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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
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, UK
Covering all historical periods and geographical contexts, the series
explores how mental illness has been understood, experienced, diag-
nosed, treated and contested. It will publish works that engage actively
with contemporary debates related to mental health and, as such, will be
of interest not only to historians, but also mental health professionals,
patients and policy makers. With its focus on mental health, rather than
just psychiatry, the series will endeavour to provide more patient-centred
histories. Although this has long been an aim of health historians, it has
not been realised, and this series aims to change that.
The scope of the series is kept as broad as possible to attract good
quality proposals about all aspects of the history of mental health from
all periods. The series emphasises interdisciplinary approaches to the field
of study, and encourages short titles, longer works, collections, and titles
which stretch the boundaries of academic publishing in new ways.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14806
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
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
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maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: Classic Image/Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
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
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Pittsburg, where we halted next night, on the Ohio, is certainly,
with the exception of Birmingham, the most intensely sooty, busy,
squalid, foul-housed, and vile-suburbed city I have ever seen. Under
its perpetual canopy of smoke, pierced by a forest of blackened
chimneys, the ill-paved streets, swarm with a streaky population
whose white faces are smutched with soot streaks—the noise of
vans and drays which shake the houses as they pass, the turbulent
life in the thoroughfares, the wretched brick tenements,—built in
waste places on squalid mounds, surrounded by heaps of slag and
broken brick—all these gave the stranger the idea of some vast
manufacturing city of the Inferno; and yet a few miles beyond, the
country is studded with beautiful villas, and the great river, bearing
innumerable barges and steamers on its broad bosom, rolls its turbid
waters between banks rich with cultivated crops.
The policeman at Pittsburg station—a burly Englishman—told me
that the war had been of the greatest service to the city. He spoke
not only from a policeman’s point of view, when he said that all the
rowdies, Irish, Germans, and others had gone off to the war, but from
the manufacturing stand-point, as he added that wages were high,
and that the orders from contractors were keeping all the
manufacturers going. “It is wonderful,” said he, “what a number of
the citizens come back from the South, by rail, in these new metallic
coffins.”
A long, long day, traversing the State of Indiana by the Fort Wayne
route, followed by a longer night, just sufficed to carry us to Chicago.
The railway passes through a most uninteresting country, which in
part is scarcely rescued from a state of nature by the hand of man;
but it is wonderful to see so much done, when one hears that the
Miami Indians and other tribes were driven out, or, as the phrase is,
“removed,” only twenty years ago—“conveyed, the wise called it”—to
the reserves.
From Chicago, where we descended at a hotel which fairly
deserves to be styled magnificent, for comfort and completeness, Mr.
Lamy and myself proceeded to Racine, on the shores of Lake
Michigan, and thence took the rail for Freeport, where I remained for
some days, going out in the surrounding prairie to shoot in the
morning, and returning at nightfall. The prairie chickens were rather
wild. The delight of these days, notwithstanding bad sport, cannot be
described, nor was it the least ingredient in it to mix with the fresh
and vigorous race who are raising up cities on these fertile wastes.
Fortunately for the patience of my readers, perhaps, I did not fill my
diary with the records of each day’s events, or of the contents of our
bags; and the note-book in which I jotted down some little matters
which struck me to be of interest has been mislaid; but in my letters
to England I gave a description of the general aspect of the country,
and of the feelings of the people, and arrived at the conclusion that
the tax-gatherer will have little chance of returning with full note-
books from his tour in these districts. The dogs which were lent to us
were generally abominable; but every evening we returned in
company with great leather-greaved and jerkined-men, hung round
with belts and hooks, from which were suspended strings of defunct
prairie chickens. The farmers were hospitable, but were suffering
from a morbid longing for a failure of crops in Europe, in order to give
some value to their corn and wheat, which literally cumbered the
earth.
Freeport! Who ever heard of it? And yet it has its newspapers,
more than I dare mention, and its big hotel lighted with gas, its
billiard-rooms and saloons, magazines, railway stations, and all the
proper paraphernalia of local self-government, with all their fierce
intrigues and giddy factions.
From Freeport our party returned to Chicago, taking leave of our
excellent friend and companion Mr. George Thompson, of Racine.
