Rural History (2020), 31, 151–164

doi:10.1017/S0956793319000372

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Children, poverty and mental health in rural and

urban England (1850–1907)
Steven J. Taylor
University of Leicester
Email: sjt48@leicester.ac.uk

Abstract
Over the course of the nineteenth century children increasingly became social, economic and scientific
concerns. Their physical and mental well-being was deemed intrinsic to the future development of
Britain and its Empire, and thus maintaining healthy youngsters was, by the turn of the twentieth century,
considered a national priority. This article explores the interconnectivity between poverty and the child
residents of pauper lunatic asylums in England. It draws on a corpus of extant patient case files from four
pauper lunatic asylums between 1851 and 1907 and engages with detailed information about the children
and their mental conditions. Additionally, there will be a focus on understanding family backgrounds,
parental occupations, the correlation between diagnoses and class, and methods of ‘treatment’ designed
to equip children for independent working lifestyles. The overarching objective is to consider the
socio-economic ramifications of child mental illness for parents and families and better understand
how Victorian institutions accommodated this specific class of patient.

Introduction
To modern observers the roots of ‘modern’ society are often embedded in the nineteenth century.
The reorganisation of society from countryside to town and city, accompanied by changing work
practices brought about by the rapid growth of industry and factories indicated the emergence
of a nascent ‘modern’ nation. Furthermore, the growing democratisation of British society led
to shifting attitudes towards the population’s most marginal members. Children, the aged, the
sick, disabled and insane were all viewed and judged by new criteria that expected them to func-
tion according to the new industrial order. This article tackles the double marginality of mental
health and childhood, experienced in rural and urban settings, in order to understand if repre-
sentations and the lived experiences of poverty worked to create and embed notions of what it
meant to be insane. It examines how pauper lunatic asylums were accessed by families and delves
into their socio-economic circumstances in order to produce a more nuanced understanding of
how the lunatic asylum functioned as a space of medicine and welfare for various social classes.
Ever since the writings of Rousseau in the late eighteenth century, children and childhood have
become encompassed in a discourse that places them at the heart of social, and by extension
national, development (Rousseau, 1782; Steedman, 1992). In the late nineteenth century these
ideas gained traction, and nowadays, whether through health statistics, school league tables,
or concepts linked to perfectibility, image and the body, children are intrinsic to how we view
the modern world (King and Taylor, 2017). Childhood is thus a discursive rather than biological
concept, with it having different meanings according to space, place, time and class (Taylor,
2017a). In this article children are viewed not just through the prism of the medical institution
but also through the wider lens of the families that utilised such provision. So this is not an analysis
of asylums and their medical treatment of the insane, but rather an exploration of how this specific
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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 152 Steven J. Taylor

institutional space functioned within a broader landscape of poverty, disease and welfare for a
well-defined population.
By the turn of the twentieth century, children occupied a distinct and sentimentalised space in
the public imagination. Schooling for children of all social classes was compulsory and legislative
and cultural developments had made child labour, and its associated practices such as apprentice-
ship, the exception rather than the rule (Humphries, 2010). Of course, it is too simplistic to argue
that these changes occurred smoothly or rapidly, and on the ground many working families
resisted both the imposition of schools on their daily lives and the gradual erosion of the income
that a child could contribute to the family economy (Cunningham, 1995: 103–06). These changes
in the long term not only sentimentalised childhood but also served to make this time of life a
more public experience, with those unable to progress academically rapidly identified by peers,
teachers and the wider community. An examination of the experiences and interactions of men-
tally impaired children with institutions for the insane at this crucial cultural intersection for ideas
about childhood emphasises the growing importance of young people’s health in town and country
at local and national levels.
Children are even more important because their admission occurred at a time when authorities
and reformers were attempting to break the cycle of poverty. Not only were the young represen-
tative of the health of the nation in physical terms, but the survival of the nation and empire
also depended on their moral character (Brown, 2017). The separation of children from parents
who were thought to be negative influences on their offspring became a familiar occurrence
throughout the period, with reformatories, industrial schools and emigration homes becoming
ever more common. This was the era of the evangelical child-rescue movement that attempted
to reshape the working classes according to its own middle-class Christian ideals (Murdoch, 2006;
Parr, 1980). A core component of which was the instilling of respectable habits into pauper
children, something that had to happen away from their supposedly vice-ridden families and
neighbourhoods. Much of this discourse grew out of proto-eugenic ideas that were just finding
a voice and children thought to be tainted by the supposed bad heredity of their families, such as
the mentally impaired, posed a further danger to society. Subsequently, their incarceration,
in asylums and other institutions, was all the more necessary.
Considering the socio-cultural context of childhood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, children provide a unique opportunity to better understand the nature of asylums as
spaces of care and treatment. For adults, their lack of mental faculty would mean that their eco-
nomic failure was expected and their fall into destitution and institutionalisation would not have
come as a surprise, either to contemporaries or historians. Children, either healthy or not, were
different, they were unable to function outside of a family unit or the alternative structures, such as
children’s homes or schools, which were provided by adults; they were therefore dependent by the
very nature of their youth. When they did fall into destitution it was usually a result of family
circumstances such as illness, unemployment or parental death. Therefore, their mental well-
being poses a more complex question of the asylum. This being, was it primarily an institution
of health, welfare or custody? Understanding the socio-economic function of the asylum will allow
a greater chance to understand how ideas of class, welfare and childhood intertwined in this space.
The remainder of the article will be divided between three core sections. The first discusses the
current historical literature dealing with children, insanity and institutions; with an explicit focus
on the scholarship that combines these three themes. The second introduces the asylums to be
used to conduct the analysis. This will include contextual information about each institution
and a broad discussion of the children who were located within them. Four separate asylums have
been selected, as it is difficult to extrapolate findings from a single institution to draw broader
conclusions; therefore the focus on numerous spaces of care will help to mitigate some of the
problems of representation associated with single asylum studies (A. Shepherd, 2016; Hide,
2014; L. Smith, 2014; Coleborne, 2015; Taylor, 2017a). An exploration of the sources and
approaches to be adopted, especially the nominal record linkage of asylum records with the
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 Rural History 153

