A few miles from the terminus of one of our metropolitan railways is an
immense plot of buildings, looking more like a town than a single house.
It is a stately pile, beautifully situated, and I doubt not many a
care-worn Cockney, as he has been hurried past it by the rail, has often
wished that he had a little niche in it where he could come of a night
after the day's toil was over, and smell the sweet flowers and the fresh
grass; yet the place is a lunatic asylum, and whilst I write there are in
it fourteen hundred men and women bereft of reason, unaccountable for
their actions, and shut up away from their fellows. Very often the
number is much greater, and yet this does not contain all the pauper
lunatics of the metropolitan county. There is another equally large on
another line of railway, and there are Wandsworth, Bedlam, and others in
London itself.
It would do some of the noisy poor, who waste their time in low
pot-houses talking of their rights--when all that a man has a right to is
what he can get--good to look over such a place as Colney Hatch. There
are pauper lunatics lodged in a palace, waited on by skilful male and
female attendants, living in light and airy galleries, as clean as
wax-work, with four meals a day, and with every want supplied. I am sure
every Englishman must confess that our asylums and hospitals are the
glory of our land. None can deny the active and practical character of
the philanthropy of our days. You may depend upon it, nine-tenths of the
men and women here were never so well fed, lodged, and cared for before.
Their day commences at six, and terminates at eight. Such of them as can
be usefully employed are, in cleaning the wards, and in various domestic
duties; but they have plenty of spare time--the women for sewing or
knitting, and the men for out-door exercise or reading. In one ward I
found some good books on the table, such as Boswell's Johnson, Gibbon's
Life, popular works on science, and _Punch_ and several magazines. The
only woman I saw reading was an old one, with a Bible before her. The
women are by far more troublesome than the men. Directly I went into one
ward, a middle-aged woman advanced towards me, with one arm uplifted,
exclaiming, "Here comes my husband, King John." Another female, still
plainer and more elderly, seemed inclined to address to me endearments of
a still tenderer character. It was clear that they retained the
instincts of their sex without its clearness. Yet there were some to
whom the novelty of a stranger offered no excitement--who sat huddled up
by the window, with scowling eyes and dishevelled hair, flesh-and-blood
pictures of despair. This one had led a gay life--what a termination for
a votary of pleasure! That one had become what she was by drinking; this
one again by the grand passion, which underlies all history, past and
present--all philosophy, objective or subjective--all religion, true or
false. But, hark! it is a quarter to one, and that is the dinner bell.
We enter the hall, a room capable of holding seven or eight hundred
persons. Some enormous Yorkshire puddings, with some excellent beef, are
borne by several eager assistants (patients) on to the tables in the
middle of the room; they are immediately cut up, and each portion is
enough for one person's dinner. When the tables set apart for the women
are served, the door opens, and in rush the poor creatures in a manner
that shows they have not lost their relish for food. On the men's side
similar preparations are made, and then in they rush; and when all are
seated, a blessing is asked, and dinner commences: it does not last long.
As soon as the patients have cut up their pudding, the knives and forks
are carefully removed--and in a very few minutes a signal is made; they
all rise--thanks are returned, and the meal is over--such as have not had
enough generally managing to collar a bit of pudding as they march out.
This is very short work, you say, but it is quite long enough. You will
hear a woman screaming now and then, short as it is, and an attempt will
be sure to be made to get over to the men's side before the meal is over.
You see enough to sadden you, but the worst cases you do not see--they
are wisely concealed from the curious eye; it is enough to know that they
are humanely tended. Why should we care to look on such? Going down a
stair-case, I saw through a glass door a poor creature suffering from
suicidal monomania; night and day she had to be watched, and such had
been the case for years. In her sad face there was visible to the most
superficial observer
"The settled gloom
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore."
Well might she wish to lay down her life, that her crazed brain had
rendered insupportable.
