social and cultural context.7 Geogra-
phers such as Chris Philo, Sarah Curtis and Wilbert Gesler have considered
the role of the environment, the landscape and the community in the geog-
raphy of asylums.8 Their work has shown that physical location of asylums
was dictated by a number of factors, including the notion that removal or
segregation from society was seen as beneficial both for the patient and the
community.
Thus, to understand the roots, the purpose and the conception of Cater-
ham Imbecile Asylum, we need to understand what factors led to its cre-
ation, the motivations behind its founding and how it was intended to
2 CREATING CATERHAM 29
operate within the wider mixed economy of welfare. To do this, the chapter
will focus on a specific time and a specific episode: the events leading up
to the passing of the Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 and the building of
Caterham.
Ideal Institutions
By the time Caterham was being designed, there had been several waves of
institutional building. From the small-scale asylums built to echo country
houses following the passing of the so-called 1808 Wynn’s Act to the large-
scale asylums like Colney Hatch following the 1845 Lunacy Acts, as well as
numerous hospitals and workhouses erected in the early to mid-nineteenth
century, the managers of Caterham were surrounded by a plethora of insti-
tutional forms. Alongside these physical structures were numerous texts,
articles and books on the subject of asylum design, taking into account
the newest innovations in medical, sanitary and scientific theories to afford
greater efficiency in terms of economies and administration of patients,
staff and residents in these sites. Caterham was built on the pavilion plan,
a design that was more commonly used in hospitals and infirmaries. It was
considered by contemporaries, Burdett included, to be incredibly sanitarily
efficient. In fact, it was a style much favoured by the MAB, and versions
of it were used for a number of its institutions, including the St Pancras
Infirmary in Archway, London.9 Wards were naturally ventilated, with the
circulation of fresh air afforded by the high ceilings and the numerous long
windows which opened at the top for matters of sanitation, safety, and
security. Attention was also paid to the internal arrangement, with the beds
placed between the windows to maximise airflow and to ensure the great-
est amount of cubic space per patient, which were central features of the
sanitary practicalities of the pavilion plan design. The rectilinear corridors
connecting the three-storey ward buildings to the central administrative
block further prevented disease and illness from being transferred between
these different sections of the asylum site. Bad air was seen as a corrupting
force, carrying with it disease, illness and in many cases death. This foul
air, with its miasmatic qualities, was an ever-present concern to Victorians,
before the advent of germ theory towards the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, and was a particular concern to institutional managers who were often
dealing with demands of smells, limited space, and sickness. Thus, buildings
that could ensure the flow of clean, fresh and good air were welcomed by
30 S. EASTOE
many involved in the management and administration of the sick, fevered