decennial census, will also occur here. The final section will then offer an analysis of the socio-
economic circumstances of children who were admitted to pauper lunatic asylums. This will
particularly focus on issues of class and employment, living arrangements, family make-up,
and age and the life cycle.

Scholarship of child mental health

The literatures of madness, poverty and childhood are vast and ever-growing fields, yet they
infrequently intersect. The history of madness and psychiatry has focused heavily on the impact
of institutions and their philosophies. Perhaps the most compelling argument has been that
of Michel Foucault, who contended that asylums developed as instruments to control deviant
members of society who failed to adapt to the needs and structures of industrialisation
(Foucault, 1961). Such a narrative is fascinating, but has been mostly refuted by scholars such
as Roy Porter (1987), Edward Shorter (1997) and Pieter Spierenburg (1984), who observe the
influence of private initiatives, chronological anomalies and the reliance on the French experience
to draw Europe-wide conclusions. A further influential argument has been offered by Andrew
Scull, who observed pauper lunatic asylums as spaces where alienists (doctors for the mad)
consolidated their expertise and with it professional control over the insane. Of course, such a
goal failed to materialise due to the rapid growth in asylum populations and the inabilities of
the nascent psychiatrists to cure the vast numbers of chronic and elderly cases, often certified
by Poor Law Medical Officers, who were sent to these newly founded institutions (Scull, 1979).
Whereas this literature has focused on the crossroads of poverty and mental impairment, there
have also been wider studies that have specifically considered the institutional experiences of
society’s better-off members. Charlotte MacKenzie’s study of Ticehurst Asylum (1992) provides
a comprehensive overview of this asylum’s affluent members, with patients keeping private
carriages on the grounds of the institution and paying in excess of £450 per annum for care
(MacKenzie, 1985; A. Shepherd, 2007). Of course this experience is far removed from that of
the patients and their families who were admitted to the asylums, to be examined later in this
article. In fact, Cathy Smith has observed that ‘poverty and material deprivation were widely con-
sidered as both catalyst to and a consequence of periods of mental ill-health’ (2012: 118).
More recently scholars have attempted to move outside of the asylum when exploring the
experience of insanity. These studies have concentrated on discussions about the familiarity of
families with committal processes in the nineteenth century, rather than arguments about medical
professionalisation and social control (Coleborne, 2015; C. Smith, 2006; Walton, 1979; Mellet,
1982). In his seminal article, Mark Finnane observed the complexities of asylum certification
and emphasised the centrality of families in the process of committing their loved ones
(Finnane, 1985). He noted that the vast majority of the insane in post-famine Ireland were com-
mitted directly from their own homes rather than via other institutions. Moving to the experience
of England, David Wright identified that families of the upwardly mobile middle class in south-
east England were among those who accessed the private and fee-paying idiot institution of
Earlswood Idiot Asylum (Wright, 1998). Akihito Suzuki has explored familial awareness of the
stigma attached to lunacy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how families often
sought to shield insane relatives from the public gaze (Suzuki, 1997; Suzuki, 1999). These useful
insights into the care arrangements of prosperous families reveal little about the institutional
experiences of mentally impaired children or those accessing pauper lunatic asylums during
this period.
Historical studies of community and domestic care were the focus of Wright and Peter
Bartlett’s edited volume Outside the Walls of the Asylum. The contributors to this collection
observed that despite the growth and importance of asylums in the nineteenth century, the majority
of the insane population were still cared for outside its walls and usually within the domestic sphere
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 154 Steven J. Taylor