The authorities of the Central Illinois Railway, to whose courtesy and
consideration I was infinitely indebted, placed at our disposal a
magnificent sleeping carriage; and on the morning after our arrival,
having laid in a good stock of supplies, and engaged an excellent
sporting guide and dogs, we started, attached to the regular train
from Chicago, until the train stopped at a shunting place near the
station of Dwight, in the very centre of the prairie. We reached our
halting-place, were detached, and were shot up a siding in the
solitude, with no habitation in view, except the wood shanty, in which
lived the family of the Irish overseer of this portion of the road—a
man happy in the possession of a piece of gold which he received
from the Prince of Wales, and for which, he declared, he would not
take the amount of the National Debt.
The sleeping carriage proved most comfortable quarters. After
breakfast in the morning, Mr. Lamy, Col. Foster, Mr. ——, of the
Central Illinois rail, the keeper, and myself, descending the steps of
our moveable house, walked in a few strides to the shooting
grounds, which abounded with quail, but were not so well peopled by
the chickens. The quail were weak on the wing, owing to the
lateness of the season, and my companions grumbled at their hard
luck, though I was well content with fresh air, my small share of
birds, and a few American hares. Night and morning the train rushed
by, and when darkness settled down upon the prairie, our lamps
were lighted, dinner was served in the carriage, set forth with
inimitable potatoes cooked by the old Irishwoman. From the dinner-
table it was but a step to go to bed. When storm or rain rushed over
the sea-like plain, I remained in the carriage writing, and after a long
spell of work, it was inexpressibly pleasant to take a ramble through
the flowering grass and the sweet-scented broom, and to go beating
through the stunted under-cover, careless of rattlesnakes, whose tiny
prattling music I heard often enough without a sight of the tails that
made it.
One rainy morning, the 29th September, I think, as the sun began
to break through drifting rain clouds, I saw my companions preparing
their guns, the sporting chaperon Walker filling the shot flasks, and
making all the usual arrangements for a day’s shooting. “You don’t
mean to say you are going out shooting on a Sunday!” I said. “What,
on the prairies!” exclaimed Colonel Foster. “Why, of course we are;
there’s nothing wrong in it here. What nobler temple can we find to
worship in than lies around us? It is the custom of the people
hereabouts to shoot on Sundays, and it is a work of necessity with
us; for our larder is very low.”
And so, after breakfast, we set out, but the rain came down so
densely that we were driven to the house of a farmer, and finally we
returned to our sleeping carriage for the day. I never fired a shot nor
put a gun to my shoulder, nor am I sure that any of my companions
killed a bird.
The rain fell with violence all day, and at night the gusts of wind
shook the carriage like a ship at sea. We were sitting at table after
dinner, when the door at the end of the carriage opened, and a man,
in a mackintosh dripping wet, advanced with unsteady steps along
the centre of the carriage, between the beds, and taking off his hat,
in the top of which he searched diligently, stood staring with lack-
lustre eyes from one to the other of the party, till Colonel Foster
exclaimed, “Well, sir, what do you want?”
“What do I want,” he replied, with a slight thickness of speech,
“which of you is the Honourable Lord William Russell, correspondent
of the London Times? That’s what I want.”
I certified to my identity; whereupon, drawing a piece of paper out
of his hat, he continued, “Then I arrest you, Honourable Lord William
Russell, in the name of the people of the Commonwealth of Illinois,”
and thereupon handed me a document, declaring that one, Morgan,
of Dwight, having come before him that day and sworn that I, with a
company of men and dogs, had unlawfully assembled, and by firing
shots, and by barking and noise, had disturbed the peace of the
State of Illinois, he, the subscriber or justice of the peace, as named
and described, commanded the constable Podgers, or whatever his
name was, to bring my body before him to answer to the charge.
Now this town of Dwight was a good many miles away, the road
was declared by those who knew it to be very bad, the night was
pitch dark, the rain falling in torrents, and as the constable, drawing
out of his hat paper after paper with the names of impossible
persons upon them, served subpœnas on all the rest of the party to
appear next morning, the anger of Colonel Foster could scarcely be
restrained, by kicks under the table and nods and becks and
wreathed smiles from the rest of the party. “This is infamous! It is a
political persecution!” he exclaimed, whilst the keeper joined in
chorus, declaring he never heard of such a proceeding before in all
his long experience of the prairie, and never knew there was such an
act in existence. The Irishmen in the hut added that the informer
himself generally went out shooting every Sunday. However, I could
not but regret I had given the fellow an opportunity of striking at me,
and though I was the only one of the party who raised an objection to
our going out at all, I was deservedly suffering for the impropriety—to
call it here by no harsher name.
The constable, a man of a liquid eye and a cheerful countenance,
