Annual report of the Committee of Visitors of the County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum : for the year 1862.

  • County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1863?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Committee of Visitors of the County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum : for the year 1862. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the 12 males and 11 females, all Irish or foreigners, sent here from the borough of Birmingham, as without ascertained settlement, 513 males and 540 females ; the difference in these numbers bearing a probably fair average proportion to that existing between the adult males and females of that section of the population from which they are taken. The Table giving the ages of patients on admission is so far instruc¬ tive, as confirming the general deduction that insanity is altogether more a disorder of matured than of early life ; and that the mental equilibrium is most prone to be overthrown when the quality and capacity of the varied endowments of our moral and intellectual being are put to the test of the actual battle of life. Experience confirms what theory would suggest, that at such a time any inherent con¬ stitutional defect, previously latent, is prone to be forced into active morbid development; and the mind, which under more favourable circumstances might have passed unscathed to the end of life, is pros¬ trated under the shock of any of the numerous causes to which the advent of insanity is commonly ascribed. As regards domestic condition, the Table shows for the ten and a half years, in both sexes, a moderate preponderance of the single over the married. As, however, the large proportion of our patients are of an age when marriage is the natural and normal state, the greater number of unmarried among them represents a much more decided inequality than might at first sight be supposed to exist; thus confirm- i ing the old, though not undisputed opinion, that insanity is much more frequently met with among the single than the married. If this opinion I represents the real state of facts, which it probably does, the disparity | must not be regarded as entirely a result of the special influences of these two social conditions ; as in many individuals there is more or less predisposition to insanity, which, reversing the presupposed order of cause and effect, acts as a bar to marriage, instead of the state of celibacy being the cause either direct or indirect of mental disorder. In reviewing the social condition of the patients, there is nothing in the previous occupations to lead to any special inferences. By far the larger proportion of them is drawn from the class of labourers, servants, and those engaged in domestic duties. Weavers and silkwinders occupy the next important numerical position, but are not in excess as compared with the population from which they are drawn; and in the whole list charwomen, washerwomen, and needlewomen, constitute the only class that contributes unduly to the list; but as these occupations are often mere names to represent destitution, and unfortunately vice in a variety of forms, the apparent discrepancy is very readily accounted for.