(Bartlett and Wright, 1999). Meanwhile, Jade Shepherd has demonstrated the causative impact of
mental illness on family breakdown, with children being the victims of neglect and violence when
parents experienced domestic crisis (J. Shepherd, 2013). Evidently, the domestic arena was a crucial
element in understanding how families, society and institutions reacted to insanity, but gaining
retrospective insight into this private sphere is complex. Previous studies have extended the focus
by concentrating on the circulation of children between institutions of welfare, medicine and the
domestic sphere in an attempt to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the mixed economy
of welfare and the home in managing children of the poor (Taylor, 2017a: 139–72). This article
represents an extension of this approach in order to build a more detailed picture of the socio-
economic circumstances of mentally ill and disabled children.
Despite focus on family involvement in the certification process, explicit attention from schol-
ars towards the mental ill health of children has been rare. My previous work has demonstrated
that relationships between the young, families and institutions functioned according to a rural/
urban dichotomy and was more likely centred on the ubiquity of available provision rather than
medical need (Taylor, 2017a). While constructions of child mental health and institutional
experience feature heavily in this study, family backgrounds are less frequently explored
(Taylor, 2017b). Likewise, in Amy Rebok Rosenthal’s exploration of families and insanity in late
Victorian Britain, the economic circumstances of those who sent their children to the East Kent
County Asylum do not feature (Rebok Rosenthal, 2012). Moreover, Melling et al. accurately
observed that the majority of insane children, both in their Devon case study and the country
more widely, remained outside of pauper lunatic asylums and were cared for in domestic arrange-
ments or workhouses (Melling et al., 1997). Yet, like previous studies there was no robust analysis
of the families that were accessing lunatic asylums.
By its very nature then, this is not an article that focuses on children explicitly but instead is an
attempt to use children as a prism through which to ask wider questions about the types of families
that were making use of pauper lunatic asylum provision for their offspring. It does this by asking
three core questions. First, how does the admission of children to asylums contribute to the core
debates about institutionalisation, psychiatry and childhood? Secondly, does knowledge of the
socio-economic position of children and their families help to improve understanding of mental
health and the institution in this period? Finally, what does childhood experience tell us about
family circumstances in the mid- to late nineteenth century?

Four asylums and their young patients

The analysis will be conducted using the records of child patients admitted to four pauper lunatic
asylums across England. Confinement of the insane and the building of asylums became compul-
sory elements of medical provision in the counties of England and Wales following the Lunacy
Acts of 1845. These stated that pauper lunatics had to be confined in specialist institutions that
were funded from public expense. Consequently, the identification and certification of the insane
took place within the mechanisms of the New Poor Law, and was completed mostly by Poor Law
Relieving Officers and Medical Officers, rather than asylum doctors (Bartlett, 1999b). As the nine-
teenth century progressed it became evident through the ever-expanding asylum population that
these institutions were seen as the solution to mental illness and disability. In 1859 asylum patients
consisted of 1.6 per every 1,000 people living in the country but by 1909 this had expanded to
3.7 per 1,000 (Shorter, 1997: 47). Despite the considerable increase in certification, at no point
was any allowance made for issues of age (Melling et al., 1997). Children were therefore part
of this rapid expansion and were admitted into asylums alongside the manically violent, the
morbidly melancholic and the suicidal.
The four institutions examined in this article were diverse in geography and experience. The All
Saints Asylum in Birmingham was a borough asylum that provided care for the pauper insane of
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 Rural History 155

