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‘Appeasing the Unstrung Mental Faculties’: Listening to Music in Nineteenth-Century Lunatic Asylums
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2020
Abstract
Listening to music found a new context during the early nineteenth century, in the shape of large, closed institutions set up to house and treat the insane. In response to social reform as well as a growing problem of mental health, lunatic asylums for paupers were set up across Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. Replacing the previous practices of restraint and containment, a system of ‘moral management’ dominated the new asylums. Patients’ lives were kept busy and ordered, with careful attention given to their employment, their diet and their recreational activities. Music played an important part in establishing the routine of the new institutions. Formal dances offered a social occasion and a controlled environment within which the two sexes could meet. Both dances and concerts were used as a reward for patient behaviour, encouraging the kind of self-control which was seen as crucial to recovery and rehabilitation. Musical events acted as a diversion from the grim realities of institutional life and played an important role in allowing patients to engage with religious observance. Musical experience could be active or passive; patients might engage by dancing or making music of their own, and their music might be symptomatic of illness or wellbeing. Using documents including formal records, patient notes and newspaper reports, it is possible to investigate some of the ways in which listening to music played a therapeutic role, and the place of musical experience in the lives of asylum patients.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 17 , Special Issue 3: The Experience of Listening to Music in the Nineteenth Century , December 2020 , pp. 403 - 425
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2020
References
1 I am grateful to the Wellcome Trust for a research expenses grant, which enabled me to carry out the archive visits for this article, and to my colleagues and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable input. The article includes a number of concepts and terms, such as ‘lunatic’, ‘idiot’, and ‘pauper’, which would be considered offensive in modern contexts. I have included them here in reflection of the terminology in use during the nineteenth century. The modern-day terms ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ are also used where appropriate. Further information on the meaning of specific terms is given in the relevant footnotes.
2 Archival research encompassed the pauper lunatic asylums in Norfolk, West Riding, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Derby, and Brookwood (Surrey), together with private institutions at York and Barnwood in Gloucester, the Bethlem Hospital, and the Holloway Sanatorium.
3 I discuss this debate, particularly as developed in publications during the 1890s, below.
4 See Smith, Leonard, Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody: Public Lunatic Asylums in Early Nineteenth Century England (London: Leicester University Press, 1999)Google Scholar and Foucault, , Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Howard, Richard (New York: Pantheon, 1965)Google Scholar. Foucault argues that the new order of asylums was an attempt to impose a strict order and control onto the insane, segregating those who could threaten society through their unwillingness (or inability) to conform.
5 McGuire, Charles Edward, Music and Victorian Philanthropy: The Tonic Sol-Fa Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. This theme is also considered in Helen Barlow's article in this issue.
6 The complex relationship of music to the idea of ‘liberalism’ is explored in Sarah Collins's recent edited volume, Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.
7 In the case of state-run pauper lunatic asylums, as in workhouses, ‘paupers’ were those who were destitute, unable to provide for themselves, and who required support from local authorities for basic supplies such as food and clothing.
8 Legge, Richard, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, in Journal of Mental Science 40/170 (July 1894): 368–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Contemporary views stemmed from a number of influences: the popular association of asylums with the notorious ‘Bedlam’, depicted widely during the eighteenth century as a vision of ‘Hell on Earth’; the association of madness with sinfulness, particularly as depicted in William Hogarth's engraving of Bedlam from the final episode of The Rake's Progress (1735); and the widely held belief that one of the principal causes of madness was hereditary disease. Asylum Medical Superintendents frequently lamented that families were reluctant to commit relatives to the asylum, preferring instead to care for them at home, often until their illness was too advanced for the available treatments. The social and cultural context of madness in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries is discussed in detail in Scull, Andrew, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993): 46–69Google Scholar. Scull notes that ‘in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century practice, the madman was often treated no better than a beast’ (92). While the reforms of the nineteenth century accompanied a fundamental change in mindset regarding the humanitarian essence of the insane, popular stereotypes were slow to disappear altogether.