paid particular attention meantime to a large bottle upon the table,
and as I professed my readiness to go the moment he had some
refreshment that very wet night, the stern severity becoming a
minister of justice, which marked his first utterances, was sensibly
mollified; and when Mr. —— proposed that he should drive back with
him and see the prosecutor, he was good enough to accept my
written acknowledgment of the service of the writ, and promise to
appear the following morning, as an adequate discharge of his duty
—combined with the absorption of some Bourbon whisky—and so
retired.
Mr. —— returned late at night, and very angry. It appears that the
prosecutor—who is not a man of very good reputation, and whom his
neighbours were as much astonished to find the champion of
religious observances as they would have been if he was to come
forward to insist on the respect due to the seventh commandment—
with the insatiable passion for notoriety, which is one of the worst
results of American institutions, thought he would gain himself some
little reputation by causing annoyance to a man so unpopular as
myself. He and a companion having come from Dwight for the
purpose, and hiding in the neighbourhood, had, therefore, devoted
their day to lying in wait and watching our party; and as they were
aware in the railway carriage I was with Colonel Foster, they had no
difficulty in finding out the names of the rest of the party. The
magistrate being his relative, granted the warrant at once; and the
prosecutor, who was in waiting for the constable, was exceedingly
disappointed when he found that I had not been dragged through the
rain.
Next morning, a special engine which had been ordered up by
telegraph appeared alongside the car; and a short run through a
beautiful country brought us to the prairie town of Dwight. The
citizens were astir—it was a great day—and as I walked with Colonel
Forster, all the good people seemed to be enjoying an unexampled
treat in gazing at the stupendous criminal. The court-house, or
magistrate’s office, was suitable to the republican simplicity of the
people of Dwight; for the chamber of justice was on the first floor of a
house over a store, and access was obtained to it by a ladder from
the street to a platform, at the top of which I was ushered into the
presence of the court—a plain white-washed room. I am not sure
there was even an engraving of George Washington on the walls.
The magistrate in a full suit of black, with his hat on, was seated at a
small table; behind him a few books, on plain deal shelves, provided
his fund of legal learning. The constable, with a severer visage than
that of last night, stood upon the right hand; three sides of the room
were surrounded by a wall of stout honest Dwightians, among whom
I produced a profound sensation, by the simple ceremony of taking
off my hat, which they no doubt considered a token of the degraded
nature of the Britisher, but which moved the magistrate to take off his
head-covering; whereupon some of the nearest removed theirs,
some putting them on again, and some remaining uncovered; and
then the informations were read, and on being asked what I had to
say, I merely bowed, and said I had no remarks to offer. But my
friend, Colonel Foster, who had been churning up his wrath and
forensic lore for some time, putting one hand under his coat tail, and
elevating the other in the air, with modulated cadences, poured out a
fine oratorical flow which completely astonished me, and whipped
the audience morally off their legs completely. In touching terms he
described the mission of an illustrious stranger, who had wandered
over thousands of miles of land and sea to gaze upon the beauties
of those prairies which the Great Maker of the Universe had
expanded as the banqueting tables for the famishing millions of
pauperised and despotic Europe. As the representative of an
influence which the people of the great State of Illinois should wish to
see developed, instead of contracted, honoured instead of being
insulted, he had come among them to admire the grandeur of nature,
and to behold with wonder the magnificent progress of human
happiness and free institutions. (Some thumping of sticks, and cries
of “Bravo, that’s so,” which warmed the Colonel into still higher
flights). I began to feel if he was as great in invective as he was in
eulogy, it was well he had not lived to throw a smooth pebble from
his sling at Warren Hastings. As great indeed! Why, when the
Colonel had drawn a beautiful picture of me examining coal deposits
—investigating strata—breathing autumnal airs, and culling flowers
in unsuspecting innocence, and then suddenly denounced the
serpent who had dogged my steps, in order to strike me down with a
justice’s warrant, I protest it is doubtful, if he did not reach to the
most elevated stage of vituperative oratory, the progression of which
was marked by increasing thumps of sticks, and louder murmurs of
applause, to the discomfiture of the wretched prosecutor. But the
magistrate was not a man of imagination; he felt he was but elective
after all; and so, with his eye fixed upon his book, he pronounced his
decision, which was that I be amerced in something more than half
the maximum fine fixed by the statute, some five-and-twenty shillings
or so, the greater part to be spent in the education of the people, by
transfer to the school fund of the State.
As I was handing the notes to the magistrate, several respectable
men coming forward exclaimed, “Pray oblige us, Mr. Russell, by