the city. It had a catchment area of three urban and densely populated poor law unions (Aston,
Birmingham and Kings Heath). The Berrywood Asylum in Northamptonshire that served a pre-
dominantly rural county dominated by the vested interests of the landed aristocracy, although
there was some proto-industry centred around boot and shoe manufacturing (Hurren, 2008;
C. Smith, 2007). The Prestwich Asylum in Lancashire was located just outside of Manchester
and was one of four institutions that served the county. The rapid rate of industrialisation meant
that poverty was acutely felt both in the city but also in the rural areas of the county and as
such the demand for pauper lunatic provision was high and diverse. The pressures on asylum
space in Lancashire were further magnified by the large number of Irish migrants who came
to England following the famine of 1845–7 (Cox et al., 2012; Cox et al., 2013; Cox and
Marland, 2015). Finally, the Three Counties Asylum catered for the needs of Bedfordshire,
Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire. These were three relatively small rural counties without
major cities or much industry and thus they provide a contrasting lens for the analysis here.
The regional differences of these institutions inevitably affected their individual evolutions (Taylor,
2017a). For instance, the two asylums located near to urban centres opened their doors (Birmingham,
1850; Manchester, 1851) considerably earlier than their rural counterparts (Berrywood, 1876; Three
Counties, 1860). They were also significantly larger, with Birmingham built to house 300 pauper
lunatics and Manchester 350. However, by the turn of the century, the number of pauper insane
had multiplied exponentially with Birmingham having room for 1,200 patients and Manchester hold-
ing 2,300. Meanwhile, the rural Berrywood and Three Counties Asylums experienced growth, albeit
on a much more modest scale. At its opening in 1876 Berrywood was designed for 115 patients and
by 1900 contained 900 (C. Smith, 2007). The Three Counties Asylum could hold 466 pauper lunatics
when it first opened its doors and by the turn of the twentieth century was home to 1,000 residents.
The extensive record keeping of Victorian institutions and the subsequent survival of docu-
mentation means that asylum archives are a treasure trove for historians. The child patients of
each institution were located through extensive and systematic analyses of admission registers,
patient indexes and patient case files. The names, ages, admission numbers and diagnosis of
each child on their arrival at the asylum were located using the registers and indexes. From this
information the admission numbers acted as a guide to locate individual patient case files that
were contained in the much larger and much more extensive patient casebooks. The contents
of these related to the medical and everyday experiences of the individuals living inside the
asylums. If they are read closely and against the grain these documents offer an opportunity
to uncover the lost stories and narratives of each child patient. By looking past their purpose
as repositories of mental health information, each case file becomes an expansive document that
reveals much wider detail about behaviour, families, institutions, habits and everyday life, from the
perspectives of both medical professionals and lay observers. Subsequently, the content must be
painstakingly sifted through in order to learn more about the patients who were confined.
At times information about the socio-economic backgrounds of patients stands out in these
records. However, this is usually because a relative of the patient had been previously certified
and confined as insane; at a surface level therefore, socio-economic circumstances were used
as an aetiological lens. Using the non-medical information contained in case files it is occasionally
possible to gain insight into lived experience of the child within the family prior to admission.
Each patient was examined upon entry to the asylum and the findings were recorded in a section
of the case file titled ‘Mental State on Admission’. A subsection of this area was the ‘History of
Case’ where lay and other medical professions, if any had previously treated the patient, could note
salient details. It is these details that are used quantitatively in this article to understand the socio-
demographic make-up of the child patients in asylums, but also qualitatively to understand the
lived experience of mental illness inside and outside the institution (Porter, 1985).
Using this method of identification there were 560 children, under the age of fourteen, certified
as ‘insane’ and admitted to the four asylums. The age of fourteen, while it might appear arbitrary
and a little on the conservative side by modern standards, has been selected to represent the
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 156 Steven J. Taylor

historical experience of when childhood ended for children of the working class between the years
1850–1907 (Taylor, 2017a). Of these, 433 (77 per cent) were diagnosed with the learning disabil-
ities of idiocy and imbecility, rather than mental illness. While these terms have evolved to have
different meanings in the present day, they were part of the medical lexicon in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Those diagnosed as idiots or imbeciles were thought to be in a perma-
nent state of disability, usually from birth, and with little chance of improvement (Seguin, 1866;
Wright, 2001; M. Thomson, 1998; Taylor, 2017b). Other diagnoses, such as mania (reckless,
impulsive and possibly dangerous behaviour) and melancholia (depression of various degrees
of severity), were deemed non-permanent and curable within the correct medical setting. The
language and behaviours that were used to construct these diagnoses were surprisingly consistent
across the period and institutions (Taylor, 2017a).
The institutional experience of admission was, of course, uneven. In the rural areas considered
here, the Berrywood Asylum admitted 229 children (140 boys and 89 girls), while the Three
Counties Asylum accommodated 164 (97 boys and 67 girls). In more urban settings the All
Saints Asylum was home to 95 (55 boys and 40 girls), and Prestwich 72 (37 boys and 35 girls).
There are a couple of significant issues to explore further in these figures. First, the two rural
asylums witnessed a greater influx of child patients and in a shorter space of time than those
institutions located near cities. This is striking, as it had been thought that asylum populations
increased due to the social pressures of industrialisation and urbanisation (Scull, 1979).
Secondly, the predominance of boys is somewhat surprising, as historians had argued that women
were more likely to be confined than men (Showalter, 1987). This disparity can be explained in a
number of ways. First, Melling et al. (1997) suggested that child admissions were a tool to control
adolescent male behaviour. A closer look at the children admitted to the four institutions used
here reveals that the situation was more nuanced. The average age of a child was 10.2 years
old when they entered the asylum – if broken down by gender this shifts slightly to 10.7 years
for boys and 9.6 years for girls. The nature of diagnosis appears to suggest that the picture was
more complicated than simply controlling unruly behaviour. Idiocy and imbecility were
diagnoses associated with ‘harmless’ behaviour and the high percentage of the cohort admitted with
these conditions suggests that unruly behaviour was not a dominant factor, even if it was sometimes
recorded in the case file (Taylor, 2017a). Wild or dangerous behaviour, more commonly associated
with a diagnosis of mania, was only received by 8 per cent (47) of children. Therefore a further
explanation is required to explain the gender imbalance. This leads to the second point, suggested
by Wright, that idiot or imbecile patients, often described as harmless, could be of some use within
the domestic environment engaging in chores such as housework or childcare that could ease the
burden on stretched household economies (Wright, 2001: 82; Wright, 1997: 183). In line with the
socio-cultural climate and gender norms of the time these duties were regularly completed by
females and therefore the predominance of boys may be explained.
Insights into background and the qualitative experience of domestic life prior to admission are
difficult to glean. Surviving personal correspondence between patients and their families during a
period of confinement has been one way to do this, but letters to and from children occur infre-
quently in the records (L. Smith, 2008). From those that do exist we can glimpse into the nature of
family life and the relationship between child and parent. For example, Abraham Creighton’s father
wrote to the Three Counties Asylum upon the admission of his 10-year-old son in July of 1893
(BLAS LF31/12, 1893). The first page of the letter is missing but the second reads as follows:

air, exercise, and proper diet will improve him very much, nothing has such a soothing effect
upon him as music, of which he is very fond. He can play a little of ‘Rock of Ages’. He used to
sing a great deal when younger and easily learns tunes with hearing them once or twice.
Singing and Recitations please him. From some cause or other eating always upsets his equi-
librium and makes him restless. Milk and macaroni puddings, and fish he likes. He is inclined
to be a naughty boy, at times, and touch his private parts. We have had to watch him a good
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 Rural History 157

deal for it, of late years he has grown much better. He is very sensitive about his feet and
cannot do with them being touched much when you wash him.
When well his disposition is cheerful, tricky, and full of fun.
He has naturally a keen insight into people, and will not go near anyone he does not like. I beg
to remain
yours Respectfully
A. W. Creighton

Numerous themes run through the content of this letter, such as education, leisure activities,
diet, notions of respectability and gender roles. What can most clearly be observed is the element
of parental concern from father to son and a developed awareness of methods that will improve
his well-being and comfort inside of the asylum. Access to, and an ability to play music appears
to belie the diagnosis of idiocy, as patients were supposed to be unable to learn or develop
intellectually. Further, looking more into the socio-economic background of the family, the
availability of music and the education to play what is assumed to be a piano, hints at the family
holding a degree of respectability. This works in combination with the eloquence of the father who
was employed as a ‘photographic artist’ according to census returns (Census, 1891a). What we
take forward from here is the underlying expectation that the asylum would improve the condition
of his child, despite asylums being proven to be largely ineffective at doing this.
Sources such as Creighton’s letter are, however, few and far between and raise more questions
than they answer. There are obvious issues concerning the extent to which they represent the
typical experiences of children and there are questions about the existence of the letters that
do survive. Were these the only ones that the asylum received, or the only ones saved, and if
so why? Therefore while the content of the few letters that exist are interesting and help us relate
to the lived experiences of the subject, sender and recipient, their overall value in drawing broader
conclusions is fairly limited.
To reveal more about the background of the children and their families the records of the lunatic
asylum have been linked with census-enumeration data to create a subsample consisting of 10 per
cent of the children identified. This was not a feasible task for all 560 due to space and time restric-
tions and the fact that some were born and died in the inter-census years, but it will nevertheless build
a more detailed picture of the domestic context prior to, during and after confinement. From the
census greater detail about family make-up, parental occupations and socio-economic status can
be accessed. Such a methodology has been used before in the history of psychiatry. Joe Melling
and Bill Forsythe used it in their study of the Devon Asylum to draw conclusions about the house-
hold, and Wright used it in relation to children admitted to the Earlswood Asylum (Melling and
Forsythe, 2006; Wright, 2001). This article differs by using this approach to elucidate the socio-
economic circumstances of children admitted to publicly funded pauper lunatic institutions.
There are complexities and pitfalls to using the census in this way and it must not have
too much emphasis placed upon it (Higgs, 1996). One of the key problems here is the diverse
nature of family life in the nineteenth century. For instance, Mildred Ayres was admitted to
the Berrywood Asylum at the age of nine following the death of her mother in 1900 (NRO
NCLA/6/2/1/9, 1900: 223). Her father can be located on the census using his full name and
the street address that he provided for the asylum certification. (Census, 1901a). He was, however,
a lodger living with Thomas Smith and his family. It is unclear whether following the death of the
mother the family had disintegrated and if any other children had been distributed elsewhere,
perhaps to other family members or public institutions. The census therefore can only be trusted
for the information that it contains and its many silences should noted. Ayres may have had
brothers or sisters, but she could have just as easily have been an only child, and from the census
data we simply cannot tell.
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 158 Steven J. Taylor

