METROPOLITAN IMBECILE ASYLUM, CATERHAM, ANNUAL REPORT, FOR 1878

<p>Records relating to Caterham Asylum are deposited at London Metropolitan Archives. See SRO Rep 787 for details of these. Photographs of the Asylum are included in Bygone Caterham by Jean Tooke (Phillimore and Co Ltd, Sussex, 1988). For a baptism register of Caterham Metropolitan Asylum and Guards Chapel, 1871-1888, see 6087/1/86.</p>

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Presented by Surrey Local Studies Library, Guildford, in September 1993.

The Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 aimed to alleviate the overcrowded insanitary wards in London workhouses by moving 'quiet chronic insane and mentally defective' patients to asylums at Leavesden in Hertfordshire and Caterham. Both institutions, which opened in October 1870, were built and run by the recently constituted Metropolitan Asylums' Board.

Caterham Metropolitan Asylum, which opened on 9 October 1870 and was planned to accommodate 2,000 patients, was situated on land between the Coulsdon Road and Green Lane. It accepted 'insane paupers' who were 'harmless persons of the chronic or imbecile class as could be lawfully detained in a workhouse', including children until 1873, when they were sent to Darenth Training Colony in Kent. From 1913, under the Mental Deficiency Act, boys over the age of nine were admitted along with others not suitable for the Training Colony.

The Asylum became known as Caterham Mental Hospital after 1930, administered by the London County Council. It is now known as St Lawrence's Hospital and is administered by the South West Thames Regional Health Authority as part of Croydon District Health Authority.