and insane.
However, there was one main drawback of the pavilion plan asylum. In
the opinion of Burdett, this particular layout was best suited to asylums with
less than 1000 patients. Caterham at its highest capacity provided accom-
modation to over 2000 patients. He felt that the scale was too great to
ensure efficient supervision, sanitation and management of patients, which
were regarded by many as the most pressing concerns when it came to
asylums. This mixed interpretation of Caterham hints at the factors that
were considered most important and pertinent to the MAB. Caterham was
born of the sanitary reforms of the 1860s, not the psychiatric reforms that
led to the founding and building of lunatic asylums. These reforms were a
consequence, in part, of the so-called great confinement of the 1840s and
1850s, afforded by the growth of workhouses, asylums and infirmaries. The
sanitary crisis and welfare reforms were also a product of the wider indus-
trial and urban expansion of London. Throughout the nineteenth century,
London, like many of Britain’s cities, experienced a huge increase in terms
of size, scale and people. Many men and women flocked to London to seek
out employment and economic opportunities in the manufacturing ware-
houses, workshops, industries, offices that dotted the city.10 This influx of
people put particular stresses, not only on the city in terms of employment
and housing, but also sanitation, care and welfare.
Caterham had many architectural features that were common, and to
some degree expected, in institutional designs and plans, not least the cen-
tral administrative block where patients were received on arrival to the asy-
lum. Towards the front of this central block were the offices of the medical
superintendent and his assistants, as well as offices and mess rooms for the
head attendants, the asylum clerk and a well-appointed board room to be
used when the management committee or poor law guardians visited. To
the rear of this central block were the vast asylum kitchen, scullery and
numerous store rooms filled to the brim with food, cleaning and medi-
cal supplies, and beyond these rooms was the cavernous laundry which was
located at the very end of this mammoth structure. The ward blocks fanned
out on either side of the central administrative building, female patients on
one side and male patients on the other, with the asylum chapel laying to
the right of the main block and the houses for senior staff to the left.
Contemporary maps show that Caterham was built in a relatively rural
location, which may well have been interpreted by Burdett as evidence
of being well arranged, geographically and socially speaking. A common
2 CREATING CATERHAM 31
theme in the history of asylums has claimed that their location was dictated
by a desire to physically and visually remove the insane from society.11 How-
ever, this supposed segregation is more nuanced than being explained as a
form of removal of the inconvenient from the eyes, and perhaps hearts, of
Victorian society. As Clare Hickman has shown, a major factor in the geog-
raphy of asylums was the contemporary belief in the healing and restorative
power of nature.12 The rural landscape with its cheerful and tranquil char-
acter would counter the negative effects of urban living. Dr David Brodie,
medical superintendent of the Idiot Asylum at Larbert Edinburgh, a private
institution catering to 300 patients, stated that the ideal environment for
an imbecile asylum
…ought to be in the country, but near to a town, easily accessible at all sea-
sons, so as to allow full and frequent intercourse with the outer world…The
situation must secure perfect hygienic conditions, abundance of pure water,
equal to all possible demands for bath, lavatory and water closet require-
ments, perfect drainage, and liberal space for playground, walking exercise,
and garden or farm operations13
Elements of this environmental ideal can be found in Caterham’s geog-