letting us pay the amount for you; this is a shameful proceeding.” But
thanking them heartily for their proffered kindness, I completed the
little pecuniary transaction and wished the magistrate good morning,
with the remark that I hoped the people of the State of Illinois would
always find such worthy defenders of the statutes as the prosecutor,
and never have offenders against their peace and morals more
culpable than myself. Having undergone a severe scolding from an
old woman at the top of the ladder, I walked to the train, followed by
a number of the audience, who repeatedly expressed their extreme
regret at the little persecution to which I had been subjected. The
prosecutor had already made arrangements to send the news over
the whole breadth of the Union, which was his only reward; as I must
do the American papers the justice to say that, with a few natural
exceptions, those which noticed the occurrence unequivocally
condemned his conduct.
That evening, as we were planning an extension of our sporting
tour, the mail rattling by deposited our letters and papers, and we
saw at the top of many columns the startling words, “Grand Advance
Of The Union Army.” “M‘Clellan Marching On Richmond.” “Capture
Of Munson’s Hill.” “Retreat of the Enemy—30,000 men Seize Their
Fortifications.” Not a moment was to be lost; if I was too late, I never
would forgive myself. Our carriage was hooked on to the return train,
and at 8 o’clock p.m. I started on my return to Washington, by way of
Cleveland.
At half-past 3 on the 1st October the train reached Pittsburg, just
too late to catch the train for Baltimore; but I continued my journey at
night, arriving at Baltimore after noon, and reaching Washington at 6
p.m. on the 2nd of October.
October 3rd.—In Washington once more—all the world laughing at
the pump and the wooden guns at Munson’s Hill, but angry withal
because M‘Clellan should be so befooled as they considered it, by
the Confederates. The fact is M‘Clellan was not prepared to move,
and therefore not disposed to hazard a general engagement, which
he might have brought on had the enemy been in force; perhaps he
knew they were not, but found it convenient nevertheless to act as
though he believed they had established themselves strongly in his
front, as half the world will give him credit for knowing more than the
civilian strategists who have already got into disgrace for urging
M‘Dowell on to Richmond. The federal armies are not handled easily.
They are luxurious in the matter of baggage, and canteens, and
private stores; and this is just the sort of war in which the general
who moves lightly and rapidly, striking blows unexpectedly and
deranging communications, will obtain great results.
Although Beauregard’s name is constantly mentioned, I fancy that,
crafty and reticent as he is, the operations in front of us have been
directed by an officer of larger capacity. As yet M‘Clellan has
certainly done nothing in the field to show he is like Napoleon. The
value of his labours in camp has yet to be tested. I dined at the
Legation, and afterwards there was a meeting at my rooms, where I
heard of all that had passed during my absence.
October 4th.—The new expedition, of which I have been hearing
for some time past, is about to sail to Port Royal, under the
command of General Burnside, in order to reduce the works erected
at the entrance of the Sound, to secure a base of operations against
Charleston, and to cut in upon the communication between that
place and Savannah. Alas, for poor Trescot! his plantations, his
secluded home! What will the good lady think of the Yankee
invasion, which surely must succeed, as the naval force will be
overwhelming? I visited the division of General Egbert Viele,
encamped near the Navy-yard, which is bound to Annapolis, as a
part of General Burnside’s expedition. When first I saw him, the
general was an emeritus captain, attached to the 7th New York
Militia; now he is a Brigadier-General, if not something more,
commanding a corps of nearly 5000 men, with pay and allowances
to match. His good lady wife, who accompanied him in the Mexican
campaign,—whereof came a book, lively and light, as a lady’s should
be,—was about to accompany her husband in his assault on the
Carolinians, and prepared for action, by opening a small broadside
on my unhappy self, whom she regarded as an enemy of our
glorious Union; and therefore an ally of the Evil Powers on both
sides of the grave. The women, North and South, are equally pitiless
to their enemies; and it was but the other day, a man with whom I am
on very good terms in Washington, made an apology for not asking
me to his house, because his wife was a strong Union woman.
A gentleman who had been dining with Mr. Seward to-night told
me the Minister had complained that I had not been near him for
nearly two months; the fact was, however, that I had called twice
immediately after the appearance in America of my letter dated July
22nd, and had met Mr. Seward afterwards, when his manner was, or
appeared to me to be, cold and distant, and I had therefore
abstained from intruding myself upon his notice; nor did his answer
to the Philadelphian petition—in which Mr. Seward appeared to
admit the allegations made against me were true, and to consider I
had violated the hospitality accorded me—induce me to think that he
did not entertain the opinion which these journals which set
themselves up to be his organs had so repeatedly expressed.
CHAPTER XXI.
Another Crimean acquaintance—Summary dismissal of a newspaper

