What Life Was Like in Victorian Asylums

By Holly Mullis

When you are told to picture a Mental Asylum, what do you imagine? A large, scary, and cold building? Padded cells, strait jackets, pills in cups? Lobotomies and electroshock therapy? Well, how about during the Victorian era? Thanks to most horror films, that's how most people now a day's picture Mental Asylums. However, they weren't actually as dark as we all think.

Before Mental Institutions, people suffering from mental illnesses were left in the care of their families. Those who didn't have family or homes had no choice but to become street beggars, begging for food and shelter. Bethlem, one of the oldest Institutions to date, began in 1247 and is still being run today as part of the NHS, with some obvious changes to the way things are run and the way patients are treated and housed. It was documented by Patricia Allderidge in Management and Mismanagement at Bedlam, 1547-1633 that back in the day, the building had 'a parlour, a kitchen, two larders, a long entry throughout the house, and 21 rooms wherein the poor distracted people lie, and above the stairs eight rooms for servants and the poor to lie in'. It was an open building allowing the patients to roam its entirety, as well as the neighbourhood. It was built over a sewer that was used by both a hospital and the asylum, meaning that it would become regularly blocked which left the asylum in filthy conditions. Dietary provisions were also poor, leading to patients suffering from starvation, with portions being minimised daily and consisting of only bread, meat, oatmeal, butter, cheese, and beer.

By the 1700's, there were some private buildings that wealthy families could discreetly send their 'mad' relatives, whereas poor people had to use local parishes, some ending up in workhouses or prisons. During this time, institutions were solely to keep the patients, otherwise known as 'inmates', in custody, with the keepers acting as nothing more than guards. Physical restraints were a common part of mental healthcare, being justified that they controlled anti-social behaviours such as ruining clothes and performing sexual acts, and they stopped patients from harming themselves or attempting to commit suicide (patients were even strapped to their beds at night to prevent such attempts). Some patients were so worried about them hurting themselves that they would even ask to be restrained.

In 1829, a patient at Lincoln Asylum called William Scrivinger died from strangulation after he was strapped to his bed in a strait jacket overnight without any supervision. The incident caused the abolishment of all physical restraints and began a non-restraint system. The change to their system was influential to the 1800s asylum reform and changed attitudes towards mental illness and the way mental patients were cared for.

With the change in attitude came a legislation, shifting ideologies from 'custody to cure'. Mental illness was now recognised as something that could be cured or reduced, Asylums became mandatory as it was no longer acceptable for mentally ill people to be kept in workhouses and prisons, and a programme was made for building asylums based on scientific and medical knowledge about mental illness. Patients experiencing mania were encouraged to repress strong emotions and manic actions and thoughts were discouraged, for people who were excited by the opposite sex, money and religion those topics were never mentioned in conversation, people experiencing melancholy were distracted with other topics of conversation and delusional patients were spoken to in a polite yet firm manner, with the staff not arguing against their delusions but gently challenging them. Patients were assigned jobs as a form of distraction, given regular meals and fresh air.

Where distractions didn't help, 'medicines' were given. Sedatives, such as morphine, were given to manic patients as a way of calming them down, particularly at night, and melancholic patients to regulate their mood. If morphine became ineffective, they were given chloral hydrate or Indian Hemp. Patients who experienced feelings of exhaustion and were sunken and sullen were given spirits, and patients who were physically weak were given brandy to help with recovery. Lunatics, supposedly, are well-known to be prone to constipation so were given things such as castor oil, black draught of senna or croton oil. The use of water was also used to calm down patients, giving them warm baths with a cold flannel on their head. These treatments only scratch the surface of what patients were given during the 19th century. While lobotomies have stopped being given since the 1950s, electroshock therapy is still a procedure that is given today as a safe and effective intervention for major depressive order, mania, and catatonia, and is effective for 80-90% of those cases.

Overtime, Mental asylums transformed into what we know today as psychiatric hospitals; buildings that specialize in short term therapy for low-risk patients and others that specialize in temporary or permanent care for people who require routine assistance, treatment or a specialized and controlled environment. People are usually admitted to psych wards voluntarily, however if a psychiatrist believes a patient may cause themselves or others significant harm, then they can be involuntarily committed and treated. The Mental Health Act was passed in 1959, more than a decade after the NHS began, and an integration was attempted to merge mental health care into the organisation. Since then, they have partnered up with multiple mental health charities, one being Time to Change, an organisation that's working to end mental health discrimination that unfortunately still occurs today.

While the lives of Victorian mental patients weren't as dark as we believe them to be, there have still been some vast improvements to the treatment of mentally ill people over the decades with thanks to scientific and medical knowledge, and the work of the NHS. Unfortunately there are still improvements to be made and there are still attitudes that need to be changed when it comes to the stigma of mental illnesses, but people today appear to be much more willing to learn and accept the diseases that plague so many people on this planet.