raphy, from the connection to the local village to the liberal space for
occupation, entertainment and exercise. Moreover, certain additions to
the asylum capitalised on its hygienic features, such as fresh air, good light
and an abundance of clean water that was pumped on-site. The asylum
was built on a 72-acre site, which overlooked the verdant Caterham Val-
ley. The location was described by the management committee as having
strong prevailing winds, a good chalky subsoil which was perfect for farm-
ing and a general tranquillity that would undoubtedly assist in keeping the
asylum hygienic and sanitary.14 It was also well connected to London with
the local train station ‘a little more than a mile away’.15 The railway was to
play an important role in the running of the asylum, beyond that of trans-
porting patients, goods and staff to the asylum doors. Family members
were actively encouraged to visit the asylum, and in 1872 the Management
Committee, following requests from the medical superintendent, arranged
with the South Eastern Railway Company, which ran the line between Lon-
don and Caterham Station, for reduced price train fare for patient families.
By 1874, over 14,000 of these specially arranged tickets had been issued
to patients’ relatives.16 The railway station was, in some respects, the gate-
way to the asylum in the village. On visit days, hundreds of families would
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el querido no es engañado, ni el
cohecho hace bien ni mal. No
dudo yo que en la mayor
Babilonia permita Amor algún
pecho lleno de fe y lealtad, y entre
la soledad de los campos alguna
intención dañada, para confusión
de aquéllos y ventaja de estotros;
mas pocos son, y tan pocos que
por milagro se puede topar con
ellos. Bien probarán los pastores
del Tajo con su intención la mía, y
bien me acuerdo que el
enamorado Filardo, la noche
antes quedó en la cabaña de
Fidea, con Silvia y Dinarda; pues
agora sabed que, recogidas las
tres pastoras después de largas y
dulces pláticas, el celoso amante,
vencido del dolor que le
atormentaba, buscó á Pradelio y
con palabras graves y corteses le
llevó á la falda de un collado,
lugar solo y propio para su
intención. No se receló Pradelio
de Filardo porque sabía que era
noble de corazón y de trato llano
y seguro, ni Filardo jamás pensó
ofenderle, porque de nada le
tenía culpa, y junto con esso le
conocía por bastante para su
defensa. Golpeándole iba á
Filardo el corazón, y mil veces en
el camino escogiera no haberse
determinado, pero ya que no se
vino en tiempo de volver atrás, lo
más sereno que pudo soltó la voz
y díxole: ¿Qué has entendido
siempre de mi amistad, pastor?
Hasta ahora, dijo Pradelio, no la
he probado, pero entiendo que á
mí ni á nadie la puedes hacer
mala. No cierto, dixo Filardo, pero
si esso es assí, ¿por qué me
haces tanto daño? ¿Daño? dixo
Pradelio; no sé cómo. Yo te lo
diré, dixo Filardo. ¿No sabes,
Pastor, que yo amo á Filena más
que á mí, y que fuí la causa de
que tú la conociesses, y después
que ella te conoce nunca más ha
vuelto los ojos á mirarme, y yo
muero sin remedio, porque sin
ella me es imposible vivir? Pues
yo, pastor, dixo Pradelio, ¿qué
puedo hacer que bien te esté?
Mucho, dixo Filardo; con no verla,
quitarás la ocasión de mi
tormento. ¿Qué es la causa, dixo
Pradelio, que huelgas de verla tú?
Amarla como la amo, dixo Filardo.
Pues si esso te obliga, dixo
Pradelio, la misma obligación
tengo yo; y si te parece que tú me
la diste á conocer, quiérote
desengañar, que antes que tú la
conociesses la amaba yo. Basta
decirlo tú, dixo Filardo, para que
yo lo crea, Y aun para ser verdad,
dixo Pradelio, y esto nadie mejor
que Filena lo puede saber; si
tienes tanta parte con ella, que te
lo diga. Por gran amiga la tengo
de aclarar dudas, y si no estás tan
adelante, no te penes, Filardo,
que es la vida breve y
inhumanidad gastarla en
pesadumbres. Pastor, dixo
Filardo, yo no vengo por
consejos, que valen baratos y
cómpranse muy caros. Tú te
resumes en no hacerme el gusto
que te pido: Filena haga el suyo,
que quizá pararás en lo que yo
pararé. Sin duda, dixo Pradelio, tú
fuiste muy favorecido de Filena.
Como tú lo eres, dixo Filardo.
¿Pues qué se puede hacer? dixo
Pradelio. A las mujeres, y más á
las que tanto valen, amarlas es lo
más justo, y el tiempo del favor
estimarle con el alma: y si esto
faltare, como el buen labrador
cultivar de nuevo, que tierras son
que tras los cardos suelen dar el
fruto. Mientras tú la gozas, dixo
Filardo, poca esperanza dél me
puede á mí quedar. Y á mí poco
miedo, dixo Pradelio, mientras
que tú la deseas. Filena, aunque
moza y poco cursada en esto, es
de tan claro entendimiento y de
bondad tan natural, que lo que
contigo hizo y contigo hace, sólo
le sale de una condición afable y
llana, con que generalmente trata
sus amigos, sino que los hombres
burlados de aquella llaneza,
aficionados á su hermosura, al
punto armamos torres de viento y
arrojamos la presunción por
donde jamás ha passado su
pensamiento. Yo asseguro que si
te entendió que no era tu trato
con ella tan llano como el suyo
contigo, essa fué la causa de sus
desdenes, y lo mismo haría
conmigo si me desviasse del
camino que ella lleva. Gracias te
doy, pastor, dixo Filardo, con la
buena conclusión de tus bienes y
mis males. Si yo no hubiera arado
con Filena, maestro quedaba para
saberlo hacer. Yo nací antes que
tú, Pradelio, y moriré primero; vive
en paz con tus favores, que eres
digno y muy digno de gozarlos.
En estas pláticas se les passó la
noche á los pastores, y ya que el
alba rompía, Finea y las dos
pastoras, desamparando el lecho,
guiaron á la cabaña de Filena, por
complacer á Silvia que iba
intencionada de valer con ella á
Filardo en todo lo que pudiesse.
Pues como toparon á los dos
pastores, Dinarda les pidió
compañía y todos cinco
caminaron; pero no le parecio á
Finea que fuessen ociosos, y
vuelta á Filardo encarecidamente
le pidió que cantasse y á Pradelio
que tañesse. El lo hará todo, dixo
Pradelio. Si haré, dixo Filardo,
que quien consigo discorda, con
ninguno se podrá templar.
FILARDO
Cuando el Amor, con
poderosa mano,
prendió mi pensamiento,
prometióme salud, paz y
alegria;
fiéme del tirano,
y si ve mi contento,
por diverso camino se desvía;
no espere más, Amor, quien
de ti fía.
¡Oh, mala rabia te
atraviesse el pecho,
porque sientas un poco
de lo que siente el que por tí
se huía,
tu voluntad despecho,
tu entendimiento loco,
y tu memoria como está la
mía,
y vengárase, Amor, quien de ti
fía!
¿Qué ley del cielo ó tierra
puedes darnos,
que obliguen nuestras penas
á más de padecer en su
porfía?
mas quieres obligarnos;
nuevos fueros ordenas,
que llamemos reposo la
agonía.
¡Oh, desdichado, Amor, quien
de ti fía!
¿Hemos por dicha visto de
tu casa
salir algún pagado,
como salen quexosos cada
día?
¡Oh, mano al bien escassa!
¡oh, mal aconsejado
el que se alegra con tu
compañía,
y más, Amor, aquel que de ti
fía!
Pone en sulcar las ondas
confianza,
en seca arena siembra,
coger el viento en ancha red
confía,
quien funda su esperanza,
en corazón de hembra,
qué es tu templo, tu cetro y
monarquía.
¿Qué fruto espera, Amor,
quien de ti fía?
El que de libre se te hace
esclavo,
en tus leyes professo,
morir mejor partido le sería,
pues queda al cabo, al cabo,
pobre, enfermo, sin seso,
y arrepentidos los de su valía;
en esto para, Amor, quien de ti
fía.
Buena ha estado la lisonja, dixo

