Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum (Mental Health in Historical Perspective) 9783030785246, 3030785246

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MENTAL HEALTH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum Rosemary Golding

Mental Health in Historical Perspective

Series Editors Catharine Coleborne, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia Matthew Smith, Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

Covering all historical periods and geographical contexts, the series explores how mental illness has been understood, experienced, diagnosed, treated and contested. It will publish works that engage actively with contemporary debates related to mental health and, as such, will be of interest not only to historians, but also mental health professionals, patients and policy makers. With its focus on mental health, rather than just psychiatry, the series will endeavour to provide more patient-centred histories. Although this has long been an aim of health historians, it has not been realised, and this series aims to change that. The scope of the series is kept as broad as possible to attract good quality proposals about all aspects of the history of mental health from all periods. The series emphasises interdisciplinary approaches to the field of study, and encourages short titles, longer works, collections, and titles which stretch the boundaries of academic publishing in new ways.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14806

Rosemary Golding

Music and Moral Management in the NineteenthCentury English Lunatic Asylum

Rosemary Golding Music Department The Open University Milton Keynes, UK

ISSN 2634-6036 ISSN 2634-6044 (electronic) Mental Health in Historical Perspective ISBN 978-3-030-78524-6 ISBN 978-3-030-78525-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Colney Hatch, lunatic asylum. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Stephen

Preface

Music, all pow‘rful o‘er the human mind! Can still each mental storm, each tumult calm; Soothe anxious care on sleepless couch reclin‘d, And e‘en fierce anger‘s furious rage disarm. At her command, the various passions lie, She stirs to battle, or she lulls to peace, Melts the charm‘d soul to thrilling ecstasy, And bids the jarring world‘s harsh clangour cease. Soft thro‘ the dell the dying strains retire, Then burst majestic, in the varied swell, Now, breathe melodious as the Grecian lyre, Or on the ear, in sinking cadence dwell. Oh! surely Harmony from Heav‘n was sent, To cheer the soul when tir‘d with human strife; To soothe the wayward heart by sorrow rent, And soften down the rugged road of life.1

I have long had an interest in the relationship between music, health and wellbeing, particularly in historical contexts. The current project, however, came about unexpectedly: when searching through advertisements for organists during the 1860s I came across a couple of notices seeking an organist for a pauper lunatic asylum. At the time I knew next to nothing about mental health provision during the nineteenth vii

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century, nothing about the large, state-run institutions that took care of the majority of poor patients during this period, and certainly nothing about any music that may or may not have taken place within their walls. It has been a voyage of discovery exploring the institutions, ideas and people that made up such an enormous network, through the immense volume of archival documents and other resources left behind. From visiting many of the extant buildings to tracing individuals through census records, examining photos of now-anonymous attendants in the band to deciphering the riddles of a concert programme, the project has presented surprises, joys and challenges. The asylums of the nineteenth century were enormous institutions, often beautiful buildings, with a small army of staff required to service the community based there. Yet the legacy and reputation of the nineteenthcentury asylums is often contradictory and difficult to resolve. Ostensibly part of the Victorians’ great philanthropic project, asylums were—on paper—intended to protect (both those inside and those outside), offering safe haven and the possibility of care and cure. Yet popular imagery more often reflects the horrors of overcrowded institutions, in an age where advances in both public sanitation and the understanding of mental illness were still woefully primitive. Many of the original asylums were in use as National Health Service hospitals and private institutions until the late twentieth century. While a few remain in active medical use, the majority have been repurposed as accommodation, or are in a state of disrepair. It has been a pleasure to visit many of the institutions I have studied; the engineering and design behind the original buildings are just small remaining testimonies to the enormity of the asylum project as it developed through the nineteenth century. Yet to confront the buildings is also, in some small way, to confront the reality of life for the individuals who lived and worked in asylums, and whose everyday experiences I have been investigating. The same dichotomy is to be found in archive holdings: the sanitised accounts of medical officers in annual reports and formal documents tell of patient numbers, management strategies, expenses and problems, but it is in the patient case books and collections of patient letters and writings that the pain, anguish and despair of individuals is stark. It is not surprising that some of the archival research I have undertaken has been discomforting. Archive documents from this context use words and concepts that make us ill at ease. The ready discussion of ‘idiots’ and ‘imbeciles’, the regular admission of women suffering from mental illness associated with

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childbirth or menstruation, the inclusion of young children as patients, the reduction of human beings to numbers and tables: all of these challenge the historian to balance the claims of Victorian progressives with the realities of poverty and incarceration. My focus on music and moral management has often meant skimming the surface of asylum life, setting aside the personal, lived experiences of individual patients as too often absent from accounts of everyday existence. Throughout this project I have attempted to balance my absorption into the worlds of my protagonists—chiefly the medical officers and other management associated with the asylums—with a reflective sense that I am largely missing the voices of patients, their friends and families, attendants, nurses and other junior staff. The power of music, particularly in relation to mental health medicine, is a slippery topic. Delving into both the history and current practice of music therapy has been a fascinating introduction to the close links between music, the mind and the body. I have only been able to touch upon the immense skill and knowledge of music therapists, and remain in awe of their increasingly important work in a complex world. As Henry White (1785–1806) suggests in his poem ‘On Music’, reproduced at the head of this preface, music really does touch the ear, the soul and the passions. The varied forces at work under Music’s power, as described in White’s rather archaic and romanticised verse, still challenge those working to harness music within medical contexts. Since the earliest records of antiquity music’s particular abilities to move the human soul, to communicate, unite communities and to heal have been studied and exploited. The efforts of nineteenth-century English mad doctors to achieve the same represent but a minor part of this ongoing exploration, but I hope go some way to enlightening this small corner of the history of music, medicine, culture, and society. The two parts of this volume are complementary. Both offer new material. In the first, the broader picture and historical context of the English asylum, as well as the idea of moral management, are addressed, together with an examination of the ways in which music was used in the asylum system, and more broadly with medical and moral associations. The three chapters in this part draw on published theoretical texts as well as reports and examples from specific asylums. I also consider the methodological and terminological challenges of my subject matter. In the second part, a series of case studies allow for individual institutional narratives, problems and sources to be considered in detail. Balancing public and private

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asylums, larger and smaller, and those founded towards the start of the nineteenth century (or earlier) with later foundations, I build up a dense web of material addressing both the forms of music found within the English nineteenth-century asylum, and the ways in which music was considered part of the therapeutic regime. I completed this book during the year of the most seismic event to affect my own life, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–21. Never has the healing power of music and the arts been so apparent. As musicians— professional and amateur—took to the Internet with ever-more inventive ways to share their art, others offered outdoor performances for neighbours across balconies and back gardens, and community projects in song and dance brought people together where physical meeting was outlawed. Music provided the ultimate panacea. The uses of music as a community facilitator, an accompaniment to dance and exercise, a link to ‘normality’ and as a means to connect, came closer to the spirit of music in the nineteenth-century asylums than any form of modern music therapy. We can only hope that music continues to be recognised and valued, in many varied and wonderful ways, for its immense contribution to our lives and wellbeing. I am indebted to the array of archivists, cataloguers and conservators who work to make material relating to the lunatic asylums available to researchers and the general public. In particular, I am grateful to Frank Meeres and staff at the Norfolk Record Office, Colin Gale at Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Alexandra Medcalf and colleagues at the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, archivists and staff at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield, staff at the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service, Helen Timlin and colleagues at the Gloucestershire Archives and Julian Pooley and colleagues at the Surrey History Centre. I gained important insights from the displays at the George Marshall Medical Museum and Infirmary Museum at the University of Worcester and am grateful to staff at both museums for their help. I am also indebted to David Juritz, who welcomed me into his home for a day to sift through some of the vast collection of band music from the Norfolk Asylum. I am fortunate to have the benefit of rich and supportive academic communities. Colleagues at The Open University have encouraged my research interests, and I have had many useful conversations with the network based around the Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain conference. Material from this volume was first presented as conference papers

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at the Royal Musical Association annual conference (2016), the Society for the Social History of Medicine conference (2016), The Open University’s conference ‘The Hidden Musicians’ (2016), Anglia Ruskin University seminar series (2017), the Listening Experience Database study day (2017), the Biannual Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2017), the Bethlem Museum of the Mind (2017), The Open University’s Health and Wellbeing Research Spotlight (2021) and the conference ‘Between Centres and Peripheries’ hosted by the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca (2021). I am grateful for the feedback and questions I received on these occasions. I am also indebted to my anonymous readers, who have offered careful and detailed comments on this and other publications, as well as to the editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan. Among the individuals who have inspired, encouraged and deepened my research are Helen Barlow, Martin V. Clarke, Helen Coffey, Byron Dueck, Trevor Herbert, Helen Odell Miller, David Rowland, Dave Russell and Leonard Smith. Thank you. The research presented here was supported by a Wellcome Trust Research Expenses grant (2015–2016) [108497/Z/15/Z] which allowed for vital time spent in archives during the early period of my study. I am also grateful to The Open University for the provision of research time and conference funding allowing me to complete my project and share my early findings. Thank you also to Elaine Walker who assisted with the Cheshire Asylum archives. I am privileged indeed to have the support of many from my community of friends and family, from the singers of the CSCC, the ‘Morden Mummies’ and the online #WIASN. You have all sustained me in many different ways. But it is to my family that the most fundamental appreciation must go. When I started this project in early 2014 I was engaged to be married; as it nears completion I am blessed with a wonderful husband and two beautiful daughters. I am enormously thankful to them all for their forbearance as I travelled to archives and conferences, enthused about former asylum buildings from the motorway (and dragged them around several sites) and disappeared into my study for days on end. Steeple Morden, UK November 2020

Rosemary Golding

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Note 1. Verses selected from Henry Kirke White’s ‘On Music’, written in around 1800, as set to music by Thomas Attwood Walmisley (1814-1856) in about 1830.

Contents

Part I

Music, Health and Asylum Practice

Introduction Music, Medicine and Morality Researching and Writing the History of Music, Madness and Medicine

3 13

2

Asylums, Moral Management and Music The Nineteenth-Century Asylum Moral Management The Asylum in the Late-Nineteenth Century Music and Moral Management

41 41 45 52 56

3

Music in the Asylum: An Overview The Asylum Band and Dance Concerts and Musical Performances Music in Religious Practice Music in the Patient Quarters Music and Gender Music and Class Music, Noise and the Soundscape of the Asylum Therapy, Moral Management and the Purposes of Music Case Studies

69 70 74 76 79 81 82 83 86 92

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CONTENTS

Part II Case Studies: Pauper Asylums 4 5 6 7 8

Norfolk County Asylum: Moral Management and the Asylum Band

105

West Riding Asylum: Music and Theatre in the Large-Scale Pauper Asylum

129

Gloucester Asylum: Private, Charitable and Pauper Patients

157

Worcestershire County Asylum: Patients, Staff, and Professional Musicians

177

Brookwood Asylum: Music at the Centre of Moral Therapy

199

Part III

Case Studies: Private and Charitable Asylums

9

Bethlem Hospital: Talented Staff in an Urban Setting

237

10

The York Retreat: Moral Management and Music in a Quaker Context

273

11

Barnwood House: Music in the Small Asylum

289

12

Holloway Sanatorium: The Middle-Class Experience

299

Part IV 13

Conclusion

Conclusion

319

Bibliography

339

Index

359

List of Figures

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2

Fig. 8.3

Fig. 8.4

Fig. 8.5

West Riding ‘Mental Hospital Band, 1899’ C85/1401 (Reproduced by permission of West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield) West Riding Asylum Band [c. 1900] C85/1400 (Reproduced by permission of West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield) West Riding Asylum Band [c. 1900] C85/1402 (Reproduced by permission of West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield) Brookwood Asylum Band [1873–1883] in Photograph Album 3043/1/20/7, 38 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre) Brookwood Minstrels in Photograph Album c. 1896 3043/1/20/7, 37 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre) Brookwood Asylum Band [1889–1896] in Photograph Album 3043/1/20/7, 37 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre) Brookwood Asylum Band c. 1890 [1885–1889] in folder 3043/10/2/7 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre) Brookwood Asylum Band [1895–1896] in folder 3043/10/2/7 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre)

149

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 9.1

Fig. 9.2

Fig. 9.3

The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam], St. George’s Fields, Lambeth: the female workroom. Wood engraving probably by F. Vizetelly after F. Palmer, 1860 (Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International [CC BY 4.0]) Bethlehem Royal Hospital Glee and Madrigal Society Concert Programme 17 March 1879 in BEN-01 volume of programmes and ephemera (Reproduced by permission of Bethlem Museum of the Mind) Bethlem Nubian Minstrels Programme 15 January 1889 in BEN-01 volume of programmes and ephemera. Reproduced by permission of Bethlem Museum of the Mind

245

249

253

List of Tables

Table 8.1 Table 8.2

Bandmasters at Brookwood 1889–1907 Organists at Brookwood 1867–1905

216 227

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PART I

Music, Health and Asylum Practice

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The band again struck up, and this time it was for a mazurka, which was as well danced as the quadrille. I was considerably puzzled at the whole scene, and I inquired of one of the assistants, what class of patients they were who conducted themselves in so orderly a manner? “They are of all classes, sir,” he replied; “the majority are prisoners for various offences—burglars, thieves, and murderers.” “Murderers! Are there any murderers here?” “About thirty,” he answered, quietly, and without anything like aversion in his tone or manner. … “But are you not afraid of a disturbance?” “Not the least, sir. The band are all trained warders, and there are several in the room as well. Among the women also there are several female warders.” I waited some time longer, and heard two or three songs, and saw as many dances, all conducted with the greatest propriety, and then proposed leaving – finding myself more shocked than amused at the scene.1

So the writer and reformer William Gilbert (1804–1890) described a visit to the Fisherton House asylum near Salisbury, a private lunatic asylum established in 1813 which, by the middle of the nineteenth century, also accepted pauper and criminal lunatics. Gilbert’s 1864 article draws on his interests in social responsibility and the dangers of alcohol, but also gives insights into the practices of moral management and their perception by © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_1

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the public. Like many authors of the mid- to late-nineteenth century, he is astonished at the apparent power of music and dance to calm the patients, to regulate behaviour and to create order. Yet the asylum ball was only a part of a broader scheme of moral management developed at English asylums during the nineteenth century, the attendants’ band part of a wider musical experience, and the connection between music and patient behaviour just one aspect of the complex relationship between music, medicine, wellbeing and morality that formed an important—and changing—part of music’s identity and status throughout the century. Music history has long since moved beyond an exclusive focus on great composers and music within concert halls. This is particularly true of studies of music in nineteenth-century Britain, where the roles of music in the private sphere, popular venues, music education and the street have all been the subject of recent research.2 Studying the musical performances and repertoires within lunatic asylums offers an opportunity to investigate a new type of context for music, and the semi-isolated musical life that developed within these closed communities. The numbers involved in asylum music—performers in their hundreds, and tens of thousands of patients and staff—mean that it deserves consideration as a significant aspect of the musical life of nineteenth-century England. Medicine, and Medical History, have similarly eschewed a closed, teleological, approach to consider more broadly the social and cultural contexts of health and wellbeing, and the effect of the arts, emotions and the individual. Both Psychiatric Medicine and Music Therapy fall outside core medical practice, as do their histories. The history of music in asylums, however, represents an important turning point: the first example in the UK of music as therapy used widely and systematically, despite its lack of empirical basis. This remained the case until the more widespread adoption of similar practices among hospitals and recuperation clinics during World War I. The role of music in asylums forms an important background to the formal development of music as therapy from the 1890s, and as Music Therapy from the mid-twentieth century. The question of what music was played and heard within lunatic asylums during the nineteenth century has been largely outside the purview of musical, medical and cultural historians.3 This study draws on a range of historical sources to examine the uses and meanings of music in the English asylum during the nineteenth century. Looking outwards, it is intended to prompt further consideration of music’s place in nineteenthcentury society more broadly: its meanings and functions, the ways it

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related to class and status, and the styles and genres to be found in the everyday lives of people across England. In this way it contributes to an understanding of the philosophy and value of music in nineteenthcentury England. It is also directed towards interest in the potential value of the history of music and medicine, particularly practice in institutional contexts, for modern-day scholars and practitioners of Music Therapy and Music Medicine. Recent histories of mental illness and madness have (rightly) emphasised the importance of the experience of the ‘service user’ or patient, exploring the multiplicity of narratives, authors and storytellers available to the historian.4 The present volume adds yet another story, investigating the roles in which formal and informal music making was used and experienced within the asylums of nineteenth-century England. This book offers a new perspective, cutting between the top-down focus on institutions and regulations, and the more recent drive to represent the voices of the patients or inmates. Following the trail of the music used and experienced within the asylum gives a glimpse of the everyday sights and sounds which accompanied patients and staff throughout their lives within the institutions. At the same time, it offers new opportunities to evaluate the therapeutic regimes and management structures at play. I contend thatmusic was used both as a means of softening the experience of incarceration in an asylum, and a contribution towards the control and socialisation often associated with the nineteenth-century institutions. Music helped to delineate structural spaces, asserting expectations of behaviour as well as giving further weight to the patterns and boundaries which defined so much of patient life. Finally, it forms a central part of the idealised world created for asylum patients by their middle- and upper-class benefactors. There is little here which addresses fully the ‘silencing’ of those who experienced mental illness identified by Diana Gittens.5 Many of the voices of nineteenth-century patients will remain silent, particularly those from pauper backgrounds in the large, state-funded institutions, for whom we have scant records. Indeed, the present volume draws less on patient case notes than many studies of asylums, relying more heavily on official documentation and ephemera. Yet in many ways I address the literal silence of the institutions, to add a dimension to our impression of its existence (and that of its residents) through the medium of sound and music. In the case studies which comprise the second part of this volume, the impact of the individual lives of asylum staff is given greater

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prominence, while institutional narratives are examined through the lens of attitudes towards, and provision of, musical entertainment. The minor issues of finance, the fire which destroys a recreation hall, or the difficulty in recruiting (and retaining) sufficiently skilled nursing staff, are rarely given more than a passing mention in institutional histories. Yet in these cases, their impact on the day-to-day lives of patients and the ability of an institution to implement successful programmes of entertainment, engagement and proto-therapy, was often important. The institutional context of this study is the world of the nineteenthcentury English asylum, one which has received recent and thorough interest from scholars examining social questions such as gender and class, aspects of architecture and interior design, landscaping, drama and the arts, and the medical body.6 Perspectives include those of the patients, management and attendants; the political and social meanings of the asylum; and the interactions and boundaries between asylums and the rest of society. The predominant organising philosophy within asylums during this period was the idea of ‘Moral Management’: an attempt to care for, and cure, patients by controlling all aspects of their day-to-day life and environment.7 Medical Superintendents, the senior officers in each asylum, directed each element of the institution’s administration, from diet, daily schedule, work and exercise to architectural layout and interior decoration. Moral management embodied the two frames of ‘cure’ and ‘control’ that I will identify as central also to music’s role in the asylum.8 Asylums were not places of punishment, so there was a drive to embody an ideal society within them, to create the kind of order and control that was central to moral management, to influence via idealised middle class values, and to smooth the path for rehabilitation by mimicking the structures of everyday life in the external world. Investigating the role of music within a broader structure of physical activity, employment, and entertainment offers an insight into the ways in which mental illness was approached long before the development of psychological medicine. In the absence of personalised treatment, it was general wellbeing, behaviour and order that received attention. Although patients were categorised by their symptoms and general presentation, treatments were administered on a catch-all level to all whose behaviour and physical ability allowed them to participate. With self-control a central component in patient rehabilitation, music as a means or an incentive became an important part of the therapeutic and moral management landscape. Music’s role helps illuminate the ways in which early mental health

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therapies were conceived and considered. The case of music illustrates that ‘cure’ and ‘control’ were two sides of the same coin. As we will see, through music patients often gained levels of self-control or social acceptance which were considered essential for their rehabilitation and eventual release. Musical experiences offered the re-creation of external social contexts, such as the dance or religious observance, which made this control possible. Curing patients was inextricably related to controlling them, whether through self-control or control via conforming to social norms. In the absence of a medical understanding of mental health, it was uncontrolled behaviour that led to a diagnosis, and controlled behaviour that would denote a patient cured. This study also casts new light on other aspects of asylum management, particularly the relationships between asylums and their immediate rural and urban contexts, patterns of employment and training of musicians (and other staff), and the ways in which ideas and practices were shared through the travels and communications of medical officers as well as the Commissioners in Lunacy. Music was an important link between the asylum and its wider context, whether in the form of events which brought together patients, staff and external visitors, or the employment and visits of professional musicians, on a regular or ad hoc basis. Local patronage was essential to the running of each County Asylum: Management Committees and Visitors were drawn from the region’s aristocracy, while financial and personal patronage were often key to providing fixtures and fittings, decorations, books and magazines, or even new buildings. Bequests were sometimes made for the entertainment of the patients, or to provide for newly-discharged patients needing funds for tools, clothing or lodgings. Moreover, the attitudes of the upper classes towards the asylum’s patients were important for securing their protection via legal and legislative processes. Events were carefully managed to ensure only the best-behaved and most-predictable patients were present. Musical ability became a feature in the employment of staff, from attendants and nurses, to the talented medical officers at the Bethlem Hospital, whose amateur orchestra helped form a bond between many of the London medical institutions. Music was used, therefore, to structure both the internal life of the asylum (through the regular pattern of dances, entertainments and religious observance), and its externally-facing work (in the form of fetes, performances and religious festivals). Music and musical events also came to signify asylum life: theasylum ball featured in contemporary accounts, both literary and non-fiction,

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as well as imagery such as Katharine Drake’s painting of the Somerset Lunatics Ball dating from 1847, or the image of the Entertainment at Colney Hatch in 1853 which is used on the front cover of this volume.9 The account of the Colney Hatch event illustrates many key features of the use of music within asylums: its association with wellbeing or a form of treatment; its use at events where external visitors were present; participation by officers, staff and patients: One of the most interesting features of the non-restraint system of treating lunatics is the celebration of periodical festivals, in which the patients are allowed to participate; and such rational recreation, doubtless, in many instances, induces habitual cheerfulness, and thus proves one of the many aids by which the moody sufferer is often restored to reason. An entertainment of this description was given to the patients in the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum, Colney Hatch, on Tuesday evening, the 4th inst. The numbers of the patients present were—males, 200; females, 327. Several of the committee of visiting justices and other magistrates of the county, with their friends, and many of the neighbouring gentry with their families, to the number of upwards of 100, were present. The entertainment consisted of a few tableaux, performed by the officers of the establishment, accompanied by music; also, solo singing by several patients; dancing in character, Ethiopian serenading, by attendants and servants, &c. The patients partook of tea, cakes, fruit, and spiced beer; and afterwards danced together. The festival was given in the exercising-hall of the institution; the room was gaily decorated with flags, and a temporary theatre was built for the occasion, these preparations being entirely the work of the officers and patients. The cost of the whole, including refreshments, did not exceed £30.10

Descriptions of visits to asylums during the 1840s and 1850s almost always included an account of a dance, the author expressing astonishment at the good conduct of the patients and reflecting on the benefits of music. Among the male patients at an 1841 Lincoln Asylum dance, for example, the author recorded ‘all were in a moment subdued… the most turbulent were soothed into quiet’, while at the Morningside Asylum near Edinburgh in 1845 dancing ‘proves not only harmless, but, by diverting their thoughts and senses from the exciting cause of their malady, is a relief and a benefit… the same patients who are often noisy and obstreperous in their ordinary abodes in the asylum, behave with the

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utmost decorum at the soirées’.11 Sander Gilman suggests that Charles Dickens, in his 1851 account of a visit to the Boxing Day Ball at St Luke’s Hospital for the Insane, ‘consciously chooses the image of music and the dance as his metaphor for the new asylum’.12 Dickens emphasised the homely and family atmosphere of the asylum as played out in the dance. He contrasted previous impressions of the asylum, based on the notorious practices at institutions such as Bethlem, with the newly-reformed and state-funded asylums such as St Luke’s or Hanwell, where Dickens’ friend John Conolly promoted the practice of ‘non-restraint’. Thus music and its associated activities acted as metaphors for the public: important representations of ‘normal life’ being recreated within institutional walls. This study also offers an opportunity to investigate musical participation—both active and passive—within population groups which might have had very different musical experiences, were it not for their association with the asylums. While the asylums did not achieve an extensive impact on their surrounding communities, in the ways that brass bands connected with mining communities or military winds bands often did, their reach is not to be underestimated. With about 100,000 patients at the turn of the twentieth century, and thousands of staff drawn from a wide range of social levels, a large portion of the population—from a variety of ages, backgrounds and occupations—was exposed to organised music making within both secular and sacred contexts. Behind the walls of the asylums and within a closed community, there was often a rich offering of music and other arts in the form of dances and bands, concerts, theatricals and religious observances. Aspects of the musical world of the asylum are documented in a detail usually lacking for other sectors of society. Studying music in the asylum therefore provides a unique opportunity to trace the day-to-day musical experiences of patients in an extended manner. If we take the idea of the asylum as a controlled, idealised, community, it also gives us a sense of music’s broader role and meaning for society: as a means of structuring social encounters, as a moral and intellectual pastime, and to provide a balance between individual creativity and prescribed norms. Comments on the role of music in aiding patient recovery go some way towards identifying the ways in which music’s power as health-giver was discussed during the period. There was little scientific evidence to inform a medical view on music’s role in medicine. Yet music was increasingly linked with important aspects such as morality and wellbeing, whether

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through the efforts of Victorian philanthropists to secure ‘rational’ opportunities for the new leisure time enjoyed by the working classes, or via the legal fights of those opposed to the noise and disorder of street musicians.13 The beneficial effect of music was a common trope; writers such as the anonymous ‘Vernon’, published in The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular in 1852, promoted the view that ‘Music has no expression for vice; it has no relation to bad passions, but to the finest affections of our nature’.14 The author continued, It can incite no man to the commission of an evil action, but rather prepares the mind for the exercise of virtue, and soothes the troubled spirit. It may therefore be termed a popular science—the influence it has upon the mind of a people being that of unmitigated good.15

A few years later Florence Nightingale remarked: The effect of music upon the sick has been scarcely at all noticed. In fact, its expensiveness, as it is now, makes any general application of it quite out of the question. I will only remark here, that wind instruments, including the human voice, and stringed instruments, capable of continuous sound, have generally a beneficent effect—while the piano-forte, with such instruments as have no continuity of sound, has just the reverse. The finest piano-forte playing will damage the sick, while an air, like “Home, sweet home,” or “Assisa a piè d’un salice,” on the most ordinary grinding organ will sensibly soothe them—and this quite independent of association.16

In this sense the present study also contributes towards an incipient philosophy of music for nineteenth-century England, exploring some of the ways in which music’s power was used to address medical and social needs. Music’s important place in institutions for mental health during the nineteenth century is in sharp contrast to its absence from other forms of medical care and theory. While general medicine was subject to regulation and professionalisation from the first quarter of the century, the new statesponsored lunatic asylums (set up following the County Asylums Act of 1808) and private madhouses only began to come under firm state control from the 1840s.17 This relatively unregulated and un-theorised branch of medical science allowed for the flourishing of music in a quasi-therapeutic manner. Training for specialists in psychiatric care was largely through a

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loose apprenticeship system, with young medical doctors finding opportunities to shadow a medical superintendent before taking on a junior role.18 Training and examinations for nurses and attendants in asylums only developed in the last few decades of the nineteenth century.19 The foundation of the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, the centralising influence of the Commissioners in Lunacy from the 1850s and frequent contact between Medical Superintendents helped to develop a fledgling discipline around the medical treatment of mental illness, but scientific understanding of the brain and mental health lagged well behind that of physical illness.20 Thus the field was open to experimentation and conjecture, with music among the many therapeutic techniques used across the country. Without the grounding of psychiatric theory, music and other aspects of moral management were more closely aligned to influence on patient behaviour, the use of regular routine and the importance of social structures as methods of treatment and rehabilitation. Thus elements of ‘cure’ and ‘control’ were strongly related as doctors sought to draw patients towards acceptable forms of expression and behaviour. It was not until the 1890s that music began to receive special, scientific attention in relation to medicine, and particularly mental illness. An editorial from The Lancet in 1891 gives a useful summary of the complex position of music, which had long been connected with care and cure, but viewed with suspicion due to its concurrent connection with magic and mystery. The very opening of the piece encapsulates the practice of moral treatment: Among the accessories of directly medicinal treatment, and side by side with such health-promoting agencies as rest, exercise, and change of surroundings, a definite place is due by right of its character and history to music. It is true that in later, as well as in early times, the sister art has been associated rather more with what is mythic and visionary in medicine than with its accredited or scientific practice. Miracle workers, mystics, and charlatans have in all ages made much of its influence on the minds of the impressible, whether truly suffering or not. There can be no doubt also that they have, as a class, been indebted in no small degree to their appreciation of this and the like natural aids for an apparent mastery of physical affects too commonly imputed to other personal and mysterious gifts of healing. In this respect they may teach us a lesson. The possession of a refined musical taste or a so-called “ear” may be denied to many persons. Some conception of harmony is probably almost universal. This understanding

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differs, as it must, with different minds and moods, but it exists in some degree and form, we should say, in every human being. Each temperament knows and could show, if intelligence and language were adequate, the terms of its own simplest musical coefficient, and perhaps even some of its remembered variations. The cheerful rhythm that lightened for him an hour of gloom, the flowing cadence that absorbed his petulant irritation, are as the kindred spirits of a man’s family. What wonder, then, if music be found equal to the treatment of some of his diseases—those, namely, which concern his mental and nervous condition.21

The 1890s did, indeed, see some of the first concerted efforts to examine the relationship between music and health from a scientific perspective. But at the author notes, music had long been associated with forms of healing, and particularly in relation to mental health and ‘nervous conditions’. In most cases it was this generic ‘healing’ that remained associated with music, rather than a more medicalised approach, until the advent of theorised Music Therapy in the twentieth century.22 This study poses two key questions: what forms of music were to be found in English lunatic asylums during the nineteenth century, and in what ways was music considered part of the therapeutic regime? Both questions are addressed by sustained engagement with archive material, from formal reports to books of concert programmes, photos and ephemera. The second question also lends itself to a more detailed study of the surrounding literature, including books, pamphlets and journal articles, as well as parliamentary papers and records. In this volume an extended consideration of the history of asylums, their cultural and medical world and the place of music within them is followed by a series of case studies which demonstrate the particular contexts and meanings of music in each institution. Public and private establishments, large and small, older and newer, are examined with the intention both of identifying both common themes and the particular elements that depend on individual institutional circumstances: personnel, geographical location, local connections, philanthropic support and so on. Each case study builds on the general patterns while showing how music was managed, what its role was and how the individual attitudes of staff, particularly Medical Superintendents, contributed to its use. Together they form a powerful picture of the meaning and place of music within the context of psychological institutions. This in turn tells us much about the place of music in everyday life, in forming social encounters, in moulding emotional

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responses, in signalling gender or class, and as an accompaniment to religion and morality, work and play. The remainder of this introductory chapter addresses two elements: firstly, the context of the relationships between music, medicine and morality, particularly during the later part of the nineteenth century; and secondly, the issues surrounding the writing of a history of music in asylums, questions of archive and methodology, as well as narrative and terminology. In the subsequent chapters, the history of asylums, moral management and the place of music is given more detailed consideration. The case studies which form the final part of the volume both illustrate the broad picture painted in the first two chapters, and give further grist for the evaluation of music’s role and meaning within varied institutional landscapes.