correspondent—Dinner at Lord Lyons’—Review of artillery—“Habeas
Corpus”—The President’s duties—M‘Clellan’s policy—The Union Army—
Soldiers and the patrol—Public men in America—Mr. Seward and Lord
Lyons—A Judge placed under arrest—Death and funeral of Senator
Baker—Disorderly troops and officers—Official fibs—Duck-shooting at
Baltimore.
October 5th.—A day of heat extreme. Tumbled in upon me an old

familiar face and voice, once Forster of a hospitable Crimean hut
behind Mother Seacole’s, commanding a battalion of Land Transport
Corps, to which he had descended or sublimated from his position
as ex-Austrian dragoon and beau sabreur under old Radetzsky in
Italian wars; now a colonel of distant volunteers, and a member of
the Parliament of British Columbia. He was on his way home to
Europe, and had travelled thus far out of his way to see his friend.
After him came in a gentleman, heated, wild-eyed, and excited,
who had been in the South, where he was acting as correspondent
to a London newspaper, and on his return to Washington had
obtained a pass from General Scott. According to his own story, he
had been indulging in a habit which free-born Englishmen may
occasionally find to be inconvenient in foreign countries in times of
high excitement, and had been expressing his opinion pretty freely in
favour of the Southern cause in the bar-rooms of Pennsylvania
Avenue. Imagine a Frenchman going about the taverns of Dublin
during an Irish rebellion, expressing his sympathy with the rebels,
and you may suppose he would meet with treatment at least as
peremptory as that which the Federal authorities gave Mr. D——. In
fine, that morning early, he had been waited upon by an officer, who
requested his attendance at the Provost Marshal’s office; arrived
there, a functionary, after a few queries, asked him to give up
General Scott’s pass, and when Mr. D—— refused to do so,
proceeded to execute a terrible sort of proces verbal on a large
sheet of foolscap, the initiatory flourishes and prolegomena of which
so intimidated Mr. D——, that he gave up his pass and was
permitted to depart, in order that he might start for England by the
next steamer.
A wonderful Frenchman, who lives up a back street, prepared a
curious banquet, at which Mr. Irvine, Mr. Warre, Mr. Anderson, Mr.
Lamy, and Colonel Foster assisted; and in the evening Mr. Lincoln’s
private secretary, a witty, shrewd, and pleasant young fellow, who
looks little more than eighteen years of age, came in with a friend,
whose name I forget; and by degrees the circle expanded, till the
walls seemed to have become elastic, so great was the concourse of
guests.
October 6th.—A day of wandering around, and visiting, and
listening to rumours all unfounded. I have applied for permission to
accompany the Burnside expedition, but I am advised not to leave
Washington, as M‘Clellan will certainly advance as soon as the
diversion has been made down South.
October 7th.—The heat to-day was literally intolerable, and wound
up at last in a tremendous thunderstorm with violent gusts of rain. At
the Legation, where Lord Lyons entertained the English visitors at
dinner, the rooms were shaken by thunder claps, and the blinding
lightning seemed at times to turn the well-illuminated rooms into
caves of darkness.
October 8th.—A review of the artillery at this side of the river took
place to-day, which has been described in very inflated language by
the American papers, the writers on which—never having seen a
decently-equipped force of the kind—pronounce the sight to have
been of unequalled splendour; whereas the appearance of horses
and men was very far from respectable in all matters relating to
grooming, cleanliness, and neatness. General Barry has done
wonders in simplifying the force and reducing the number of calibres,
which varied according to the fancy of each State, or men of each
officer who raised a battery; but there are still field-guns of three
inches and of three inches and a-half, Napoleon guns, rifled 10 lb.
Parrots, ordinary 9-pounders, a variety of howitzers, 20-lb. Parrot
rifled guns, and a variety of different projectiles in the caissons. As
the men rode past, the eye was distressed by discrepancies in
dress. Many wore red or white worsted comforters round their necks,
few had straps to their trousers; some had new coats, others old;
some wore boots, others shoes; not one had clean spurs, bits, curb-
chains, or buttons. The officers cannot get the men to do what the
latter regard as works of supererogation.
There were 72 guns in all; and if the horses were not so light,
there would be quite enough to do for the Confederates to reduce
their fire, as the pieces are easily handled, and the men like artillery
and take to it naturally, being in that respect something like the
natives of India.
Whilst I was standing in the crowd, I heard a woman say, “I doubt
if that Russell is riding about here. I should just like to see him to
give him a piece of my mind. They say he’s honest, but I call him a
poor pre-jewdiced Britisher. This sight’ll give him fits.” I was quite
delighted at my incognito. If the caricatures were at all like me, I
should have what the Americans call a bad time of it.
On the return of the batteries a shell exploded in a caisson just in
front of the President’s house, and, miraculous to state, did not fire
the other projectiles. Had it done so, the destruction of life in the
crowded street—blocked up with artillery, men, and horses, and
crowds of men, women, and children—would have been truly
frightful. Such accidents are not uncommon—a waggon blew up the
other day “out West,” and killed and wounded several people; and
though the accidents in camp from firearms are not so numerous as
they were, there are still enough to present a heavy casualty list.
Whilst the artillery were delighting the citizens, a much more
important matter was taking place in an obscure little court house—
much more destructive to their freedom, happiness, and greatness
than all the Confederate guns which can ever be ranged against
them. A brave, upright, and honest judge, as in duty bound, issued a