Silvia; si dessa manera sobornas
á todos los que has menester, yo
los doy por desapassionados de
tu gusto. Pastora, dixo Filardo,
quien me hiciesse á mí mudar
estas canciones, bien poderosa
sería. Yo sé que cualquiera
entiende cuán digno es de perdón
el forzado. Cante Pradelio, que
como le hacen otro son, podrá
llevar otros tenores. Esso no se
excusa, dixo Dinarda, y tomando
á Filardo la lira la dió á Pradelio,
el cual ansí obedeció á la pastora,
sin poner excusa:
PRADELIO
El tiempo que holgares,
Filena, en ver mis ojos de
agua llenos,
ó los tuyos alzares
en mi favor serenos,
el ganado y la vida tendré en
menos.
Viendo de dónde viene
el bien ó el mal que tu beldad
me ha hecho,
obligado me tiene
con un constante pecho
á agradecer el daño y
provecho.
Tu alta gentileza,
tu valor, tu saber, amé
primero,
subíme á más alteza
de un querer verdadero,
ámote mucho y mucho más te
quiero.
El quererte y amarte
proceden de mirarte y
conocerte,
cada cual por su parte;
el amarte es por suerte,
pero por albedrío el bien
quererte.
Mis llamas, mis prisiones,
son los jardines donde me
recreo;
tus gustos, tus razones,
espejo en que me veo,
y en tu contento vive mi
deseo.
Á ser sólo dotada,
como otras, de caduca
hermosura,
quizá fueras amada
de la misma hechura;
mas tu beldad de todo me
asegura.
Ansí ciega y assombra
mi gran amor, que á todos
escurece,
y el mundo es una sombra,
y cuanto en él parece
del sol que en mis entrañas
resplandece.
Págame en mi moneda
mi amor (si tanto amor puede
pagarse),
ó á lo menos no pueda
con pesares aguarse
la fe más pura que podrá
hallarse.
No son estos recelos
por no entender mi hado
venturoso,
y tampoco son celos
de indicio sospechoso:
sólo mi valor me trae medroso.
Tú, mi dulce señora,
primera causa de mi buena
andanza,
por la fe que en mí mora,
si en la tuya hay mudanza,
haz que socorra engaño á mi
esperanza.
Entre otras cosas que los