Music, Medicine and Morality The association between music and medicine can be traced back to the earliest writings of the Greek philosophers, who used an embodied idea of music to explain its influence. Pythagoras and Plato both employed the concept of cosmic harmony, arguing that music had the power to align the music of the body with the music of the spheres, bringing the body into synchronisation with the universal order. Plato argued that music should be focussed on the soul, not the body: musical sensuality and physicality was dangerous; simplicity in music was ‘the parent to temperance in the soul’.23 The sixth-century intellectual Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480–c. 526) identified three forms of music underpinning its influence and power: musica mundana (music of the spheres or celestial harmony), musica humana (the relationship between body and soul) and musica instrumentalis (the music produced by voices and instruments, which followed the same principles as celestial and bodily harmony).24 The use of music as a metaphor for bodily health and wellbeing persisted, particularly with regard to mental illness. In 1632, for example, Donald Lupton likened the mad inmates of Bedlam to ‘faire Instruments of Musicke, but either they want strings, or else though being strung are out of tune, or otherwise want an expert Artist to order them’.25 The seventeenth-century physicist Robert Hooke similarly likened the regular and geometric patterns of nature and the human body to the harmonious construction of music.26

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Within medical treatises, music was often included among the various forms of physical and social treatments. Robert Burton’s seventeenthcentury Anatomy of Melancholy, for example, recommended music along with drugs, bloodletting, prayer, exercise, diet, friendships and occupation.27 Music was also frequently associated with causes and symptoms of illness; Burton, for example, identified melancholy caused by excess blood as often leading to over-enjoyment of music, dancing and women, while musical hallucinations were another symptom of imbalance.28 Burton concluded, ‘that diseases were either procured by music, or mitigated’.29 While these views persisted well into Enlightenment Europe, early modern thought also defended musical sensuality. Music in its bodily nature began to be considered as ‘a form of nervous stimulation’.30 Where musical aesthetics were concerned, nineteenth-century developments once again rejected the role of nerves, using metaphysical models to connect music to the transcendental subject. Music’s abstract, autonomous form was prioritised, most notable with the rise of absolute music. However, nervous stimulation continued as an idea in medicine within psychiatry and physiology as well as acoustics.31 While the idea of music as a beneficial element in health has a long and complex history, a significant change around 1800 set the path for its characterisation throughout the nineteenth century as both a positive and negative influence. A new model of disease posited stimulation of the nerves as the principle cause of illness and a rise in mental illness, particularly among the rich, was blamed on over-stimulation due to excessive lifestyles.32 The Scottish medic David Uwins, for example, suggested that ‘Pianos, parasols, Edinburgh Reviews, and Paris-going desires, are now found among a class of persons who formerly thought these things belonged to a different race; these are the true sources of nervousness and medical ailments’.33 Music was incorporated into this model by a new theory which linked it to ‘quasi-electrical stimulation’: over-stimulation via unsuitable music would cause ill health.34 Where previously music had been considered as a source of (sometimes excessive) passion, this shift to seeing music as a direct stimulant of the nerves meant it was seen as particularly dangerous. James Kennaway notes that, until the late eighteenth century, music was connected with the nerves in a positive sense: music was regarded ‘as a model of order, morality, and health as much as any neo-Platonist, seeing it as a means of refining the nerves and of calming unhealthy passions, including sexual ones’.35 New musical aesthetics meant music

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lost its connection with order, becoming instead more entangled with social issues (including sexuality and illness) and Romantic sensibilities. This music was particularly dangerous to women, threatening miscarriages and infertility as well as other effects.36 During the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries the links between music and medicine were theorised more explicitly among continental practitioners. The influential physicians of the Paris asylums (an important model for asylums in England) would have been familiar with contemporary theories concerning music and health developed by their own countrymen. The Montpellier doctor Etienne Sainte-Marie, for example, drew on eighteenth-century medical publications when he argued for the importance of the connection between listening to music, and the general health of the body and nervous system.37 Writing in 1803, Sainte-Marie argued that the auditory nerves spread through the body, exciting feelings such as courage, love, pity and joy. Illnesses of a nervous nature, or those with an emotional or nervous element, might be treated or even cured by rebalancing the energy in these nerves.38 Music ensured activity in the nervous system, and music was therefore an embodied, physical act, rather than a passive experience. The ‘power of music’ was a regular trope in both prose and poetry during this period, as part of a growing interest in music’s fundamental origins, its relation to nature and its potential meaning. The idea of music’s capacity to influence mind and both in man and beast was popularised through quasi-sensationalist anecdotes to be found in both medical and lay publications. A number of these were collected by Joseph Taylor in his 1814 volume The Power of Music.39 The tales included the young lady suffering from convulsions, for whom ‘the soft melody of the violin or the piano forte, skilfully adapted to the taste and state of the patient, and often repeated, frequently prevents the convulsive fits, or abates their violence’, and the depressive actress Zamperini, who was restored in ‘health and rationality’ after repeatedly listening to harpsichord music.40 Taylor draws his stories from sources such as Charles Burney’s History of Music (1776–1789) and the Encyclopedia Brittanica (first published 1768–1771) and, while we can be sure that at least some of them were apocryphal, the regular repetition of music’s miraculous powers no doubt played into its status as a form of medical aid.41 The army surgeon John Gideon Millingen drew on many of the same anecdotes in his 1837 compilation of medical notes and tales.42 Millingen notes ‘We… frequently meet with lunatics who, although they have no remembrance

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of the past circumstances of their life, recollect and perform airs which they had formerly played’.43 The anonymous ‘J.C.’, writing in 1846, also referred to Saul in his argument for the practical use of music in lunatic asylums and hospitals, as well as more widely among the poor in prisons and workhouses.44 Responding to the 1844 ‘Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy’, the author suggests. that of all the amusements which might be introduced, none would be so efficacious as music; in some few cases, it is true, it might produce excitement, but in the generality it would have a soothing influence. The soft pealing of the organ must often produce a calm over the feelings that would, in itself, render the patient more susceptible of other impressions.45

Later nineteenth-century writers also continued to draw on their classical forebears: in 1873 Henry Maudsley, for example, recounted that the Ancient Greek ‘Asclepiades, who seems to have been the real founder of a psychical mode of cure, made use of love, wine, music, employment, and special means to attract the attention and exercise the memory’,46 while Lyttleton S. Winslow, writing in 1874, mentioned the biblical madness of Saul as the earliest record of mental disease; in this case ‘David was supposed to have subdued by music his attacks of maniacal fury’.47 The Reverend Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer (1848–1923) produced another set of anecdotes in 1886, which included examples of the effect of music on persons with mental illnesses, stating ‘idiots appear to most advantage when under the influence of music’.48 Within the emerging medical study of alienism, or modern-day psychiatry, music was identified as both a cause and a cure for mental illness. Over-emotional states were dangerous, particularly in patients prone to manic episodes. But for depressive patients, music could stimulate positive emotions. As with longstanding medical theories based around four ‘humours’ corresponding to temperaments, early therapeutic treatments for mental illness were centred around emotional balance.49 Music also played an important part in the development of brain sciences such as psychiatry and neurology during the second half of the nineteenth century. Physicians investigating the language disorder aphasia were particularly interested in patients who retained musical abilities, such as singing, despite the loss of speech. Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) and Theodore Lipps (1851–1910), for example, carried out experiments using music to attempt to understand the relative functions of music

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and language in patients of different abilities.50 Other related investigations concerned the science of brain localisation, which built on the eighteenth-century interest in phrenology developed by Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828). The localisation of language was further probed by the French surgeon Paul Broca (1824–1880), whose identification of the frontal lobe rejuvenated experimental interest in the problem. British authors also pursued the question of the relationship between music and language, more notably from the perspective of evolutionary science and the hierarchies of intellect and emotion. Debates between Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Edmund Gurney (1847–1888) focussed on the origins of music and language. While Spencer argued that music evolved from language, Darwin contested that music was the origin of language, placing music low down on the evolutionary scale.51 The neurologist John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911) considered similar issues from an experimental perspective, also building on the work on continental physicians to suggest a distinction between emotional and intellectual or ‘propositional’ language. Singing was included among the ‘emotional’ forms of language, and the separation of the two helped Jackson formulate theories explaining his observations of aphasia.52 These interests fed into the work of several physicians in the 1890s, including two examples directly connected with lunatic asylums. Richard Legge (?–1926), Assistant Medical Officer at the Derbyshire County Asylum, observed both musical listening and participation among patients with various diagnoses of mental illness.53 Legge suggested most patients with mania, melancholia, dementia or general paralysis displayed a reduction in musical appreciation or ‘musical ear’.54 Among ‘idiotic’ patients, however, musical enjoyment remained despite the loss or absence of other faculties.55 Herbert Hayes Newington (1847–1917), physician and manager of the exclusive private Ticehurst House Hospital, also considered musical abilities among his patients.56 Contrary to contemporary interest in brain localisation, however, Hayes Newington concludes that no specific part of the brain is set aside for musical perception and processing: music ‘in one form or another calls into play at various times nearly every attribute of the brain’.57 Music also gained a formal place in the work of many Continental European asylums. The Aversa asylum in Italy was well-known for its long tradition of rich musical entertainments as well as a generous attitude to entertainments and amusements for its patients.58 Numerous accounts

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point to its efficacy as a form of therapy at the institution, with concerts held several times a week at which patients were among the performers.59 The anatomistJohn Bell, writing in 1835, regarded the Italian institution favourably, suggesting its liberal approach to treatment led to happier, more contented and more ‘harmless’ patients than their English counterparts.60 Likewise in the early nineteenth century the private sanatorium at Ober-Döbling near Vienna, run by Bruno Goergen, included music, literature, walking and conversation among its activities, while the Parisian physicians Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) and Jean-Étienne Esquirol (1772– 1840), pursued the systematic use of music for the treatment of nervous disease and emotional distress.61 Later in the century the asylum at Illenau is recorded as proffering a busy schedule of music concerts as part of its therapy; here, again, the approach was more deliberately medical than at the English asylums, with the repertoire receiving careful consideration.62 Throughout the century, the use of music as therapy at Continental European asylums received more medical attention than parallel practices in England and the Anglophone world, with psychiatrists making use of patients’ preferences and educational backgrounds as well as gender and nationality to achieve a personalised treatment.63 Although English alienists were widely familiar with the work of Pinel and Esquirol, with institutions such as Aversa receiving attention in English publications, there does not seem to have been any attempt to emulate such a formal approach to music as therapy. Rather, continental writings were used to bolster the general sense of music’s efficacy, in defence of its inclusion in moral management. Music’s dual effect for good and ill was at work on many levels. Socially and culturally, Romanticism’s ‘exaltation of feeling over reason’ was at odds with the drive to use music as a tool for instilling sobriety and rationality in a changing world.64 Medically, music’s potential for ill effects came to the fore although its general powers for restoring and maintaining health were acknowledged. Within the asylum, music worked to provide entertainment and emotional engagement for many patients, while also acting as an agent for control and order. Michael Clark points out that the creativity of the arts often sat at odds with the attributes valued within moral management: ‘there remained a fundamental antithesis or at least a tension between the unmodified character of imagination, and those intellectual and moral qualities of right reason [and] sound judgement’.65 Thus the identity of music itself—as a rational, intellectual endeavour, or

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as a creative, artistic pursuit—was also important for its relationship with medicine and society, as well as its place in Victorian values.66 The nature and substance of music, as well as its effect on the body and the emotions, were important topics to philosophers and scientists throughout the middle of the nineteenth century, also reflecting the dualities of music’s place in society and medicine. The nature of sound and singing, in particular, came under the interests of writers on evolution including Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin.67 Music was identified as belonging to the realms of both the emotions and the intellect. Edmund Gurney, for example, described this duality as the ‘impressive’ and the ‘expressive’: music speaking directly to the soul or the emotions, and music reflecting or describing external objects and ideas.68 John Stainer, likewise, argued that both emotional and intellectual responses to music would contribute to full appreciation, leading discussion at the Musical Association during the 1890s on the nature of musical listening.69 Those employing music as a medical therapy harnessed both aspects in different ways and in different circumstances. Within the asylums, the two aspects of ‘emotions’ and ‘intellect’ correspond closely to the two main aims of ‘entertainment’ and ‘(self-)control’. While the era of Romanticism brought new recognition of the place of emotions and intuition besides reason and scientific thought, such ideals were both liberating and dangerous. Nineteenth-century opera was a particular example.70 The Chambers Edinburgh Journal recounted the story of a man who had been ‘confined, literally music mad’ after attempting to compose an opera in which ‘the labour of the composer was greater than the excellence of his music’. The cure was to be found in the performance of a Haydn melody by the famous Italian singer Mme Camporese.71 It is not accidental that the excesses of opera were ‘cured’ by the simplicity of Haydn. Throughout the nineteenth century, the new genres of the Romantic era, particularly those involving virtuosity and high levels of emotion, were viewed with distinct suspicion by the British musical establishment. Such ‘virtuosophobia’ is discussed by Gillen D’Arcy Wood, who notes ‘With the advent of bravura Italian singing in Britain and its adaptation to the violin and piano, however, public music culture and the wonders of virtuosic musicianship gained greater visibility, while raising, for its critics, the spectre of a mechanised humanity driven by (merely) technical accomplishment’.72 Often it was the excesses of French and Italian music that were set against the calm nature of the German Haydn, or adopted Englishmen Handel and Mendelssohn.

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The perceived close relationship between music and health, and particularly mental health or madness, was complicated by the image of the Romantic artist. Madness, as a deviation from the cultural norm, was almost synonymous with the individualism and genius demanded of the Romantic creator—whether artist, poet or composer. Free from sustained scientific and medical examination until later in the nineteenth century, the realm of the insane offered new scope for creative exploration. Artists were quick to pursue the image of the mad, tortured creator. In the absence of scientific theory, artistic fascination with insanity and, later, psychoanalysis fed into themes of the self, the unconscious, dreams and symbolism.73 Romanticism was also linked with decadence and degeneracy, sitting uneasily within the Victorian preference for order and discipline. While Romanticism offered new avenues for the connections between music and the mind, therefore, it gave music and the other arts an ambivalent status in terms of moral and social good. Music’s link with madness was cemented by the well-publicised fates of several high-profile musicians, most notably the composer Robert Schumann, who died in 1856 while incarcerated at the asylum in Endenich, near Bonn. Joseph N. Straus notes that, during Schumann’s life time and later, madness in a composer was thought to be reflected in the qualities of the music: ‘also mad and therefore bad—sick, diseased, deformed, and defective’.74 The notice of his funeral from the Niederrheinische Musikzeitung, translated and published in The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, reflected that. Although the mournful news naturally shocked us, a mild dissolution of the bonds which still enchained his body to the earth was the sole hope of all those who loved and honoured him, since, unfortunately, there could no longer be any doubt as to the incurable nature of his malady. The flame which burned in his heart for music had consumed his restlessly creative mind. His works are his monument.75

While music’s standing as a social good developed in England through the work of philanthropists and reformers, it remained connected with the potential for over-stimulation and madness, both in medical work and via the cases of some high-profile musicians. While there was little direct debate about the roles of music with respect to its dual status, the concern about potential association with over-emotional states and lesssalubrious social contexts for music may well have fed into the careful

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control of music’s use in asylums. Asylum managers were obliged to find a place for music was allowed its entertainment properties to be used for the benefit of patients, while retaining the characteristics of rationality and improvement that aligned to values of self-control, intellect and respectability. Moral management and asylum development largely took place outside standard medical structures. Widespread interest in music’s medical and biological effects among the scientific community came towards the very end of the nineteenth century, which saw the first examples of organised, empirical research into music’s role in medicine, psychiatry and wellbeing. Technological invention, medical developments and theoretical discussion of musical aesthetics combined to encourage serious consideration of the effects of musical listening. Several of these projects involved the ill, including patients in an asylum. Scientific discussion regarding the uses of music was prompted in particular by three short pieces which appeared in The Lancet during the spring of 1891, responding to the innovative work of Canon Rev. Frederick Kill Harford.76 The anonymous author argued that music was helpful in reducing anxiety and pain, which could be used to treat both mental and physical illnesses. The ‘anaesthesia of hypnotism and the soothing effects of harmony in sound’ acted on the mental state, which in turn would affect the perception of pain and grief.77 The author was clear that music was not acting directly on the cause of the illness: ‘The reference, of course, is to the pain endured rather than the malady that occasioned it’. Yet, as they noted, the reasons for music’s efficacy were unknown. All three editorial pieces (the second is quoted at length towards the opening of this Introduction) relate music especially to the treatment of nervous disorders, and therefore to the realm of mental illness. Yet music is also linked to both body and mind, and to the balance between the two. The author suggests the effect of music both in arousing emotions in the brain, and in stimulating the nervous system, the circulation, the heart and the organs.78 Music acted upon both directly, and by providing ‘a diversion to the fretting mind’. In particular, though, music was recommended for the insane: ‘Definite statistics on the subject are not forthcoming, but all that we have said goes to show that states of insanity, which are largely influenced by the condition of the sympathetic system, should find some part of their treatment in the hands of the musician’.79 During the 1890s, music and medicine continued to generate lively discussion in a variety of publications.80

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Frederick Kill Harford’s experiments with the Guild of St Cecilia represent the most concerted effort to test theories regarding the effect of music on patients during the nineteenth century, and their reception demonstrates the split among medical professionals concerning the potential use of music as therapy. Harford, an ordained priest, was a gifted musician, composer, writer and collector. He responded to the suggestions made in The Lancet by offering to provide musicians to London hospitals in order to demonstrate the influence of music.81 Among the experiments detailed by Harford are playing ‘soft music’ and lullabies to patients at the Temperance Hospital and St Pancras Hospital, and the use of gramophones.82 Patients treated with music included those suffering from nervous depression, delirium and melancholia, but Harford does not appear to have taken his musicians into any dedicated asylums. Commenting on the Guild’s work, however, the physician Edwin Goodall recommended asylums as a next step, suggesting ‘the average lunatic, with senses of taste and smell unimpaired, would cheerfully discard paraldehyde in favour of a lullaby; and asylum physicians… would doubtless be interested in an attempt to influence the mind through the sense of hearing’.83 Despite some initial indications of success, the scheme attracted fierce criticism from much of the scientific community. When the conclusion of the Guild was announced in The British Medical Journal in March 1896, the editor reflected that music had been shown to be effective in calming delirium and serving as a sedative in some cases. However, he remained unconvinced that it would ever ‘take a place among recognised antipyretics’.84 Although Harford’s experiments had been conducted with quasi-scientific methods, the lack of a theoretical or rigorous basis for music’s medical use prevented its widespread adoption as a core treatment. During the early part of the twentieth century, however, many of the approaches seen in asylums and elsewhere became part of a recognised ‘therapy’ which eventually took on its own theoretical and professional status.85 If asylum managers drew heavily on a traditional association between music and wellbeing, they also sat firmly within a context in which music occupied important social and cultural roles. There is no doubt that music was used as a powerful tool for promoting moral and social good within Victorian society, and this often drew on notions of health and wellbeing. Music’s role as a social force is perhaps best known due to its role in

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industrial communities, where brass bands were set up in order to facilitate ‘rational recreation’ among the men and women at work in mills and factories, chiefly in the north of England and across Wales.86 Brass bands were part and parcel of new social structures, living habits and commercial pressures. As Stephen Etheridge notes, they were seen as ‘an investment’: industrialists ‘gave the bands rehearsal space, music, uniforms, instruments and tuition, paid time off work, finance for travel, board and lodgings when the band was away. In return, business owners received advertising for their company and its products’.87 Although in many cases the foundation and financial support of bands was broadly philanthropic, the benefits for the business, both in terms of employee behaviour and advertising, were clear. Writing in 1895, Algernon S. Rose suggested ‘We have to thank music, no less than the Board School influence, for the suppression, in many labouring centers, of many objectionable pastimes. The successful cultivation of art, in any form, by the masses, imperceptibly educates the general taste and makes politeness of manners keep pace with refinement of mind’.88 The success of bands within the move to a new, urban environment was transferred to municipal authorities, again with the argument that rational recreation would improve the quality of life for the growing populations in large towns and cities. Supporting the public financing of such bands, Rose argued that a local band would ‘be invaluable by affording help at charitable and local entertainments’, that ‘the blowing of [brass] instruments is in itself a healthy recreation’ and that public funds would ‘[put] the performers continually on their mettle, making them feel they are under a constant moral obligation to show their friends they are worthy of such assistance’.89 Although the original purposes of control and discipline were eventually diluted as the band movement grew, with its own events, customs and identities, their function as an important part of recreational activities—both for performers and listeners—remained.90 One avid supporter of music’s role as rational recreation was the Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis, who campaigned for the Sunday opening of public spaces such as galleries and museums. Haweis argued that, as well as intensifying the specific emotions engendered by a text or ideas, music could be responsible for creating abstract emotions for both good and evil.91 Indeed, Haweis used the example of George III to reflect on the ‘power of music to create atmospheres of peace, and restore something like harmony to the “sweet bells” of the spirit “jangled out of tune”’. Used carefully, he suggests, the ‘acknowledged influence of music

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over the insane’ might find wider application, becoming ‘as powerful an agent as galvanism in restoring healthy and pleasurable activity to the emotional regions’.92 Music was to be found in many other areas of Victorian society in its guise as a rational recreation and philanthropic endeavour. Charles Edward McGuire’s study of the Tonic Sol-Fa movement places it in close relation to dissenting Christian organisations, groups promoting temperance and even the political suffrage campaign.93 Like the brass bands, tonic sol-fa classes and massed choirs provided an accepted way for the working classes to spend their leisure time and were often offered under the auspices of Mechanics Institutes and other civic associations. Vocal music, such as the published tonic sol-fa primers, could also promote social and political messages more directly.94 Wiebke Thormählen traces the idea that singing is good for the body and the mind through the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, concluding that ‘Examining the rise of choral singing suggests that the socio-political circumstances as well as popular belief systems suffused with contemporary theories of body and mind instigated its huge popular success’.95 Music also found a place at many of the new Victorian institutions, such as workhouses, young offenders’ institutions, prisons and systems of State education.96 There is no doubt that many philanthropic schemes were deliberately designed to produce a sense of morality and discipline among the working classes, for whom the changes in industrialisation and urbanisation had created enormous upheaval. Yet the imposition and control engendered by such schemes were not necessarily unwelcome or to be frowned upon. Writing on the late nineteenth century, Geoffrey Ginn contends that many endeavours were seen as genuine attempts to improve living standards among the lower classes—‘not necessarily regarded as an alien culture of the governing elite imposed for largely selfinterested reasons’.97 As with the asylums themselves, therefore, studying the broader context of Victorian philanthropic institutions requires a careful balance between the extant records, the underlying philosophies and the historical distance of modern values and assumptions. The use of music to influence the behaviour of the lower classes suggests a two-tier approach to music’s power as part of therapeutic practice. Promoting music among the lower classes not only encouraged them to emulate the social and moral framework of the middle class, but specifically introduced a level of morality and discipline considered appropriate to the lower orders. Within the private asylum, therefore, patients might

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be exposed to music chiefly as part of a medical regime; within the pauper asylum, music had added meanings associated with its moral and social role. Within the private asylum, patients’ surroundings and lives were constructed in order to imitate closely the kinds of interiors and activities they might be used to from their experience outside the institution. In the pauper asylum, in contrast, arrangements were for an idealised form of living, mimicking the middle-class day-to-day lifestyle in its physical sphere, its music, its sports and other activities. Within this latter environment music had a particular role to play in imparting a middle-class set of morals and sensibilities, as well as its broadly medical purpose in restoring the unbalanced mental faculties. The general experience of music also helps to put the use of music in asylums into perspective. Although access to formal musical experience—both in terms of concerts, the opera or chamber music, and the study of musical instruments or theory—was limited among the lower classes, musical life was often rich. Throughout England, music was a regular part of religious worship, which often extended throughout the day on a Sunday, with hymns and psalms sometimes continued in the home. In industrial areas or towns with military settlements, brass and wind bands were to be heard with bands travelling to performances and competitions from the 1850s. At around the same time the music hall developed, again within new urban areas of expansion. The music hall genres of parlour songs, character pieces and minstrelsy joined the older repertoire of broadside ballads to be found in pubs and meeting places, later moving into private houses as mass-produced pianos found popularity in better-off households.98 From the 1870s, music was regularly taught in elementary schools, children learning songs by rote as well as simple music literacy; the tonic sol-fa revolution in the mid-century ensured thousands of working-class adults were also exposed to singing as a means of recreation. The status of music changed as popular music began to gain a presence in day-to-day life, both in formal contexts such as music halls, and in the domestic sphere. A division of musical genres likewise arose within medical considerations of music’s influence: while serious music was directed at the mind, trivial or sensuous music acted on the nerves.99 Although music was often encouraged as a beneficial pastime, therefore, some genres also came to be associated with less-salubrious contexts and effects. Within the pauper asylums it was largely popular genres that

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dominated musical provision, whether at dances or fetes, or at the entertainments given by visiting performers. Yet these were experienced within controlled environments. Discussion of the impact of music covered both mind and nerves. Patients were expected to develop self-control as a result of their musical experience (particularly in large gatherings, such as the dance or chapel), but for melancholic or depressed patients, it was the direct influence of music on their emotions that could be a form of therapy. Thus the relationship of music to healing, therapy or wellbeing was complex, and could depend on the musical genres, contexts and forms of engagement as well as the practical considerations of providing for music and musicians within a large institution. It is clear from this discussion that the medical staff and management of English asylums drew on both medical traditions dating back to ancient practice, and the social and cultural context of bourgeois values and nineteenth-century philanthropy. At the same time they worked largely in a vacuum, creating miniature societies within institutional walls that made use of music in ways not replicated elsewhere. The microcosmic society of each asylum was as much about creating an idealised space for the practice of approved employment, day-to-day life and recreational activities as about medical treatment or therapy. Persuading patients to adhere to these practices was part of both cure and control—indeed,self-control, via appropriate social behaviour, was central to the perceived cure. Music’s place in asylums was both moral and medical, steeped in the context of changing values and practices, and influenced by both ancient medical beliefs and modern social contexts.

