COUNTY ADMINISTRATION: LUNATIC ASYLUMS

The records in the series' relate to both the administration of the Middlesex county asylums, and general administration of pauper lunatics in the county. MA/A/C are applications from parishes for lunatics to be maintained by the county (1853 - 1888); MA/A/J are minutes of the committee of Justices overseeing the building of Hanwell Asylum (1827 - 1831); MA/A/DE are notices of deaths from Hanwell and Colney Hatch Asylums (1846 - 1853); MA/A/DA are notices of discharge from Hanwell and Colney Hatch Asylums (1846 - 1853); and MA/A/RL are returns to the sessions of lunatics from parishes and poor law unions (1825 - 1849). There are a number of other records within the office which relate to the county asylums - general references may be found in the yearly sessions papers (MJ/SP); MA/RS/01 are printed reports on the four Middlesex asylums (1839 - 1890); MA/D/A (1762 - 1889) and MA/DCP (1718 - 1929) contain relevant planes, contracts and deeds; MF/A has receipts for county rates used for lunatic care, and financial accounts of building and maintenance work carried out at the asylums (1828 - 1889); and Boards of Guardians' records usually include registers of the people who they sent to county asylums, private asylums or MAB hospitals (from 1834)

The material is arranged in five series - MA/A/C/001 - 003; MA/A/J/001 - 002; MA/A/RL/001 - 013; and MA/A/DA and MA/A/DE which are both uncatalogued

These records are open for public inspection although records containing personal information may be subject to closure periods

Until the Nineteenth Century lunatics were provided for in private or charitable institutions (in London, these included Bethlem Hospital, a ward at Guy's Hospital, and Saint Luke's Hospital), put in a parish workhouse, or just given outdoor relief. By the beginning of that century a combination of factors saw a change in the care of lunatics - alternative approaches to patient care and diagnosis, a change in the social ethos of responsibilty to those less fortunate, and a problem of too many lunatics with too little care particularly in the metropolis. Acts of 1808 and 1828 allowed counties to build asylums from their rates; but it was not until 1845 that Justices were compelled to build. From 1832 private institutions were licensed and inspected by the Justices, and many had contracts with the parish overseers (pre-1834) or Boards of Guardians (post-1834) to take those considered mentally disturbed; those thought to be incurable or idiots were sent to the workhouse. Any asylums that were built were regulated at Quarter Sessions, and they were the places to which the institutions' records were returned. From 1815 parish clerks (and later their successors, clerks to the Guardians) had to submit returns of pauper lunatics to the sessions; from the 1828 County Asylums Act records of certification, admission, death or discharge were returned to the Justices who forwarded them on to the Home Office. In 1867 an Act set up the Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB) which was responsible for the care of "harmless and incurable" pauper lunatics, different from those intended to go to the county asylums - it built asylums at Caterham, Leavesden and Darenth. Middlesex built its first lunatic asylum relatively early in the Century. A report was presented to the sessions by a special committee of Justices enquiring into the state of pauper lunatics in the county, and a resolution was passed agreeing to the building of a county asylum. Another committee was set up in 1827 of visiting Justices to superintend the building and management of such an asylum. Hanwell, the first Middlesex County Asylum was begun in 1829 and opened in 1831. Twenty years later a second aslyum was begun (1849) at Colney Hatch, north of London, and opened in 1851. Originally it was designed to hold a thousand patients, but by the start of the First World War it had expanded to 3500 patients. Colney Hatch is a good typical example of the Victorian lunatic asylum - magnificent architecture, set in large grounds, and a self contained community with its own gasworks, bakery, brewery, farm and chapel; but there were also terrible conditions which existed in such places - overcrowding, badly heated in winter and ventilated in summer, the name gave the area and institution such a stigma that it was changed to New Southgate and Friern Hospital respectively. Another twenty years later and a third Middlesex county asylum opened, at Banstead in Surrey. Ten years later in 1881 and the Middlesex Justices started discussing the need for a fourth asylum - this time to be built at Woodford in Essex, mainly for patients from the East End of London. However, local government reorganisation overtook events, and Claybury Asylum was opened as a London County Council asylum in 1893. The other Middlesex asylums had also passed out of that county's hands in 1889 (Local Government Act) with Hanwell and Colney Hatch both passing to the LCC, and Banstead becoming the new Surrey County Asylum. Conversely, the new Middlesex County Council took over the old Surrey asylum at Wandsworth for itself, later (1918) known as Springfield. All these asylums were transferred to the new National Health Service in 1948