Socio-economic circumstances of child patients and their families

To some observers, it might appear intuitive that the children admitted to pauper lunatics
came from society’s poorest families. After all, the asylum operated within the framework of
the New Poor Law and Relieving and Medical Officers were crucial players in the certification
process (Bartlett, 1999b). By way of example, Emily Liberty might be considered a textbook case.
In 1878 she was admitted to the Three Counties Asylum at the age of thirteen from the St Albans
workhouse, where she had been residing for three months. Her father was a low-waged agricul-
tural labourer and she was the third out of five children (BLAS LF29/5, 1878: 72). Yet, while she
was a pauper in the true sense of the word, her case was not typical of the wider experience
and over half of children in the patient sample (51 per cent) resided in their own homes before
certification. This compared with 13 per cent who were admitted directly from workhouses,
20 per cent for whom the location of admission could not be determined (these were predomi-
nantly in urban asylums), and the remainder coming from other institutions such as county
asylums, private asylums, infirmaries and residential schools. It is thus not possible to conclude
simply that child admissions occurred due to the intersection of mental ill health and poverty.
Something more complex was occurring and the label of pauper, in this context at least, was
administrative rather than descriptive. The process of certification needs to be considered also
in conjunction with the stigma that was attached to receiving assistance from the New Poor
Law, something that many working families avoided at all costs.
The socio-economic background of families accessing asylum provision for their children
might not come as a great surprise. Those with parents working in low-paid and low-skilled occu-
pations such as labourers, manual workers, factory operatives or charwomen made up the largest
number, with 58 per cent (thirty-one) of children included in the subsample coming from these
backgrounds. It might be concluded that these were not pauper institutions, but that for children
the asylums operated more as general hospitals for the mentally impaired, rather than an as exten-
sion of poor law provision. Such a situation has resonance with an argument put forward by
Bartlett. He suggested that for adults the asylum space had a dual function. For the respectable
it could function as a place to get back on their feet and seek employment, while for the residuum
it could be punitive and controlling (Bartlett, 1999a). In our subsample, a third of families
(nineteen) had the head of household working in skilled or what might have been considered
‘respectable’ work, such as a shoe clicker, grocer, or tailor, and their motive for seeking publicly
funded asylum confinement needs to be further explained. Perhaps if we consider the experience
of Arthur George Weed, who was admitted to the Berrywood Asylum on 2nd May 1877, it will be
possible to observe more of the spectrum of socio-economic diversity that the asylum accommo-
dated (NRO NCLA/6/2/2/1, 1877: 210).
From his case file we learn that Weed was aged nine years old when he entered the asylum and
was diagnosed as an idiot. Upon admission his father stated that he had ‘been very strange in his
conduct for some time past – that he throws things at byestanders [sic] and is dangerous to himself
and others’ (NRO NCLA/6/2/2/1, 1877: 210). The final part of the parental testimony should not
come as a shock, often being dangerous was invoked as a method to ensure certification. The Poor
Law Amendment Act (1834) stated that any dangerous pauper lunatics should be removed from
workhouses within fourteen days (Bartlett, 1999a). The adoption of being dangerous as a mecha-
nism to ensure asylum admission demonstrates how working people quickly became acquainted
with the laws that affected their lives and manipulated them for their own purposes (Jones and
King, 2015). The Weed case, however, is more fascinating than the tropes that were used to secure
admission.
Weed and his family can be found in the 1871 census living on Kettering Road in Northampton
(Census, 1871). The father, George Weed, was recorded as head of the household with his wife and
three children, of which Arthur was the middle child. George Weed’s occupation was recorded as a
‘boot and shoe maker’, a common profession in Northampton at that time (Greenall, 2000: 114–16).