Researching and Writing the History of Music, Madness and Medicine Recent scholarly work has included numerous fascinating studies exploring the intersections of music and medicine in different countries and time periods. These are of interest to many different audiences: musicologists, historians, music therapists, medics, scientists and many others with personal or professional interests. While some aspects of music’s role in medicine seem to transcend the differences of time and place, others are historically and culturally contingent. Penelope Gouk notes the deep cultural siting of musical healing.100 Not only does cultural context inform how different types of music might be used therapeutically, but also the ways in which medicine, the body, the soul and the mind are

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conceptualised. Music Therapy as a distinct and formalised discipline or practice in the United Kingdom came into being in the mid-twentieth century, after the Second World War. As such, the therapeutic uses of music examined in this volume are a form of general music therapy, a nonspecialised activity that results from participation in music as performer or listener, rather than a practice carried out by a trained specialist in conjunction with one or more patients. Furthermore, the roles and places in which music was to be found in the asylum went beyond consciouslytherapeutic aims, and included religious, social and cultural structures. While this volume contributes to the pre-history of Music Therapy, therefore, I also examine the wider role of music in the particular social and cultural context of the asylum, and the implications of this for our understanding of music, madness, society, mental health care, and a lot more besides, in the nineteenth century. Some of the concepts and terms used in this volume have retained their currency in modern times, but many are distinctly outdated, and some have acquired pejorative connotations. Terms such as ‘lunatic’, ‘pauper’, ‘idiot’ and ‘imbecile’ will be found throughout this book attached to the contexts and meanings they were given in the nineteenth century. These terms have been retained when using direct quotations. When using my own words, however, I have largely used ‘patient’ and ‘mental illness’ in an attempt to avoid those terms now most closely associated with stigma and offense. The term ‘lunatic’ is used throughout. Of course, large numbers of the patients resident in asylums were not suffering from what we would recognise now as mental illness, but had transgressed norms of behaviour expected of their class or gender. Some descriptions of patients in asylums, the ways in which they were discussed or treated, and the philosophy behind the treatment of the mentally ill, make for uncomfortable reading. On the whole, those responsible for patients and institutions during this period acted according to what was believed to be their best interests within practical and financial constraint, but it is important to recall that medical understandings of the brain and mental states were at a very early stage. Furthermore, pauper asylums, which form an important part of this study, took care of the very poorest members of society, at a time when modern structures of national insurance and a universal health service were absent. On the one hand we might praise the foresight and generosity of those who committed funds and legislation to improve and protect the lives of those facing mental illness; on the other hand we

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can lament the awful conditions in which many were kept as institutions struggled to keep up with demand, and the slow progress in scientific or medical understanding which left many without hope of appropriate treatment or cure. The key sources utilised in this study are drawn from the formal record of asylums: annual reports, minutes, correspondence and accounts chart the management of the asylum, its expenses, its patient body and its connections. They also chart the way in which each asylum presented its activities to its overseers. Formal reports include the records of medical officers, management (in some institutions the most senior manager was not a medic; elsewhere, especially in the second half of the century, the roles were combined) and the asylum chaplain. Alongside data detailing patient numbers and financial records, prose reports cover the activities of each institution, most notably its approach to employment and recreation, religious observance, building works and staffing. Formal records rarely give a sense of the day-to-day state of patients’ health, or of the tensions and challenges involved in patient management. Patient case books, available in most asylum archives, give a much greater and more detailed insight into the individuals resident in each institution, their mental states and physical conditions. Although also written by medical staff, the individual patient records add to the medicalised diagnoses and anonymous data of the formal reports, describing the detailed symptoms and behaviours of each patient. Many archives contain a small amount of patient-produced material: letters, poems or drawings give yet further insight and new perspectives into patients’ mental states. Finally, ephemera more directly connected with entertainments include photos, handbills, posters and programmes, patient magazines, newspaper reports, and ad hoc records of attendance at dances or concerts, as well as participation in a band or choir. Although patient records and material occasionally offer snatches of evidence relevant to my topic, it is from the formal records and ephemera that most information is drawn. The picture that emerges from reports, particularly when read with a focus on the use of music, is often unexpectedly positive. The present volume is replete with stories of entertainments, dances, fairs, choirs and bands being trained, patients enjoying themselves, and the lighter side of asylum life. Asylum Superintendents were willing to spend time, energy and money investing in music as an effective form of entertainment as well as a potential therapeutic agent, and the picture given to the Asylum’s management, external Visitors and the powerful Commissioners

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in Lunacy, was necessarily a positive one. The beneficial effect of music may well have been exaggerated in order to secure approval and funding from the Visitors, local authorities and Commissioners. Such a top-down (and potentially inaccurate) view from the asylum management can only provide a very idealised version of affairs at each institution, and perhaps an unrealistic impression of the ways in which music was used, as well as its impact on patients. From the perspective of medical history, the narratives discussed here largely fail to address Roy Porter’s exhortations to move from a ‘physician-centred account’ to an ‘alternative history of medicine, largely written from the patient’s point of view’.101 Throughout this volume, however, there are glimpses of alternative perspectives important for a more rounded view: extracts from patient case books at Holloway Sanatorium give unusually individual and detailed examples of music at work; the tale of dismissed band members at the Norfolk County asylum reveals tensions between providing music and maintaining discipline; data of patient admissions, discharges and deaths, and numerous accounts of fire, disease and overcrowding which are alluded to within the heavily-sanitised formal reports demonstrate the often-dangerous and insanitary reality of asylum life. Despite the paucity of evidence directly from the patients, the aim is to reconstruct the dayto-day experiences of music within the asylum from a wide perspective that includes patients, as well as all levels of staff and external visitors. Charles Caesar Corsellis, Medical Director at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum between 1831 and 1853, captured the problem of perspective in one of his early reports. Corsellis noted To paint the upper current of a Lunatic Asylum alone, and to give it all the glowing colours of some delightful scene; to speak of the walks and gardens, the music and dancing, the mirth of some, the contentedness of others, and the universal cleanliness, would be an easy and delightful task. But besides all these, there is, as a modern author has justly said, “a deep undercurrent of unhappiness, constantly in agitation, which seeks vent in habitual moroseness or spleen, or in occasional bursts of violence, or in that capricious waywardness and irritability which can neither be subdued nor soothed. There is a display of all the follies and vices of human nature, deprived of the veil which the suggestions of prudence or reason, or the usages of society supply, and urged to assume their most aggravated forms, by imaginary misfortunes and delusions;” and perhaps at the very moment the benevolent spectator contemplates the scene around him with feelings of pleasure, he passes the door of some wretched sufferer, enduring in

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solitude and silence, a world of misery and wretchedness, beyond the reach of human skill or human sympathy to relieve.102

The purpose of this volume is not to judge or berate, although it is appropriate to mourn the many who suffered, both as a consequence of their illnesses and of the systems and institutions in place at the time. Rather, it is intended to set out the information available, to interrogate its usefulness and meaning, and to situate it within a network of other sources. Both this extended introduction and the case studies which follow aim to examine some of the problems and examples of music’s role in health, and particularly mental health, during the nineteenth century, to draw together a thick cultural context for the available sources and to explore the resulting connections, themes and narratives. While the focus on music within asylums counterbalances the more usual image of the institution based on squalor and incarceration, it must not be allowed to lead to a romanticised version of asylum life. Studies such as this encourage the scholar to train a particularly critical eye on the archive and its use. It is easy to fetishise the information held in archives; as Marlene Manoff suggests, ‘they play a symbolic role as guardians of history, culture, and memory’.103 The structure of the archives I have used here, their technologies and their finding aids have all influenced both what has been kept, how it is interpreted and what can be found by the researcher. Both archivists and historians have a role in shaping the historical narrative. In the case of asylums, the formal, printed reports which are most easily accessible represent a record several degrees removed from the parallel reality of day-to-day asylum life; the vast quantity of handwritten patient notes give a closer idea of the individual experience of the asylum; the boxes of (usually) unsorted and often-illegible patient ephemera, from letters to poetry, offer the closest opportunity for capturing the patient voice. Modern archivists continue to change the relationships between the archive and the historian via the process of digitisation. An enormous part of the story of music in the asylums remains ‘silent’, in part because records are incomplete, details missing or the thoughts and perspectives of individuals not recorded, and in part because the amount of information is simply overwhelming, the number of asylums too great to investigate and the quantities of material impossible to read and analyse.104 Thus the historian of asylums deals with both ‘silence’ and ‘noise’. The narratives presented here are just one attempt to draw coherent lines from the rich cacophony of material available.

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Notes 1. William Gilbert, ‘A Visit to a Convict Lunatic Asylum’ in The Cornhill Magazine Vol. X no. 58 (1 October 1864), 448–460; 450–451. 2. See, for example, Christina Bashford, ‘Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ in Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. LXIII no. 2 (Summer 2010), 291–360; Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and Paul Watt, ‘Street Music in London in the Nineteenth Century: ‘Evidence’ from Charles Dickens, Charles Babbage and Lucy Broadwood’ in Nineteenth Century Music Review Vol. XV no. 1 (April 2018), 9–22. 3. The most notable exception is the research of Dolly MacKinnon on Australian asylums. MacKinnon’s work demonstrates many of the same themes as those discussed in this volume; evidently much practice was shared between the UK and Australia, although the introduction of aspects such as the asylum ball and musical instruments tended to be a little later in the Australian asylums studied by MacKinnon. See, in particular, ‘‘Jolly and Fond of Singing’: The Gendered Nature of Musical Entertainment in Queensland Mental Institutions c1870– c1937’, in Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon (ed.), ‘Madness’ in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum (St Lucia, QLD, Australia: The University of Queensland Press, 2003), 157–168; ‘Divine Service, Music, Sport, and Recreation as Medicinal in Australian Asylums 1860–1945’ in Health and History Vol. XI no. 1, Australian Asylums and Their Histories (2009), 128–148, and ‘‘Amusements are Provided’: Asylum Entertainment and Recreation in Australia and New Zealand c. 1860–1945’ in Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz (ed.), Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine, Clio Medica 86 (Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi, 2009), 267–288. 4. See discussion in Catharine Coleborne, Why Talk About Madness? Bringing History into the Conversation (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). 5. ‘Silences: The Case of a Psychiatric Hospital’ in Mary Chamberlain and Paul Thompson (ed.), Narrative and Genre (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 46–62. 6. Notable recent publications include Hamlett, Jane, At Home in the Institution: Material Life in Asylums, Lodging Houses and Schools in Victorian and Edwardian England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Louise Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890– 1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Thomas Knowles and

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7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

Serena Trowbridge (ed.), Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015); Anna Shepherd, Institutionalizing the Insane in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014); Jennifer Wallis, Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum: Doctors, Patients and Practices (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Asylum history and the practice of moral management will receive detailed consideration in the following chapter. The dichotomy of ‘cure’ and ‘control’ is used regularly within modernday medical practice. In historiographical terms, the idea of ‘control’ is most closely associated with the work of Michel Foucault (see in particular Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Pantheon, 1965, trans. Richard Howard)) while the place of ‘cure’ in asylum management is discussed most extensively by Leonard Smith in his Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody: Public Lunatic Asylums in Early Nineteenth Century England (New York: Leicester University Press, 1999). See ‘Patient’s Ball, held in the kitchen of the Somerset County Asylum, England’ (1847). A reproduction of the image can be seen in the Wellcome Collection Library no. 20050i: ‘Mentally ill patients dancing at a ball at Somerset County Asylum. Process print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855’ (Wells: Backhouse; [London] (96 Strand): Ackermann & Co, [185?–?]). ‘Entertainment to the Patients at the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum, Colney Hatch’, in The Illustrated London News Vol. 23 no. 603 (15 January 1853), 44. ‘New Year’s Festival at Colney Hatch’ in Ibid. ‘Festival at a Lunatic Asylum’ in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, no. 514 (December 4, 1841), 367 and ‘A Ball at a Lunatic Asylum’ in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, no. 101 (December 6, 1845), 353–355; 354. Sander L. Gilman, Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to Aids (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 82. See, among others, Charles Edward McGuire, Music and Victorian Philanthropy: The Tonic Sol-Fa Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); ‘Music, Morals and Social Order’, 58–84, and John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 42–43. ‘The Influence of Music on the Public’ in The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular Vol. 5 no. 100 (September 1, 1852), 59–60. Ibid., 60. Notes on Nursing (London: Harrison, 1855), 33. I am grateful to Helen Barlow for bringing this quotation to my attention.

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17. The Apothecaries Act of 1815 introduced compulsory apprenticeship and formal qualifications for medical practitioners; the Medical Act of 1858 added formal registration. See Michael Brown, Performing Medicine: Medical Culture and Identity in Provincial England, c.1760– 1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014) and Ray Lewkonia, ‘Education—History’: ‘State Regulation of Practice and Education’ in Stephen Lock, John Last and George Dunea (ed.), Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 256. 18. See Sarah Hayley York, Suicide, Lunacy and the Asylum in NineteenthCentury England (Unpubl. PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2009), 108; John Conolly, Medical Superintendent at Hanwell Asylum, noted ‘Not Only in Pauper Practice, But in Practice Generally, the Treatment of the Insane is Conducted, often for the First Two or Three Months, Always for the First Two or Three Weeks, by Medical Men Engaged and Skilful in General Practice, but Unpractised in These Severe Forms of Cerebral Disorder, and Disconcerted and Alarmed by Their Occurrence Among Their Patients’. See Treatment of the Insane Without Mechanical Restraint (London: Smith Elder, 1856), 279–280. 19. See P.W. Nolan, ‘A History of the Training of Asylum Nurses’ in Journal of Advanced Nursing Vol. XVIII no. 8 (August 1993), 1193– 1201; Michael Arton, The Professionalisation of Mental Health Nursing in Great Britain, 1850–1950 (Unpubl. PhD thesis, University College London, 1998); Mrs Chapman, ‘Asylum Nursing’ in The American Journal of Nursing II/3 (December 1901), 164–169. 20. The Association supported The Asylum Journal, which outlined its aims in ‘Prospectus’, Vol. I no. 1 (November 1853), 1–7. See also Henry Rollin, ‘The Royal College of Psychiatrists, 150 Years on’ in British Medical Journal 103 (July 1991), 238–239. On the Commissioners, see D.J. Mellett, ‘Bureaucracy and Mental Illness: The Commissioners in Lunacy 1845–1890’ in Medical History Vol. XXV no. 3 (July 1981), 221–250. 21. ‘Music in the Treatment of Nervous Diseases’ in The Lancet Vol. 1 no. 3532 (9 May 1891), 1055. 22. For an introduction to the development of Music Therapy, see Rachel Darnley-Smith and Helen Patey, Music Therapy (London: Sage, 2004), 12–23 and Kerry L. Byers, A History of the Music Therapy Profession: Diverse Concepts and Practices (Dallas: Barcelona Publishers, 2016). A more personal reflection is to be found in Henry Rollin’s ‘Pioneers of Music Therapy’ in Journal of Medical Biography Vol. VI no. 3 (1998), 160–165.

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23. Republic, edited and translated by Christopher Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy, Loeb Classical Library 237 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), Vol. 1, 317. 24. Boethius, Fundamentals of Music reproduced in part in Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History, Revised edition (New York and London, W.W. Norton, 1998), 137–143. Boethius’s theories and influence are discussed further in Dolly MacKinnon, ‘‘The Trustworthy Agency of the Eyes’: Reading Images of Music and Madness in Historical Context’ in Health and History Vol. V no. 2, Histories of Psychiatry After Deinstitutionalisaton: Australia and New Zealand (2003), 123–149 and Christopher Page, ‘Music and Medicine in the Thirteenth Century’ in Peregrine Horden (ed.), Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy Since Antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 25. Lupton, London and Countrey (London: Nicholas Okes, 1632), 77–78. 26. Unpublished manuscript, cited in Penelope Gouk, Music, Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 213. Further examples are discussed in Gouk, ‘Music and the Emergence of Experimental Science in Early Modern Europe’ in Sound Effects: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience Vol. 2 no. 1 (2012), 5–21. 27. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Third edition (Oxford: 1628), Part 2, accessed at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10800. 28. Ibid., Part 1. 29. Ibid., Part 2 Memb. 6, Subsect. 3, ‘Music of All Sorts Aptly Applied’. 30. See James Kennaway, ‘Introduction: The Long History of Neurology and Music’ in Kennaway (ed.), Music and the Nerves, 1700–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 7. 31. Ibid., 9. See also James Kennaway, ‘From Sensibility to Pathology: The Origins of the Idea of Nervous Music Around 1800’ in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Vol. LXV no. 3 (2010), 396–426. 32. See James Kennaway, ‘From Sensibility to Pathology: The Origins of the Idea of Nervous Music Around 1800’ in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Vol. LXV no. 3 (2010), 405. 33. Uwins, A Treatise on Those Disorders of the Brain and Nervous System (London: Renshaw and Rush, 1833), 51, quoted in Kennaway, ‘From Sensibility to Pathology’, 415. 34. Ibid., 398. 35. Ibid., 402. 36. Ibid., 420. 37. See Ingrid J. Sykes, ‘Le Corps Sonore: Music and the Auditory Body in France 1780–1830’ in James Kennaway (ed.), Music and the Nerves, 1700–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 79. 38. Ibid.

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39. The Power of Music, in Which is Shown, by a Variety of Pleasing and Instructive Anecdotes, the Effects it has on Man and Animals (London: J. Harris, 1814). 40. Ibid., 7; 18–19. Among the animals touched by music in Taylor’s collection are pigeons, oxen, snakes, mice, spiders, an elephant and a dog. 41. A similar set of tales was published as ‘Some Effects of Music’ in The Illustrated Magazine of Art Vol. II no. 11 (1853), 314. 42. ‘Medical Powers of Music’ in Curiosities of Medical Experience (London: Bentley, 1837), 130–138. 43. Ibid., 91. 44. C. J., ‘Music a Useful Art’ in The Connoisseur: A Monthly Record of the Fine Arts, Music and the Drama Vol. 2 no. 17 (August 1846), 153–155. 45. Ibid., 154. 46. Body and Mind: An Inquiry into Their Connection and Mutual Influence, Specially in Reference to Mental Disorders (London: Macmillan, 1873), 115–116. 47. Manual of Lunacy: A Handbook Relating to the Legal Care and Treatment of the Insane in the Public and Private Asylums of Great Britain, Ireland, United States of America, and the Continent (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1874), 1. 48. Thiselton-Dyer also gives the example of a lunatic in Yorkshire who was restored by hearing the violin, as well as the cases of Farinelli and King Philip of Spain, and examples from Shakespeare, Pythagoras and Xenocrates. See ‘Music and Medicine’ in The Gentleman’s Magazine Vol. CCLXI no. 1870 (October 1886), 375–385: 378. 49. The idea of the humours can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks, but was fully established by the Roman medic Galen (c. 129–c. 216/17 CE). The four humours, blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm, each had their own characteristics and were used as a basis for diagnosis and treatment across Europe until the eighteenth century. Techniques such as bloodletting and blistering were concerned with restoring a balance between the humours. 50. Amy B Graziano and Julene K Johnson, ‘Music, Neurology, and Psychology in the Nineteenth Century’ in Progress in Brain Research Vol. CCXVI (2015), 33–49: 34–37. 51. See Peter Kivy, ‘Charles Darwin on Music’ in Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol.12 no. 1 (1959), 42–48. See also Kim Kleinman, ‘Darwin and Spencer on the Origin of Music: Is Music the Food of Love?’ in Progress in Brain Research Vol. CCXVII (2015), 3–16. 52. Amy B. Graziano and Julene K. Johnson, ‘Music as a Tool in the Development of Nineteenth-Century Neurology’ in James Kennaway (ed.),

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53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

65.

66.

67.

Music and the Nerves, 1700–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 152–169. Richard Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’ in Journal of Mental Science Vol. XL no. 170 (July 1894), 368–375. Ibid., 369–372. Ibid., 373. ‘Some Mental Aspects of Music’ in Journal of Mental Science (1897), 704–723. Ibid., 704–705. Carmel Raz ‘Music, Theatre and the Moral Treatment: The Casa dei Matti in Aversa and Palermo’ in Laboratoire Italien Vol. XX (published online, 2017). Ibid. Observations on Italy, Vol. II (Naples: Fibreno, 1835), 241, cited in Raz, ‘Music, Theatre and the Moral Treatment’. Andrea Korenjak, ‘The Use of Music as a Treatment for Gemüthskrankheit in Nineteenth-Century Viennese Psychiatry’ in Penelope Gouk, James Kennaway, Jacomien Prins and Wiebke Thormählen (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-Being (New York: Routledge, 2018), 107–120. Cheryce Kramer, ‘Soul Music as Exemplified in Nineteenth-Century German Psychiatry’ in Penelope Gouk (ed.), Musical Healing and Cultural Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 137–148: 140. Korenjak, ‘The Use of Music as a Treatment for Gemüthskrankheit’, 118. Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church Vol. 1, reissued digital version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 244. Clark, ‘Morbid Introspection, Unsoundness of Mind, and British Psychological Medicine 1830–1900’ in R. Porter, W.F. Bynum and M. Shepherd (ed.), The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry Vol. III (London: Routledge, 1988), 76. Derek Scott notes that music epitomised the Victorian ideal of the ‘Rational Amusement’. Scott summarises nineteenth-century bourgeois values as ‘Thrift Set Against Extravagance, Self-help Versus Dependence, Hard Work Versus Idleness… Where Art and Entertainment Were Concerned, the Key Value in Asserting Moral Leadership was Respectability’. See Sounds of the Metropolis, 59. The place of music in evolutionary thought during the nineteenth century is explored in depth in Bennett Zon, Evolution and Victorian Musical Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Nicholas Bannan gives a comprehensive overview of the more recent

1

68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80.

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context in his ‘Introduction’ to Music, Language, and Human Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–30. Gurney, The Power of Sound (London, 1880), 312–348. See Stainer, Music in its Relation to the Intellect and the Emotions (London: Novello, 1892). See David Trippett and Benjamin Walton (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Scientific Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) for a detailed examination of many aspects of the links between opera, science, technology and medicine. ‘Effect of Music on a Maniac’ in Chambers Edinburgh Journal Vol. 9 no. 464 (19 December 1840), 384. ‘Being shown into a room separated from that of the maniac only by a thin wall, Camporese began to sing one of Haydn’s melodies. The attendants in the next room observed their patient suddenly become less violent, then composed, and at last he burst into tears. The singer now entered; she sat down, and sang again. When she had concluded, the poor composer took from under his bed a torn sheet of paper, scored with an air of his own composition, and handed it to her. There were no words, and nothing in the music; but Camporese, running it over, sang it to some words of Metastasio, with such sweetness that the music seemed excellent. “Sing it to me once more,” said the maniac. She did so, and departed, accompanied by his prayers and the tears of the spectators’. Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, 1770–1840: Virtue and Virtuosity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3–4. See, for example, James Whitehead, Madness and the Romantic Poet: A Critical History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 8. Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 36. ‘Brief Chronicle of the last Month’ in The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular Vol. VII no. 163 (1 September 1856), 301. ‘Music as a Remedy’ (25 April 1891), ‘Music in the Treatment of Nervous Diseases’ (9 May 1891) and ‘Music in the Treatment of Disease’ (23 May 1891). ‘Music as a Remedy’ in The Lancet Vol. I no. 3530 (25 April 1891), 951. ‘Music in the Treatment of Disease’ in The Lancet Vol. I no. 3534 (23 May 1891), 1170. Ibid. See, for example, George Henry Dutton, Music & Phrenology. A Treatise on Vocalists, Instrumentalists, and Composers, with Their Phrenological and Physiological Qualifications (London: Fowler, 1892); William W. Ireland ‘On Affections of the Musical Faculty in Cerebral Diseases’ in Journal of Mental Science Vol. XL no. 170 (July 1894), 354–367.

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81. An outline of Harford’s activities is found in William B. Davis, ‘Music Therapy in Victorian England’ in Journal of British Music Therapy Vol. II part 1 (1988), 10–16. 82. ‘Music and Illness’ in British Medical Journal Vol. 2 no. 1603 (19 September 1891), 667–668; ‘The Guild of St. Cecilia’ in British Medical Journal Vol. 2 no. 1601 (26 September 1891); and ‘Soft Music in Cases of Insomnia’ in British Medical Journal Vol. 2 no. 1607 (17 October 1891), 870. Harford concluded from his early experiments that ‘soft, slow music only should be used for those who are seriously ill, and that the brisk exhilarating dance music recommended by Mr. Herbert Spencer must be reserved for convalescents.’ See ‘The St. Cecilia Guild’ in British Medical Journal Vol. 1 no. 1640 (4 June 1892), 1228. 83. ‘Music as a Therapeutic Agency’ in British Medical Journal Vol. 2 no. 1608 (24 October 1891), 920. Goodall had trained at Bethlem Hospital, although at the time of writing he was demonstrator of pathology at Owens College, Manchester. He later held posts at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, the Joint Counties Asylum at Carmarthen and Cardiff City Mental Hospital. 84. ‘Music as a Hypnotic’ in The British Medical Journal Vol. II no. 1837 (14 March 1896), 679. Antipyretics are fever-reducing drugs. 85. On music therapy between Harford and the end of the twentieth century, see Helen M. Tyler, ‘The Music Therapy Profession in Modern Britain’ in Penelope Gouk (ed.), Musical Healing and Cultural Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 375–393. More recent, albeit with a focus on the United States, is Kelly L. Hyrniw Beyers’, A History of the Music Therapy Profession: Diverse Concepts and Practices (Dallas: Barcelona, 2016). 86. See Trevor Herbert, ‘Nineteenth-Century Bands’ in Herbert (ed.), The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 32–33. 87. Stephen Etheridge, ‘Brass Bands in the Southern Pennines 1857–1914: The Ethos of Rational Recreation and Perceptions of Working-Class Respectability’ in Anne Baldwin, Chris Ellis, Stephen Etheridge, Keith Laybourn and Neil Pye (ed.) Class, Culture and Community: New Perspectives in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British Labour History (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 48. 88. Talks with Bandsmen: A Popular Handbook for Brass Instrumentalists quoted in ibid., 46. 89. Quoted in ibid., 49. 90. Ibid., 51. The role of rational recreation within industrial towns receives further attention in Alan Metcalfe, Leisure and Recreation in a Victorian Mining Community: The Social Economy of Leisure in North-East England, 1820–1914 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006).

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91. Haweis, Music and Morals, Seventh edition (London: Daldy, Isbester & Co., 1876), 46–48. 92. Ibid., 49. 93. McGuire, Music and Victorian Philanthropy: The Tonic Sol-Fa Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 94. See, for example, the temperance songs discussed in ibid., 87–97. 95. ‘Framing Emotional Responses to Music: Music-making and Social WellBeing in Early Nineteenth-Century England’ in Penelope Gouk, James Kennaway, Jacomien Prins and Wiebke Thormählen (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-Being (New York: Routledge, 2018), 102. 96. See Helen Rogers, ‘Singing at Yarmouth Gaol: Christian Instruction and Inmate Culture in the Nineteenth Century’ in Prison Service Journal Vol. 199 (January 2012), 35–43 and examples discussed in Rosemary Golding, ‘Music and Mass Education: Cultivation or Control’ in Sarah Collins (ed.), Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 60–80. 97. Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 5. 98. Cyril Ehrlich has shown that, during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, upwards of 10,000 pianos were produced annually by English manufacturers. See Ehrlich, The Piano: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 144. 99. Kennaway, ‘Introduction: The Long History of Neurology and Music’, 9. 100. ‘Introduction’ in Gouk (ed.), Musical Healing and Cultural Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 1–25. 101. Roy Porter, ‘The Patient’s View: Doing Medical History from Below’, Theory and Society Vol. XIV no. 2 (March 1985), 175–176. 102. Report of the Medical Director of the West Riding of York Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1840. Corsellis’s view is echoed by Oliver Sacks in a 2009 article, in which he urged ‘One must not be too romantic about madness, or the madhouses in which the insane were confined. There is, under the manias and grandiosities and fantasies and hallucinations, an immeasurably deep sadness about mental illness, a sadness that is reflected in the often grandiose but melancholy architecture of the old state hospitals.’ See Sacks, ‘The Lost Virtues of the Asylum’ in The New York Review (September 24, 2009), 50–52. 103. ‘Archive and Library’ in John Frow (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory available as a pre-copyedited manuscript at https://hcommons. org/deposits/item/hc:22309/. 104. Marlene Manoff explores the idea of ‘silence’ in archives in ‘Mapping Archival Silence: Technology and the Historical Record’ in Fiorella

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Foscarini, Heather MacNeil, Bonnie Mak and Gillian Oliver (ed.), Engaging with Records and Archives: Histories and Theories (London: Facet, 2016), 63–82.

CHAPTER 2

Asylums, Moral Management and Music

The Nineteenth-Century Asylum Madness and the care and cure of the mad have been common features and concerns of societies since the beginnings of recorded history. The treatment and confinement of the insane has been influenced by both medical knowledge and changes in social, legal and economic contexts. The mysteries surrounding the brain left space for treatment according to religious and humanitarian beliefs. The history of asylums, madhouses and other forms of accommodation for the insane in nineteenth-century England therefore reflects changes in society as well as in medicine. It also reflects a more general move towards standardisation and centralisation of social provision, the setting up of large institutions and government control via inspectors and commissions.1 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Britain, accommodation for the mentally ill took four main forms. Families who could afford and manage to retain friends or relatives within private homes usually did so, keen to avoid the stigma of mental illness and to allow the afflicted the opportunity to return to society should the malady pass. Most sufferers, therefore, went undocumented, only accessing external help when necessary. Three forms of institution existed for those who were unable to remain at home. Private madhouses, run with little regulation and often excessive fees, were an option for the rich. These might © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_2

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be operated by medically-trained personnel, but often social connections, rather than medical qualifications, were more important in identifying a suitable location. Second were the charitable institutions such as Bethlem, which catered for patients unable to afford the fees of the private houses. Bethlem itself was founded within the confines of a monastic house, but others were supported by private bequest, such as the Bethel Hospital in Norwich. Finally, many pauper lunatics were kept within the workhouses which were set up to tackle the problem of poverty, both within new urban environments and traditional agricultural areas. It was the overuse of workhouses for sufferers of chronic mental illness, together with reports of poor conditions in other institutions, that prompted proper consideration of the State’s responsibilities for pauper lunatics at the turn of the nineteenth century. The reforms which led to the nineteenth-century era of asylum management are usually traced to events in late eighteenth century York. Poor conditions at the York public asylum (founded in 1777), and specifically the death of a Quaker patient in 1790, led to the foundation of an alternative institution set up on a religious basis in 1796 by the prominent Quaker William Tuke.2 Although it remained a small and somewhat idiosyncratic institution, Tuke and his family used their influence to promote the York Retreat as a model for public institutions. The Retreat’s second Medical Superintendent, George Jepson, was also instrumental in developing a gentle and humane approach to treatment.3 William Tuke’s grandson, Samuel Tuke, believed that most insane people retained ‘a considerable degree of self-command’. Moral treatment, a psychological approach to patient care, focussed on helping patients re-establish selfcontrol through kindness, domesticity and regular occupation aimed at engaging their minds.4 The York Retreat was part of a much larger movement towards both humane treatment of the poor and sick, and towards greater state intervention and control. With industrialisation underway it was clear that eighteenth-century provision for paupers—families, friends and the workhouse—was insufficient for the problems of mass movement, urbanisation and poverty. Whereas treatment of the pauper included an element of punishment, housing pauper lunatics alongside the ‘undeserving’ poor was increasingly uncomfortable: as Ruth G. Hodgkinson has suggested, ‘a growing humaneness… was offended by the anomaly and injustice of maintaining lunatics with ordinary paupers’.5

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The foundations of moral treatment are indicative of what Andrew Scull describes as ‘a fundamentally different approach to madness, one which does, indeed, mark a distinct rupture or departure in English responses to insanity’.6 Throughout the eighteenth century, traditional means of ‘taming’ the mad had focussed on repression, breaking of the will and external discipline and constraint. Moral treatment relied instead on ‘the forces of reason’, ‘the sufferer’s own desire to please others’ and the construction of a carefully-managed world-in-miniature, in which problematic aspects of life could be controlled or eliminated and more pleasing features enhanced.7 The first centralised response to the challenge was the 1808 County Asylums Act, which permitted Justices of the Peace to raise public funds in order to build establishments for the care of pauper lunatics, thus allowing them to be removed from prisons and workhouses. New institutions were governed by a board of local magistrates and landowners, who commissioned the purchase of land, building design, landscaping and interiors. Asylums were under the nominal management of a Medical Superintendent, sometimes a qualified medic, but in the early days often a businessman with experience of running a private madhouse. The development of moral treatment, along with practices such as non-restraint, was as much due to the influence of lay people as medical officers.8 To the new boards it was the ability to create a respectable, homely institution, rather than medical expertise, which came to the fore when considering asylum management. The new asylums were both medical and social institutions, and this dual identity was essential both to their development and to the emergence of psychiatry as a professional specialism. By 1840 thirteen institutions had opened, from Cornwall to Yorkshire. The earliest institutions adopted many of the practices developed at York and other reforming institutions, with new buildings designed to enhance the restorative influence of architecture and space. The asylum at Lincoln, under the supervision of Dr Robert Gardiner Hill, was the first to do away with all forms of physical restraint in 1838.9 Order, regularity and reason were the principles upon which new asylums were founded, with facilities for each function from dormitories, day rooms and dining hall to airing courts and recreational walks. A symmetrical pattern of male and female wings was widely adopted, with service and management areas shared in the central portion. Further attempts to improve provision and regulate institutions resulted in a number of pieces of Parliamentary legislation. Private

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madhouses were addressed in a Select Committee in 1815–1816 whose report was scathing on matters from accommodation to patient management and medical provision.10 Two Acts in 1828 were concerned with general regulation on the one hand, and the specific provision for pauper and criminal lunatics via County asylums on the other. Additional regulatory legislation was passed in 1842 and in 1845 the important dual legislation of the Lunacy Act and the County Asylums Act made ratepayer-funded provision for pauper lunatics via dedicated County asylums compulsory. Minimum expectations for medical attention were established, as well as systems for reporting and supervision, and by the middle of the century, most asylums were headed by qualified medics. The 1845 Acts were never entirely successful in their attempt to move all pauper lunatics into specialist asylums, and reform was subject to delays and amendments. However, its statutes meant that the County asylum became the norm, and the network of large pauper asylums grew into the most important tool in the treatment of mental illness until well into the twentieth century. In addition to increased regulation and interest from central bodies, from the 1830s asylums began to adopt common aims and practices. Ideas such as the innovations at the York Retreat, and experiments with non-restraint at Lincoln and Hanwell, were spread widely via published pamphlets and books. Fifteen Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy were appointed to oversee London asylums (including charitable institutions and private madhouses, except the Bethlem Hospital) as a result of the 1828 Acts, and two further itinerant Commissioners engaged to inspect provincial institutions under the terms of a further Act in 1842. The 1845 Lunacy Act provided for 11 new Commissioners in Lunacy, a nationwide force that replaced the Metropolitan group and which covered the whole of England and Wales. Half of these were drawn from experienced Medical Superintendents and physicians; the other half came from public office and legal backgrounds.11 In addition, medical officers travelled frequently, whether as part of their training, moving between posts, and in search of new ideas and methods. Thus, in addition to the Commissioners’ role as a centralised and specialised body of knowledge informing work within mental health institutions, there was a steadily growing shared sense of both theory and successful practice.