hombres tienen malas, dixo
Dinarda, ésta es una: que desde
la hora que comienzan á amar,
desde essa misma comienzan á
temer. Yo te asseguro, dixo
Filardo, que si es agravio
temellas, también lo es amallas,
porque verdaderamente el que no
teme no ama, que bien lo dice
aquel soneto de Siralvo, ¿hasle
oido, Silvia? No, Filardo, dixo la
pastora. Pues yo te lo quiero
decir, dixo Filardo. Y yo oirle, dixo
Silvia, que aunque me tienes
enojada, no tanto que no te quiera
escuchar. Tú sabes, dixo Filardo,
la obligación que tienes á mi
voluntad, y ahora óyeme el
soneto.
FILARDO
Poco precia el caudal de
sus intentos
el que no piensa en el
contrario estado;
el capitán que duerme
descuidado
poco estima su vida y sus
intentos.
El que no teme á los
contrarios vientos,
pocos tesoros ha del mar
fiado;
pocos rastros y bueyes
fatigado
el que no mira al cielo por
momentos.
Poco ha probado á la
fortuna el loco
que en su privanza no temiere
un hora
que se atraviesse invidia en la
carrera;
Finalmente de mí y por mí,
señora,
creed que el amador que teme
poco,
poco ama, poco goza y poco
espera.
En cuanto dixo Silvia: será para

