Old Manor Mental Hospital Salisbury

CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR RECORDS OF MENTAL HOSPITALS

100: Minutes

110: Annual Reports

111: Official Visitors' Report Books

112: Annual Statistical Returns

113: Hospital Publications

114: Official Visitors' Reports on Patients Books

115: Other non-medical Report Books

120: Deeds

130: Correspondence

140: Registers of Staff

141: Indexes of Staff

142: Salaries and Wages

150: General Ledgers

151: Patients' Ledgers

152: Private Patients' Account Books

153: Quarterly Abstracts of Accounts

154: Accounts Day Books

156: Stocks and Stores Accounts

157: Repairs

160: Miscellaneous

161: Photographs

165: Plans

170: Admission Registers

172: Indexes to Admissions

173: Miscellaneous A. and D.

174: Journals

175: Medical Registers

176: Registers of Discharge

177: Registers of Deaths

178: General Registers

180: Post-mortem Books

181: Ward Report Books

182: Medical Superintendents' Journals

183: Registers of Diarrhoea

184: Registers of Mechanical Restraint and Seclusion

190: Case Books

198: Reception Orders

<span class="wrapper"><p>Amongst the records of the Administration Section of the Court of Quarter Sessions (page 18 in the handlist) there are admission registers 1813-1854 (5 vols.) with at the back of the first volume minutes of the Visitors' Committee 1828-1845, annual reports, and plans of the hospital. (A1/560-565).</p> <p>In the Hampshire Record Office amongst the Hapgood collection 32M73 is a small group of receipts, bills and letters from Dr. Finch about a patient 1858-1861.</p> <p>See also collection 444 deposited by Knowle Hospital Management Committee for miscellaneous deeds and personal papers of the Finch and Chubb family.</p></span>

A private lunatic asylum started in Fisherton Anger outside Salisbury circa 1813. From 1829 it was licensed by the Wiltshire Court of Quarter Sessions until a boundary change in 1904 caused the Quarter Sessions of the City of Salisbury to be the licensing authority. In 1954, by which time it had become known as the Old Manor Mental Hospital, it ceased to be privately run and was absorbed into the National Health Service. It was then administered by the Knowle (Fareham, Hampshire) Hospital Management Committee. In the early 1850s it had been the largest private mental hospital in England, with about 700 beds.

In 1974, the N.H.S. was reorganised and the hospital came within the Salisbury Health District of the Wiltshire Area Health Authority.

Between 1850 and 1870 the asylum accepted criminal lunatics, prior to the establishment of Broadmoor. Throughout its history it received pauper lunatics from local authority asylums all over the country, and particularly London. Presumably because it was run privately, in its early years by Dr. Finch and his descendants and later by the Chubb family, no minutes were kept. This collection comprises large quantities of correspondence, accounts, clinical and case records from 1813 to c.1960 and a useful group of plans.