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Moral Management Moral treatment and moral management were key principles for the day-to-day organisation of lunatic asylums during the main part of the nineteenth century. Moral treatment usually refers to practices during the early nineteenth century, in which a personal, family-type relationship was established between patients and medical staff, typically the Medical Superintendent and his wife, and one or more other senior officers. Kindness, homeliness and comfort were at the core of this mission to offer a familiar, safe domestic environment but it extended to cover all aspects of patient experience, from the buildings, interiors and location to diet, clothing and routine: ‘every mode by which the mind is influenced through the mind itself’.12 Under the principle of moral management, every element of asylum life was part of the aim to create a regulated atmosphere, wherein patients might regain self-control and prepare for re-integration into society. Diet was carefully monitored, a regular routine established, changes of scene and outdoor exercise encouraged, and patients kept occupied through employment and recreational activities. The intention was at once to remove patients from the causes of their mental state, while recreating the comforts and familiarities of the home environment.13 Intellectual diversion would have a dual effect, distracting the patient from the immediate cause of their illness, while improving the mind in order to create a long-term cure.14 The work of medical staff and attendants was also important as role models in appropriate behaviour. Employment and recreation formed a kind of social reconditioning, through which patients would learn to conduct themselves in different contexts and situations. The emphasis on conduct and behaviour reveals a strong philanthropic, middle-class assimilationism to the asylums project. This included management and staff behaviour modelling the same moral values. As asylums grew the personal, family-like element of the scheme became impossible and the same principles were transferred to what became known as ‘moral management’: the careful control of all aspects of a patient’s life in order to manage behaviour.15 Writing in 1847, John Conolly, best known for his advocacy of non-restraint at Hanwell Asylum, emphasised the importance of absolute control over the patient experience.16 Conolly’s enthusiasm for order extended to management of religious observance and even to its musical accompaniment: religious services should be given ‘with great

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exactness’, while an organist should provide ‘steady and consistent performance [without] any interruption or uncertainty’.17 By the time Conolly was writing in the 1840s, the drive for control, order and consistency in a large institution had overtaken the original values of comfort and personal attention. Occupation and employment were a key feature of moral management in the newly-founded pauper lunatic asylums from the early nineteenth century, and of the accompanying surge in texts on asylum and patient management. This was further promoted by the evidence and conclusions of the 1815–1816 Select Committee on Madhouses, which criticised poor practice including an over-reliance on physical restraint. One respondent, a Mr William Ricketts who kept a large madhouse in Droitwich, Worcestershire, described moral treatment in practice: careful monitoring of diet, outside exercise, leisure space, household tasks and gardening work for male paupers.18 Ricketts had no doubt of the benefits of occupying both mind and body for the full recovery of his charges, particularly when they were at a convalescent stage. Referring specifically to amusements, he noted. Patients of the superior orders amuse themselves at cards; some of them are musical; they have a piano-forte; one lady plays and sings most admirably; and part of my own family being musical, we have generally, almost always, sacred music on a Sunday evening, where those who are capable, of the bettermost sort of patients, attend.19

At a similar time, an early treatise by John Haslam (1817) emphasised the importance of an individual approach to occupation, matching tasks to the patient’s mental state, abilities, status and background.20 William Ellis wrote on insanity in 1838 in his position as Medical Superintendent at Hanwell, but had previously implemented schemes of employment as first Superintendent at the West Riding asylum in Wakefield. In discussing the location and design of pauper lunatic asylums, including the institution at Hanwell, he emphasised both the wellbeing and the employment of patients as core factors, as well as practical considerations. The asylum site, for example, should be elevated with a good water supply and at a distance from any town, allowing a large plot to be purchased. The site would include gardens, a farmyard, airing courts and workshops; patient employment was beneficial for health as well as the economy of the institution.21

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Both the arts and sport came to play a part in the practice of moral management during the nineteenth century. Writing on the history of Art Therapy, Susan Hogan links moral treatment to both utilitarian philosophy and to non-conformist religious traditions, noting that ‘morality’ at this time was associated with assimilation to approved cultural norms and values.22 Hogan identifies the use of art as an aspect of the promotion of self-control among patients, a theme which is also strongly present in writings about music. Reading was also widely used as a tool to promote patient wellbeing, despite cultural concerns about the potential harm of exposing the lower classes to new ideas available through literature. Laura Blair’s research into Asylum Libraries reveals the language used to describe the potential benefits of reading among the patient population: books, like music, could appeal to both the mind and the emotions, forming mental stimulation as well as allowing ‘rational’ enjoyment and entertainment.23 The inclusion of organised sporting activities within asylums reveals further some of the approaches taken to the management and treatment of patients during this period. Evidence given to the 1815–1816 Select Committee repeatedly noted that exercise and simple sports such as bowling were good substitutes where the class of the patient meant employment was inappropriate. Steven Cherry and Roger Munting explore the important place of organised sport in the asylum, noting that it helped to mimic normal social patterns, offering a respectable yet stimulating pastime, and contributing to the public image of the institution. For men, organised sport was a key part of Victorian social fabric, with cricket in particular representing ‘the values and culture of Victorian Britain’.24 The principles of self-control and respect for rules were epitomised in the game of cricket, although other sports and games such as football, bowls and dancing were also popular. Furthermore, outdoor sports allowed for the fresh air so important to the situation of the rural asylum. At times, sports also allowed for excursions to other institutions, or integration with the local community. Women were less often encouraged to participate in organised sports; walking was the only available option for many. It is notable that towards the end of the nineteenth century, gymnastic exercises or drill were introduced in order to allow women access to physical exercise—often to the accompaniment of music. Facility in sports sat alongside musical ability in the employment of attendants; Cherry and Munting give the example of an attendant working at St Andrew’s in the

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1920s, but as we will see in the case studies, these attributes were also favoured from the 1890s at Worcester Asylum and elsewhere.25 Much attention was given to decorating wards with wallpaper, pictures, plants and birds, while the outside space was divided between establishing a farm (both to provide food and to occupy patients) and setting out gardens, walks and sports facilities. Like music and exercise, the location of asylums in open countryside was linked to both medical and moral aspects.26 Jane Hamlett’s study of material life and interiors in nineteenthcentury asylums provides an analysis of the ways in which homeliness and comfort were constructed during this period.27 Hamlett also introduces another important aspect of moral management, arguing that the material world of the asylum was used both to control inmates, and to create opportunities for them. It was a civilising, ritualised and middle-class version of homeliness that was selected as the basis for asylum buildings and décor, which were in turn expected to ‘inspire correct behaviour’: as Hamlett suggests, ‘Drawing rooms could create politeness, and encourage the niceties of etiquette’.28 While moral management and the non-restraint movement dominated discussion of the treatment and organisation of pauper lunatic asylums in the early nineteenth century, medical treatments common in the eighteenth century continued to be used on a widespread basis. Ellis outlined both physical and ‘moral’ causes of insanity and associated treatments. Bleeding, blistering and leeching were common physical treatments, as well as reducing body heat by shaving the head, bathing in ice or applying cold compresses.29 Where moral causes, such as over-excitement or shock, were to blame, physical treatments were still considered appropriate in order to address the symptoms. Ellis further recommends careful control of the diet, and the use of herbal remedies to restore bodily functions to working order.30 Additional moral remedies were tailored to the patient’s individual circumstances and included distraction, persuasion and treating the symptoms rather than the cause of the illness.31 Despite the non-restraint movement, and the central role of non-medical and moral approaches, it was physical treatments that received most attention in reports and accounts throughout the century. William A.F. Browne, writing in 1864, argued for the combination of medical and moral means carefully controlled on an individual patient basis by a qualified and experienced physician.32 The underlying aims of moral management feature heavily in discussions concerning the place of music. Morality and self-control were

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important aspects, as well as activities that promoted both mental stimulation and enjoyment. Routine and occupation were essential elements. Both employment opportunities and aesthetics influenced the choice of location, while ‘homeliness’ as well as correct behaviour directed interior design. Furthermore, activities were constructed to encourage patients to follow normal social patterns within strictly controlled environments. Following Hamlett’s conclusions, we might identify both ‘cure’ and ‘control’ among the aims and outcomes of the moral management approach. Moral treatment and management were particularly supported by the early work of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy, who had an influential role in disseminating early views and practices during the 1830s and 1840s. In their 1835–1836 Report, for example, the Commissioners recorded that they had recommended ‘employment should be offered to the patients’, noting that it was ‘almost invariably followed, by beneficial effects’.33 Outdoor employment such as gardening or household work were encouraged, with the physical benefits given equal value to the potential psychological gains. In this report, amusements and recreational activities also feature for the first time in the form of ‘several small libraries… formed at the suggestion of the Commissioners’.34 There is no doubt that the Commissioners had in mind the cost– benefit analysis required of any publicly-funded institution, and were obviously frustrated by the lack of a clear correlation between provision of resources such as books and games, and patient wellbeing. The same problem applied to religious worship: while they could not discover any permanent benefit, the temporary effect of ‘soothing or occupying the patients for a short period’ was sufficient to justify its continuation.35 Nevertheless, early reports tended to examine arrangements for employment rather than entertainment, perhaps mindful of public reaction. A subsequent report emphasised the fate of the patient left without occupation, rather than trying to quantify the benefits of its provision: In some places, books and amusements are furnished abundantly for the benefit of Patients, and various means of occupation, adapted to their capacities and previous habits, are provided. In others, the Lunatic is left to pass his time listless and unoccupied, or occupied only with the delusions that disturb him, and which thus, being diverted by no amusement or employment, in the course of time become strengthened, and not to be removed.36

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As the post-1845 Commissioners established their roles on a nationwide basis similar themes developed, linking moral treatment with distraction from psychological ills and treatment of physical disorders. On the one hand moral treatment was intended to ‘withdraw their attention from thoughts and feelings connected with their disordered state’; on the other they promoted ‘means likely to promote vigour of the body, such as exercise in the open air, ample diet, the careful administration of stimulants and tonics, bathing, warm clothing, and healthful recreations’.37 In this report the Commissioners warned against becoming ‘too exclusively devoted to what is termed Moral Treatment, to the neglect, in some instances, of the resources of medicine’.38 Nevertheless, in their dealings with individual asylums they were supportive of moral management through both employment and recreation. Although the Commissioners failed to pinpoint the exact role of occupation and amusement in moral treatment, it became commonplace to encourage their adoption in County asylums where possible: Much benefit is obtained in Lunatic Asylums by means calculated to amuse Patients within door, by supplying them with books and newspapers, light periodical publications, and some musical instruments. This is done in many Asylums, and whenever we notice any deficiency in this particular, we make a point of calling the attention of the Medical Officers to the subject.39

It is clear that the pressure and encouragement exerted by the Commissioners in favour of moral treatment, and particularly the introduction of means for employment and amusement, were influential in its widespread adoption throughout the County asylum network, as well as at private and charitable asylums and madhouses. The function of moral management as part of a wider system of Victorian values and social practices requires further consideration, which in turn will reflect on the place and role of music in the asylum. Revisionist histories from the 1970s position moral treatment and management not as a humanitarian attempt to treat the mentally ill with kindness and respect, but an alternative method of straight-jacketing patients into accepted social and moral norms.40 Michel Foucault’s extensive work on institutions and society frames the asylum as a means of control: an attempt to impose order and reason on the insane. Tracing the history of the asylum back to the early seventeenth century, he argues that

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employing inmates in useful work not only positioned them to contribute to the economic functioning of the system, but helped keep the idle and unemployed confined during periods of low employment.41 Work was similarly central at the York Retreat where, together with the pressure of religious observance, Foucault suggests it possessed ‘a restraining power superior to all forms of physical coercion, in that the regularity of the hours, the requirements of attention, the obligation to produce a result detach the sufferer from a liberty of mind that would be fatal and engage him in a system of responsibilities’.42 From the Retreat to the large State asylums of the nineteenth century, Foucault argues that work, religion and morality supplanted physical restraint as the controlling mechanisms of the large institution. Foucault’s ideas continue to provide a useful lens for considering the social meaning of the structures in Victorian asylums. In his view the authority of the asylum’s staff was derived not from science, but from bourgeois values; their aim was to separate the disorder of the mad from the order of everyday life, until patients had internalised social norms and conformed to expected behaviour. Despite the outward appearances of humanity in the asylum—in contrast to the prison or the workhouse—the underlying aims of repression and control were present. Each aspect of moral management was linked to such an impulse for control and surveillance. Spaces and architecture, interior decoration, furniture, clothing, work, exercise, amusement and religious observance were all part of a larger scheme to embed socially acceptable patterns of thought and behaviour. Timetables and routines reinforced adherence to norms according to class, age and gender—for both patients and staff. The family metaphor which had been so popular when small asylums allowed for personal relationships morphed into a mask for authoritarian attitudes and rigid power relations. Thus developing appropriate social behaviour among patients acted not only as a cure, but as a form of control. Among more recent scholars, Andrew Scull continues to develop the idea of the asylums as social control, far from the benign and humanitarian picture painted by many accounts.43 While Scull agrees that moral treatment was a far more humane method of control than previous approaches, he also argues that it legitimised features of control and imprisonment which were largely hidden.44 The dichotomy of cure and control helps to offer an interpretative tool for the analysis of music in the asylum. Much of the discourse surrounding music and other entertainments, extant in the formal reports and other

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papers, identify music as a source for moral good, an opportunity for therapeutic impact and a source of solace for patients. Medical Superintendents arguing for the provision of buildings and resources for music and other arts emphasise its value in the medical mission of the asylums. Among their arguments was the idea that music—usually either listening to it or dancing—would help patients gain self-control, the ability to socialise and a link with the norms of ‘everyday life’ that would be essential to their rehabilitation. In some cases, access to entertainments was used as a motivation for good behaviour. Music also proved an effective means for engaging large numbers of patients—and, in some cases, also for occupying the nursing and attendant staff. Did music, therefore, participate in the covert imposition of social control described by Scull? The moral role of music was deeply rooted in expectations of behaviour, control and conformity familiar from all levels of nineteenth-century society. Ultimately, therefore, cure and control were far from being opposites; they were closely linked via the need for patients to regain acceptable levels of self-control and behaviour. To be ‘cured’ was to have gained self-control, and to conform to social expectations. Participation in, and experience of, music were key elements in this.

The Asylum in the Late-Nineteenth Century From the middle of the nineteenth century the optimism associated with the new provision for pauper lunatics, as well as the reform and accountability pressed onto older private institutions, began to wane.45 State asylums expanded enormously, soon outgrowing their accommodation; hastily built extensions meant the careful planning of the original buildings was soon obliterated; generous day rooms and dining halls were taken over as dormitories and outdoor space was lost. Fire and disease were significant threats to the operation of large institutions, particularly as expansion led to overcrowding and poor-quality buildings. Asylums often struggled with a basic water supply, and outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and scarlet fever were not unusual. Industrialisation and migration meant family units were no longer nearby for many patients; indeed, David Wright suggests that confinement of the insane was less to do with medical understanding, and more ‘a strategic response of households to the stresses of industrialization’.46 The hope to cure the majority of patients, returning them to the community, was quashed as asylums filled up with chronic cases, the

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elderly and the unwanted. The confidence of ‘moral treatment’ gave way to the more pragmatic ‘moral management’, and a shift from cure to custody and confinement. In many cases patients’ surroundings retained the domestic image, but with larger populations, regimes grew tighter, budgets smaller and space for individual expression more controlled. Early on in this expansion the Scottish physician William A.F. Browne suggested ‘All practical men concur in the opinion that asylums containing more than 300 inmates become mere lock-up houses’.47 Many English asylums were already well beyond this size. The theories of moral management, based on individual attention to a patient’s situation and illness, increasingly diverged from the need to provide for large numbers of patients on a general basis. In parallel with many other occupations and the wider medical profession, employees at lunatic asylums saw their work increasingly regulated and aligned. Nurses and Attendants moved from largely unqualified generalists to gaining medical knowledge and specialist skills, with qualifications introduced and career progression through medical or pastoral routes opened up.48 1841 saw the foundation of the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, which became an important focus for sharing information and practice. Developments in psychiatric understanding, along with experimental treatments, also began to distinguish this branch of the medical profession. Both practice and research moved towards a somatic or bodily approach to mental illness. Sir James Crichton-Browne’s work at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in the 1860s and 1870s was particularly important in the ‘medicalisation’ of mental illness treatment.49 Crichton-Browne (1840– 1938) moved the West Riding institution from an old-style asylum to a medical hospital, opening up laboratories to experimental scientists and promoting a systematic approach to research. Other innovations included regular medical conversaziones , the publication West Riding Medical Reports (1871–1876) and the journal Brain (1878).50 He also drew the practice of moral management within a scientific structure and discourse. Crichton-Browne had his own theories about the uses of music as a therapeutic tool, criticising the generalist approach and advocating a more systematic application: instead of this [entertainment] being carried out individually, as of course it ought to be, and adapted to each case, it is carried out in a wholesale way. Instead of being fine-hand painting it is slapdashery. Amusements

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are provided, and crowds of patients are sent to them. I believe, on the whole, the effects of even this imperfect system are very beneficial; but the treatment is not carried out in the true principles.51

Where previously chemical and physical treatments were adopted alongside moral management, medical advances brought physical treatments such as electrotherapy to the fore.52 Among the new theories were Henry Maudsley’s belief in a genetic component to madness, situating psychiatry within Darwinian theories of evolution and biology.53 Chemical sedatives such as chloral hydrate were common from the 1870s, despite ongoing uncertainty over both physical and psychological side effects. Other more traditional treatments pervaded, including syrups and potions, cod liver oil, alcohol, tobacco, sweets, cold baths and showers, and warm baths, alongside the innovative electric baths.54 At the turn of the twentieth century, aspects of moral management began to appear under the guise of scientific treatments, including physical drill; Swedish gymnastics performed to music were introduced at Claybury asylum in 1903.55 The advancement of scientific methods created a tension with the traditional reliance on moral management as a means for organising patient life. While Medical Superintendents were increasingly drawn from highlytrained practitioners, the overseeing Commissioners in Lunacy combined those with medical experience with laymen, and asylum Visitors typically had no medical background. In 1856 the Asylum Journal of Mental Science reflected on a recent Commissioners’ report, noting that ‘we do not know of any more painful sight than an admirably constructed and arranged asylum for the insane, replete with domestic comforts, and abounding in evidence of extreme solicitude for the contentment or happiness of inmates, but containing no marks of any medical intentions or operations’.56 William A.F. Browne likewise criticised the ‘do-nothing’ school of moral management which relied on kindness alone, to the exclusion of appropriate physical treatment and regulated moral therapy.57 Opposing the medical view, Daniel Hack Tuke of the York Retreat argued in 1892 that that which from the first has been regarded as a most important feature of the Institution, is its homishness—the desire to make it a family as much as under the peculiar circumstances of the case is possible. However desirable the scientific study of insanity may be, and I hope we shall never underrate

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is, it would be a fatal mistake to allow it to interfere with or in the slightest degree take the place of the social and domestic element, and the personal relationship between the physician and his patient, which tend to mitigate the distress which may be occasioned by the loss of many home comforts and associations, along with the residence among strangers.58

Asylums remained closely controlled by the governors, magistrates and private individuals associated with their management and funding.59 Although medical interest in psychiatry made enormous progress, asylum populations of long-term, chronically ill patients, together with public and lay perceptions and the need to provide for care as well as cure, meant that moral management remained important.60 Understanding the tensions between medical men and the lay management of asylums offers an important background for the place and role of music. The first part of the century had seen significant innovation in the care and management of patients within new contexts. However, the demands of maintaining large institutions combined with the medicalisation of mental health treatment to relegate music and other artistic and recreational activities to a habitual presence. The poor rate of cure among asylum patients led to a loss of public confidence and funding was gradually reduced.61 Music, entertainment and the other aspects of moral management continued to be an important part of asylum life, and in some cases, individuals were able to influence its development. However, from the 1870s much less attention was paid to new advances in the day-to-day running of asylums, with scientific discovery and development largely situated outside institutions. This discussion has concentrated largely on the provision of statefunded asylum care for pauper lunatics, which formed the main focus for reform and provision during the nineteenth century. Private and charitable asylums, in existence long before the County asylum network and many still in operation today, offered an alternative. Until the establishment of County asylums, charitable institutions such as Bethlem and the York Retreat were the main source of provision for the insane poor. Private madhouses were typically small institutions run by an individual and catering for the middle and upper classes. Paupers might be sent to private homes at the ratepayers’ expense if they were too dangerous to be kept in the workhouse. In all cases, patients were typically only admitted once their condition was too severe to be treated within the home, such was the stigma of mental illness.62 As provision for paupers developed,

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charitable asylums more frequently took on middle class patients, seeking to fill the gap between the expensive private institutions and the statefunded pauper asylums. Establishments such as the Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water, Surrey (1885), were founded with this particular need in mind. Although patients at private asylums rarely undertook the kinds of employment common among pauper institutions, the principles of moral management were often the same: patients were occupied with a range of activities suited to their social class, and an emphasis on homeliness and familiar routines. In the absence of employment, and on a smaller scale, some private asylums struggled to entertain patients. However, many developed elaborate provisions for amusements, a full programme of entertainments, visits to local amenities, and extensive health and wellbeing facilities. Some private institutions were also aided by the presence of voluntary boarders, who typically displayed only mild or intermittent symptoms of mental illness and therefore took a full part in the social programme. Differences between the private and pauper asylums stemmed from their size, their relation with the surrounding community, the backgrounds and talents of their patients, the interests of their medical and lay management, their financial resources and their function as a society-in-miniature. While pauper asylums were encouraged to adopt a shared system of management, private asylums differed enormously in their structure. Detailed contexts of the private asylums examined here will be discussed within the individual case studies.

Music and Moral Management Music became linked to the practice of managing an asylum from the early decades of the nineteenth century, through shared practice, the publications of influential writers and the Commissioners in Lunacy. Most of this discussion was within the context of moral management, as asylums addressed the problem of occupying patients in a manner suited to their abilities and class. One early treatise was by the physician George Man Burrows (1771– 1846), who kept private asylums in London during the first half of the nineteenth century. Writing in 1828, he emphasised the importance of devising occupations and entertainments suitable for the individual character, social status and medical condition of the patient. Among patients

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suffering from mania, he noted music was often a source of hallucination or delusion, and singing ‘without cause’ among the manifestations of this affliction.63 He also recorded the careful balance in using music as a treatment: among hypochondriacs, he noted, some seemed ‘agitated and distressed by a “concord of sweet sounds;”’, while in another case music had ‘produced a painful emotion, agitation, and then greater abstraction’.64 Burrow’s son, also George, had made visits to many continental asylums during the 1820s and reported on the use of music at a number of Italian institutions.65 Burrows senior compared the potential use of music in England with other countries, suggesting. Music has not only been highly extolled as an amusement for the insane, but as a powerful means of cure. Experience and sober reflection instruct us, that music, like everything else that powerfully affects the passions, is relatively good or bad in every case of insanity. Among a musical people, such as the Italians or Germans, it would be more generally applicable and useful than among a people like the English, who are not musical. But there are lunatics in all countries to whom music is discord and misery; some are perfectly insensible to it; and others on whom it produces the best effects. We must, therefore, as in respect to every moral remedy, first ascertain the disposition as well as the peculiar delusion of each patient, and admit or proscribe music and other amusements and occupations according to their effects.66

Setting aside Burrows’ assessment of the English as ‘not musical’, his book illustrates the central place now taken by moral therapies, including amusement and occupation. The influence of another key proponent of moral treatment, John Conolly, was chiefly found in the widespread adoption of non-restraint around the middle of the century, but his publications covered many other aspects of asylum management and design. In an 1847 publication he encouraged making provision for music both in terms of suitable space and musical instruments, noting ‘kind people will be found to furnish instruments which could not properly be bought for a county asylum’.67 Conolly made reference to both regular musical parties and informal performances on the wards, although he also noted that some musical activities were dependent on particular officers and their families.68 William A.F. Browne was similarly enthusiastic, suggesting in 1864 ‘The worst dement should never be despaired of when music is untried. There is or may be a hidden life within him which may be reached by

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harmony’.69 Other writers approached music with more caution. John Gideon Millingen, for example, advised in 1840 ‘While we select means of amusing the patients, much discrimination and judgment is required. Music, dancing, and various games, which may prove beneficial to many, are frequently of too exciting a nature to be allowed; the same judgment is requisite in the choice of books, &c’.70 The later Manual produced in 1879 by John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke expressed their ‘considerable distrust’ of balls, concerts and theatrical entertainments, warning that such a novelty could cause ‘undue excitement’.71 Music, they suggested, was a ‘great resource to ladies, but the brass bands formed of asylum servants are a questionable hobby’, limiting the choice of applicants for attendant positions and used with insufficient discrimination and purpose.72 Another influential writer, Dr John Webster (1795–1876), made extensive visits to Continental Europe in the 1840s and 1850s, sharing his observations with fellow professionals via a series of pamphlets.73 Webster notes the central place of occupation and amusement in French asylums, using a number of examples to demonstrate the success of this scheme in allowing patients to gain skills, make money and earn privileges, such as using knives and forks at the dinner table. In one division of the Salpetriere asylum under the watch of M. Baillarger, 40–45 patients were recorded playing games, working and learning ‘music from notes, chalked upon a large black board placed in the room’.74 In the same ward, a music mistress visited three times a week to preside over a miscellaneous hour of singing, recitation and other activities. Another physician of the time, M. Falret, was also recorded as a ‘great advocate for the cultivation of music as a subsidiary means in the treatment of insanity’, promoting similar events in his section of the institution. The benefits of music are given some deliberate consideration in Webster’s account, as part of a general beneficial programme of occupation and good treatment. The practice of moral management was used both to ‘engage the minds’ of the patients and to ‘gain their confidence by gentleness and kind treatment’. The two principles were also found at work in the English system, although the former generally given greater emphasis in the publicly funded pauper asylums, where an overabundance of ‘kindness’ paid for by taxpayers’ contributions might meet with disapproval. Within the French institution, however, kindness took on an important role, the gratitude it espoused in patients leading them to

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attempt self-control. Music was also cited as a particular agent in the treatment of patients, Webster noting its particular influence on a melancholic patients.75 In his 1838 Treatise, William Ellis reflected on the need for private institutions to be founded on a large scale, to be run on the same principles as the new pauper asylums with a committee of Trustees and a salaried medical superintendent. Ellis’s treatise expands on the idea of creating a ‘home from home’ for patients, and while he says little about what this entails for pauper patients, he has a clear vision of the needs of the middle and upper classes: For persons in the higher ranks of society, a mansion should be provided, with park, woods, lawns, hot-houses, gardens, and green-houses. It should be fitted, internally, with every convenience and luxury for the gratification of the taste. Science and the fine arts ought to be pressed into the service of stimulating the dormant faculties to healthy exercise. There should be, as there is now at Aversa, a music-room, which the patients of both sexes should daily have the privilege of using; and one evening in every week should be specially devoted to a dress-concert or oratorio, to which all, in a fit state to attend, should be invited. Such an association of patients, of the two sexes, would have a very happy influence on both. And an additional impetus should be given, by remunerating for their assistance any professional persons, either male or female, residing in the neighbourhood. This would enliven the evening’s entertainment, and make it more valued. It would also tend to lead the feelings to a profitable contemplation of happier days, by showing that the capability and the means of enjoyment, in this respect at least, were left; and it might awaken the hope, that the avenues to other pleasure, moral and intellectual, might soon be opened.76

