Reports of the County of Lancaster Lunatic Asylum at Prestwich : 1852.

  • County of Lancaster Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports of the County of Lancaster Lunatic Asylum at Prestwich : 1852. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/44 (page 14)
    Of the 388 patients left in the Asylum at the commencement of the year, 99 (or one-fourth of the number) were the subjects of epilepsy and general paralysis ; and, in addition to these, 159 were cases of many years’ standing, with little or no chance of recovery. The asylum is, therefore, already burthened with patients, to the amount of at least 258, (or two-thirds of the whole) whose maladies are of a hopeless character. These facts will at once set aside the supposition that this Asylum is to be appropriated chiefly as a curative establishment, and I fear that before very long it will be so full of incurables that very few of the more urgent cases will gain admission. The employment of the patients, which was very considerable the first year, has been carried on during the past to a much greater extent, and has helped much to keep down the expenditure. The whole of the interior of the Asylum has been painted and whitewashed by the men under the management of the chief male-attendant, and in like manner the apartments of the House-Surgeon, Steward, and Matron have been painted and papered: the walls of the entrance-hall, staircases and various offices have also been painted by the same hands. Through the industry of the patients many comforts, at a comparatively trifling expense, have been added to the wards, and many defects remedied which have presented themselves in the working of the establishment. A large quantity of furniture and clothing has also been made by them, and 1 would here draw your attention to the great amount of work done in the shoemakers’ shop, where nine-tenths of the patients employed there have been taught shoemaking and mending by the attendant, several of them having been instructed and rendered competent to make a pair of shoes whilst under treatment for a recent attack of insanity. All the airing-grounds (one of which has been laid out as a bowling- green) are on the point of completion, and the carriage-drive and road connecting the farm buildings with the meadows are also finished, the latter having been a work of great magnitude, in consequence of its having been, for the sake of convenience, carried across a deep ravine. This, with the cultivation of the garden-land, hay-making, and other farming operations, has afforded plenty of out-door occupation.