Filida el soneto. Sólo esto me
descontenta de Siralvo, ser tan
demasiado altanero: en el
Henares á Albana, en el Tajo á
Filida; á otra vez que se enamore
será de Juno ó Venus. Amigo es
de mejorarse, dixo Dinarda, que
aunque Albana no es de menos
suerte y de más hacienda, Filida
es muy aventajada en hermosura
y discreción. Pues yo sé quién la
pide en casamiento, dixo Finea; y
si se ha de casar no tomará otra
cosa que mejor le esté. Filida,
dixo Dinarda, no lo hará de su
voluntad; y si la apremia, dejará
los deudos y se consagrará á
Diana, y si considera lo que con
tanta razón puede, que es no
haber hombre que la merezca,
hará muy discretamente. Unas
coplas sé yo, dixo Pradelio, que
hizo Siralvo á su deseo,
aprobadas por dos claríssimos
ingenios: uno el culto Tirsi, que de
Engaños y Desengaños de Amor
va alumbrando nuestra nación
española, como singular maestro
dellos, y otro el celebrado Arciolo,
que con tan heroica vena canta
del Arauco los famosos hechos y
vitorias. Esso tienen las coplas,
dixo Silvia, que por parecer de
uno aplacen á muchos; pero si a
mí no me agradan, poco me
mueve que grandes poetas las
alaben, que por la mayor parte
gustan de cosas que no son
buenas para nada. ¿Qué poesía ó
ficción puede llegar á una copla
de la Propaladia, de Alecio y
Fileno, de las Audiencias de
Amor, que todos son
verdaderamente ingenios de
mucha estima, y los demás, ni
ellos se entienden ni quien se la
da? ¿Y los dos de un nombre, dijo
Pradelio, el Cordobés y el
Toledano, y el claro espejo de la
poesía que cantó Tiempo turbado
y perdido? No falta, dixo Filardo,
quien los murmure, y aun al que
por mayoría es llamado el Poeta
Castellano, porque hasta ahí llega
la ciencia de los que á sola su
opinión lo entienden. Esta es la
mía, dixo Silvia; dínos las coplas,
Pradelio, que para mí no quiero
mejor Tirsi ni Arciolo que mi
gusto; con lo cual, sacándolas el
pastor del seno, las leyó, y
decían:
PRADELIO
Si no te he dicho, Deseo,
en la estimación que estás,
sabe que te tengo en más
que á los ojos con que veo;
y no es demasiada fiesta,
que una prenda tan valida,
no es mucho que sea tenida
en lo menos que me cuesta.
Aunque tú quedaste en
calma
sin viento que te contraste,
bien sabes que me anegaste
la luz del cuerpo y del alma,
y visto parte por parte,
pues solo suples la falta,
de todo lo que me falta,
por todo debo estimarte.
Yo voy ciego, y voy sin guía,
por la mar de mis enojos,
y tú das lumbre á mis ojos
más que el sol á medio día;
no puede imaginación
engastar perla de Oriente
que esté tan resplandeciente
como tú en mi corazón.
Voy á remo navegando,
es la imán mi voluntad,
y sola tu claridad
el norte que va mirando
el débil barquillo abierto,
sin merecimiento en él,
y en el naufragio cruel
eres mi seguro puerto.
No espero jamás bonanza
en la vida ni en la muerte,
mas bástame á mí tenerte
en lugar de la esperanza;
bien sé que en ti se turbó
el sossiego más sereno,
mas no hay ninguno tan bueno
por quien te trocase yo.
Vengan penas desiguales,
y por caudillo desdén,
que sola serás mi bien,
aunque les pese á mis males.
Tú, en la esperanza más dura,
tú sola, en el día malo,
tienes de ser mi regalo,
mi consuelo y mi blandura.
¿No fuiste engendrado,
dime,
de aquellos ojos beninos
por quien quedarán indinos
los que el mundo en más
estime?
Y en mi pecho concebido,
y en la vida alimentado,
hijo que tanto ha costado,
¿no es razón que sea
querido?
Juzguen el justo caudal
que hago de ti por vicio;
digan que en este edificio
eres arena sin cal;
llamen tu hecho arrogancia,
sin esperanza á do fueres,
que yo que entiendo quién
eres
confessaré tu importancia.
¡Oh, cuánto me has de
costar
en cuanto no me acabares!
mas cuanto más me costares,
tanto más te he de estimar;
los daños de aquesta historia,
bravos son considerados;
vistos no, que van mezclados
contigo, que eres mi gloria.
El rato que considero
la gracia, la gentileza,
la discreción, la belleza,
por quien á tus manos muero,
no sólo el dolor terrible
passo sin dificultad,
pero con facilidad
te sufro en ser impossible.
Quizá dirán devaneas
muchos que saben de Amor.
¿Qué es cosa y cosa, amador,
deseas ó no deseas?
Responderles he que sí
y que el mal que Amor me
hace,
de mi desventura nace,
y el bien y el honor, de ti.
Pues, ilustre Deseo mío,
¿quién te torcerá el camino,
si veniste por destino,
y vences por albedrío?
Eres una dulce pena,
eres un contento esquivo,
eres la ley en que vivo,
y en la que Amor me condena.
Las coplas me han contentado,

