Report of the Committee of Visitors of the Lunatic Asylum for the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire : presented at the Epiphany quarter sessions for the respective ridings, 1860 together with the superintendent's thirteenth annual report, read at the Easter sessions, 1860 and an account of the receipts and payments to the end of the year, 1859 / North and East Ridings of Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum.

  • North and East Ridings of Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee of Visitors of the Lunatic Asylum for the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire : presented at the Epiphany quarter sessions for the respective ridings, 1860 together with the superintendent's thirteenth annual report, read at the Easter sessions, 1860 and an account of the receipts and payments to the end of the year, 1859 / North and East Ridings of Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mical management and providing for the daily needs of the whole establishment. Any one at all acquainted with public Institutions will know something of the onerous character and responsible nature of the important functions each officer and servant has to perform. For to overlook one fault is to encourage others and to add to the trials always before us; or on the other hand to omit to make good legitimate wants, is to heap double duties on our shoulders. The mere provision of food and necessaries is a busi¬ ness of itself. We have, in addition, the cutting out and making up of every article of clothing for males and females, the bedding- linen, mattresses, mattress cases, boots and shoes, which not only has been always done by our own staff and patients ever since the opening of the Asylum in 1847, but also by them for providing on an extensive scale similar goods and stores, which have been sold to other County Lunatic Asylums, Hospitals, and Schools; and in 1854 for the use of the Crimean Soldiers. From these exertions in aid of other Establishments, the two¬ fold advantage of useful occupation for the patients and profit to the Asylum itself, have resulted. Until the Institution outgrew the accommodation of the wash-house and laundry, the female patients used to earn from £70 to £100 per annum by washing, &c., for the Yeoman School in York, whilst farmers in the neigh¬ bourhood have derived in busy seasons valuable help from the male patients. All these enterprises have been entered upon with great willingness and pleasure. Besides these extra-ordinary doings we have devoted without stint of pains and labour, every care to the requirements of our own increasing wants. When the Asylum was added to in 1850 and again in 1855, for the addition of 140 and 166 patients respectively, the whole of the excavations for the capacious basement-floor offices, both for the wings and the North central offices, as well as the foundations, footings and drainage were all executed with scarcely any cost to the Ridings. The extension of the embankment, which is quite an engineering work of 1000 yards in length, and the outfall over-flow drain and settlement tanks, 600 yards in length, were done by the same inexpensive hands, together with the following work: the whole of the roads and footpaths made, old hedges stubbed, new fences planted, deep ditches and ponds filled up with the excavated soil from the foundations, &c. Iron hurdles have been made by the blacksmiths, furniture by the cabinet makers, carts and wheel¬ barrows, farm and garden tools, &c., by the various artisans. In a word, the inmates under direction and instruction have, by their tact and industry, saved the payers, both of the poor rates and county rates, several thousands of pounds, not only in providing largely for their own daily wants but likewise in works' of construction and improvement of the whole estate and establishment; as