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 Rural History 159

At this point the family situation appears somewhat unremarkable, but in the 1881 census George
Weed was listed as a ‘shoe manufacturer’, a subtle, yet more prestigious and respectable variation
than merely a ‘shoe maker’(Census, 1881b). Obviously this could have been the slip of a pen from
a very busy census enumerator, but further searches reveal that the George Weed Pedestrian Boot
Factory was located at 72 St Michael’s Road, Northampton (Industrial Heritage of Northampton,
2018). A short walk from the family home, the factory was three storeys high and still stands,
although it no longer makes boots and has been renovated into boutique apartments. Therefore,
in Northampton at least, we witness the asylum being accessed by families who had financial resour-
ces as well as those without. Furthermore, it was not as though the only option for the family was the
Berrywood Asylum. The Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, a privately funded institution, was
well established and located much nearer to the family home (C. Smith, 2007; C. Smith, 2012).
Evidently, the asylum fulfilled a function for those at many levels of society, and by delving
deeper into the backgrounds of the families that used this provision it is possible to ascertain
the circumstances that drove them to seek institutional care. From the wider sample it is clear
that the asylum was by no means the first option for families caring for a mentally disabled child.
The average length of time between a child displaying evidence of mental illness or disability and
then being certified was on average three years and nine months. Usually the admission process
was triggered by a shift in domestic circumstances. Finnane, Wright and Smith have referred to
this as strategic use of the institution, and Cathy Coleborne has more recently termed the ‘calamity
of insanity’ (Finnane, 1985; Wright, 1998; Coleborne, 2009). By way of example, Edith Shatford
was admitted to the Berrywood Asylum in March 1898 at the age of thirteen (NRO NCLA/6/2/1/9,
1898: 13). She was directly taken from the workhouse, rather than her own home, and was diag-
nosed with idiocy. Prior to her certification there was no evidence in the patient case file to suggest
that she had previously received medical attention for her condition. Seven years before, in the
1891 census, she had been living with both of her parents, her father being a shoemaker, and her
six siblings, of which she was the third youngest (Census, 1891c). By 1901, however, the family
dynamic had been shattered. Three years before the census Edith was admitted to the asylum, just
after her father had died from phthisis. Her mother appears to have started a new relationship and
can be found on the 1901 census living with Thomas Bates, with none of her seven children were
living with her (Census, 1901b). From this situation it might be inferred that Thomas Bates was
unwilling or unable to accommodate the seven children and they therefore had to be found alter-
native spaces in which to live. Edith’s home was now the Berrywood Asylum from which she was
eventually discharged in 1915 after spending seventeen years there as a patient.
The complexity of family living arrangements in urban areas may at times have exacerbated
family tensions and facilitated admissions to the asylum. David Walford, aged six, was admitted to
the Birmingham Borough Asylum in 1907 from the home of his grandparents (BCA MS344/12/
29, 1907: 633–4). In this instance, it might be speculated that the boy’s condition, described
as ‘congenital insanity’, was becoming too difficult for his ageing grandparents to manage.
Living in more diverse domestic arrangements was Edward Felton. He was admitted to the
Birmingham Asylum in April 1888 at the age of nine (BCA MS344/12/9, 1888: 421–4). Felton
lived with his father Edward, a confectionist, and mother Clara, as well as his aunt and uncle,
Henry who was an engine driver, and Emily Felton and their four children. Also in the household
was Francis Gatehead, a twenty-year-old lodger, who was working as a machinist. In total there
were five adults and five children living in the home. According to the census returns the heads
of neighbouring households were working in skilled occupations and also employed domestic
servants, so there may have been a degree of affluence in the family, yet nevertheless this was still
a crowded domestic space (Census, 1881b). Unfortunately, Felton’s parents cannot be found in
later censuses. There may have been a shift in family dynamics that served as a catalyst for asylum
admission, or they may have relocated to a new area. The boy himself was transferred after six
years to the Rubery Hill Asylum, an institution built near Birmingham to accommodate harmless
patients suffering from mental disability.
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 160 Steven J. Taylor