It is a sad sight that of an assembly of insane men and women. At the
asylum to which I refer they are very humane people, and very successful
in their treatment of the distressing cases constantly occurring, and
twice a year--at Christmas and Midsummer--they give an entertainment, at
which the better-behaved lunatics attend, and seemingly enjoy themselves
very much. I was recently at one, and when I arrived, found that a field
adjoining the asylum had been set apart for the purpose. There were
about five hundred lunatics, male and female, present, and besides there
were several gentlemen and ladies present, spectators like myself. It
was a lovely afternoon, and there was music and dancing, and playing
cricket, and battledore and shuttlecock, and all the various enjoyments
of out-door life; but in all these matters I found the attendants
appeared to take the initiative; still the poor creatures seemed to enjoy
themselves much, and were happy in their way. Yet the pleasure-seeker
will not go to such a spectacle again. I do not say the vulgar idea of
the maniac was realized; on the contrary, the poor creatures seemed
decent and very well behaved--but there was a pitiable want of fine
physical development, there were in abundance crooked forms and stunted
figures. You do not like to see what a poor thing is man when his reason
is dethroned. Of course the refractory patients we do not see on such
occasions, but, looking up at a window, I saw one woman's face--as she
viewed the scene in which she might not participate--so wild in its anger
and hopeless in its despair, that that face haunts me yet. It set me
thinking how a woman could get into that state. Perhaps her father and
mother, ignorant of physiological laws, had married, and she had been the
result; or the ignorance of her friends, or her own ignorance--or the
competition of modern life--or the wrongdoing of others--had precipitated
a catastrophe which otherwise might never have occurred, and thus society
pays indirectly for its ignorance far more than it would have to do for a
genuine useful education. Think of what desolated homes these poor
creatures form a portion. Remember what a fearful cost it is to the
respectable hard-working amongst us, who can barely manage to make two
ends meet, to have to rear such palatial residences for our pauper
lunatics. The asylum of which I write in its erection cost the county an
enormous sum--in its maintenance it does ditto--and I hear it is now in
an insecure state, firm as it looks, and that the county of Middlesex
will have to spend upon it some tens of thousands of pounds more.
I once visited this place in the winter-time; a large hall was lighted
up, and there were some very pretty dissolving views exhibited, and there
was dancing and music and eating and drinking going on. The room was
covered with laurels and flowers and banners, and, of course, there were
many ladies and gentlemen present, and the place had a cheerful air; and
all confessed it was a good thing to give the poor creatures a little
innocent amusement. But only think of dancing with lunatics--and such
ugly ones too--and being held by the buttonhole by some wild-eyed ancient
mariner. Coleridge might have come here and written:
"He held him with his glistening eye,
The wedding guest stood still,
And listen'd like a child--
The mariner has his will."
But if the wedding guest stays here long, he would not be in a fit state
for the wedding--and still less would he be so if he goes over the
building. What a contrast the present treatment of lunatics is to that
which prevailed till lately! The exposure of the wretched system pursued
at Bethlem, which took place in 1814, in consequence of the investigation
of a parliamentary committee, appears to have been productive of great
good. The visitors thus describe one of the women's galleries:--"One of
the side-rooms contained about ten patients, each chained by one arm or
leg to the wall, the chain allowing them merely to stand up by the bench
or form fixed to the wall, or sit down again. The nakedness of each
patient was covered by a blanket gown only. The blanket gown is a
blanket formed something like a dressing gown, with nothing to fasten it
in parts. The feet even were naked." Many women were locked up in
cells, naked and chained, on straw, with only one blanket for a covering;
and the windows being unglazed, the light in winter was shut out for the
sake of warmth. In the men's rooms, their nakedness and their mode of
confinement, continues the report from which we have already quoted, gave
this room the appearance of a dog-kennel. At this period the committee
for months together made no inspection of the inmates. The house surgeon
was in an insane state himself, and still oftener drunk; and the keepers
were often in the latter state; yet at this very time the governors spent
600 pounds in opposing a bill for regulating mad-houses, and I dare say
they cried out lustily, No centralization!--no interference with vested
interests! as enlightened Englishmen and parochial dignitaries are wont
to do in our days.
Could we not do without lunatic asylums, if society gave up its drinking
customs? Not exactly; but their number might be very much decreased.
Two-thirds of our lunatics become so through drink. "They are very bad
at first, sir," said one of my informants to me, "but after a little
while they get quieter, and perhaps they are cured in two or three
months." And yet I find all these lunatics are supplied with beer.
"They has two half-pints a day, sir, and when they work they gets two
half-pints more, and very good beer it is, sir," continued my informant,
"as strong as any man need drink." Now is not this preposterous? Men
who drink till they become lunatics should be taught to do without it;
but they are allowed their beer even in the asylum, and when they go out
they begin drinking again, and of course relapse. Thus we keep feeding
our lunatic asylums, at the very time we profess to cure lunatics. I
admit these places are in many respects well managed--that the buildings
are commodious--that the attention is good--that the governors are
humane, and the medical officers vigilant; but which is the truer
humanity, to take care of the man when in a lunatic asylum, or to keep
him out of it altogether?
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