The fundamental position of music in pauper lunatic asylums and in private asylums was therefore quite different. Where the managers of pauper asylums were pressed to justify expense as part of and effective programme of treatment, or a beneficial philanthropic act (hence Conolly’s suggestion that instruments in the pauper asylum should be donated, rather than bought), for those dealing with the care of upper- and middleclass patients, musical events and opportunities were part of constructing a suitable social and cultural context. In addition, the small size of private institutions, and the tendency to allocate individual living and recreational

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spaces to patients (together with their companions) changed the scope for organised musical activity. Although there was no formal training in asylum management or mental health treatment, by the mid-nineteenth century common practices had developed, due to the influence of the Commissioners, correspondence, publications, movement and visiting among medical officers, as well as the early manifestations of professional associations and journals.77 By some of the same means practice was shared and spread internationally. Music as both entertainment and treatment is encouraged in many of the Commissioners’ statements. Some of the Medical Superintendents and resident physicians link music particularly with specific forms of lunacy, noting its suitability for the less-severely afflicted. Dancing is prescribed with care not to over-excite patients.78 In some cases music is suitable as a familiar comfort; in others its novelty provides another form of engagement and amusement. Patients may listen or dance; in some cases they are more actively involved and play or sing together with staff. While common themes run through the pauper and private asylums, we can be sure that the ways in which patients were treated and the levels of entertainment afforded were quite disparate. The Eighth Report of the Commissioners for Lunacy, published in 1854, provides an excellent overview of some of the ways in which music had begun to find a place at both private and state-funded asylums by the middle of the nineteenth century, as well as the language used to describe its impact by Asylum officials.79 The report contains statements from 181 asylums, the majority small private and charitable institutions. Statements about the use and place of music reflect key themes from moral management: inducement to good behaviour; ‘homeliness’; selfcontrol; intellectual engagement; and enjoyment or entertainment. At the Denbigh County Lunatic Asylum, for example, ‘Psalmody and other music is very generally promoted, and is found very conducive to the amusement and tranquillity of the Patients’,80 while at Bristol County Asylum ‘The winter balls and the summer excursions, two for either sex, to spend a day in the country with music, &c., are also great inducements to good behaviour and industry’.81 The report from Lancashire County Asylum made particular reference to the usefulness of music in bringing together large numbers of patients and staff in common enjoyment: Without wishing to be egotistical, I desire particularly to allude to a weekly entertainment which has been regularly kept up for the last two years, and

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which constitutes a most agreeable termination on Saturday evening to the week’s labours. Amongst the officers and attendants, with the assistance of some friends in the village, we have organised a musical band, and this, with the frequent help of some of the members of a neighbouring quadrille band, and other musical acquaintances, gives the inmates an abundance of inspiriting music, to which they dance with evident enjoyment. Upwards of a hundred of each sex are always present, and a few strangers of all grades favour us with their company, and often, besides, friends and relatives of the patients; all which is encouraged, and has, I believe, a most beneficial effect upon the patients and public, and not less in promoting good feeling amongst the servants and officers.82

Among the private asylums, Fisherton House Asylum, Salisbury reported that Amongst other pastimes music is found to be of great advantage, and a band is formed so as to introduce several different instruments, selected according to the caprice of the various performers; and many who had no previous knowledge of music have been taught to play in a very credible manner; thus securing amusement for themselves, and likewise diffusing the same throughout the whole establishment.83

The principle of homeliness was prioritised at Eastgate House, Lincoln, where The institution, which comprises patients of the upper and middle classes only, is assimilated as much as possible to the comforts and refinements of home, in which suitable employments of various kinds, books, pictures, and music, tend to sooth the stricken mind, and walking and carriage exercise invigorate and refresh the patients, whose state admits of such indulgence… Little excursions into the country are arranged, and occasionally they are taken to a concert or to the theatre. I mention these things as illustrative of the principle of treatment.84

In a similar manner, at Gate Helmsley Retreat in Yorkshire, familiar intellectual and practical pastimes were re-created for the patients: It is well also to occupy the mind with antagonistic ideas derived from industrial or intellectual pursuits, for the mind can only take cognizance of one idea at a time… The favourite or habitual pursuits of the patient when

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in health are often most readily followed in these cases. It is in this way that music has so excellent an influence upon many insane.85

At times the provision of music and other entertainments told a less positive story. The Commissioners had little formal power, and institutions relied heavily on the preferences and beliefs of their management, particularly the Medical Superintendent. Visiting the Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital in 1854, the Commissioners recorded: ‘For in-door amusement and employment there is a room for those accustomed to drawing, painting, or modelling, a library, music, chess, bagatelle, &c.’.86 Reporting again just seven years later, the Commissioners noted the influence of a new management regime: ‘new arrangements had been made for superintendence of the establishment’… ‘The other recommendations, made at the visit in June 1857, had not been carried out; and the lectures, dances, and musical entertainments, which were once frequently held, appeared to have been discontinued’.87 Although the Commissioners played an important part in promoting practices across the asylum network, it is also clear that the individual circumstances, connections and personalities of asylums and their staff played an important role in the place and value of music within institutions.

Notes 1. Recent publications on the institutions and policies of nineteenth-century English social provision include Samantha Shave, Pauper Policies: Poor Law Practice in England, 1780–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), Paul Carter and Kate Thompson (ed.), Pauper Prisons, Pauper Palaces: The Victorian Poor Law in the East and West Midlands, 1834–1871 (Kibworth Beauchamp: Matador, 2018), Michelle Higgs, Prison Life in Victorian England (History Press, 2017), David Churchill, Crime Control and Everyday Life in the Victorian City: The Police and the Public (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) and Michele M. Strong, Education, Travel and the “Civilisation” of the Victorian Working Classes (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 2. Details of the foundation of the York Retreat are given in Anne Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 11–14. 3. Ibid., 22. 4. Samuel Tuke, Description of the Retreat, an Institution Near York for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends (Alexander, 1813), 139. 5. Ibid., 140.

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6. Scull, ‘Museums of Madness Revisited’ in Social History of Medicine (1993), 8. 7. Ibid., 10–11. 8. Akihito Suzuki notes the ‘vital’ role of the magistrates in enacting the policy of non-restraint at Hanwell asylum, for example. See ‘The Politics and Ideology of Non-Restraint: The Case of the Hanwell Asylum’ in Medical History Vol. XXXIX no. 1 (January 1995), 2. 9. Hill’s claims to have been the initiator of the non-restraint movement are contextualised in the protracted and bitter disputes of the late 1830s and 1840s; see Leslie Topp, ‘Single Rooms, Seclusion and the Non-Restraint Movement in British Asylums, 1838–1844’ in Social History of Medicine, Vol. 31 no. 4 (November 2018), 754–773. 10. See ‘Report from the Committee on Madhouses in England’ in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1814–1815, paper 296. Further evidence was published in 1816, paper 227. 11. For an overview see D.J. Mellett, ‘Bureaucracy and Mental Illness: The Commissioners in Lunacy 1845–1890’ in Medical History Vol. XXV no. 3 (1981), 221–250. 12. William A.F. Browne, ‘The Moral Treatment of the Insane’ in British Journal of Psychiatry Vol. X (1864), 313. 13. Browne noted this particular point: ‘The hospitals for the non-affluent classes, however spacious and comfortable, should not be palatial; they should resemble, at many points, the homes from which their inmates have been withdrawn, because they love and have been accustomed to the very homeliness of these dwellings’. See Ibid. 14. A similar approach was suggested by James Platt in his 1878 book Morality (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1878). Platt’s recommendation for the improvement of the ‘masses’ was ‘rousing and stimulating into healthy activity their intellectual and moral faculties’. He suggested: ‘My advice to every one having a strong tendency to drink, or vice, or vicious habits of any kind, is to take up some hobby or intellectual pursuit or study. The concentration of your mind thereon will alienate the thoughts from the vice, and check the action of the animal propensity; whilst the intellectual and moral sentiment, becoming stronger from increased activities, will give you strength to combat and control the desire of the lower part of your nature’ (p. 183). 15. Kathleen Jones suggested that, after the 1845 Act, the ‘humanitarian’ drive was overtaken by economic and legal factors. See Jones, A History of the Mental Health Services (London: Routledge, 1972), 153. 16. See Conolly, The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums, and Hospitals for the Insane (London: Churchill, 1847). 17. Ibid., 125–126.

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18. ‘First Report: Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee appointed to consider of Provision being made for the better Regulation of Madhouses, in England’, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1816, paper 227, 304. Prior to dedicated pauper asylums in every county, some pauper lunatics were housed at the expense of the parish in private institutions. 19. Ibid. 20. Haslam, Considerations on the Moral Management of Insane Persons (London: Hunter, 1817), 69–77. Haslam was apothecary at Bethlem between 1795 and 1816; his dismissal coincided with a damning report by the 1815–1816 Select Committee. See Denis Leigh, ‘John Haslam, M. D.—1764–1844: Apothecary to Bethlem’ in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Vol. X No. 1 (January 1955), 17–44. 21. Ellis, A Treatise on the Nature, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment of Insanity (London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1838), 266. For a detailed investigation see Sarah Rutherford, The Landscapes of Public Lunatic Asylums in England, 1808–1914 (Unpubl. PhD Thesis, De Montford University, 2003). 22. Hogan, Healing Arts: The History of Art Therapy (London: Kingsley, 2001), 32. 23. ‘Restorative Reading’ (Blog post 1 Febrauary 2019, accessed 3 December 2019) at https://www.asylumlibraries.co.uk/allposts/category/Project+ context. 24. Cherry, Stephen, and Munting, Roger, ‘‘Exercise Is the Thing’? Sport and the Asylum c. 1850–1950’ in The International Journal of the History of Sport Vol. XXII no. 1 (January 2005), 43. 25. See Worcestershire Record Office B499:9/10127/3 Salaries and Wages April 1893–March 1898. 26. See Chris Philo, A Geographical History of Institutional Provision for the Insane from Medieval Times to the 1860s in England and Wales: The Space Reserved for Insanity (Lewiston and Queenston, USA, and Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 567. 27. See Hamlett, At Home in the Institution: Material Life in Asylums, Lodging Houses and Schools in Victorian and Edwardian England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 28. Ibid., 20. 29. Ellis, A Treatise on the Nature, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment of Insanity 161–163. 30. Ibid., 163–186. 31. Ibid., 223. 32. Browne, ‘The Moral Treatment of the Insane’, 337. 33. Annual Report from 1st June 1835 to 31st May 1836, 2, in Copies of the Annual Reports made by the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy to

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34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

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the Lord Chancellor, from 1835 to 1841, both inclusive PP 1841 session 2/ 56. Ibid. Ibid. Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy, to the Lord Chancellor, 1844, 6. PP 1844/ 1. Further Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, to the Lord Chancellor, 1847, 225, 230. PP 1847–8/ 858. The 1847 Report was the first under the new system to give an overarching view on the many different aspects of asylum management which fell under the Commissioners’ purview. It covers in some detail the various conditions of mental illness, means of treatment and the situation at many of the public and private asylums under their remit. Subsequent reports give only an update together with key data and any institutions causing concern, being overwhelmingly taken up with the business of maintaining, building and expanding asylums suitable for the growing population of pauper lunatics. Ibid. Ibid., 227. A useful overview of the competing historiographies can be found in Vicki Coppock, and John Hopton, ‘The Historical Maze’ in Critical Perspectives on Mental Health (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2002). Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason transl. Richard Howard (1967) (London: Routledge, 2002), 47. Ibid., 235. See Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions, 2–4. See also Scull, Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective (University of California Press, 1989), Chapters 3 and 4. Ibid., 16. This shift is discussed, among others, by Louise Hide; see ‘From Asylum to Mental Hospital: Gender, Space and the Patient Experience in London County Council Asylums, 1890–1910’ in Jane Hamlett, Lesley Hoskins and Rebecca Preston (ed.), Residential Institutions in Britain, 1725–1970: Inmates and Environments Perspectives in Economic and Social History (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 53. Wright, ‘Getting Out of the Asylum: Understanding the Confinement of the Insane in the Nineteenth Century’ in Social History of Medicine Vol. X no. 1 (1997), 137. Browne, ‘The Moral Treatment of the Insane’, 324. Louise Hide notes attempts during the 1890s to raise the profile of attendants and nurses in order to attract a higher calibre staff, following too many problems with staff breaking rules, drunken behaviour and a

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49.

50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

high turnover of staff. See Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 75. Jennifer Wallis’s work, which focusses on the West Riding Asylum, is concerned with the use of the body as a site for diagnosis, treatment and research. See Wallis, Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum: Doctors, Patients and Practices (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). See Thomas Bewley, Madness to Mental Illness. A History of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Online archive 8, Sir James Crichton-Browne (1840–1938) (the Wakefield Triangle): https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/ docs/default-source/about-us/library-archives/archives/sir-james-cri chton-browne-1840-1938-the-wakefield-triangle.pdf?sfvrsn=8c2d691_4. Accessed 29 March 2019. Crichton-Browne, 1889, quoted in Henry Burdett, Hospitals and Asylums of the World Vol. 2 (London: Churchill, 1892), 182. See A.W. Beveridge and E.B. Renvoize, ‘Electricity: A History of Its Use in the Treatment of Mental Illness in Britain During the Second Half of the 19th Century’ in British Journal of Psychiatry no. 153 (1988), 157–162. See Maudsley, Responsibility in Mental Disease, 13–16. See discussions in Louise Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 137–141. Ibid. Asylum Journal of Mental Science, Vol. III no. 22, 490. Browne, ‘The Moral Treatment of the Insane’, 311. Daniel Hack Tuke, Reform in the Treatment of the Insane (London: John Churchill, 1892), 43–48. William Ellis emphasises the limited control of medical superintendents in the overall management of the asylum in his 1838 publication A Treatise on the Nature, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment of Insanity, 209. Jane Hamlett further discusses the tensions between hygiene and comfort that developed in the late-nineteenth century. See At Home in the Institution, 25. For a useful overview see Margaret Homberger, ‘Madness’ at http:// www.bbk.ac.uk/deviance/madness/intro.htm. This observation applied equally to pauper patients; Medical Superintendents frequently lamented that, by the time patients reached the asylum, their condition had deteriorated too far to be treated effectively. Burrows, Commentaries on the Causes, Forms, Symptoms, and Treatment, Moral and Medical, of Insanity (London, T. and G. Underwood, 1828), 268, 344. Ibid., 482–496. Ibid., 523–528. Ibid., 706–707.

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67. 68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73.

74.

75.

76.

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Conolly, The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums, 54. Ibid., 55. Browne, ‘The Moral Treatment of the Insane’, 332. Millingen, Aphorisms on the Treatment and Management of the Insane: With Considerations on Public and Private Lunatic Asylums, Pointing Out the Errors in the Present System (London: Churchill, 1840), 104. MIllingen was a surgeon in the British Army, later taking on the role of physician at the military asylum at Chatham as well as Hanwell lunatic asylum. See T. Saunders and J. Falkner, ‘Millingen, John Gideon (1782– 1849)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed 14 May 2020, at https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/978019 8614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-18759. J.C. Bucknill and D.H. Tuke, A Manual of Psychological Medicine, Fourth edition (London: Churchill, 1879), 690. Bucknill was an influential supporter of non-restraint in his role as Superintendent at the Devon County asylum; Tuke, a physician and specialist in mental illness, spent time working at the York Retreat founded by his ancestors. Both contributed to the academic development of the mental health specialism. Ibid., 690–691. Webster’s career and travels are outlined in a memoir written by his sister Mary Webster. See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Webster-5142. Accessed 7 August 2019. ‘Treatment of Insanity in France’ printed in Provincial Medical Journal and Retrospect of the Medical Sciences Vol. V no. 114 (3 December 1842), 197–198: 198. Ibid: ‘In many, the effect produced by the music upon their countenances and behaviour was often quite apparent; and I could cite several instances of its beneficial influence, but one will be sufficient, which I met with in a young female who had been admitted the previous evening. At the first visit of the physician, only an hour before, this poor girl was morose, stupefied, and could scarcely answer questions distinctly; but now she seemed pleased with the entertainment, talked to her neighbour, and looked up cheerfully to the physician; indeed, she appeared altogether a changed creature, and no one from her appearance or conduct would have said she was either insane, or the inmate of a madhouse’. Ellis, A Treatise on the Nature, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment of Insanity (London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1838), 201–202. Ellis went on to recommend lectures on scientific subjects, the cultivation of botany, instruction in the fine arts, keeping of domestic birds and animals, stocking a library and engaging the patients in charitable acts as well as light employment. The asylum at Aversa, near Naples, was well-known for its system of non-restraint; see Carmel Raz, ‘Music, Theater, and the

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77.

78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

Moral Treatment: The Casa dei Matti in Aversa and Palermo’ in Laboratoire italien Vol. XX (2017) https://doi.org/10.4000/laboratoireitalien. 1581. In summer 1853, for example, the Norfolk Superintendent Ebenezer Owen visited eight pauper asylums in the north of England (see Master’s Report Book 1849–1860, 26 July 1853), while a delegation from California visited 24 English asylums as part of an extended tour (see ‘Report of the Commissioner in Lunacy’ in Appendix to Journals of Senate and Assembly, State of California (Sacramento: Springer, 1872), 5). The 1847 Report from Peckham House, a private asylum, recommended ‘Music and Dancing should Likewise be Encouraged, Except in Recent Cases, and in Those Where It Is Found to be Too Exciting.’ See Further Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, to the Lord Chancellor PP 1847–8/ 858, 436. Copy of the Eighth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor PP 1854/ 339. Ibid., 124. Ibid., 143. Ibid., 131–132. Ibid., 204. Ibid., 189. Ibid., 208. Ibid., 148. Copy of the Fifteenth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, 1861 PP 1861/ 314, 17.

CHAPTER 3

Music in the Asylum: An Overview

Music was found in the asylum in a variety of guises and contexts. During the winter season, music formed the core of the typical programme of entertainments through concerts, singing classes and dances. In the York Pauper Asylum, for example, the 59 entertainments of the 1870– 1871 season included seven balls, 28 meetings of the singing class, four evenings of ‘Reading and musical entertainment’, five evenings of ‘Vocal and Instrumental Concert’ and a Lecture on ‘The History of Music’.1 In this chapter some of these uses of music are examined in more detail. Once again, the focus is largely on State-sponsored pauper lunatic asylums, with reference to private and charitable institutions where relevant. Beginning with the asylum band, music is also explored in concerts and other entertainments, religious worship and smaller spaces. While there is a good deal of information regarding the music that was performed in asylums, we know less about which patients experienced music (though in some cases raw numbers are available) and even less about how it was experienced. Recreation halls and chapels were rarely large enough to accommodate all patients in an institution, particularly with growing populations, and figures often show only around a half to two-thirds of patients having attending dances or religious services. Patients attending activities is occasionally mentioned in case notes, but their response is rarely recorded. The information available on music is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_3

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therefore only a partial representation of the ways in which music was used and its role in the asylum.

The Asylum Band and Dance The regular dance became a central feature of most institutions by the middle of the nineteenth century: a weekly, fortnightly or monthly opportunity for the sexes to meet (men and women were otherwise heavily segregated), and an important part of the overall routine.2 The dance is also the most common representation of music in the asylum within external imagery and literature. Balls and dancing were a feature of some asylums from at least the early 1840s, with a group of musicians typically hired in to provide the music. An 1841 ‘tea-drinking and dance at the Lunatic Asylum’ in Lincoln was recorded in the Lincoln Gazette and reprinted in the Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, whose author noted The power of music over the passions and feelings of mankind, and even over the brute creation, is universally admitted, and many wonderful instances of such power are on record; but we doubt very much if any thing more wonderful, or more clearly demonstrating the influence of harmonious sounds over the human mind, was ever witnessed, than what is described in the following account…3

A report from the Gloucester Lunatic Asylum, published in 1842, claimed Balls and other amusements, occurring in lunatic asylums, have been of late publicly mentioned as matter of admiration and astonishment. In this asylum, large parties for dancing have always been promoted; as well as dinner and evening parties, when proper, and pleasurable excursions, for many hours, in the country. Musical entertainments within the walls, and attendance on public amusements, are of so frequent occurrence, that they constitute the practice rather than form the occasional source of astonishment in this asylum.4

Dr. Forbes’ description of the twelfth night festivities at Hanwell asylum in 1843, published in the Morning Chronicle and reprinted in a specialist medical journal, also includes a band formed of both patients and servants, which perambulated around the gallery during the dancing and festivities.5 A typical band might vary from five or six players to over a dozen, with a range of string, brass and wind instruments. From the

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1850s hired musicians began to be commonly replaced by trained bands drawn from the asylum staff, usually the attendants, and by the 1860s a band, providing music at weekly entertainments, was common practice. Later in the century the average band more closely resembled a modern-day wind band, the choice of clarinets, cornets and heavy brass more suited to the larger spaces required for recreational activities as asylum populations grew. However, mixed ensembles remained: the band at Norwich, for example, was led by a violinist with a pianist used to fill in any gaps in instrumentation or harmony.6 The bands examined in the case studies in this volume are entirely made up of attendants and external musicians, but there is evidence that patients were involved in bands elsewhere, including the Bristol Lunatic Asylum in 1871.7 In addition to any performance opportunities, the dance was an opportunity for patients to engage actively with the music.8 The structured order and defined behaviour of the dance both provided an opportunity for patients to meet socially and to develop the self-control so central to their curing and rehabilitation. Asylum dances are featured in many of the personal narratives extant from the nineteenth century. The semi-fictional account Ten Years in a Lunatic Asylum by Mabel Etchell, for example, recounts the details of a weekly dance in which the patients were ranged neatly by ward and gender, the male patients ‘very politely’ engaging their dancers, and the medical staff and their guests mixing and dancing with patients.9 The protagonist muses on the benefits of the social gathering, being ‘a little object for patients and nurses. The former were thus taken out of themselves, and the little bustle and excitement of preparation was certainly good for us’.10 The forms of dances chosen for the occasion also ensured patients could follow strict protocols, again emphasising self-control and moral behaviour. At the Morningside Asylum in Edinburgh, for example, patients danced ‘with the most wonderful sane propriety, decorum and grace, reels and quadrilles—polkas, waltzes, and mazurkas being properly forbidden within the walls of the Asylum’.11 Similar patterns of genre are to be found in English asylums, and the dance appears to have offered a compromise between informal music making familiar to the pauper patients while maintaining middle-class behavioural standards. Illustrations of asylum dances form some of the most vivid images of life in the institutions and offer a glimpse of the life of the pauper lunatics as imagined by outsiders: the dancing is wild and energetic, the hall busy with onlookers, the musicians usually tucked away in a corner.

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Sketches of individual patients, such as the drawings of the fancy dress ball at the Brookwood Lunatic Asylum published in the Illustrated London News in 1881, offered a humanised version of the asylum.12 Images of asylums and, more generally, the mad were popular in the nineteenth century: identifying and visualising the insane, Sander Gilman argues, helped the rest of society to define itself as sane, ordered and moral.13 The image of the asylum ball was used to illustrate the reforming, benevolent character of the new pauper asylums. As Dolly MacKinnon notes with reference to public asylums in Australia, ‘Images of patients moving to music demonstrate the therapeutic benefits of music on the mind, soul and body’.14 Such an image was important, not only for reassuring the general public about the efficacy of the new asylums, but for Medical Superintendents anxious to secure additional funding in order to provide facilities and space for recreational activities. MacKinnon argues that the ubiquity of such images also normalised the idea of music and dance as a form of medicine.15 Katharine Drake’s image of the ‘Patient’s Ball’ at the Somerset County Asylum in 1847 included a banner inscribed ‘harmony’, further emphasising the close link between music and wellbeing.16 The asylum ball likewise formed part of popular accounts of the asylum, such as in Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop: As I was looking at the marks in the walls of the galleries, of the posts to which patients were formerly chained, sounds of music were heard from a distance. The ball had begun, and we hurried off in the direction of the music… there were the patients usually to be found in all such asylums, among the dancers. There was the brisk, vain pippin-faced little old lady, in a fantastic cap… there was the old-young woman, with dishevelled long light hair, spare figure, and weird gentility… there was the vacantly laughing girl, requiring now and then a warning finger to admonish her; there was the quiet young woman, almost well, and soon going out. For partners, there were the sturdy, bull-necked, thickset little fellow who had tried to get away last week; the wry-faced tailor, formerly suicidal, but much improved; the suspicious patient with a countenance of gloom… there was the man of happy silliness, pleased with everything.17

Written accounts of dances and other festivities also provided rare opportunities for the public to gain an insight into the life and work of the asylum. The Asylum ball was one of the key opportunities for visiting dignitaries to view the asylum at work. As Dolly MacKinnon notes, the dance provided an opportunity for ‘public relations’, showcasing the

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best-behaved patients within an atmosphere of enjoyment and merriment.18 Forbes’s account of twelfth night at Hanwell emphasised the role of entertainment in the patients’ treatment: ‘These fêtes, or “parties,” as the patients call them, have not been got up from any motives of display, but constitute part of the system of management adopted by Dr. Conolly, one essential principle of which is—to endeavour to operate on the intellect through the affections’.19 As with the records from the Salpetriere asylum, the writer noted the importance of creating a comfortable and happy atmosphere for the patients, while noting that the magistrates governing the asylum had maintained a balance between their generosity in this regard and their ‘responsibilities as trustees of the public money’.20 Forbes describes the majority of patients as being ‘at least sedately cheerful’, being. on their legs, some dancing to the band, some in earnest conversation with the gentlemen or lady visitors, or with the officers of the house; some singing, some reciting poetry, many imparting in confidential whispers to the strangers their alleged wrongs from bad relatives, from wicked overseers, from corrupt magistrates, and from yet higher and more dignified functionaries.21

Accounts such as this helped to mould public perception of lunacy and its treatment through such descriptions, advancing the cause of moral management. Following his description of the dancing and music, Forbes emphasises the many ways in which the event exercised a beneficial influence on the patients as well as servants, attendants and associated visitors, including the children of asylum staff. The scenes of generosity and wellbeing evidenced at the twelfth-night party, Forbes argues, are reflective of the healthy occupation of patients to be found throughout the year at Hanwell, with marked influence on the treatment of inmates. The band itself was an important feature for asylum identity and may also have been intended to bring an element of reform and discipline to the sometimes wayward attendants. It certainly improved the sense of community, as reported by Lancashire County Asylum (Chapter 2). With male staff often drawn from ex-military personnel, asylum records frequently report on intemperance and poor behaviour, leading to dismissal. Asylum work was not well-paid and retaining staff was often a challenge. Like the bands of the northern mill towns, then, the asylum band may have acted as an important part of the work and life of the

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lower-grade staff, as well as the patients. Medical Superintendent James Sherlock at Worcester Asylum suggested in 1868 that cultivating musical talents among the attendants improved their taste and character, as well as giving them an opportunity to relax.22 During the second half of the nineteenth century many asylums preferred to hire attendants with musical ability.23 Additional payment was common, and some bands were further recognised with a separate uniform, perhaps another link to the military: the band at the Somerset Lunatic Asylum in Wells, for example, was described as ‘habited in a neat uniform of white kerseymere, faced with green’.24 Thus the band was linked to discipline, control and community as well as enjoyment and occupation.