dixo Silvia, porque son del arte
que yo las quiero; tienen llaneza y
juntamente gravedad. En mil
obras de poetas he leído á
Caribdis y Scila y Atlante y el
humido Neptuno, cosa bien poco
importante en amores, y que se
dexa entender que no le sobran
conceptos al que se acoge á los
ajenos. Mas ahora, ¿qué hará
Siralvo? ¿Es su cabaña aquélla?
Sí, dixo Pradelio, vamos por allí,
que él holgará de hacernos
compañía. Qué fresca es, dixo
Finea, esta Fuente de Mendino;
pues allí me parece que duermen
dos pastores y, sin duda, son
Alfeo y Siralvo. Sí son, dixo Finea;
y llegando más cerca, al ruido los
dos pastores recordaron, y
saludándose alegremente
determinaron de seguir á Silvia, y
ella, que en extremo era graciosa
y discreta, los fué entreteniendo
hasta llegar á la cabaña de
Filena, donde la hallaron vestida
de una grana fina, con pellico azul
de palmilla, pespuntado de pardo
y lazadas verdes; camisa labrada
de blanco y negro, y el cabello, en
cinta leonada, trenzado con ella;
estaba Florela vestida de verde
claro, saya y pellico; el cabello
cogido en una redecilla de oro, y
un cayado en la mano. Con la
llegada de los pastores creció su
hermosura y gentileza, y tras
breves pláticas supieron que la
sin par Filida iba al templo de
Pan, Dios de los pastores, y
enviaba por Filena, y tendría
mucho gusto de que todos
fuessen allá, porque estaría sola
con Belisa, la vieja Celia,
Campiano y Mandronio,
doctíssimos maestros del ganado.
Con esta seguridad tomaron el
camino del templo, donde en
breve espacio passaron grandes
cosas. Siralvo supo de Florela
cómo trataban de casar á Filida,
y Filida estaba tan congojada de
ver á sus deudos determinados,
que se pensaba ir con Diana sin
ninguna duda, y porque la tenían
la noche antes no se lo había
dicho, mas ya estaba declarado
por la una parte y por la otra. Este
fué agudo puñal para el corazón
de Siralvo, y mucho más holgara
de verla casada que con Diana en
los montes, donde el verla y oirla
sería con mayor dificultad; pero
certificado de que era su gusto
hacerlo, se consoló con Florela
cuanto pudo. Por otra parte, Silvia
y Filena trataron de la causa de
Filardo y Pradelio, y sin valerle á
Silvia sus ruegos ni razones,
Filardo quedó excluído y Silvia
corrida y triste; llamó al pastor y á
Dinarda, y despidiéndose los tres
se volvieron, á gran pesar de
Filardo y á mayor placer de
Pradelio, porque tuvo lugar de
irse con la pastora Filena solo á
su voluntad platicando. Finea y
Alfeo no se hicieron mala
compañía; porque si él se
desterró enamorado y
desfavorecido, ella hizo otro tanto;
un mismo dolor los afligía, y una
misma razón los debiera consolar;
mas agora, de todos seis sólo
Pradelio y Finea, contentos,
llegaron al templo del semicabro
Pan, donde fueron de la sin par
Filida y los que con ella estaban
favorablemente recebidos, y
sacando la anciana Celia
preciosas conservas, por ruego
de Filida, los pastores comieron
del desusado manjar y bebieron
del agua fresca que en el jardín
del templo había; luego
anduvieron por él mirando y, entre
otras cosas, hallaron, de sutil
mano y pincel, la bella Siringa
convertida en caña, y el silvestre
amante juntando con cera los
nuevos cañutos. Adelante, en una
gran tabla, estaban, por letras y
números, las leyes pastorales, el
tiempo de desquilar, el modo de
untar la roña, el talle del mastín,
la forma del cayado, el arte de
hacer el queso, manteca y otras
muchas menudencias más y
menos importantes; y por si
alguno se acordasse que el
silvestre Dios fué de Hércules, por
amores de Deyanira, despeñado,
quiso el pintor que se viesse la
fuerza de su despeñador, y assi
puso alrededor del templo sus
espantosas hazañas.
Primero, en su concepción,
Júpiter, su padre, trasformado en
Amphitrión, marido de su madre
Alcumena.
Después, en su nacimiento, la
madrastra Juno hecha pobre
vejezuela y con hechizos
estorbando el peligroso parto;
pero después, con la astucia de
Agalante, está nacido el poderoso
Hércules en compañía del no
menos valeroso hermano, hijo de
su padrasto Amphitrión.
Después desto se veían los
muchachos solos, en sendas
cunas; el de Amphitrión llorando,
de dos culebras enviadas, de la
venenosa Juno; pero Hércules,
que de soberano poder era
ayudado, asiendo con sus tiernas
manecillas las fieras culebras, las
tenía ahogadas.
Tras esto estaba, cuando llevó
vivo á Euristheo el fiero puerco de
Arcadia del monte Erimantho,
donde estaba (por maldición de
Diana) destruyendo los campos y
labores, y matando cuanta gente
hallaba ó le buscaba por la fama
de su fuerza.
Luego se veía la Selva Nemea, y
el gentil mancebo por ella,
siguiendo al fiero León, al cual,
alcanzado, rompía con sus manos
las fuertes quijadas, y después
desollándole se cubría de su
duríssima piel.
Assí vestido, estaba más adelante
en la Laguna Lernea, llena por
sus anchas islas de juncos y
cañaverales, peleando con la fiera
Sierpe Hidra; más viendo que si le
cortaba una cabeza, por sola
aquella le nacían siete, después
que con la espada la tajaba el
duro cuello, sobre la misma
herida ligeramente le pegaba un
hacha de vivo fuego.
Aunque esto se veía vivamente
retratado, no parecía menos bien
la lucha suya y del gran Anteo, al
cual, como Hércules vido que
dejándose caer sobre la Tierra
(cuyo hijo era), cobraba dobladas
fuerzas en sus brazos, con los
suyos le apretaba de manera que,
quitándole el alma, le hacía
extender el cuerpo, desasido de
su bravo y fuerte vencedor.
Adelante estaba, en el Occeano
de Africa, matando el fiero Dragón
de la Huerta de Atlante. Y
después victorioso con las
Manzanas de oro. Tras esto, en el
monte Aventino, viendo que el
ladrón Caco, hijo de Vulcano y
Venus, le había hurtado sus
vacas, le estaba poniendo fuego á
su fuerte cueva, donde con
lumbre y humo le procuraba dar la
muerte: y al fin salido della,
echando por su boca y oídos
grandes llamas, procuraba en
vano defenderse; pero el valeroso
Alcides, teniéndole en el suelo,
sin ninguna piedad le ahogaba.
Luego sustentando el Cielo con
sus hombros.
Después, amarrando al Can
Cerbero y sacándole á él y á
Proserpina robados, dejaba
herido á Plutón, Dios de los
Infiernos. No con menos agonía
peleaba con el de las Aguas
Acheloo, al cual habiendo vencido
en su propia figura de gigante, y
después de Dragón, cuando le ve
hecho Toro, con risa le abate, y
quita el Cuerno de su frente.