writ of habeas corpus, sued out by the friends of a minor, who,
contrary to the laws of the United States, had been enlisted by an
American general, and was detained by him in the ranks of his
regiment. The officer refused to obey the writ, whereupon the judge
issued an attachment against him, and the Federal brigadier came
into court and pleaded that he took that course by order of the
President. The court adjourned, to consider the steps it should take.
I have just seen a paragraph in the local paper, copied from a west
country journal, headed “Good for Russell,” which may explain the
unusually favourable impression expressed by the women this
morning. It is an account of the interview I had with the officer who
came “to trade” for my horse, written by the latter to a Green Bay
newspaper, in which, having duly censured my “John Bullism” in not
receiving with the utmost courtesy a stranger, who walked into his
room before breakfast on business unknown, he relates as a proof of
honesty (in such a rare field as trading in horseflesh) that, though my
groom had sought to put ten dollars in my pocket by a mild
exaggeration of the amount paid for the animal, which was the price I
said I would take, I would not have it.
October 9th.—A cold, gloomy day. I am laid up with the fever and
ague, which visit the banks of the Potomac in autumn. It annoyed me
the more because General M‘Clellan is making a reconnaissance to-
day towards Lewinsville, with 10,000 men. A gentleman from the
War Department visited me to-day, and gave me scanty hopes of
procuring any assistance from the authorities in taking the field.
Civility costs nothing, and certainly if it did United States officials
would require high salaries, but they often content themselves with
fair words.
There are some things about our neighbours which we may never
hope to understand. To-day, for instance, a respectable person, high
in office, having been good enough to invite me to his house, added,
“You shall see Mrs. A., sir. She is a very pretty and agreeable young
lady, and will prove nice society for you,” meaning his wife.
Mr. N. P. Willis was good enough to call on me, and in the course
of conversation said, “I hear M‘Clellan tells you everything. When
you went away West I was very near going after you, as I suspected
you heard something.” Mr. Willis could have had no grounds for this
remark, for very certainly it has no foundation in fact. Truth to tell,
General M‘Clellan seemed, the last time I saw him, a little alarmed
by a paragraph in a New York paper, from the Washington
correspondent, in which it was invidiously stated, “General M‘Clellan,
attended by Mr. Russell, correspondent of the London Times, visited
the camps to-day. All passes to civilians and others were revoked.”
There was not the smallest ground for the statement on the day in
question, but I am resolved not to contradict anything which is said
about me, but the General could not well do so; and one of the
favourite devices of the Washington correspondent to fill up his
columns, is to write something about me, to state I have been
refused passes, or have got them, or whatever else he likes to say.
Calling on the General the other night at his usual time of return, I
was told by the orderly, who was closing the door, “The General’s
gone to bed tired, and can see no one. He sent the same message
to the President, who came inquiring after him ten minutes ago.”
This poor President! He is to be pitied; surrounded by such
scenes, and trying with all his might to understand strategy, naval
warfare, big guns, the movements of troops, military maps,
reconnaissances, occupations, interior and exterior lines, and all the
technical details of the art of slaying. He runs from one house to
another, armed with plans, papers, reports, recommendations,
sometimes good humoured, never angry, occasionally dejected, and
always a little fussy. The other night, as I was sitting in the parlour at
head-quarters, with an English friend who had come to see his old
acquaintance the General, walked in a tall man with a navvy’s cap,
and an ill-made shooting suit, from the pockets of which protruded
paper and bundles. “Well,” said he to Brigadier Van Vliet, who rose to
receive him, “is George in?”
“Yes, sir. He’s come back, but is lying down, very much fatigued.
I’ll send up, sir, and inform him you wish to see him.”
“Oh, no; I can wait. I think I’ll take supper with him. Well, and what
are you now,—I forget your name—are you a major, or a colonel, or
a general?” “Whatever you like to make me, sir.”
Seeing that General M‘Clellan would be occupied, I walked out
with my friend, who asked me when I got into the street why I stood
up when that tall fellow came into the room. “Because it was the
President.” “The President of what?” “Of the United States.” “Oh!
come, now you’re humbugging me. Let me have another look at
him.” He came back more incredulous than ever, but when I assured
him I was quite serious, he exclaimed, “I give up the United States
after this.”
But for all that, there have been many more courtly presidents
who, in a similar crisis, would have displayed less capacity, honesty,
and plain dealing than Abraham Lincoln.
October 10th.—I got hold of M‘Clellan’s report on the Crimean war,
and made a few candid remarks on the performance, which does not
evince any capacity beyond the reports of our itinerant artillery
officers who are sent from Woolwich abroad for their country’s good.
I like the man, but I do not think he is equal to his occasion or his
place. There is one little piece of policy which shows he is looking
ahead—either to gain the good will of the army, or for some larger
object. All his present purpose is to make himself known to the men
personally, to familiarize them with his appearance, to gain the
acquaintance of the officers; and with this object he spends nearly
every day in the camps riding out at nine o’clock, and not returning
till long after nightfall, examining the various regiments as he goes
along, and having incessant inspections and reviews. He is the first
