Memoir of Mr. Thomas Bakewell, keeper of Spring Vale Asylum, near Stone, Staffordshire.

Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir of Mr. Thomas Bakewell, keeper of Spring Vale Asylum, near Stone, Staffordshire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE OR, COMPENDIUM OF bz RELIGIOUS, MORAL, 8>- PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE MAY.] THE TORCH OF LITERS INATES THE PATHS OF WISDOM. [1826. MEMOIR OF MR. THOMAS BAKEWELL, KEEPER OF SPRING VALE ASYLUM, NEAR STONE, STAFFORDSHIRE. ( With a Thf. biography of an individual who has rendered himself conspicuous in any department of life, is always in- teresting; and when talents of a su- perior order have been employed in the cause of humanity and virtue, the history of their application becomes instructive, by inciting to imitation. The records of fame will indeed be rendered more or less extensive, in proportion to the dimensions of the circles in which such characters move, but genuine worth is not to be esti- mated by circumstances that are purely adventitious. The leaders of fleets and armies awaken public attention by the reports of the cannon they discharge; the divine gains the plaudits of his con- gregation by the eloquence of his dis- courses ; and the public prints are ever ready to emblazon the mental energies which display their lustre in the senate and at the bar. But it is not to ex- alted station that the friends of hu- manity are confined. To many who fill more local spheres, private suffer- ing is indebted for its alleviation, and be who wipes the tear of sorrow from the eye of distress, is a greater friend to his species than those whose names are inscribed on the pedestals of im- mortality in characters written with blood. Among the miseries that afflict our common nature, though bodily pain may be severe, mental anguish is still more acute; and hence— “ Could human courts take vengeance on the mind. Axes might rust, and racks and gibbets fall.” The unhappy maniac, terrified with the phantoms of his own imagination, endures the agonies of wo in all their accumulations of dreadful reality; and he that can administer relief, or even mitigate bis pangs, deserves to be 89.—VOL. vm. placed among the friends and bene- factors of mankind. It is melancholy to reflect, that in such cases of deep affliction, interest should wish to perpetuate agonies that humanity would relieve. But this we fear is too frequently the case. The death or the insanity of one indi- vidual transfers his property to an- other, who, from pecuniary motives, privately aims to prevent a cure which he publicly professes to effect. Of this dishonourable and detestable fea- ture in the human character, the fol- lowing memoir will furnish many de- plorable instances. The facts are de- rived from personal observation ; and to the interested baseness of the hu- man heart, some of our lunatic asy- lums are indebted for no small pro- portion of their permanent inmates. But these reflections must now give place to narrative. Mr. Thomas Bakewell was born at Kiugslone, a village near Uttoxe- ter, Staffordshire, June the 1st, 1761. A considerable part of his infancy was spent in the moorlands of the same county, at the house of Mr. Chadwick, of Griudon, who was his grandfather by the mother’s side, and who kept a private asylum for the insane. The only school education he received was under Mr. Richards, of Ashbourn, Derbyshire, to which place his grand- father had removed his establishment. But as Mr. Bakewell conceives that such portions of his life as do not relate to the disease of insanity, arc in themselves unimportant, and un- worthy the notice of the public, we shall confine our observations to these branches, and take the liberty of quoting the introduction to his lecture on the natuxe, causes, and cure of mental diseases, as delivered by him some years since at Liverpool. We shall resort to this expedient without reluctance, as it contains a narrative of the causes which led him to study the nature of this most dreadful of ail human maladies, together with bis 2c