Twentieth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1857.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1858]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twentieth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1857. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to allow these patients to walk beyond the boundary walls. Independently of the additional number of attendants that would be required to adopt this plan of trial, it must be remembered that as we are surrounded with gentlemen’s residences, and there are preserves adjacent to the asylum lands, it will not be easy to avoid those encroachments which many regard with suspicion, if not with alarm. The male patients have long enjoyed the full advantage of very partially restricted liberty. One man, very insane, but of correct and undeviating good conduct, goes almost daily to Woodbridge wdth the donkey and cart; a second is the most regular conveyor of letters to and from the post we ever possessed ; a third, taking a fourth with him, goes frequently to the sea-side for water. These men are trusty, they are under the all controlling power of attachment, and not one of them would go one yard beyond his allowed limit. Thus, in this respect, as in many others, unknown to those who have not been conversant with Asylum management, we may perhaps be pardoned the expression of a feeling which leads to satisfactory retrospection. We are not in the condition of men starting afresh, but of those who have literally borne the “ burden and heat of the day.” It was the practice twenty-five years ago, when the number of patients was only 150, to allow both males and females the indulgence of the free air system; they walked to Bromeswell, Sutton, Bredfield, and the adjacent villages; they attended the Churches of Ufford and Melton ; and with those exceptions, we have never varied in encouraging the removal of all unnecessary restrictions. Through the vagueness of some clauses in the Asylum Act, some patients have again been received who could not be recognized as coming really under the true character of pauper lunatics. Not more than a month ago, a gentleman came from a distance, to express his feelings of resentment, that a patient had been admitted as a nominal pauper who