A similar situation occurred in the case of Frederick Hall, aged nine, who was admitted to the
Birmingham Asylum in February 1892 (BCA MS344/12/12, 1892: 673–6). He had been living with
his mother, Sarah French, and her husband James French. It is unclear what happened to
Frederick’s father, as he does not feature either in the census or asylum documentation, but
Frederick was living in the home along with his three siblings, of which he was second youngest
and all of whom shared the surname Hall (Census, 1891d). By the time of the 1901 census the
family was still living together, but the eldest child had left and Frederick was residing within the
asylum. His older sisters, Florence, fourteen, and Lily, nine, were still living with their mother and
step-father, but additionally Sara and Thomas Brown and their young child Horace were now
living in the household. Sara was recorded as being Sarah’s eldest daughter and was not living
with the family in the earlier census, thus further highlighting the difficulties of using the census
as a source to analyse family situations (Census, 1901c). In this situation it is possible that a bur-
geoning household and the presence of Horace, a new grandchild, were the factors that pushed the
family to seek the asylum for Frederick.
Moving beyond the complexities of household living arrangements, it is also important to explore
in more detail the nature of family life in this period. Since Finnane’s work (1985) there have been
arguments about strategic use of the asylum and families depositing members at specific points in
the life cycle, such as the birth of a new child, times of illness and bereavement. David Wright (1998:
199–200) found that for the privately funded Earlswood Idiot Asylum it was most commonly the
first or second born child that was likely to be institutionalised. The experience of children certified
and sent to pauper lunatic asylums, however, does not correlate with these findings. The census
subsamples reveal that the opposite was most common, and that it was the youngest child in
the family who was most regularly certified and confined. This is of course significant as domestic
roles in working families were often crucial in the smooth running of the household. An older child
could be capable of bringing home a wage or at least could contribute to household chores or child-
care responsibilities so that parents would have more freedom to bring home an extra wage.
The youngest child usually required the most care and attention and therefore their removal would
lift a burden on the domestic sphere, especially if the family was in a time of hardship. A further
explanation for the dominance of younger children within the sample might also have been that the
family unit was still expanding and the birth of a sibling may have been imminent. This is more
difficult to quantify, as pregnancy was not recorded by the census. However, many of the families
were young and the dependency of a mentally disabled child and a newborn baby, as in the example
of Frederick Hall, might have been too much to cope with at that point in the life cycle.
Overall, the youngest child in a family accounted for 34 per cent of admissions to the asylums.
In comparison the eldest child was only admitted 19 per cent of the time. The middle child out of
three occurred 7 per cent of the time; a middle child with three to five siblings 17 per cent; and a
child with more than six siblings who was not the eldest or youngest featured 7 per cent of the
time. None of those that made up the subsample was the only child living in a household. Breaking
this down to an institutional level, the rural Berrywood Asylum had the highest number of youn-
gest children (43 per cent) and the urban Prestwich Asylum (13 per cent) the fewest. In fact in
Manchester it was more common for either the eldest child or a middling middle child to be
confined, both accounting for 25 per cent of admissions. However, the smallness of the sample
for the Manchester institution might, in this situation, distort the figures somewhat.
These data regarding the place of the child in the family also mask an issue of gender. If the
sample is divided between boys and girls then the story is somewhat different. Youngest boys
made up 44 per cent of all boys certified and 21 per cent of girls were the youngest. Perhaps,
the fear of male adolescent behaviour and the usefulness of girls in the domestic sphere led
to the disparity between the genders at the point of admission. With regard to girls more generally,
the youngest and eldest were admitted at the same frequency (21 per cent), as were girls who
came from large families with four to six children, but they were neither the eldest nor youngest.
Those who were the middle child out of three made up 8 per cent of the sample, suggesting that
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 Rural History 161

they may have been capable of domestic responsibilities, and those who came from families with
seven or more offspring made up 13 per cent.1 By adopting such a detailed look at the family lives
of those children who were admitted to asylums, we see that living arrangements were complex,
family dynamics often fluid, and that pressures of economy and survival often were important
factors in the decision to seek certification.

Conclusions
Using children as a tool to interpret poverty and mental health care in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries produces findings that are both specific to the history of psychiatry
and to the historical study of welfare, medicine and childhood, more generally. The use of patient
case files linked to other records builds a more vivid picture of the lived experiences of the
individuals who found themselves confined in these institutions, and by extension we are able
to see further into the broader world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The length of time that it took families to seek medical attention for their children suggests that
institutions and incarceration were not the first responses of those caring for the mentally impaired.
From this it is not a great leap to conclude that families loved and cared for these children and it was
especially when life-cycle changes occurred that intervention was sought. The majority of children
came from families that might be termed the working poor. These were people whose existences were
never entirely secure or comfortable and they were acutely impacted by shifts in circumstances, such
as illness, disability, unemployment and old age, which affected the family dynamic. These shifts must
have been amplified further when care for a mentally disabled child was added to already precarious
existences. Yet not all families came from among the poor and a good number of ‘respectable’ work-
ing families also sought the institutional provision of pauper lunatic asylums. This might be repre-
sentative of the precariousness of life at this time but also an expectation that these new medical
spaces would improve the conditions of their loved ones.
Families were acutely aware of the health needs of their children. The father of Abraham
Creighton offered his thoughts on how best to treat his child in the asylum in the hope that
his advice would work in combination with asylum methods. Therefore despite the delay in seek-
ing treatment, it might be considered that improvement was expected when families accessed the
asylum. In this instance the term ‘pauper’ used to describe those confined within asylums is not
appropriate and was deployed as a blunt administrative descriptor, rather than one that reflects
the socio-economic status of patients and their families.
Finally, the experience of children living with mental illness and disability can be added to a
growing historical literature of confinement and institutionalisation that puts families at the centre
of the diagnostic process and further shifts emphasis away from institutions. Despite growing
concern about the nature of childhood and the growing popularity of eugenic and degenerative
discourse in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, later embodied in the Mental Deficiency Act
(1913), the admission of children was still instigated and driven by families at points that suited
their own socio-economic need.

Note
1 There were four girls (17 per cent) for whom it was not possible to identify their place within the family unit.

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Cite this article: Taylor SJ (2020). Children, poverty and mental health in rural and urban England (1850–1907). Rural
History 31, 151–164. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793319000372

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