Republican general who could attempt to do all this without incurring
censure and suspicion. Unfortunate M‘Dowell could not inspect his
small army without receiving a hint that he must not assume such
airs, as they were more becoming a military despot than a simple
lieutenant of the great democracy.
October 11th.—Mr. Mure, who has arrived here in wretched health
from New Orleans, after a protracted and very unpleasant journey
through country swarming with troops mixed with guerillas, tells me
that I am more detested in New Orleans than I am in New York. This
is ever the fate of the neutral, if the belligerents can get him between
them. The Girondins and men of the juste milieu are ever fated to be
ground to powder. The charges against me were disposed of by Mr.
Mure, who says that what I wrote of in New Orleans was true, and
has shown it to be so in his correspondence with the Governor, but,
over and beyond that, I am disliked, because I do not praise the
peculiar institution. He amused me by adding that the mayor of
Jackson, with whom I sojourned, had published “a card,” denying
point blank that he had ever breathed a word to indicate that the
good citizens around him were not famous for the love of law, order,
and life, and a scrupulous regard to personal liberty. I can easily
fancy Jackson is not a place where a mayor suspected by the
citizens would be exempted from difficulties now and then; and if this
disclaimer does my friend any good, he is very heartily welcome to it
and more. I have received several letters lately from the parents of
minors, asking me to assist them in getting back their sons, who
have enlisted illegally in the Federal army. My writ does not run any
further than a Federal judge’s.
October 12th.—The good people of New York and of the other
Northern cities, excited by the constant reports in the papers of
magnificent reviews and unsurpassed military spectacles, begin to
flock towards Washington in hundreds, where formerly they came in
tens. The woman-kind are particularly anxious to feast their eyes on
our glorious Union army. It is natural enough that Americans should
feel pride and take pleasure in the spectacle; but the love of
economy, the hatred of military despotism, and the frugal virtues of
republican government, long since placed aside by the exigencies of
the Administration, promise to vanish for ever.
The feeling is well expressed in the remark of a gentleman to
whom I was lamenting the civil war: “Well, for my part, I am glad of it.
Why should you in Europe have all the fighting to yourself? Why
should we not have our bloody battles, and our big generals, and all
the rest of it? This will stir up the spirits of our people, do us all a
power of good, and end by proving to all of you in Europe, that we
are just as good and first-rate in fighting as we are in ships,
manufactures, and commerce.”
But the wealthy classes are beginning to feel rather anxious about
the disposal of their money: they are paying a large insurance on the
Union, and they do not see that anything has been done to stop the
leak or to prevent it foundering. Mr. Duncan has arrived; to-day I
drove with him to Alexandria, and I think he has been made happy
by what he saw, and has no doubt “the Union is all right.” Nothing
looks so irresistible as your bayonet till another is seen opposed to it.
October 13th.—Mr. Duncan, attended by myself and other
Britishers, made an extensive excursion through the camps on
horseback, and I led him from Arlington to Upton’s House, up by
Munson’s Hill, to General Wadsworth’s quarters, where we lunched
on camp fare and, from the observatory erected at the rear of the
house in which he lives, had a fine view this bright, cold, clear
autumn day, of the wonderful expanse of undulating forest lands,
streaked by rows of tents, which at last concentrated into vast white
patches in the distance, towards Alexandria. The country is desolate,
but the camps are flourishing, and that is enough to satisfy most
patriots bent upon the subjugation of their enemies.
October 14th.—I was somewhat distraught, like a small Hercules
twixt Vice and Virtue, or Garrick between Comedy and Tragedy, by
my desire to tell Duncan the truth, and at the same time respect the
feelings of a friend. There was a rabbledom of drunken men in
uniforms under our windows, who resisted the patrol clearing the
streets, and one fellow drew his bayonet, and, with the support of
some of the citizens, said that he would not allow any regular to put
a finger on him. D—— said he had witnessed scenes just as bad,
and talked of lanes in garrison towns in England, and street rows
between soldiers and civilians; and I did not venture to tell him the
scene we witnessed was the sign of a radical vice in the system of
the American army, which is, I believe, incurable in these large
masses. Few soldiers would venture to draw their bayonets on a
patrol. If they did, their punishment would be tolerably sure and swift,
but for all I knew this man would be permitted to go on his way
rejoicing. There is news of two Federal reverses to-day. A descent
was made on Santa Rosa Island, and Mr. Billy Wilson’s Zouaves
were driven under the guns of Pickens, losing in the scurry of the
night attack—as prisoner only I am glad to say—poor Major Vogdes,
of inquiring memory. Rosecrans, who utterly ignores the advantages
of Shaksperian spelling, has been defeated in the West; but D—— is
quite happy, and goes off to New York contented.
October 15th.—Sir James Ferguson and Mr. R. Bourke, who have
been travelling in the South and have seen something of the
Confederate government and armies, visited us this evening after
dinner. They do not seem at all desirous of testing by comparison the
relative efficiency of the two armies, which Sir James, at all events,
is competent to do. They are impressed by the energy and animosity
of the South, which no doubt will have their effect on England also;
but it will be difficult to popularize a Slave Republic as a new allied
power in England. Two of General M‘Clellan’s aides dropped in, and
the meeting abstained from general politics.
