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96 A LUNATIC VILLAGE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Part Ii. {Concluded From P. 33.)
Let us again take another table , and analyze it . On the 31 st of December , 1859 , just a year ago from the time at which I write ,
there were 391 insane women at Gheel . ( At that epoch the number of men was only 409 , or very slightly in excess . ) Of these women ,
the immense majority were Belgian and Dutch ; there were only four Frenchwomen , and not one Englishwoman . Of the total , 391 ,
38 paid their pensions , 353 were paupers ; 244 were single , and 147 were married ; 212 came out of towns , and 179 from country
districts ; 184 had some sort of education , and 207 had none ; 64 were reckoned as curable , hut 327 were incurable . Of these mad
women we note this remarkable fact , that 310 were quiet , and only 81 were agitees , while 369 were free , and the very small proportion
of 22 were under restraint . Thus , even of those who were agitees , 59 went uncontrolled . The " busy bees" among all these insane
• _, women amounted to 283 , only 108 were idle ; 303 were quite nice and tidy ; and of all the insane men and women at Gheel a
year ago , nearly half went to church on Sunday . I have said , that 22 women were under some sort of coercionbut this only _implies a
light chain linking the feet , so that the patient , cannot walk fast or far . Only 2 patients wore strait-waistcoats ; and the table does
not say whether these were male or female . Out of the 283 employed female patients , 36 worked in the field or garden , 176 were
in the menage _, and 14 had the care of children ; the rest were engaged in sewing , lace-making , & cwith the exce _} _3 tion of onewho was a
, , cordier or ropemaker , and another set down as " commissionaire " equivalent to our commission agent .
During the last four years no case has occurred among all these _orazy peopleeither of assassinationincendiarismor any other
, , , violent breaking of the peace . Two cases of suicide took place in 1859 , both by women afflicted with melancholy .
A few details as to the nourriciers , the accommodation they afford , and the rate of payment they obtain , may not be amiss . The
commune of Gheel contains 617 households wherein insane patients are received ; being about a third of the total number of its families .
Of these 617 , 280 possess one room devoted to a patient ; and 297 possess two rooms , where they can thus receive two patients ; 32
can take in three patients ; and 8 nourriciers find room for four . The highest prices of payment are those which range from £ 20
to £ 40 per annum , and over . There are forty-two nourriciers who charge these pricesand are considered . of the first class . One
, hundred and eighteen charge from £ 12 to £ 20 per annum ; the majority , howeverreceive patients for £ 10 or £ 12 . Two hundred
, patients , of whom half belong to the middle class , live in the town of Gheel itself ; the rest are distributed in seven surrounding hamlets .
If thus far we have said nothing of the medical supervision exercised at Gheelit is be . cause such supervision here takes a secondary
place as a means , of cure ; but it is none the less regularly provided .
The medical service consists of an inspector , of four physicians , and
96 A Lunatic Village.
96 A LUNATIC VILLAGE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1861, page 96, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041861/page/24/
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