Concerts and Musical Performances In addition to the activities of the band at dances, other formal musical activities were to be found, whether performed by the band, other internal musicians, or external visitors. As asylums expanded and their place in the social and cultural landscape solidified, many institutions became regular features in musicians’ tours. Indeed, with over one hundred institutions in operation across England and Wales by the end of the nineteenth century, they offered a rich seam of opportunity for itinerant musicians and other performers. The repertoire heard at formal concerts ranged widely in genre. At pauper asylums, popular repertoire was more likely to be found, from handbell ringers to mixed programmes of entertainment including songs and sketches similar to many music-hall variety acts. Classical repertoire was also encountered, most commonly in the form of string quartets. Asylums situated near large urban centres, particularly the London institutions, received visits from amateur groups such as choirs and opera groups. It was also not unusual for other charitable institutions, particularly schools, to send a choir to perform a concert or church service for the benefit of the asylum patients. It was less usual to find internal staff performing at formal concerts. This was the case at Bethlem Asylum at the end of the century, but the regular presence of Medical Officers in orchestral and chamber concerts here was due to the unusual talents of the senior staff and the particular context of the asylum in easy reach of other institutions (with similarly talented staff) and professional musicians. Miscellaneous concerts were, however, to be found at many asylums, featuring a mixture of musical and other items, such as recitations, sketches and comical acts. Among

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the pauper asylums these typically showcased the talents of attendants as well as officers. At the smaller private and charitable asylums, musical evenings, particularly those held within the ladies’ wards, were more likely to draw on the talents of patients. Middle-class women would have received musical training as part of a narrow education in social skills and accomplishments, and they brought their abilities, and sometimes their instruments, with them. Music was also to be found in the developing theatrical activities at some institutions. At the West Riding Asylum at Wakefield from the 1860s, theatrical pursuits were fashioned into a high-quality, serious endeavour, but from the 1840s many institutions included sketches, farces and musical theatre within their programmes, often constructing a temporary stage at one end of the recreation hall for the purpose. Musical theatre might involve a full band drawn from asylum staff, but smaller productions usually required a pianist. Theatrical events often adopted a miscellaneous character, including incidental music or songs. It was usual for the band to provide musical interludes between acts or numbers, with an opening overture and a rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’ to conclude. Although perhaps appearing to follow a random order, miscellaneous concerts and the mixed theatrical performances were carefully structured to balance the different genres, lengths of items and numbers of performers. The same was true for more highbrow chamber concerts, which often included one or two full pieces in sonata form, together with solo instrumental pieces, songs and occasionally transcriptions. The formal, socially-governed world of the concert provided additional constraints on audience behaviour. In the private and charitable asylums, where musical talents and resources meant patient-led concerts were more common, the social norms of the soirée, ‘at home’ or drawing room concert were re-enacted, providing important links to the values and patterns of the outside world. Practice at the larger pauper institutions and the private asylums diverged in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Most pauper asylums grew so large that formal dances and concerts performed by visiting acts were the most effective way of entertaining crowds of hundreds of patients. It was impossible to involve patients in these contexts, although many asylums provided pianos for patient use in the wards. At the smaller private institutions, patient—and staff-led musical activity proliferated, particularly in the form of the drawing room soirée, chamber music or

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smoking concert. Thus size as well as social background affected the types of musical activity and experience on offer. The repertoire of music performed in formal concerts, soiree and informal gatherings reflected the middle-class ideals of morality and selfcontrol as well as the simple backgrounds of most patients. As Derek B. Scott notes, the kinds of ballad songs found widely performed in middle-class homes were closely aligned with improvement and the idea of ‘rational amusement’.25 Themes of the song lyrics included mortality, love, children, friendship, courage and national pride. Many such ballads were found among the miscellaneous concerts of the pauper asylums, and the ‘at homes’ of the private institutions. Song dealing with more complex and contested emotions may have been deemed unsuitable; as Juliet Foster explains with regard to theatrical performance, comedy and farce were seen as most appropriate for audiences who may not be mentally or emotionally stable.26

Music in Religious Practice Chapels and religious spaces varied enormously between asylums. In many cases, through to the middle of the century, asylums lacked the funds for a separate building, and a large day room or the dining room was used for Sunday services. As pressure grew on dormitory space, day rooms and dining halls were often repurposed for sleeping quarters, and religious practice (as well as recreational activity) relegated to ad hoc arrangements within the wards or workrooms. Where dedicated chapels were built, they frequently became too small to fit the required portion of the patient population; alternative arrangements might be made, such as holding more than one service on a Sunday, or dividing male and female patients. Typically the proportion of patients attending the weekly service stood at between half and two-thirds; besides non-Anglican patients, others were unable to leave bed or the wards, or needed constant supervision away from other inmates. Additional religious observances might be held within the living spaces: in some cases short, daily prayer meetings took place before breakfast or after dinner, conducted by a visiting priest or resident chaplain, or by one of the medical officers, management staff or matron. The provision of a chapel building or dedicated space was not made a requirement for state asylums until the 1880s; in the smaller private and charitable institutions patients remained more likely to attend a local parish church or meet in one of the day rooms.

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Music was found throughout these settings. Where a hall or day room was used for services, a piano or harmonium was often purchased to allow for hymn-singing. An organ was often installed in a dedicated chapel, though this was usually the focus of a significant fundraising campaign and relied on the generosity of local supporters, rather than being paid for via the asylum’s general funds. In both cases the institution was usually reliant on its staff and associates for someone to play the instrument; whereas the asylum bands were staffed on the whole by male attendants, the organist or pianist was usually female, either one of the female attendants or the wife, daughter or sister of one of the male officers. Only one instance of a patient taking the role of organist has come to light, at the Norfolk County asylum, though this may have been more common than the formal records reflect. The same was true for ad hoc, smaller religious events often held in the wards or day rooms. A female attendant or associate might be present at times to play for a couple of hymns, but this was heavily dependent on working patterns, and tended to be subject to individual circumstances. Hymn singing, whether in the chapel or around a piano in the wards, was in many cases the only regular opportunity for the majority of patients to engage in musical performance themselves. Asylum accounts are testimony to large purchases of hymn books, often on a frequent basis as books were used (and perhaps abused) by patients. Increasingly, asylums made more formal arrangements for music in the chapel, particularly from the 1880s as patient populations grew and a dedicated chapel building with a resident Chaplain became the norm. At the Norfolk County asylum, for example, an organist was employed initially to play for a single service each Sunday, though the role grew to encompass several services in the 1860s. Local women or music teachers were often engaged for a moderate sum, or young professionals such as the cathedral organist’s apprentice hired by the Norfolk institution in 1879.27 Choirs in the chapel were less common than organists. Whereas an external professional musician was often brought in to train and establish a wind band, the chapel choir was more frequently directed by an internal member of staff. The choir was also more likely than the band to contain a mixture of patients, staff and relatives. Photographs of the choir at the West Riding Asylum, for example, reveal a treble line drawn from the young sons of attendants and officers.28 At Norfolk, the Matron was responsible for setting up a choir of patients and attendants in the 1850s, although an external musician received a small sum for teaching singing.

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Like the band, choirs were dependent on the availability of their members, and working patterns often hampered musical success, with different sets of singers being available for the morning and afternoon Sunday services. As with other musical activity, choirs developed further in the 1890s to offer formal concerts and provide an important link with the outside world. External choirs were also sometimes hosted by asylum chapels, sometimes with extravagant results, such as the choral festivals withband held at Bethlem in the 1890s. This was a particular feature of the medium size private asylums, where the presence of boarding patients may also have allowed for more collaboration between the asylum’s musicians and local amateur groups. Music also offered a solution for the traditional cessation of work activity on a Sunday. Patients who were kept active through manual work during the week could usefully be engaged in singing hymns outside of the Sunday services. At the Holloway Sanatorium, concerts of sacred music were introduced in 1894 as a suitable means for entertaining patients during Sunday evenings, with performances from patients and staff. A similar activity was introduced at the York Retreat early in the twentieth century; Sunday-evening singing was also recorded at the West Riding Asylum in 1844, again in relation to the restricted activities available to patients. Sacred music—whether hymns, moral songs or instrumental solos—offered an opportunity for communal activity within the bounds of social and religious expectations. As the established religion, the Anglican church dominated religious observance within asylums and was usually the only religion formally provided for by the State institutions. Yet asylum records show a wide range of religious affiliations, particularly patients from non-Conformist and Catholic persuasions. Many registers record small numbers of Jewish patients, and others from minor religions or sects. In most cases there is no record of separate provision for these; they may have been visited by friends or relatives or kept private observances. Some asylums made arrangements with a local Catholic priest to visit on occasion, and elsewhere small parties of selected patients might be organised to attend a nearby mass. In Brookwood Asylum, for example, a Catholic priest conducted weekly services on a Sunday afternoon and these were sometimes enhanced musically by one of the staff.29 The Retreat at York provides an alternative perspective: its Quaker foundation meant that music was considered unsuitable for patients, and few musical activities were provided until a broader spectrum of patients

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began to be admitted in the second half of the century. With music proving important for patient identity in addition to wellbeing, its place in religious contexts was significant.

Music in the Patient Quarters In addition to formal, organised musical events such as concerts, dances and religious services, music was often to be found in asylum wards, galleries, day rooms and elsewhere. As noted above, trained musicians (performers and teachers) as well as music sellers, musical instrument makers and piano tuners were among the patients admitted to pauper lunatic asylums as well as private institutions, and other residents will have included those with musical training, such as the teachers and governesses included among the paupers. Many of the middle- and upper-class women resident in private and charitable asylums would have received musical training and were also more likely to bring personal possessions, such as instruments or sheet music, with them to the institution. As with chapel music, the ad hoc, smaller musical events in the private and charitable institutions were often heavily dependent on the talents of female associates of the male officers. Wives, in particular, were central to hosting small gatherings in the ‘salon’ tradition, playing the piano on an informal basis and supporting the musical aspirations of individual patients. The social class of both patients and staff was an important factor in the types and locations of music, and its position within asylum life. With asylums intended to replicate, in many ways, the situation and experiences of patients in normal society, small and intimate musical events were a part of the social element of asylum life for the middle and upper classes. Here, musical gatherings and soirees were part of the attempt to recreate the domestic environment. The series of ‘musical evenings’ held at Bethlem and similar events at other private and charitable asylums demonstrate regular performance by both staff, patients and associates but these were not replicated elsewhere, perhaps due to the size and restrictions of the larger county and private institutions. Among the private asylums, both Bethlem and the Holloway Sanatorium admitted boarders, voluntary patients, who contributed to the day-to-day life of the institutions via organising social gatherings and administrative tasks. For pauper patients, who were much less likely to own or play an instrument or to experience private concerts, music was largely restricted to larger gatherings and religious contexts.

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Detailed records of informal performance by patients are rare. Accounts and other reports show that many asylums purchased pianos for use in the day rooms and wards; by the end of the nineteenth century it was not unusual for each ward to contain a cottage piano, with a grand piano for use in the recreation hall and often also in the dining room. Nurses’ day rooms were also often equipped with a piano, as can be seen in photographs from the period. The presence of pianos as a sign of musical activity must, of course, be treated carefully: the journalist Nellie Bly recorded from her investigation in a New York Lunatic Asylum that one piano’s ‘untuned response sent a grinding chill through me’.30 Accounts often include piano tuning just once a year, and asylums were large buildings prone to draughts and damp. Photographic evidence also occasionally points to other instruments in the wards, particularly violins or folk fiddles.31 One patient’s account describes his use of this instrument while in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum: ‘I still play a little on the violin and one of the gentlemen in this gallery accompanies me’.32 An overview of music at the Lancaster County Asylum in 1893 recounted having cello players, singers and pianists among the patient body, as well as a recent excellent violinist: ‘many pleasant evenings he and I spent in playing away at some masterpiece for violin and piano’.33 Yet in most cases there is no information about patients playing violins or other instruments, particularly at the pauper institutions. Patient notes do not form a core part of the material used to assess the role of music in asylums in this study, but a small sample of patient notes from the Holloway Sanatorium has revealed occasional small references to patients making and responding to music themselves. This example, and the insight it provides into the complicated relationship between music and mental health, is discussed in my final case study. Finally, scheduled musical activity was to be found in some activities in the form of singing and music literacy classes. At the combined Gloucester asylum, for example, singing classes on the Mainzerian sol-fa model were adopted in the 1850s; at the same time at Worcester, singing classes were established, while at that institution ‘training in musical knowledge’ was offered in the 1890s. Educational opportunities in music were sometimes, but not always, tied together with the religious music of the chapel. However, education was a firm part of the moral mission of the asylum, and suitable music would have aimed to instil appropriate moral values in patients as well as giving them approved methods of keeping themselves entertained during periods of recreation.

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Music and Gender Asylums were highly segregated institutions and, on the whole, there were few opportunities for male and female patients to meet. In many institutions men and women were separated entirely, with two mirrorimage wings of the building each housing dormitories, day rooms, airing courts, dining rooms and other facilities. Men were usually employed out of doors or in workshops; women were more likely to be employed in domestic work or activities such as needlework. The two groups were usually only combined for religious services and large recreational activities, such as fairs and dances. In these circumstances, music was often an important factor in negotiating the social challenges of such a meeting, whether through the social mores of the dance or the structure of hymns and psalms that formed the Anglican service. Other musical activities helped to differentiate the two genders, emphasising the contrasting social and behavioural expectations placed on men and women. The asylum band was entirely composed of men, usually drawn from the attendants, and other groups such as minstrels were also restricted to male patients or staff. At West Riding Asylum it was the men that stayed on after dinner for music and singing before resuming their work.34 On the other hand, women’s wards and nurses’ common rooms were more likely to house a piano, and in the private asylums it was the women’s communal spaces that were used for soirees or musical evenings (although often male officers and patients were invited). Men’s wards, in contrast, could host ‘smoking concerts’ featuring more popular music and acts such as blackface minstrels. Women were particularly useful among the staff members engaged in providing musical opportunities. Female staff and relatives often played the organ or harmonium, sang in the choir, and took part in songs and choruses within more miscellaneous programmes. In both instances these reflected the usual gendered divisions of musical activity from outside the asylum.35 Women were in the majority among asylum patients, and the recorded causes of insanity echoed the perceived links with pregnancy, childbirth and particularly ‘female’ tendencies towards emotional states. However, the uses of music in the asylum do not reflect contemporary views on music as a negative force among women, whether through sensual stimulation or intellectual fatigue.36 In general in the pauper asylums, men and women patients experienced the same formal musical opportunities; in the private asylums and where informal music making was concerned, and where patients had more opportunities for musical participation, traditional gender roles were followed.

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Music and Class The case studies examined in the second part of this volume include pauper lunatic asylums, charitable asylums and the private asylums catering for the wealthier middle- and upper-classes. The types of music provided and pursued in the different institutions varied, as part of the aim to construct a familiar ‘home-from-home’ environment for patients. This was made explicit in the early history of the Gloucester asylum, where pauper and private patients were housed in different wings of the same institution, with quite different levels of recreational facilities and entertainment on offer.37 As the provision of recreation and entertainment developed in the larger pauper asylums, some elements were common across the different institutions: asylum bands, for example, were formed in almost all asylums, and likewise most offered a programme of visiting performers, ranging from Classical soloists to opera troupes and popular entertainers. Strict class structures meant that the provision of music in pauper institutions was not taken for granted. Charles Corsellis, Superintendent at the West Riding Asylum between 1831 and 1853, repeatedly argued that patients of this class were better suited to hard work than ‘trifling’ amusements, both as part of their treatment and in preparation for rehabilitation.38 At the Gloucester asylum, the types of activity considered suitable for different classes was equally clear: here, pauper, charitable and private patients were housed in different wings of one institution, with the private patients alone offered the luxuries of musical entertainment as well as close interaction with the institution’s medical management.39 Although music was widely adopted among the pauper asylums, its role as a form of therapy rather than an indulgence was emphasised by Medical Superintendents. In contrast, Medical Officers at private institutions were more likely to describe music as an enjoyable pastime, befitting the social status and experience of patients. The impact of class is also evident in the work of charitable asylums. The York Retreat began as an unusual institution, being founded on Quaker principles. However, from the mid-nineteenth century it began to accept charitable and paying patients from non-Quaker backgrounds, at which point its provision of music and other entertainments increased. Similarly, the Bethlem Hospital began to take middle-class charitable patients as state provision for paupers was improved in the early- to midnineteenth century. Bethlem remained small, allowing for more intimate

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musical and social events, and its proximity to the city of London also permitted considerable contact with the cultural world, as did its musically talented senior staff of the late-nineteenth century. As a charitable, rather than state, institution, it also drew a good deal of support from philanthropists as well as musical performers. Musical programmes drew on a wealth of both amateur and professional performers, and the institution received donations of musical instruments as well as financial support. It is not surprising to find a good deal of common ground between private and pauper asylums where the practical development of moral management is concerned, as medical staff frequently moved between private and state provision. Rather, it is the scale and frequency of music making that varied most between different types of institution, with private asylums typically spending more on entertainment. Private institutions also typically offered more of a focus on Classical repertoire, with concerts of chambermusic and even orchestral repertoire which were absent from the pauper asylums. In addition, the patients in private asylums were given the opportunity and resources to organise their own events, whether performing themselves or making use of networks of friends and family to sponsor visiting professionals or pay for instruments. This both reflected the availability of resources—pianos, instruments, and musical ability or training—and the cultural norms of the world outside the asylum, where middle-class women (in particular) routinely used music as a form of socialisation.

Music, Noise and the Soundscape of the Asylum Music was clearly very much part of the soundscape of the asylum, from organised musical events to ad hoc performances and individual players. Yet the soundscape—both music and noise—was much broader than the music described in extant records. As well as music, sound came under the attention of asylum management and formed a part of schemes for moral management. Prisons and workhouses often operated a silent system, with inmates forbidden to speak or sing except under particular circumstances. John Conolly, at Hanwell Asylum, promoted quiet and tranquillity within the asylum; an extract from his report on the wards on Christmas Eve equates sound with disorder, whether talking, laughing or drumming on the side of a bed.40 Bells, gongs and shouted instructions organised the day for the patients. The soundscape of the asylum also helped to underline other aspects: segregation by gender and class would have

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been reflected in the voices heard in each section, while the times of day ascribed for religious worship, recreation and work were also echoed in different patterns of noise, music and silence.41 Although the county pauper asylums tended to draw patients from the local area, on occasion overpopulation led to a transfer between different institutions, which could lead to patient being housed far from their home. Differences in accent, dialect, vocabulary and songs might further act as an expression of identity, belonging or otherness. Sound remains important in the experience of health institutions; Tom Rice’s study ‘Broadcasting the body: the “private” made “public” in hospital soundscapes’ notes the effect of sound on patient identity and privacy.42 Rice notes in particular the impact of communal living: as one patient commented upon admission to hospital, ‘the first thing you lose is your privacy, the second is your dignity and the third is your sanity’. The use of music, noise and silence as a tool for power and suffering in large institutions has been explored in a modern context in the same volume by Suzanne G. Cusick.43 The present study is focussed on deliberate acts of music making, rather than the general soundscape of the asylum environment. But this does not mean that music was voluntarily listened to, or enjoyed. In many ways, music formed part of the structured soundscape of the asylum, in the same way that clocks, alarms, bells and silence helped to regulate time and activity. Music could be positioned in the foreground or the background, it could invite participation via singing or dancing, trigger an emotional or physical response, or simply form part of the overall auditory experience. The interaction of sound and space was particularly important, with sounds and music used to help demarcate spaces as well as time and structure. The establishment of separate spaces for dining, entertainment, worship, recreation and sleep was key to the planning of nineteenthcentury asylums, and in many cases ongoing debates over funding for a new chapel or recreation hall spanned much of the century. With expanding populations, however, spaces were frequently conflated. Recreational activities were relegated to makeshift spaces shared with workshops or dining tables, and concerts or hymns might be heard in the same space being used as a dormitory. In these cases music and sound could help to affirm or destabilise established structures and spaces. Individual instances of music and sound could also conform to or contradict the structures of the asylum. As with other forms of behaviour (such as dance), the

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same sounds in different contexts could have different meanings, particularly within the heavily-regulated world of the asylum. A patient singing or dancing in the expected manner within an organised activity would receive approbation; singing and dancing in the wards or in the middle of the night could be noted as another symptom of mental instability.44 Music, noise and silence were used in this way as part of medical assessment and description: as Dolly MacKinnon notes, ‘madness was both audible and visible’.45 Noise and language might signify a state of mind, or evidence of compliance or deviance.46 On admission, patients were often described as ‘noisy’, a shorthand for general excitement, and Samuel Tuke’s 1815 description of the three categories of patient included ‘1st class, Those who are disposed to incoherent laughing and singing; and generally, all those who are capable of very little rational enjoyment’.47 Sound, speech and music might be used by patients in an attempt to remain sane, or to maintain a connection with their life outside the institution. Nellie Bly describes in 1887 a fellow patient who ‘sang in order to try to maintain her memory, but at last the nurse made her stop it’.48 In contrast a journalist describing the Earlswood Asylum in 1864 recorded that, while on admission many patients had ‘tongues and could not speak’, the success of the institution could be seen in their behaviour: ‘all more or less awakened to life and understanding, running and leaping, laughing and chatting, asking and answering questions, and contending with each other in a high spirit of emulation in all kinds of games’.49 Where order and control were important management principles, music could be a positive or a negative feature of the soundscape. It could form part of the ‘noise’ to be eradicated, or an aspect of the daily routine and part of social reconditioning. Accessing the soundworld of the asylum remains challenging. At the small, private Barnwood House asylum, for example, management minutes tell us that pianos were installed in the day rooms for the use of the privileged patients in residence. An anonymous account from the 1880s, however, makes reference to noise, disturbance and banging on pianos, a strong contrast to the orderly impression given in the formal records.50 The many records of asylum bands and choirs tell us that the quality of their performances was variable, often dependent on the availability of particular members of staff, with combinations of instruments changing under the rapid turnover of attendants. Tracing the aural experiences of patients is one way to attempt to create a social history of the asylum, moving away from accounts dominated

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by political legislation and structural development. In this case, however, the majority of my material is still drawn from the management: aural experiences are, nevertheless, captured in written documentation. The multi-sensory approach to history advocated by scholars such as Mark M. Smith and John M. Picker is here paired with a parallel interest in the textual records, debates and reports regarding music’s position from the perspective of the authorities.51 My contribution to a sound studies standpoint on asylum history is, therefore, matched by an equal interest in structural approaches. Daniel Morat asks ‘Have “auditory regimes” been equally important in the formation of modern culture and modern subjectivity as “scopic regimes”?’52 Within the closed context of the asylum we have the opportunity to investigate the use of music and sound as part of a very specific regime, giving an insight into a very idealised place for music. Indeed, as we will see, music contributed a great deal to the asylum regime and culture. Music spoke to the senses and emotions, offering opportunities for individual expression and social experience. At the same time, it operated in strictly-controlled environments where behaviour was closely monitored and social mores expected to be observed. Both freeing and controlling patients, it represented—through sound—the central contradiction of the asylum as a place of safety and treatment, regulation and constraint.

Therapy, Moral Management and the Purposes of Music Music had a variety of meanings within the asylum: as already seen, it could represent part of the order and rationality so important within institutional structures as an integral part of the system of ‘moral management’, and it could symbolise insanity and irrationality as a form of ‘noise’; it could be associated with formal behaviour in concerts, dances and chapel services, or it could signify individual expression and nonconformity. In many cases, music was associated with a wide range of purposes: at Gloucester Asylum in 1871, for example, it was considered not only to promote cheer and good feeling, but ‘conduce actively towards cure’, while at Barnwood House in 1877 it was variously described as having a curative effect, helping patients avoid idleness and aiding in the avoidance of acts of destruction or mental degradation.53 Within the reports of the Medical Superintendents, a number of common

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themes can be identified which help to explore the role of music in the asylum.54 The most common description of the music in an asylum was that it provided entertainment and diversion within the context of a restrictive and monotonous environment. At the Norfolk County Asylum, for example, Medical Superintendent J.M. Bacon described ‘musical additions’ as ‘a pleasure and a benefit’.55 Depressive patients were encouraged to pursue occupations which distracted their minds from their troubles. While almost all pauper asylums offered opportunities for employment, in many cases only around 60% of patients were able to take part due to physical restrictions, so musical entertainments were effective in offering diversion to a larger group. Musical activity promoted enjoyment in the moment, and at times in anticipation. One description from the Morningside Asylum in Edinburgh recounted ‘The excitement they had undergone showed no lasting effect upon them: the stimulant appeared to have acted, as it were, mechanically; for the moment it was withdrawn the patients returned to their ordinary condition. Still, it seems, the meetings are looked forward to with pleasure during the rest of the week. One unhappy inmate is so nearly in a state of dementia, that only two ideas exist within him – the ball on Thursdays, and the chapel on Sundays’.56 The Lancaster County Asylum described in a Magazine of Music article of 1893 summarised ‘Music plays a very prominent part in the working of these institutions. The insane are always more or less fond of it, and some recreation must be found, not only for them, but also for the nurses and attendants’.57 It was within the realm of enjoyment and entertainment that music was most closely connected with the idea of ‘cure’. A second key theme of many reports was that music engendered a sense of self-control among patients. In some cases, musical events were used as a reward for patients who had conformed to expected patterns of behaviour, but many Superintendents also emphasised the effects of music on patients’ self-control, which, they suggested, could last for several days before or after the relevant event. Thomas Nadauld Brushfield, writing at Brookwood asylum in 1868, noted that noisy patients were quiet for several days leading up to the entertainment, and during it, though lasting effects were more difficult to notice.58 Superintendents’ reports also emphasised the importance of the intellectual engagement with music shown by many patients, especially at concerts where patients were expected to listen, rather than take part. An intellectual, rather than emotional, response from patients helped to connect music further

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with ideas of rationality and control. Music was repeatedly linked with patients experiencing calm and order, and the early stages of recovery. Whether this was a genuine ‘therapy’, or emphasised in order to justify the continued expense of music and other entertainments, is hard to tell at an historical distance. Yet it is clear that music became entwined with the therapeutic purposes of moral management from an early stage, and was closely associated with the idea of ‘control’ which was central to establishing moral and behavioural norms. Rationality and order were the focus of one description of a festival held at the Pauper asylum in Lincoln in 1841. The festival comprised a celebration tea followed by a ‘merry dance’; the asylum was decorated by the patients themselves and the music was provided by two violins and ‘two Swiss girls, who travel with the French pianos and tambourine’.59 The author reflected that To describe the effect that the first note of music striking on the ear produced in the male ward is impossible; all were in a moment subdued – the latent and inactive mind seemed to send forth every remnant of ‘reason’s wreak’; the most turbulent were soothed into quiet; and the parties and coteries were formed, with more regularity and order than at some rational meetings.60

The author continued with similar astonishment at the transformation of the female patients: In the morning we had seen them, melancholy evidences of minds overthrown; noisy, vociferous, and ‘holding discourse with incorporeal air, and bending their eyes on vacancy;’ now entering fully into social pleasures. At first it seemed by a dream, which at length burst into reality; we mixed with them, and joined them in the dance; and those who in the morning would have excited alarm, were now fit to be companions of confidence and security. Not only did we take for partners the most violent cases, but Miss Z., of whom so much has been written, whose violence has been so much spoken of, whose ‘untameable spirit ’ has caused her to undergo months and months of seclusion – this patient was as subdued and as quiet as the most convalescent.61

This image of rational, ordered behaviour recalls the association of asylums with social control. The link between music and control has been further developed within the context of the asylum ball by Sander Gilman;

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as Dolly MacKinnon explains, ‘the images of music and dance in the popular press depict madness within a medicalised and contained environment of the asylum or hospital. Although the “mad” are portrayed they are under the control and therapeutic influence of the music, the medical staff and the institution’.62 Both the careful structures of the dance or chapel service, and the musical repertoire of the soirée or concert could emphasise social and cultural order. The emphasis on rationality and order was linked to a restoration of balance in energies more reminiscent of the ancient theories of the humours. Where patients were lacking in energy, music could prove restorative, and where patients lacked control, music could calm. John D. Cleaton, Superintendent at the West Riding Asylum in the late 1850s, noted this particular dual aspect of music’s powers.63 While music was described as pleasurable and enjoyable, it was offered within carefully-structured social settings and can be seen as a part of the asylum’s mission to prepare patients for rehabilitation into society. Whether the behaviour of an audience at a concert, the singing and listening of congregations in a church, engagement in dancing or the social sphere of the salon, musical contexts were closely associated with social contexts. Concerts, excursions and dances all required a certain level of conformity to social norms, particularly where contact between the sexes was permitted. Music therefore provided both an opportunity for connection to the outside world, and a space for the enactment of middle class ideals: as a facilitator of social re-conditioning through its links to prescribed behaviours. The role of music might be linked to rehabilitation, but it might also be considered as part of ‘habilitation’, alongside the schemes of rational recreation and self-improvement likewise considered central to social stability and encouraged by the middle classes from the mid-eighteenth century.64 In practice, music was used in different forms and with different ends. The Norfolk Superintendent William Hills described the benefits of music as relief from monotony, moral treatment and an incentive to work; at around the same time the Commissioners in Lunacy reflected on the use of music as an inducement for patients to take exercise. Even once a more medical approach to mental illness was established, music and other forms of entertainment continued to be described as central to the moral management programme. Norfolk Superintendent David Thomson, for example, identified music in 1903 as a ‘powerful remedial agent’.

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Music was experienced within the asylum in both active and passive forms. Patients might participate in music making as part of religious services, or in some cases when music was performed in the wards and day rooms. The regular dance was also an opportunity for participation in a physical sense, through dancing. Yet even the more passive opportunities, such as formal concerts, could provoke an active response. One account of an evening theatrical performance at the Somerset County Asylum near Wells describes the overture performed by the band: ‘all appeared to be pleased, and all listened to the music with great attention, although some of the females, and these generally among the older ones – appeared to find the inclination to dance irresistible’.65 Records do not tend to acknowledge the different types of musical experience offered by the different activities, nor any differences in their therapeutic efficacy. Although listening and performing may have engaged patients in different ways, the popular and communal idioms of many performances, the largely amateur nature of the performers and the informal settings suggest a continuity between the two, with patients joining in dancing or singing at will. Music was not always seen as a positive force. Samuel Tuke, writing in 1850, expressed concerns that pauper patients should not be treated to entertainments above their station. Tuke argued. These great and very occasional efforts to occupy and amuse the Patients even if no objection could be taken to their character, are very transient in their pleasurable effect, and if not followed up by any corresponding efforts to please, may probably only induce a stronger feeling of restlessness and discomfort under the requisite restraints. What we want in Asylums is not (except in a few cases) the violent excitement of pleasurable feelings but the engagement of the mind in the pursuit of some rational object in which it can feel an interest or in which without much painful effort, it can be induced to engage.66

Employing musical attendants sometimes led to staff being unable to perform their duties, as in the case of the Brookwood bandmaster who resigned after only two months in 1871, ‘being unfit for attendants duty’.67 At the Holloway Sanatorium, the patient case notes demonstrate a fine line between music indicating patient wellbeing, and that which could be regarded as symptomatic of madness, with musical activity expected to conform to social expectations in terms of its form, location

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and timing. Singingunder control within a choir was a sign of mental wellbeing, but night-time song likely to be an indication of ill health. The late-nineteenth-century decay in conditions at state-run asylums caused by inadequate buildings and facilities, overpopulation, and a stalling in medical development, is often characterised as ‘psychiatric pessimism’.68 Yet the story of music in asylums often challenges this overall assessment. Moral management was most effective in smaller establishments, yet Medical Superintendents at institutions such as the West Riding Asylum or the Bethlem Hospital managed to introduce ways of using entertainment, including music, to form a cohesive programme for patients throughout the last few decades of the nineteenth century. The development of resident bands, large concerts and music in religious contexts, all contributed to a re-fashioning of moral management for the expanded, and often impecunious, asylum. And while a twentyfirst century perspective suggests that moral management largely failed as an approach, it is clear that music was one of the few effective tools available to asylum staff to address the challenges facing them. The positive effects associated with music again speak to the theme of ‘cure and control’; indeed, patients’ ability to adopt self-control was a key function of ‘cure’. Music was associated on a broad level with individual faculties of control, as well as the ability to exhibit appropriate conduct in social situations such as the dance or chapel. Music, noise and silence were all indicative of a patient’s mental state and recovery. In modern medical terminology, ‘cure’ and ‘control’ have very different meanings. In the context of mental illness, however, and particularly within nineteenth-century practice, ‘cure’ was closely aligned with ‘control’, patients aiming to demonstrate their own self-control as well as the ability to live according to social norms of conduct. While much more benign than the chains and manacles formerly associated with the madhouse, music provided the enjoyment, routine and social structures that supported patients’ return to accepted modes of expression and behaviour. The Parisian physician Esquirol remarked ‘I have often employed music, but have rarely been successful with it. It brings peace and composure of mind, but it does not cure’.69 Perhaps then, control as a form of cure was the only realistic aim of music within the asylum.