10 Herman Charles Merivale, My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by a Sane Patient (1879). Although Merivale mentions various musical and other activities, he records that he was not inclined to attend concerts or musical parties.
11 Holloway Sanatorium Case-book A: Females. Certified patients admitted Aug 1885–Dec 1887, 13 August 1885 and 1 September 1885. Available at Closed stores WMS 2 (Shelfmark: MS.8159). Online https://wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/mental-healthcare/holloway-sanatorium/ (accessed 12 February 2017).
12 Holloway Sanatorium Case-book A: Females. Certified patients admitted Aug 1885–Dec 1887, 20 March 1886.
13 With respect to music, see McGuire, Music and Victorian Philanthropy. A comprehensive study of the idea of ‘rational recreation’ can be found in Bailey, Peter, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1880–1885 (Trowbridge: Routledge, 1978)Google Scholar.
14 Nurses and attendants were poorly paid and most often drawn from domestic service (nurses) and the military (attendants).
15 The most fundamental change in attitudes towards madness, as described by Andrew Scull, was the shift from viewing the insane as beastly, or subhuman, to a new view of madmen as ‘in essence a man; a man lacking in self-restraint and order, but a man for all that’ (Scull, Most Solitary of Afflictions, 93). This altered both the way in which the insane were treated, and the potential for cure and rehabilitation. Such a change in perspective underlay the moves towards the principle of non-restraint, and treatment via moral means (see below).
16 See Smith, , Lunatic Hospitals in Georgian England, 1750–1830 (New York: Routledge, 2007): 4Google Scholar.
17 Humoral theory was based on the work of pre-Socratic Greek philosophers including Alcmaeon and Hippocrates, and developed further in the writings of Galen. It was based on the idea that the body held four fluids (the humours) which affected a person's temperament, as well as their health. Imbalance of the humours would result in poor health. See Jacques Jouanna, trans. Allies, Neil and ed. van der Eijk, Philip, ‘The Legacy of the Hippocratic Treatise The Nature of Man: The Theory of the Four Humours’, in Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2012): 335Google Scholar. While advances in mainstream medicine meant humoral theory was considered of little use after the early nineteenth century, the slower progress in understanding the brain, and in particular the causes of mental illnesses, meant that more outdated theories and treatments remained in place in asylums and related settings until much later.
18 See Digby, Anne, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985): 12Google Scholar.
19 Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine, 33.
20 The total population of lunatics in England and Wales was recorded as 20,893 in 1844, and 85,352 in 1890 (see Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflications, 362). The enormous expansion of asylums is detailed in ibid. 364–70.
21 For detailed studies of these two institutions, see Shepherd, Anna, Institutionalizing the Insane in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014)Google Scholar and Mackenzie, Charlotte, Psychiatry for the Rich: A History of Ticehurst Asylum, Wellcome Institute Series in the History of Medicine (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar.
22 Non-restraint and moral management receive detailed consideration in Smith, Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody.
23 The terms were given official sanction in the ‘Idiots Act’ of 1886, although meanings and usage remained fluid, along with a range of alternative terminology. Clarification of terminology was welcomed by the medical profession; the Act was reported in the Journal of Mental Science in April 1887, which acknowledged the preference for ‘imbecile’ among many parents of children with learning difficulties. See ‘Idiots Act, 1886’, Journal of Mental Science 33/141 (April 1887): 103–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Until the mid-nineteenth century there was little formal medical investigation into the biological causes and features of insanity and the Greek theory of bodily humours continued to dominate much discourse.
25 Patient occupations were noted on admission and listed in the annual reports of each institution.
26 The information in this and following paragraphs is based on unpublished archival research undertaken with the generous support of a Wellcome Trust Research Expenses Grant, 2015–17.
27 The default was Anglican worship, although at some institutions (particularly as patient numbers grew) Catholic, non-conformist and Jewish celebrants were able to attend the asylum.