October 16th.—Day follows day and resembles its predecessor.
M‘Clellan is still reviewing, and the North are still waiting for victories
and paying money, and the orators are still wrangling over the best
way of cooking the hares which they have not yet caught. I visited
General M‘Dowell to-day at his tent in Arlington, and found him in a
state of divine calm with his wife and parvus Iulus. A public man in
the United States is very much like a great firework—he commences
with some small scintillations which attract the eye of the public, and
then he blazes up and flares out in blue, purple, and orange fires, to
the intense admiration of the multitude, and dying out suddenly is
thought of no more, his place being taken by a fresh roman candle or
catherine wheel which is thought to be far finer than those which
have just dazzled the eyes of the fickle spectators. Human nature is
thus severely taxed. The Cabinet of State is like the museum of
some cruel naturalist, who seizes his specimens whilst they are
alive, bottles them up, forbids them to make as much as a contortion,
labelling them “My last President,” “My latest Commander-in-chief,”
or “My defeated General,” regarding the smallest signs of life very
much as did the French petit maître who rebuked the contortions and
screams of the poor wretch who was broken on the wheel, as
contrary to bienséance. I am glad that Sir James Ferguson and Mr.
Bourke did not leave without making a tour of inspection through the
Federal camp, which they did to-day.
October 17th.—Dies non.
October 18th.—To-day Lord Lyons drove out with Mr. Seward to
inspect the Federal camps, which are now in such order as to be
worthy of a visit. It is reported in all the papers that I am going to
England, but I have not the smallest intention of giving my enemies
here such a treat at present. As Monsieur de Beaumont of the
French Legation said, “I presume you are going to remain in
Washington for the rest of your life, because I see it stated in the
New York journals that you are leaving us in a day or two.”
October 19th.—Lord Lyons and Mr. Seward were driving and
dining together yesterday en ami. To-day, Mr. Seward is engaged
demolishing Lord Lyons, or at all events the British Government, in a
despatch, wherein he vindicates the proceedings of the United
States Government in certain arrests of British subjects which had
been complained of, and repudiates the doctrine that the United
States Government can be bound by the opinion of the law officers
of the Crown respecting the spirit and letter of the American
constitution. This is published as a set-off to Mr. Seward’s circular on
the seacoast defences which created so much depression and alarm
in the Northern States, where it was at the time considered as a
warning that a foreign war was imminent, and which has since been
generally condemned as feeble and injudicious.
October 20th.—I saw General M‘Clellan to-day, who gave me to
understand that some small movement might take place on the right.
I rode up to the Chain Bridge and across it for some miles into
Virginia, but all was quiet. The sergeant at the post on the south side
of the bridge had some doubts of the genuineness of my pass, or
rather of its bearer.
“I heard you were gone back to London, where I am coming to see
you some fine day with the boys here.”
“No, sergeant, I am not gone yet, but when will your visit take
place?”
“Oh, as soon as we have finished with the gentlemen across
there.”
“Have you any notion when that will be?”
“Just as soon as they tell us to go on and prevent the blackguard
Germans running away.”
“But the Germans did not run away at Bull Bun?”
“Faith, because they did not get a chance—sure they put them in
the rear, away out of the fighting.”
“And why do you not go on now?”
“Well, that’s the question we are asking every day.”
“And can any-one answer it?”
“Not one of us can tell; but my belief is if we had one of the old
50th among us at the head of affairs we would soon be at them. I
belonged to the old regiment once, but I got off and took up with
shoe-making again, and faith if I sted in it I might have been
sergeant-major by this time, only they hated the poor Roman
Catholics.”
“And do you think, sergeant, you would get many of your
countrymen who had served in the old army to fight the old familiar
red jackets?” “Well, sir, I tell you I hope my arm would rot before I
would pull a trigger against the old 50th; but we would wear the red
jacket too—we have as good a right to it as the others, and then it
would be man against man, you know; but if I saw any of them
cursed Germans interfering I’d soon let daylight into them.” The hazy
dreams of this poor man’s mind would form an excellent article for a
New York newspaper, which on matters relating to England are
rarely so lucid and logical. Next day was devoted to writing and
heavy rain, through both of which, notwithstanding, I was assailed by
many visitors and some scurrilous letters, and in the evening there
was a Washington gathering of Englishry, Irishry, Scotchry, Yankees,
and Canadians.
October 22nd.—Rain falling in torrents. As I write, in come reports
of a battle last night, some forty miles up the river, which by signs

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Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in

Victorian Society: Caterham Asylum,

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland:

The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and Migration: A

Gaelic Games in Society: Civilising Processes, Players,

Politicising Polio: Disability, Civil Society and Civic

Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood: Self, Society and the

Sports, Society, and Technology: Bodies, Practices, and

Women, Literature and Finance in Victorian Britain:

Environment and Society 1st ed. Edition Magnus Boström

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-

Another Crimean acquaintance—Summary dismissal of a newspaper

October 5th.—A day of heat extreme. Tumbled in upon me an old

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AMO Assistant Medical Officer