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Case Studies The case studies presented in the remainder of this volume bring to the fore a wide range of aspects concerning the place and role of music in nineteenth-century British asylums. The five main County pauper asylums studied all follow a similar pattern, with asylum bands established in the middle of the century, chapel music present to a greater or lesser extent and additional musical events in the form of concerts, theatrical performances and ad hoc music making. Each asylum also offers insights into the perceived relation between music and health. At some pauper asylums, music took on a formal and extended role, such as within the theatrical stagings at the West Riding Asylum. Archives vary enormously in content and detail, as do the formal reports printed on an annual basis. The asylums at Gloucester and Worcester left little evidence of individual musical events, but details in the archives such as the wages and organisation of external, professional musicians at Worcester in the 1870s and 1880s give important information about the ways in which music was valued, and the intersection between the asylum and the wider world. For other institutions, the archives offer a rich glimpse of an active musical world: extant programmes and posters from West Riding offer a colourful picture of the theatrical achievements of inmates and staff; a large collection of band music dating from the Norfolk County Asylum from the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries gives a unique view on repertoire; while the records of attendance and programmes for dances at Brookwood Asylum in Woking from the late 1880s allow us to get a sense of the experiences of patients and staff at individual events. Three of the case studies, focussed on Norfolk (1814), West Riding in Yorkshire (1818) and Gloucester (1823), relate to asylums founded within the first few years of public provision. In these cases we see the early exploration of moral management within new institutional settings, the provision of occupation and work, and the gradual introduction of music and entertainment. The two remaining studies of public asylums, Worcester (1852) and Brookwood in Surrey (1867), examine institutions set up once asylum practice was established and during the era of compulsory provision following the 1845 Lunacy Act. At Brookwood, in particular, music and entertainment were embedded within a full programme of moral management from the outset. Each asylum is traced through expansion and development into a mature institution, examining

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the pressures and opportunities this involved, and the impact these had on provision of music as part of the therapeutic landscape. Contrasting the pauper asylums with a range of private and charitable institutions gives further information about the perceived roles of music within mental health care and treatment, and the specific links between musical activity, patient class and institutional type. With music deeply embedded in the quest for moral treatment or management and the therapeutic patient experience, the type of domestic life appropriate for different classes of patients had an important influence on the types of employment, entertainment and recreational activity considered suitable. Occupying middle- and upper-class patients at the private asylums was often a challenge. It was not reasonable to engage them in manual or farm work, as was often the case at the pauper institutions. Women could be given embroidery or painting but music and other entertainments often emerged as the most respectable and practical way to give structure and interest to patients’ lives. Music and entertainment also offered a suitable draw for attendants and nurses. The private asylums examined here are also chosen in order to capture the range of institutions at work during the Victorian period. Two, the Bethlem Hospital (1330) and the York Retreat (1796), predate the 1808 Act. While Bethlem was a charitable institution intended for the poorest members of society, the York Retreat catered for Quaker patients from all classes. Both moved to take more middle-class patients from the middle of the nineteenth century. A third institution, Barnwood, was a much smaller and more exclusive private asylum in Gloucester, which had begun life allied to the public asylum before separating in 1860. Finally, the Holloway Sanatorium (1885) represents a large institution established later in the nineteenth century with the specific remit of catering to middle-class patients, combining organisational and management approaches drawn from the pauper institutions with the lifestyle provided in smaller private asylums. Private asylums, particularly during the first half of the nineteenth century, were not subject to the level of scrutiny imposed on the new and state-funded County asylums, and archive holdings vary. It is rarely possible to build up a picture for a private institution that is as detailed or as complete as that for the County asylums. Yet the differences in archive holdings sometimes reveal other aspects of the relationship between music and health that add a new dimension to our story. The ephemeral archive

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holdings of individual institutions also rely heavily on the work and interests of their management. Beyond the formal holdings of Annual reports, staffing registers and accounts, it was incumbent upon individuals to ensure the survival of programmes and playlists from concerts, dances and fetes, photos of the asylum band or descriptions of patient music making. Where the formal archives of the Holloway Sanatorium are sparse, for example, the patient case notes offer some new perspectives into the medical interpretation of musical ability and participation on an individual level. In the case studies which follow I have endeavoured to convey the individual nature of each institution, as well as its extant archive, reflecting on the constraints of each narrative as well as the opportunities presented by differences between the collections. Although the case studies have been arranged with pauper and private institutions separated for convenience, there was a good deal of overlap, not least in the case of Gloucester Asylum, where private, charitable and pauper patients shared a site between 1823 and 1860. Despite differences in character, practices and individuals moved freely across the public and private spheres. In many cases it was practical considerations that led to differences between the two types of institution. In the case of Gloucester, after the private and pauper elements divided in the 1860s, differences can be seen in the amount of patient engagement with music. At the larger public asylum patients were largely passive, while the smaller private institution either encouraged or relied on patient involvement for some activities, with patients (particularly females) also more likely to possess musical skill and training. The case studies are all drawn from English asylums. As other studies have shown, asylum practice was shared widely, and many of the features discussed here would have been familiar to staff and patients throughout North America and Australasia. Within the United Kingdom, movement between asylums, particularly among senior medical staff, as well as the uniting power of the Commissioners, who served England and Wales, meant practice was also relatively uniform as the century progressed. Approaches to asylum management were also shared with Scotland, with the Crichton Royal Institution in Dumfries representing one of the most advanced and innovative asylums under the leadership of Dr William Alexander Francis Browne in and early- and mid-nineteenth century. Browne’s work drew on both Scottish and English institutions and was shared via publications, lectures and his role as a Commissioner; his son, Sir James Crichton-Browne, was an influential Medical Superintendent

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and writer.70 In the mid- and late-nineteenth century Edinburgh became an important centre for training and research in psychiatry, with alienists Thomas Clouston and David Skae playing an important part in training English Asylum Superintendents.71 A report from 1843 recounts patients at the Morningside Asylum performing their ‘Sunday psalmody’ at the outset of a choral class with the music educator Joseph Mainzer.72 The activities of the patients, described in an 1857 Report under Skae, follow the same pattern as at English asylums, with ‘books and newspapers, … concerts, dances, lectures, and occasional country excursions’.73 While much practice was shared between the different institutions, however, the picture that emerges is also one in which individuals play a large part in determining the ways in which music was absorbed into the fabric of asylum institutions during the nineteenth century. The individual beliefs of medical superintendents were influential in financing and developing a band, in building and equipping a chapel and in making time for patients’ entertainment. Medical superintendents, other officers and the team of Visitors were also crucial in determining the level of support from the local community, which might in turn affect funding for concerts and fetes, donations of instruments, offers of performances or sponsorship of individual events. In some cases, the musical talents of individual officers were also central to the development of a vibrant musical culture. This was particularly the case at Bethlem in the 1880s and 1890s, where a succession of gifted and well-connected amateur musicians capitalised on the asylum’s position in central London, not only performing in chamber concerts themselves but also bringing in numerous local amateur and professional performers. The influence of individuals among the medical management adds to the predominance of the medical voice among the official reports. It is here that the most detail regarding the place and role of music can be found. Yet, as noted, it was often the visitors and management committee, made up of lay people, that held ultimate power in the administration of the pauper asylums. While Medical Superintendents might be the driving force behind many of the innovations to be found in asylums, records show that each expense had to be cleared with the management board. Moreover, where entertainments and activities were concerned, external visitors were likely to be present in order to maintain contact and scrutiny over the ways in which the asylum was run. Medical Superintendents were under pressure, therefore, both to manage the asylum in ways that were acceptable (both economically and socially) to the lay representatives and

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to report their work in a favourable light. They were also motivated by self-interest: the use of medical terminology to describe and interpret asylum management, the emphasis on treatment as a scientific practice and the formation of societies and publications are part of a defines of the role of the medic in a structure which, until the medical developments of the 1870s, was heavily lay-oriented. In this way the ‘voice’ of the Medical Superintendent, other medical officers and the Chaplain, needs to be read in the context of an influential, largely upper-class, managing group. The paucity of the patient voice among extant records means this study is necessarily a ‘top-down’ account, reliant on the reports of asylum officers as well as formal records for the majority of its data. Nevertheless this intense archival approach is intended to avoid a focus on legislative changes or official policy. The case studies are designed to foreground detailed investigations into the complex nature of each institution, facilitating both a multifaceted exploration of each on its own terms, and subsequent comparison and critique. While the result is undeniably a history of institutions and ideas, the narrative approach also allows for the histories of individual people and contexts to be drawn out. The materials discussed here, and in the case studies, tell us about the everyday as well as the big picture in asylum life, the work of individuals and isolated occasions as well as the influence of larger-scale developments and broader movements. They add a dimension of aurality to the existing images and narratives of nineteenth-century asylums, uncovering a hitherto-lost area of musical life. They offer a new perspective for adjudicating the tensions, pressures and motives behind the ways in which asylums were managed and their patients treated. Finally, they tell us about the fundamental links between music, health and wellbeing that played such a strong part in asylum care and management during the nineteenth century, and continue to speak loud and clear today.

Notes 1. ‘Report of the Commissioner in Lunacy’ in Appendix to Journals of Senate and Assembly, State of California (Sacramento: Springer, 1872), 295. 2. Gavin Holman includes 33 Asylum bands in his list of British institutional bands, most dating from the 1860s. See ‘Music of Discipline and Reform—The Bands of Children’s Orphanages, Industrial Schools and Asylums’, accessed online at http://ibew.org.uk/Musicofdiscipline.pdf. 3. ‘Festival at a Lunatic Asylum’ in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, no. 514 (December 4, 1841), 367.

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4. See ‘Instruction at Lunatic Asylums’ in Provincial Medical Journal and Retrospect of the Medical Sciences Vol. IV no. 8 (28 May 1842), 158. The Gloucester Asylum was founded in 1823 and, initially, combined a pauper institution with a private section. It is likely that the wealth of entertainment referred primarily to the provision made for private patients. 5. Dr. Forbes, ‘Twelfth Night in a Lunatic Asylum’ in Provincial Medical Journal and Retrospect of the Medical Sciences Vol. V no. 121 (21 January 1843), 336–338: 336. The dancing was followed by a further series of vocal and instrumental musical items. 6. Extant music from the Norfolk County Asylum includes marked violin and piano parts. These form part of the extensive collection currently held by David Juritz. 7. See Paul Tobia, The Patients of the Bristol Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century, 1861–1900 (Unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of the West of England, 2017), 112. 8. One exception is the band at the Broadmoor Hospital, where ‘Patients were given singing lessons and taught how to play instruments, and some joined the asylum band’. See Reports of the Superintendent and Chaplain of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for the Year 1876 (London: George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1877), 9, quoted in Jade Shepherd, ‘“I Am Very Glad and Cheered When I Hear the Flute”: The Treatment of Criminal Lunatics in Late-Victorian Broadmoor’ in Medical History Vol. 60 no. 4 (October 2016), 479. 9. Charlotte Phillips, Ten Years (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1868), 333–338. The account has been linked to the West Riding Asylum where Phillips spent time. See Hester Parr and Chris Philo, ‘Mapping Mad. Identities’, in Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift, Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural. Transformation (London: Routledge, 1995), 200–217. 10. Ibid., 334. 11. ‘Visit to the Morning-side Asylum’ in Journal of Mental Science 5 (October 1858), 100. 12. Illustrated London News Vol. LXXVIII no. 2175 (22 January 1881), 85– 86. 13. Gilman, Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to Aids (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 48. 14. ‘Music, Madness and the Body: Symptom and Cure’ in History of Psychiatry Vol. XVII no. 1 (2006), 12. 15. ‘‘The Trustworthy Agency of the Eyes’: Reading Images of Music and Madness in Historical Context’ in Health and History Vol. V no. 2, Histories of Psychiatry After Deinstitutionalisaton: Australia and New Zealand (2003), 124. 16. Katharine Drake, ‘Patient’s Ball, Held in the Kitchen of the Somerset County Asylum, England’ (1847). A reproduction of the image can be

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17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

seen in the Wellcome Collection Library no. 20050i: ‘Mentally ill patients dancing at a ball at Somerset County Asylum. Process print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855’ (Wells: Backhouse [London] (96 Strand): Ackermann & Co [185?–?]). Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop Vol. II [1840] (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2009), 175. Dolly MacKinnon, ‘‘Amusements Are Provided’: Asylum Entertainment and Recreation in Australia and New Zealand c. 1860–1945’ in Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz (ed.), Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting, The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine, Clio Medica 86 (Amsterdam and NewYork: Editions Rodopi, 2009), 270. Forbes, ‘Twelfth Night in a Lunatic Asylum’, 336. Ibid. Ibid. See Chapter 7. Among the case studies here, this was the case at Gloucester, West Riding and Worcester. However, at Bethlem in 1891, the Superintendent Percy Smith suggested that training attendants rather than appointing musicians was more likely to lead to them remaining longer. See Chapter 9. Shepton Mallet Journal, 8 January 1864, 4. I am grateful to Peter Jaggard of the Mendip Hospital Cemetery for providing copies of articles relating to the Wells Asylum. ‘Music, Morality and Rational Amusement at the Victorian MiddleClass Soirée’ in Bennett Zon (ed.), Music and Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Temperley (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 83. ‘Performance in Bethlem, Fulbourn and Brookwood Hospitals: A Social Psychological and Social Historical Examination’ in Anna Harpin and Juliet Foster (ed.), Performance, Madness and Psychiatry: Isolated Acts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 48. SAH 352 Master’s Account Book 1875–1899, 27 December 1879. Photos of Asylum Church Choir (1892) (West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield C85/1399). See Chapter 8. Ten Days in a Madhouse (New York: Munro, 1887), chapter IX. Bly’s book is based on articles published in the New York World, detailing her committal to the women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell Island while feigning insanity. Bly does recount some more favourable experiences involving music in Hall 7. One patient, Miss Mattie Morgan, organised music and singing in the evenings, which was often joined by the doctors (chapter XV). Another patient, the Polish ‘Wanda’, was a talented pianist whose ‘touch and expression are perfect’ (Chapter XVI).

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31. Allan Beveridge reproduces a photo of George Lumsden, a ‘musical’ patient in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, drawn by John Myles in October 1882 (See ‘The History of Psychiatry: Personal Reflections’ in Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Vol. 44 (2014), 80. Another example is reproduced in Mark Stevens, Life in the Victorian Asylum: The World of Nineteenth Century Mental Health Care (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2014): image between pages 86 and 87 shows a male patient from Broadmoor in single room, playing the violin. Stevens suggests he was ‘approaching discharge’. Without exception photographic and pictorial evidence of violin playing is restricted to male patients. 32. James G, 15 October 1887, quoted in A. Beveridge, ‘Life in the Asylum: Patients’ Letters from Morningside 1873–1908’ in History of Psychiatry Vol. 9 no. 4 (1998), 441. The Morningside institution housed both private and pauper patients and it is not clear from which side James G wrote. 33. ‘Music in a Lancaster County Asylum 1893’ in The Magazine of Music Vol. 10 no. 11 (November 1893), 242. 34. Report of the Committee of Visitors and of the Medical Superintendent of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum for the year 1879 (West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield C85/1/12/3 1868–1879), 11. 35. Similar examples are described by Dolly MacKinnon in ‘‘Jolly and Fond of Singing’: The Gendered Nature of Musical Entertainment in Queensland Mental Institutions c1870–c1937’, in Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon (ed.), ‘Madness’ in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum (St Lucia, QLD, Australia: The University of Queensland Press, 2003), 157–168 and ‘Divine Service, Music, Sport, and Recreation as Medicinal in Australian Asylums 1860s–1945’ in Health and History Vol. XI no. 1, (Australian Asylums and Their Histories, 2009), 128–148. 36. These two aspects are discussed in James Kennaway, ‘The Piano Plague: The Nineteenth-Century Medical Critique of Female Musical Education’ in Gesnerus Vol. LXVIII no. 1 (2011), 26–40. 37. See Chapter 6. 38. See Chapter 5. 39. See Chapter 6. 40. Conolly, The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums, and Hospitals for the Insane, 29. 41. Dolly MacKinnon discusses these ideas in detail in ‘Hearing Madness and Sounding Cure: Recovering Historical Soundscapes of the Asylum’, Politiques de communication no. 1 (2017), 77–106. 42. ‘Broadcasting the Body’ in Georgina Born (ed.), Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 170–185.

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43. ‘Towards an Acoustemology of Detention in the ‘Global War on Terror’ in Born (ed.), Music, Sound and Space, 275–291. 44. The different meanings of music and sound are investigated further in the context of patient notes in Chapter 12. 45. ‘‘Hearing Madness’: The Soundscape of the Asylum’ in Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon (ed.), ‘Madness’ in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum (St Lucia, QLD, Australia: The University of Queensland Press, 2003), 75. Malcolm Nicolson has also demonstrated the developing use of listening as a form of diagnosis among medical practitioners, particularly with regard to the slow and controversial introduction of the stethoscope in nineteenth-century Edinburgh and London. See Malcolm Nicolson, ‘Having the Doctor’s Ear in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh’ in Mark M. Smith (ed.), Hearing History: A Reader (Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 151–168. 46. As MacKinnon notes, perceptions of what it meant to be ‘noisy’ (particularly in language) were heavily gendered; women’s language was closely linked to ideals of femininity, morality and virtue. See ‘Hearing Madness’, 81–82. 47. Practical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic Asylums (York, 1815), 18. 48. Bly, Ten Days, Chapter XIV. 49. Anon., ‘Happy Idiots’ in All the Year Round (23 July 1864), 564– 569, reproduced at Andrew Halliday, “Happy Idiots,” Nineteenth-Century Disability: Cultures & Contexts, accessed March 7 2019, http://www.nin eteenthcenturydisability.org/items/show/3. 50. S.L.L., Autobiographical Account 1888 [Gloucestershire Record Office, D3725/box 111], 28. 51. See, for example, Mark M. Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), Mark M. Smith ‘Futures of Hearing Pasts’ in Daniel Morat (ed.), Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19 th - and 20 th -Century Europe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), pp. 13– 21 and John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 52. Morat (ed.), ‘Introduction’ in Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19 th - and 20 th -Century Europe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2014), 2. 53. See Chapters 6 and 11. 54. I explore these themes in further detail in my article ‘‘Appeasing the Unstrung Mental Faculties’: Listening to Music in Nineteenth-Century Lunatic Asylums’ in Nineteenth Century Music Review (published online March 2020) https://doi.org.10.1017/S1479409819000569.

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55. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878 [Norwich County Archives: SAH 131] 26 October 1861. 56. ‘A Ball at a Lunatic Asylum’ in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, no. 101, (December 6, 1845), 353–355: 354. 57. ‘Music in a Lancaster County Asylum 1893’ in The Magazine of Music Vol. 10, no. 11 (November 1893), 242. 58. See Chapter 8. 59. ‘Festival at a Lunatic Asylum’ printed in the Lincoln Gazette, reproduced in Chambers Edinburgh Journal no. 514 (4 December 1841), 367. The Edinburgh reprint was prefaced with the following: ‘The power of music over the passions and feelings of mankind, and even over the brute creation, is universally admitted, and many wonderful instances of such power are on record; but we doubt much if any thing more wonderful, or more clearly demonstrating the influence of harmonious sounds over the human mind, was ever witnessed, than what is described in the following account’. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. ‘‘The Trustworthy Agency of the Eyes’: Reading Images of Music and Madness in Historical Context’ in Health and History Vol. V no. 2, Histories of Psychiatry after Deinstitutionalisaton: Australia and New Zealand (2003), 127. See also Sander Gilman, Disease and Representation, 89–93. 63. Quarterly Report 28 October 1858; see Chapter 5. 64. Discussed in Maureen Park and Robert Hamilton, ‘Moral treatment of the insane: Provisions for lifelong learning, cultural engagement, and creativity in nineteenth-century asylums’ in Journal of Adult and Continuing Education Vol. XVI no. 2 (2010), 101. 65. A.T.B., ‘An Evening with the Lunatics at the Wells Asylum’ in The Western Gazette (31 December 1880), 7. 66. RET 1/1/4/3 1840–73, 165–6. Letter from Samuel Tuke to the Retreat management dated 13 April 1850. 67. See Chapter 8. 68. See, among others, Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe, The Politics of Madness: The State, Insanity and Society in England, 1846–1914 (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 46–47; Andrew Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700–1900 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 272; Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (New York and Chichester: Wiley, 1997), 33. 69. 1817, quoted in Henry R. Rollin, ‘Pioneers of Music Therapy’ in Journal of Medical Biography VI (1998), 164. 70. On Scottish influence, see Andrew Scull, ‘The Peculiarities of the Scots? Scottish Influences on the Development of English Psychiatry, 1700– 1980’ in History of Psychiatry Vol. 22 no. 4 (2011), 403–415.

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71. See, for example, Allan Beveridge, ‘Thomas Clouston and the Edinburgh School of Psychiatry’ in G.E. Berrios and H. Freeman (eds), 150 Years of British Psychiatry, 1841–1991 (London: Gaskell 1991), 359–388. 72. ‘Music in the Morningside (Edinburgh) Lunatic Asylum’ in The British and Foreign Medical Review Vol. 15 no. 29 (1843), 282–283. 73. 1857 Royal Commission Report, transcribed at https://www.scottishinde xes.com/institutions/59.aspx (Accessed 1 October 2020).

PART II

Case Studies: Pauper Asylums

CHAPTER 4

Norfolk County Asylum: Moral Management and the Asylum Band

The Norfolk County Lunatic Asylum in Thorpe, just outside Norwich, was one of the first asylums founded under the new powers granted by the 1808 County Asylums Act.1 Work and recreation formed part of asylum life from the outset, although it was not until 1846 that the Asylum purchased six acres of land for employment and exercise. It was also not until the 1840s that a modernisation of the institution began: under Ebenezer Owen recreational activities, including music, were established, and fully embedded in the practice of moral management. During the second half of the century music flourished in both sacred and secular contexts, providing opportunities for patients, attendants, officers, family members and local performers within the institution. The Norfolk asylum offers an introduction to the typical ways in which music was organised and perceived during this period. As a predominantly agricultural county, Norfolk had large numbers of paupers living in rural areas, not provided for by the established workhouses in cities and towns. Provision for the mentally ill was limited: the charitable Bethel Hospital, founded in 1724, catered for both private patients and paupers, while private madhouses included those at Loddon (1782) and Framlingham (1807).2 Magistrates resolved to provide for a public asylum almost as soon as the 1808 Act was passed, and in 1814 the new buildings opened at Thorpe, a small village to the East of Norfolk © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_4

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city, originally catering for around 80 patients. By the end of the nineteenth century, following numerous extensions and the construction of a second site, around 1000 patients could be housed. Like many of the new asylums, the Norfolk institution was situated in a rural area outside the city, yet within easy reach of amenities. The Asylum continued to be overseen by the local magistrates and landowners who made up the Committee of Visitors; individuals audited the institution at least monthly and all new expenses and management decisions were approved by at least one of the Committee. For many of the paupers admitted from the rural land around Norwich, physical health was a major contributor towards mental deficiencies; in some cases, the environment provided by the asylum was enough to restore both body and mind. In the early part of the century, however, Norfolk was typical of a joint approach, combining both containment and cure. Steven Cherry writes, for example, that the Medical officers ‘employed variations of traditional humoural theory and physical therapies predominated, their attention directed towards “exercise, health, security and even… comfort”’.3 Among the ‘treatments’ available in the early years were purgatives and emetics, opium, bed confinement and warm baths.4 Although moral treatment was emphasised in official reports, physical restraint was not uncommon at this time: in 1815 two-thirds of the male patients and half of the female patients were subjected to mechanical restraint.5 Reports show that physical punishment reduced dramatically over the first twenty years of the asylum’s existence, with officers eager to show a move to other approaches of treatment. By 1854 the management were able to report an ‘entire absence’ of mechanical restraint, and ‘rare use of seclusion’.6 It was in the 1840s and 1850s that significant reforms were introduced at Norfolk, addressing issues of physical ill-health with a concerted effort to build a homely institution. The appointment of Superintendent Ebenezer Owen (1816-?) in 1843 was part of this modernisation of the institution, although Norfolk was the last English asylum to appoint a qualified medical superintendent in 1861. Owen, Superintendent between 1843 and 1861, had no formal medical qualifications but had been an attendant at Hanwell Asylum, and may have based his approach to running the Norfolk asylum on the pioneering work carried out by Ellis and Conolly at that institution.7 From 1853 Owen visited other asylums known for their high standards and moral methods, including West Riding and York, making notes on

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their construction, fittings and patient numbers.8 It was also from this time that new developments at Norfolk changed the character of the estate. Following the acquisition of land for agriculture in 1846 and a further 30 acres in 1853, formal gardens were established in the 1850s. Proposals for a church were lodged in 1857; as Cherry notes, ‘The physical expansion of the asylum suggested not only a hospital but a distinct community, in which male and female patients lived separated lives and performed gendered work-roles geared to the objects of efficiency and greater self-sufficiency’.9 At the end of 1852 the Asylum had held 139 male and 159 female patients.10 The Records of the Norfolk County Asylum are particularly rich regarding the implementation of moral management in the 1850s and 1860s, and the foundation and development of an asylum band in the mid-century. The first evidence of a band being formed to provide music for the asylum is to be found in the Annual Report of 1853, where the Medical Officers’ report covers aspects of treatment such as diet, classification of patients, employment, seclusion and recreation.11 This report provides a starting point for considering the approach taken at the Norfolk asylum, and the contexts into which formal music making was introduced. It is clear from the 1853 Report that all aspects of everyday life were considered part of the ‘moral management’ treatment. Over- or understimulation of patients was key to their recovery, and effected through a variety of means. The detailed report demonstrates the application of Moral Management in practice during the middle of the nineteenth century. The report on ‘Medical Treatment’ begins with Diet: ‘food of easy digestion, nutritious, and even stimulating, is required, which again must differ, according to the class of individuals for whom it is intended’.12 After diet, the Medical Officers set out further aspects of treatment, of which chemical medicine was only one: The class of persons with who he is placed both by day and night; the occupation, amusement, or otherwise; and the administration of medicaments or the withholding them, according to the peculiar nature of the case, are matters of the utmost importance to the man whose nervous system has received a severe shock.13

Employment was an important part of practice, both for wellbeing and as part of the economy needed to run a large institution on public

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funds. The Norfolk Officers emphasised the medical benefits of employment and recreation: ‘The various forms of classification, occupation, and amusement, may be looked upon not only as hygienic measures of great importance in a lunatic asylum containing a large number of persons, but also as medico-moral remedies of great use (if judiciously wielded) in promoting recovery’.14 Until the 1840s employment was limited to work around the asylum: washing, cleaning and needlework. The opportunity for physical exercise was limited until the grounds were extended in 1846 and the 1850s. In the case of the predominantly rural Norfolk, farm labour was by far the most appropriate choice for the majority of male patients. By 1860 over half of men and three-quarters of women were working, as farmers, painters, carpenters, tailors, or cleaners, in the laundry, or in the kitchens. In addition, and for less mobile patients, workrooms provided ‘a combination of entertainment and therapy, offering drawing, paperwork, the making of decorations, bric-a-brac, bonnets and prints for bazaars, with the definite purpose of fund-raising, for decorating wards and later for musical instruments, entertainment and excursions’.15 Further detail was given in the 1853 Report on the types of amusement available to patients, which spoke to both physical and mental exercise. Those not employed in manual labour were provided with games such as quoits, nine-pins, draughts and bowls. For the ‘improvement’ of those who could read, books were supplied, ‘of an interesting character, including those of history, the cheaper periodicals, newspapers, &c’.16 For female patients, employment and recreation were closely related, consisting of activities such as needlework, knitting, netting and fancy work, ‘such as is suited to their tastes and previous habits’.17 Music was also a new part of this provision, with a nod to the influence of other asylums: the report noted that ‘A band has been formed from among the attendants and patients; the Committee of Visitors having kindly placed at our disposal funds for that purpose, as is the practice in similar institutions in other counties. We consider music to be one of the most appropriate amusements for the insane’.18 Other musical activities were grouped together with education and mental stimulation. A school was planned, in reaction to the low level of education found among many paupers admitted to the asylum. Finally, the report recorded that the Matron had been instrumental in forming a choir from patients and attendants, with the purpose of singing in the chapel.19 The Matron was Mrs Owen, wife of the Superintendent. It was not unusual for female family