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Idiocy Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society Caterham Asylum 1867 1911 1St Ed 2020 Edition Stef Eastoe Full Chapter

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Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in

Victorian Society: Caterham Asylum,

More information about this series at

Mental Health in Historical Perspective

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

Cover credit: Classic Image/Alamy Stock Photo

Throughout Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity, much of the terminology is

1 Introduction and the Roots of Caterham 1

4 Experiencing Caterham: Work, Occupation

5 Visualising Idiocy, Visualising Caterham 127

6 Geographies of Idiocy and Imbecility 159

Appendix A—Admissions 201

Appendix B—Deaths 203

Appendix C—Discharges 205

AMO Assistant Medical Officer

Fig. 5.7 Patient Portrait John W., Male Casebook 12,

Table 3.1 Number of idiot or imbecile persons, per million

Introduction and the Roots of Caterham

On a fine December morning in 1872, William Gilbert, secretary of the

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Asylums, Idiocy and Scholarship

areas of medico-psychiatric study at the turn of the nineteenth century.32

[t]he emphasis on controlling ‘dangerousness’ and treating ‘curable lunatics’

To chart the institutional reaction to idiocy and imbecility purely through

…‘eugenicist’ plans for countering any diminution of the qualities of national

Aims and Scope

limited archival sources for Leavesden, and in order to provide an in-depth

Sources and Methodology

of charts and data. This echoes the professionalisation of psychiatry, which

of positive experiences, care and humanitarian responses that are as much

Overview of the Book

22. Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy, 44.

83–101; Dolly McKinnon, ‘“Amusements are Provided”: Asylum Enter-

Felix Driver, ‘The Historical Geography of the Workhouse System in Eng-

In 1892, Sir Henry Charles Burdett, a leading authority on the design of

© The Author(s) 2020 27

many involved in the management and administration of the sick, fevered

Elements of this environmental ideal can be found in Caterham’s geog-

Buena ha estado la lisonja, dixo

Entre otras cosas que los

En cuanto dixo Silvia: será para

Las coplas me han contentado,

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AMO Assistant Medical Officer