28 Exceptions to both rules existed; for example the choir at Chester County Lunatic Asylum was formed of patients. The Chaplain selected those whom he could ‘depend upon’, regardless of their enjoyment of the singing. See Report of the Chester County Lunatic Asylum … Year Ending 31 December 1870, Cheshire Record Office HW/64, 23–4.
29 The pauper asylums in my study regularly spent funds on instruments (brass, wind and strings, pianos, harmonium and/ or organ) and their upkeep (new reeds, new strings, repairs, tuning and replacement parts), sheet music and band parts, hymn books, music stands, and visiting performers, including a regular organist. Further expenses were needed for training a band or choir. In the Worcestershire County Asylum in 1867, for example, expenses included £6 for the Band Instructor, £15 16s for Music and Instruments, £1 2s for Tuning and Repairing the Piano, and £3 10s for Repairing the Harmonium. See Fourteenth Annual Report of the County and City of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum (Worcester: J. Hatton, 1867): 18, 54Google Scholar. During this period the staff of 38 attendants were each paid between £16 and £20 per annum.
30 The development of theatrical performances was particularly well-supported at Wakefield asylum, which established its own theatre company and performed full-scale plays, operas and concerts on a regular basis in the last quarter of the century.
31 Superintendent's Journal 18 November 1872, Norfolk County Archives: SAH 132. Hills supported music-making among the patients; in this case he noted ‘We have, at the present time, several male patients who can play the violin, – if we possessed one they could amuse themselves and others. If permitted, I can purchase a second-hand one for 15s/6d, sufficiently good for the purpose.’ The purchase was approved but no further details are given.
32 SAH 264 Case Book December 1865–April 1870, p. 1054.
33 Forty-first Annual Report of the County and City of Worcester Lunatic Asylum, for the year 1893, and Financial Statements, 1893–94 (Worcester: Journal and Daily Times, 1894)Google Scholar: Commissioners’ Reports, 13. The Commissioners ‘noticed the gift of a lady, an American orchestrone, which when played at our request by an Attendant, visibly gave much pleasure to many even of the idiot class’.
34 Superintendent's Journal 1861–1878, Norwich County Archives: SAH 131, 26 October 1861 and 22 November 1861.
35 Superintendent's Journal 1861–1878, Norwich County Archives: SAH 131, 7 December 1863. Blackface minstrelsy was at its height in Britain during this period, with African-American melodies and songs on an African theme popular in music hall repertoire. See Scott, Derek B., The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017): 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Superintendent's Journal 1861–1878, Norwich County Archives: SAH 131, 25 January 1868.
37 Superintendent's Journal 1861–1878, Norwich County Archives: SAH 131, 28 May 1868.
38 The importance of sport as a part of moral management in nineteenth-century lunatic asylums has been examined in Cherry, Steven and Munting, Roger, ‘“Exercise is the Thing”?: Sport and the Asylum c.1850–1950’, International Journal of the History of Sport 22/1 (2005): 42–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Superintendent's Journal 1861–1878, Norwich County Archives: SAH 131, 2 February 1877.
40 Sixty-Ninth Annual Report of the Gloucester County Lunatic Asylums, at Wotton and Barnwood, near Gloucester. 1892 (Gloucester: Partridge and Robins, 1893)Google Scholar, Chaplain's Report, 26.
41 Under the Dome: The Quarterly magazine of Bethlem Royal Hospital was published between 1892 and 1930. Previous magazines, Bethlehem Star, Under the Dome and Above the Dome, were handwritten and have not survived. This series was a new attempt to produce something more substantial and long-lasting and was largely produced by the patients themselves with input from officers; particularly at smaller private asylums, patients and staff were encouraged to develop a sense of family and such initiatives were often the result of joint endeavour. See Bethlem Archives, UTD-01 to UTD-09.
42 ‘Entertainments’ in Under the Dome, 31 March 1893, 21–2.
43 ‘Entertainments’ in Under the Dome, 31 March 1893, 25. Among the performers were medical staff Dr Hyslop and Dr Percy Smith, Mrs. Percy Smith, the Rev. F.G. Hume and the Rev. N.P. Tower. Bethlem's status and mainly middle-class population meant a good deal of connections in the musical world could be drawn on for concerts and other entertainments, and the institution was frequently visited by amateur and charitable groups.
44 [Dr Forbes], ‘Twelfth-Night in a Lunatic Asylum’, in Provincial Medical Journal and Retrospect of the Medical Sciences, 5, no. 121 (21 January 1843): 336–338: 336Google Scholar. John Conolly (1794–1866) was one of the foremost proponents of non-restraint from his position as Medical Superintendent at Hanwell Asylum from 1839. He published extensively on the idea, as well as founding the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association and associated journals, which were aimed at both recognizing and regulating the work of medical practitioners in institutions such as the new asylums.
45 The first journal to focus on mental health was the Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, which ran between 1848 and 1860 and again from 1875–1883. A rival, the forerunner of the modern day British Journal of Psychiatry, was founded in 1853 as The Asylum Journal, renamed The Asylum Journal of Mental Science in 1855 and Journal of Mental Science in 1858. This publication was established in connection with the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, founded by Dr Samuel Hitch in 1841.
46 Report of The Retreat, York, a Registered Hospital for the treatment of Mental Diseases for 1908, 8.
47 Third Annual Report of the County and City of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Medical Superintendent's Report (Worcester: Chalk and Holl, 1856): 34–35Google Scholar.
48 Eleventh Annual Report of the County and City of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Medical Superintendent's Report (Worcester: Deighton & Son, 1864): 97Google Scholar.
49 Annual Report of the Gloucester County Lunatic Asylums, at Wotton and Barnwood, near Gloucester. 1888 (Gloucester: Partridge and Robins, 1889), Chaplain's Report, 36–7Google Scholar.
50 Quarterly reports of the Medical Director to the Committee of Visitors in Medical Director's Journal 1858–67: 29 July 1858, West Yorkshire Archive Service: C85/1/13/1.
51 Annual Report of the Gloucester County Lunatic Asylums, at Wotton and Barnwood, near Gloucester. 1890 (Gloucester: Partridge and Robins, 1891), Chaplain's Report, 35Google Scholar.
52 Quarterly Reports of the Medical Director to the Committee of Visitors in Medical Director's Journal 1858–67, 28 October 1858.
53 Harford was a clergyman with a strong belief in the power of music to reduce pain and anxiety in both physical and mental illness. The Guild was founded in summer 1891 with the intention to provide musicians for London hospitals. One key feature was that the musicians would not be seen by the patients, and in time Harford proposed to set up a telephony network in order to relay music direct from a central performing location. The effect of the ‘live’ performances would be sustained by the use of music boxes and phonographs. See Davis, William B., ‘Music Therapy in Victorian England’, in Journal of British Music Therapy 2/1 (1988): 10–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
54 RET 1/1/4/3 1840–73, 165–6. Letter from Samuel Tuke to the Retreat management dated 13 April 1850.
55 RET 6/1/19/1/34. Copy of letter written from Elizabeth Naish Capper to a friend (M.R.) in 1878, 25–6.
56 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’.
57 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 370.
58 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 368.
59 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 368.
60 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 369.
61 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 371.
62 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 371.
63 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 371.
64 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 372.
65 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 373.
66 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 373.
67 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 374.
68 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 373.
69 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 373.
70 Stainer, John, Music in its Relation to the Intellect and the Emotions (London: Novello, 1892)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Among the relevant subsequent papers were Pearce, Charles W., ‘On Listening to Music’, Proceedings of the Musical Association 19 (1892–93): 53–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Banister, Henry Charles, ‘On Judgement and Taste with Regard to Music’, Proceedings of the Musical Association 18 (1891–92): 55–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lake, Ernest, ‘Some Thoughts on the Social Appreciation of Music’, Proceedings of the Musical Association 18 (1891–92): 93–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
71 Stainer, Music in its Relation to the Intellect and the Emotions, 50.
72 Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’, 374.