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members to take on roles in the domestic and recreational running of the asylum, and women’s involvement in music was particularly common. The same report recorded the presence of a brass band at a patients’ tea party held beyond the Asylum walls, and the Christmas amusements which included ‘music and singing’.20 £5 was paid during the year for ‘Teaching Music’, perhaps in order to train the new band members, though there is no record of money spent on instruments.21 The band does not feature again in reports of the 1850s, but music remained part of asylum life as facilities for ‘healthy and innocent’ recreation and amusement developed overall.22 Reports from 1854–1860 record the provision of a new play-ground, newspapers and magazines, new decoration of the walls, a glass room holding birds and plants (aviaries were a popular form of amusement at Asylums), dancing, singing, excursions and sport. Of particular note was a rail trip to Yarmouth. The Asylum was close to a small station on the main line, and in 1856, the Superintendent recorded an added attraction: ‘By the courtesy of the Officers of the East Norfolk Militia, we had the gratuitous services of their band during the greater part of the day’.23 In 1857 a similar trip to Lowestoft was also accompanied by an unspecified band.24 The regular winter entertainments largely consisted of singing, dancing and recitations. In 1856 Owen complained of the lack of space for patient recreation, but in 1858 the new dining room was reported to be sufficiently large to hold all the ‘patients in health’ while a new chapel holding 420 people was in the process of being fitted out.25 The schedule outlined in the Superintendent’s report of 1859 includes ‘reading, music, card-playing, and other amusements’ between supper at 6 pm and bedtime at 7 pm: not a significant amount of time, but evidently important enough to be included.26 It was clearly challenging to organise regular entertainment during this period, and the Asylum relied partly on the talents of patients. In November 1854, Owen reported. To secure means of recreation and amusement for the Patients during the long winter evenings has often been found a matter of difficulty, occasionally however we have had a patient capable of giving some assistance in this respect, with violin &c. but we are at this time without such aid at command and it is to supply this deficiency that I now beg permission to appeal to the Justices for leave to engage for a time (once or twice a week) a person to play the violin &c.27

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The Annual Report of the same year confirmed that a violinist had been engaged to attend once a week, providing an opportunity for patients of both sexes to ‘dance to the merry tunes of the humble musician’, interspersed with recitations and songs provided by the patients.28 Between 1855 and 1862 Accounts show that a band was regularly hired at a cost of around 1 s 6d a time; in the late 1850s the lone violinist Mr. James Jackson also appears with a variety of payments reflecting the ad-hoc nature of his employment.29 The total spent on hiring musicians in 1856, for example, was £6 12 s 4d: not a wild extravagance next to the superintendent’s salary of £150, but a significant sum. Jackson’s three sons also received payment and the family provided a band in 1857. From October 1859 to March 1862 a band of three was provided fortnightly by a Mr E. Tuddenham. Therefore, it seems that the band mentioned in the 1853 Report either was short-lived or did not materialise; it was not until the 1860s that further reports of a band were recorded. By the end of Owen’s time as Superintendent, a regular scheme of excursions and entertainments was in place, with frequent visits outside the asylum to the circus, fair or for picnics. In the summer, boat trips and excursions to the sea were common. Two annual large-scale entertainments—the summer ‘frolic’, held outside usually on the cricket ground, and the Christmas entertainment—completed the year, together with a harvest festival.30 No details are given at this time of the patients’ musical activities: there is no record of pianos in the rooms, but we might speculate that occasional instruments (such as the violin mentioned in 1854), together with the songs mentioned at the weekly meetings, were also used to pass the time away in the evenings. At this stage, music was predominantly classed as an entertainment, but nevertheless one considered particularly suitable for patients. A new Medical Superintendent, William Charles Hills (1828–1902), was appointed in 1861, and it may have been due to his influence that music took on a more formal role in Asylum life. Hills had served as Assistant Medical Officer at the Kent Asylum but the Norfolk post was his first as Superintendent.31 The 1853 band is confirmed as having been short-lived, for Hills’ Journal in 1861 records that he was ‘anxious to establish a band amongst the Attendants and servants, and should feel gratified by being allowed to hire four musical instruments, and also to engage a teacher for a brief period at the rate of 7s 6d per week’.32 Hills proposed the addition with a number of benefits for the asylum, both

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for the patients and for the economic health of the institution: ‘I anticipate pleasant and cheap results from this plan, as in a short time we should be enabled to dispense with the necessity of having the musicians according to the present mode; and the patients may possibly have treats more frequently’.33 The cost of hiring a band over the winter months had amounted to £10 per annum, and with the cost of training and equipping the band it was some years before a saving could be made.34 Hills’ drive for economy was also seen in his other innovations; at the same time he began training and employing patients in the shoemakers’ workshop, to avoid the need to purchase new boots, and in 1863 the Asylum built its own forge, relying on the skills of patients in blacksmithing to save additional money.35 The asylum attendants’ band was trained by a local professional musician who also provided his own musicians for certain events. On 17 January 1862 the first entry was made for ‘Mr Fitzgerald teaching band’; later entries show that Fitzgerald was paid 7s 6d per week for teaching the band, which he continue to do throughout 1862, and for three months over the summer of 1863. Fitzgerald also provided the band for the Christmas celebrations in 1863, and a professional band continued to be engaged for the Servants’ Christmas Treat in subsequent years. However, payments for the fortnightly balls ceased once the Asylum’s own band was trained and, despite the regular need for repairs, new strings and reeds, and new instruments, a significant saving must have been made. Although Fitzgerald’s own musicians continued to play on occasion, it is clear that the attendants made quick progress. In his 1862 Annual Report, Hills recorded that. A brass band has been formed by the attendants, and the proficiency they have attained, in a short time, is highly creditable to them: they perform at our fortnightly winter entertainments in the dining hall; during the summer, in the airing grounds; and at all other times when required. These agreeable diversions are highly appreciated by the patients.36

The report from the Commissioners in Lunacy in April 1862 noted that ‘A band is also in course of formation’, confirming the new foundation.37 The same report indicates that Musical Instruments had been bought for the sum of £10 from the West Riding Asylum.38 Accounts from the latter institution record that their brass band was replaced by string instruments at around the same time, so it is likely to have been these instruments that

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were purchased to be used by the Norfolk attendants. Hills continued to take a personal interest in the band; his Journal includes notes regarding their progress, suggestions for the continuation of specialist training and requests for purchase of music and new instruments. In the absence of detailed lists, Hills’ records provide some information about the formation of the band. Among the instruments purchased in the 1860s and 1870s are a cornet, bass drum, bombardieu and bass violin.39 Music appears among the miscellaneous expenses in the Annual Reports and Accounts from 1857 with between £7 and £10 spent annually on ‘Music, &c.’, no doubt covering instruments, repairs and sheet music. A replacement clarinet was ordered in 1888.40 Payments were also made for composition: E.J. Gaul received 2 s in June 1867, while R. Hodds was paid the more significant amounts of £9 and £12 7 s 6d in 1868 and 1869, respectively, for ‘Composition, Bands, &c.’.41 Hodds continued to draw significant sums of up to £23 18 s 6d in 1871 for these services. It is not clear whether he was involved in the band in other ways, and it may have been that the ‘composition’ primarily covered arrangements for the appropriate group of instruments, rather than original music. The main activity of the band was to play for fortnightly dances during the winter season; formerly using hired musicians, it was here that the asylum would save money by training its own musicians. The band is also mentioned in connection with other recreational activities. In 1869, for example, it was reported that ‘Nearly 300 take part in the weekly dances, and as many as 322 attended a grand concert given last January’.42 Concerts continued to feature, and in 1872 further activity included: ‘In addition to the customary walks in the country, 50 of the patients took a trip down the river, in a Steam Boat, and had a Pic Nic, which was enlivened by our band of musicians, and was thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed by all’.43 The band in 1871 consisted of five male attendants, initially performing on a voluntary basis. There is little information regarding members of the band, save for one unfortunate incident. William Wells, one of the attendants in the Infirmary Ward, was recorded as leader of the band in the 1870s. Wells had begun work as an attendant in April 1869. His appearance in the Journal of 22 September 1872 is under rather painful circumstances: he had poisoned one of his fingers while on duty and there was some doubt whether he would be able to continue to play following treatment.44 In 1871 the Asylum Management Committee

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approved a one-off payment in recognition of their efforts, drawing on a legacy given to the Asylum to support patient recreation: I wish to bring our band under the notice of the Committee – It is composed of the attendants, who bestow much time and pains after their day’s work, in practising and whose services are willingly given. The music is thoroughly appreciated by the patients and there is a saving, as formerly musicians were hired once a fortnight! Would the Committee grant them a small sum from the “Johnson” fund? Such a recognition would encourage them!45

The Johnson fund was a bequest left to the asylum with the intention of supporting recreations and amusements for the patients.46 Margin comments record that the sum of 10 s was presented to each of the five band members on this occasion. The same sum was repeated in 1872 (‘The men have been very indefatigable during the past year, and deserve some recognition’.) and 1873, when the band master was granted £1.47 From the mid-1860s the band’s performances were added to by visiting performers, usually presenting a variety of music and other entertainments, including readings, magic lantern displays, dramatic entertainments, ventriloquists and so on. The Superintendent’s Journal of 1864, for example, records the visit of a small party of minstrels, noting that ‘the patients enjoyed the Evening’s entertainment very much’. Later in 1866 a mixture of entertainments was on offer: ‘The Choristers Cricket Club contested our eleven in which we were beaten, and although defeated the patients enjoyed themselves. In the evening the choristers gave a charming entertainment in the Hall’.48 Four of the cathedral choristers returned later in the same year to give ‘a vocal and instrumental entertainment’.49 The asylum obviously used its local connections well. In addition to the visits by the cathedral choristers, Mr Howlett, owner of a successful local business selling pianos and other instruments, visited with friends to give a musical entertainment in January 1870.50 Howlett returned in 1875, giving a magic lantern display; on the same occasion ‘Hisson and three others player the piano and sang part songs; all were greatly amused and seemed grateful for this diversion’.51 From 1875 the Asylum Chaplain and Vicar of St John Timberhill, Mr Ram, also provided a number of amusements, either himself with the aid of friends, or by arranging for local choirs and other musicians to visit. The programme for

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1880 included a ‘concert with theatricals’ given by young persons from Norwich, a choral concert, and two different sets of hand-bell ringers.52 It is notable that musical performances were given in a central location, the Recreation Hall, to which patients moved. There is no equivalent record of performances or entertainments of any kind being performed in the wards or smaller rooms. Indeed, it appears that even musically able patients often lacked the opportunity to play. In 1872, for example, Hills reported that ‘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 15 s/6d, sufficiently good for the purpose’.53 The purchase was approved, but there is no record of this example of music making being given any formal role or encouragement in asylum life. Thus, music and other forms of diversion were largely restricted to patients who were well enough to be mobile. It is also likely that music and other entertainments were used as an encouragement for good behaviour among patients, as was the case elsewhere, although this is not detailed in the Norfolk records. Although large numbers of patients often attended, equally large numbers were left behind in their beds or in the infirmary wards. In February 1887 the experienced Superintendent David George Thomson (1856-1923) replaced Hills, and the Asylum’s management moved further towards a medical approach in treatment. Thomson had previously worked at Derby County, Camberwell and Surrey County Cane Hill Asylums.54 He faced immediate challenges at the Norfolk institution in the form of poor sanitation and overcrowding, with the asylum still reliant on facilities built in the 1840s. Enormous expansion and renovation took place during the 1890s, and the Asylum’s Management and the Committee of Visitors seem to have been increasingly willing to spend funds on music and other entertainments. In 1889 the Commissioners reported that ‘theatrical representations are not given, owing to the want of a stage’.55 In the same year, the Annual Report noted alterations to the Recreation Hall, including ‘Stage, with Scenery and Fittings’ at a cost of £28.56 An attempt was also made to recruit female attendants who could contribute to the cultural life of the asylum: in 1894 Thomson reported, ‘I may say that every effort is being made, and not without success, to obtain young women of more education, culture, and possessing musical and other accomplishments than formerly’.57 These may have been intended to replicate the female ‘companions’ found elsewhere,

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particularly at private asylums. Classes for nurses were started in the same year, but these appear to have focussed solely on medical training rather than more holistic accomplishments. Female attendants do not appear to have participated in the band, but may well have used musical ability elsewhere on the wards, or in the chapel. Musical activities and entertainments continued along the nowestablished pattern, Thomson boasting in his inaugural report that ‘the numbers attending the amusements have been much increased, nearly doubled’.58 In 1890 the Commissioners reported that, of over 700 patients housed at the Asylum, ‘over 400 attend Divine Service on Sundays, and over 300 the weekly dance’.59 Renovation of the asylum’s physical buildings was matched by an overhaul of living and employment conditions. From 1889 both the bandmaster and band members received regular extra payment for their addition duties; the band members fee was set at 1 s. per week extra, while the Bandmaster received £1 per year.60 The Bandmaster’s payments were recorded separately in Wages books, but band members were not included here. William Wells is recorded as receiving his first extra payment as Bandmaster in March 1890.61 He resigned his post in 1894.62 In 1903 Thomson recorded an ‘excellent String Band under the leadership of Mr. Chas. Fox, our esteemed and talented Head Attendant’.63 The band’s members were not always well-behaved. Thomson’s Journal details a ‘grave breach of the rules’ in July 1887, when he records. In accordance with what has been the custom at this Asylum I gave the Asylum Band permission to go out and play at a neighbour’s house on Jubilee eve, this they did. Next day it was reported to me that a member of the band Woodcock by name, the Asylum upholsterer, had been seen by the night nurses in what is known as the long dormitory on the male side of the old building about 5 am on the morning of the 21st June. Also that two male attendants, Wells + Fox, had been seen in the Nurses Mess room about the same hour… On enquiry I elicited the facts that several members of the band were the worse for drink on that occasion and that on returning to the Building they had wandered to, and entered the side door of the female division instead of the corresponding door on the male division…64

The unfortunate Woodcock was dismissed, but Wells and Fox were saved by their long service and good character, perhaps even by their dedication to the band.65 The latter two attendants were ‘censured severely’ and

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reported to the visiting magistrates. However, later in the year permission was refused for outside visits at Christmas time, perhaps an important addition to the band members’ wages and a significant punishment.66 Towards the end of the century music at the Asylum branched out into theatrical productions. Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ was performed by ‘the Staff’ in May 1899, and the production repeated in 1900 in aid of the South African War Fund.67 This was followed in 1901 by ‘The Mikado’, in 1905 by ‘The Gondoliers’ and 1906 with ‘Utopia Limited’. Initially using the Asylum Hall, from 1901 the Theatre in Norwich hosted performances, although the company continued to be made up largely of asylum staff.68 Rather astonishingly, a large collection of music from the band has survived, being rescued from the skip as the asylum closed in the mid1990s. The music is uncatalogued but roughly sorted, and still retains much of its practical organisation into band sets.69 The earliest music dates from the 1890s, with the majority of the collection bearing date stamps or copyright from the 1920s and 30 s. The repertoire is suited to dances and light entertainment; among the earlier sets are arrangements of opera tunes and overtures, but by the first few decades of the twentieth century it is waltzes and polkas, quicksteps and marches, then the foxtrot, that predominate. Among the earliest printed copies are sets dating from the 1890s, including the Waltz ‘Linger longer, Loo’ by Sydney Jones, the Quadrille ‘The Gay Parisienne’ arranged by Warwick Williams ‘on Melodies from the New Musical Comedy’ by Ivan Caryll, ‘The Circus Girl Lancers’ with melodies by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton arranged, again, by Warwick Williams, the ‘Happy Darkies’ Barn Dance by Arthur E. Godfrey and arranged by Carl Kiefert, and ‘The Great Eastern’ Polka by C. Coote Junior. Dated parts for orchestral repertoire are later: both the ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ by Julius Fuˇcík and Franz von Suppé’s overture to ‘Light Cavalry’ are date stamped ‘Norfolk Mental Hospital 3 May 1920’. The band’s repertoire over time was vast and suggests a proficient set of instrumentalists. Arrangements are for 12–15 players, including strings, wind and a small brass section, piano and occasionally organ. Handwritten parts to an unnamed waltz, for example, include music for both piano and organ. However, there is no evidence that all the parts were used, particularly where printed sets were purchased. The band was often led from the first violin, but it is clear from the parts that the pianist played the important role of filling in any missing parts, while instrument allocations

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were not strictly adhered to. In one Euphonium part book, for example, parts labelled trombone, bassoon and ophicleide are bound together, suggesting a certain flexibility in performance, and a smaller band than may be indicated by the published parts. Many sets include a stand-alone piano arrangement, meaning the music could be recreated in more intimate or informal surroundings. One folder of music is labelled ‘Major C. Fox, Chief Orderly, The Norfolk War Hospital, Thorpe, near Norwich’, most probably the same Charles Fox who was bandmaster at the turn of the century. Largely marches and two-steps, the folder also contains piano solos and duets, pointing again to a broader spectrum of music in a wide variety of contexts. ∗ ∗ ∗ In parallel to the establishment of a band and musical recreation, some attempts were made at providing music for the chapel in the 1850s. As noted previously, the 1853 report refers to patients and attendants forming a ‘tolerable choir’ under the direction of the Matron, Mrs Owen. In November 1854, accounts record a Mr William Gree being paid £1 2 s 6d for ‘Teaching singing at chapel’.70 Tuition did not continue, but in July 1854 it was agreed that an organ would be hired from Mr Howlett of Norwich at a rate of five pounds per annum; from 1855 accounts include this sum.71 In 1859 the Medical Superintendent noted that ‘The introduction of an harmonium and of vocal music has added much to the interest of the chapel services’.72 Twice in 1859, the Thorpe Church Choir and Mr Weeds were paid for singing at Chapel.73 The organist during this period was a Mr Robert Owen, the teenage son of the Superintendent and Matron.74 There is no formal record of Robert Owen’s musical activity and he does not appear in the wages or expenses books. In October 1861 the temporary Superintendent J.M. Bacon recorded that. Owing to the departure of Mr Robert Owen rather suddenly there was no means of having the usual musical additions to the service in the Chapel on Sunday mornings, but as it seemed a pity to drop a custom which is a pleasure and benefit to the patients, I obtained the services of a girl in the village who seems very well suited for the purpose and it the Committee approve, she will be willing to continue playing.75

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On Hills’ appointment as Medical Superintendent the commitment to Chapel music continued alongside his moves to establish the band, with a clear nod to its beneficial outcomes: ‘I beg to report that Elizabeth Gaff has completed her month’s duties as Organist creditably and I would wish to suggest that some permanent arrangement should be made, as the patients fully appreciate the music’.76 The organ continued to be played by a female visitor: in 1864 Gaff died, to be replaced by Emma Stanley, and in 1866, when Stanley moved to Norwich, she was replaced by Martha Shardelow, a Thorpe resident.77 Gaff, Stanley and Shardelow were all engaged by the Matron, Mrs Hills, wife of the Superintendent. In 1863 a harmonium was bought to replace the hired organ (although the Superintendent’s Report suggests an earlier date of 1859; see above),78 and in 1882, this was replaced by an organ bought for £80 from the Churchwardens of St Matthew’s in Ipswich.79 The Commissioners’ report for this year recorded that ‘An organ for the chapel has… been purchased, and is now being fixed, and the harmonium now used will be placed in the Hall’.80 The Chaplains’ report books for the third quarter of the nineteenth century show an interest in musical activity in the chapel matching that of secular developments. Until 1868 the organist played for one service on a Sunday afternoon, but from July of that year music was added to the Sunday morning service.81 As the asylum population grew, and chapel services required frequent use, hymn books were a regular purchase. In 1873 Hymns Ancient and Modern was chosen to replace the previous hymn book, Horne’s Selection of Psalms and Hymns.82 A choir was in place in the early 1870s; in 1873 the Chaplain, Charles Whittle, recorded giving ‘the choir and attendants copies of an Easter carol to be learned and practised’.83 This suggests patients may have been involved in the choir. In 1875 six copies of Ancient and Modern ‘with accompanying tunes’ were ordered ‘for the use of the singers in the chapel’.84 Hymn books continued to feature regularly in the accounts, with 12 copies of ‘Versicles and Responses’ being purchased from W. Howlett in 1893.85 From 1872 Accounts show payments of £8 per year for ‘playing the Harmonium’, though the recipient is not detailed. A named organist is not recorded again until December 1877, when the Accounts record payment of £10 to a Miss Shardelow for 1 year’s playing the Harmonium, possibly Martha Shardelow who had been engaged previously.86 The following financial year the accounts again record a payment, this time £8 15 s in January 1879, to Messrs Shardelow.87 However, the Chaplain’s

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report of February 1878 records that a Mr Burton had resigned from the post, and was replaced by a Mr Alden, pupil of Mr Gladstone, Organist of Norwich Cathedral. Alden was recruited to ‘play the Harmonium and to teach the Choir, at the Salary hitherto payed’, and received his first annual payment of £10 in December 1879.88 The following few years saw a steady succession of organists, as successive postholders found more remunerative work elsewhere, until a Mr J Betts took up the post in 1886 on a salary of £15 a year, remaining until at least 1892.89 No organist payments are recorded after 1 October 1892. It may have been that an organist was supplied internally, from among the attendants, officers or patients or their families. The latter organists were employed through the Chaplain, rather than the Matron. Chapel music is one area where evidence exists of patient involvement in music. In particular, the case book for 1870 records the stay of Susanna Wilhemina Sargeant, who was admitted in February 1870 aged 24.90 Recorded as ‘a governess… a Wesleyan and well educated’, Sargeant was on admittance ‘indecent in language and behaviour… constantly making grimaces and gesticulating’. Entries in March and April show a steady improvement, and on 30 July the medical officer notes she. Seems now to be in possession of her natural state of mind, and is more even tempered. She is very fond of drawing and music and between the two divides most of her time. On Sunday afternoons she plays the harmonium and leads the singing in the chapel, and in this respect has proved herself to be a great acquisition.91

Having remained well over the summer, Sargeant was discharged on probation in early September and does not appear to have returned. In general, the case books say little about patients’ activities, and this is therefore a rare instance of a named patient being connected with music. ∗ ∗ ∗ Towards the end of the century both religious and secular opportunities for varying the routine of asylum life remained important. A Commissioners’ report of 1897 records that 47% of the nearly 1,000 patients attended chapel services on Sunday, and 15% attended other forms of religious service. 40% attended entertainments, while 38% ‘walk out weekly or oftener beyond the Asylum grounds’. Work also continued to play a role in most patients’ lives: 65% were ‘usefully employed’.92 Thomson

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wrote a special report for the Inspection by the Norfolk County Council in 1903, which set out the state of the asylum. Musical opportunities, as before, included the choir and organ in the chapel, where two services were held each Sunday to a capacity of 450 people. In addition to the string band, he mentioned the Nurses’ mess and recreation room ‘furnished with piano, books and papers’ and the Attendants’ mess in the recently-constructed Asylum annexe, ‘consisting of Billiard and Recreation Room, fitted with Billiard Table, Piano, Bookcase, etc.’.93 If the c.1900 band were solely strings, it implies a more formal group than the mixed assortment suggested by instrument purchases in the 1860s and 1870s. However, sheet music in the collection dating from the late nineteenth century includes parts for a fuller band, and it is likely that an effective dance band would require wind and brass instruments to accompany a noisy crowd. The exact nature of the band and its size therefore remain unclear. There was evidently plenty of music going on at the Norfolk Asylum, with participation in various ways by both staff and inmates. Music formed part of the structured elements of asylum life and also appeared among ad-hoc activities. Music was recognised as an important feature, but can it be said to have been part of the therapy being developed for patients during this period? There is little written about the position music held in the asylum with respect to a formal therapeutic role. It is clear that music was not ‘prescribed’ to particular patients, and therefore if its role really was therapeutic, it was in a general sense, rather than in response to individual needs. Hills’ report from 1873 records both employment and recreation as important parts of the balance of treatment offered to the patients, but also suggests that recreation played as much a part in persuading patients to undertake work as in effecting a recovery: During the year, the full employment of the patients, according to their several capacities, has been as carefully attended to as in former years; and I may say the same of recreation and amusements, which are so necessary as a relief from the dull monotony of their lives; these are aids in their moral treatment, without which I believe, there would be very little willing work executed especially by the female part of our community.94

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The Commissioners in 1874 cited musical performances as one way in which ‘a large majority of the patients are induced to take out-door exercise’.95 Thus music was seen as an enabler for other forms of moral treatment, rather than primarily as treatment in itself. Superintendent David Thomson’s view of music and recreation continued to emphasise the variety it offered rather than specific medical benefits: ‘The importance of these as a relief to the monotony of confinement to the wards and airing courts cannot be over-rated, and I am glad to say that the numbers attending the amusements have been much increased, nearly doubled’.96 Thomson continued to place great emphasis on recreation as part of treatment. Reporting in 1891, he suggested that Asylum physicians were aware that medicines were not suitable treatment for insanity; rather, they aimed to ‘place the patient in the best possible circumstances to wrestle with the illness, hence the improved nursing in Asylums, the liberal supply of extra diet, including good stimulants’. He explained recent expenditure on spring mattresses as an important part of this treatment.97 Again in 1900, Thomson noted that Amusements, ‘like employment, are essential to promote the recovery of the curable, and vary the monotony of Institution life, for staff and patients alike, and your staff willingly devote their talents to this objective’.98 Finally, in his 1903 extended report, Thomson suggested that ‘Amusement as well as Employment is a powerful remedial agent in the treatment of Mental Disorder, not only in curable cases but to relieve the tedium and monotony of Institution life among our permanent residents, Staff as well as Patients’.99 Reflecting on the history of the asylum in his 1903 Report, Thomson suggested that ‘Work and amusement, the two principle occupations of sane people, became increasingly used as treatment for the insane’.100 As medical knowledge and practice developed, recreation remained important, but was paid little attention in a medical sense. Innovations such as the training for nurses developed by Thomson did not appear to cover the therapeutic role of either recreation or employment, previously considered such an important part of the asylum’s regime. Yet moral aspects remained key. The dual role of music and other recreational activities as treatment and amusement was expressed repeatedly in reports during this period. Music was used to relieve monotony and lift the spirits of both patients and staff. It provided structure to the everyday life of the asylum, and a framework for social encounters. It enhanced and promoted involvement in religious

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worship. It was used to cajole reluctant patients into taking part in other activities, notably employment, essential for the economic stability of the institution as well as keeping patients occupied and preparing them for possible return to life in society. It is notable that music was present at almost all of the events where the strict segregation of sexes was broken: at dances, religious services and many of the special outdoor recreational activities. Music was therefore used to accompany something of a relaxation of the rules, but also to help ensure conformity and to give a structure for behaviour during these times. Dancing and singing hymns were carefully managed ways of allowing patients to express themselves while at the same time maintaining control of their bodies and voices. Some of these roles extended the effect of employment, ensuring that less-active patients could access this, and providing similar physical engagement through the use of dance. In addition, the inclusion of music in the asylum’s regime mirrored its use in society and gave patients a link to everyday life. To be sure, the diet of dances, cricket and picnics, and the availability of pianos may have mimicked more closely life in a social class or two above that of the paupers resident in the asylum. Although there were references to music’s role in treatment, particularly later in the nineteenth century, no detailed theory accompanied such assertions, and it seems that ‘therapy’ was due to the effects of mood and structure, rather than specific physical or medical effects. Thus, while music fitted closely into the scheme of Moral Management outlined at the Norfolk Asylum in the 1850s, its particular role as a potential part of cure or therapy for the patients was not given detailed consideration. The uses of music at the Norfolk County Asylum illustrate several key features. The importance of individuals and family involvement are both clear, in particular the encouragement of music from the Owens (as well as the contribution of their organist son, Robert) as well as the Chaplain Mr Ram, and long-standing attendants and bandmasters William Wells and Charles Fox. At Thorpe, too, we see the importance of location: near enough to Norwich to engage local musicians, they were able to draw on apprentice organists from the Cathedral as well as the range of amateur and professional performers resident in the city. However, it was the asylum band that took on a central role in providing music within the institution. The band addressed key aspects of the Moral Management agenda, providing structure through regular dances and events, as well as helping to occupy the often-wayward attendants (though not always with success). Training an internal band also reflected the financial constraints

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placed on the state-run asylum. Moreover, in the reports of the Medical Superintendents and other Officers, we see music’s function as part of a therapeutic regime begin to come under discussion.

Notes 1. A history of the Norfolk County Asylum can be found in Stephen Cherry, Mental Health Care in Modern England: The Norfolk Lunatic Asylum St Andrew’s Hospital, 1810–1998 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003). 2. See Ibid., 25. See also Mark Winston, ‘The Bethel at Norwich: An Eighteenth-Century Hospital for Lunatics’, in Medical History, vol. 38 (1994), 28–32. 3. Cherry, Mental Health Care, 44. Quotation taken from Master’s Journal, 17 October 1816. 4. Ibid., 44. 5. Ibid., 48. 6. First Annual Report of the Medical Officers on the State and Management of the Asylum for the Insane Poor of the County of Norwich (1854) in Norfolk Record Office SAH 28: Norfolk County Asylum Reports 1850–1877, Medical Officers’ Report, 26. Subsequent Annual Reports from the shelfmarks SAH 28–32 are referred to by date. The Medical Officers are signed as R. F. Foote, M. D. and G. W. W. Firth, Chir.Soc. Ebenezer Owen, as Superintendent, was not officially part of the medical team at the Asylum. It was not until the 1860s that a medical man took overall responsibility for the Asylum’s work. 7. Owen was known as both Superintendent and Master; I have used the former title here. 8. Master’s Report Book 1849–1860, 26 July 1853. 9. Cherry, Mental Health Care, 61. 10. First Annual Report (1854), Medical Officers’ Report, 7. 11. Ibid., 21–31. 12. Ibid., 21. 13. Ibid., 22–23. 14. Ibid., 25. 15. Cherry, Mental Health Care, 67. 16. First Annual Report (1854), 26. 17. Ibid., 28. 18. Ibid., 26. 19. Ibid., 26–27. 20. Ibid., 28. 21. Ibid., Accounts, 77. 22. Report 1854, Superintendent’s Report, 30.

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23. Report 1856, Superintendent’s Report, 2. The Militia was stationed in Yarmouth. 24. The accounts record that E. Tuddenham’s band was hired in 1859 to accompany a trip to Lowestoft; it is likely that a similar arrangement took place in 1857. 25. Report 1858, Superintendent’s Report, 2. 26. Report 1859, 2. 27. Master’s Report Book 1849–1860. 28. Report 1854, Superintendent’s Report, 30. 29. Master’s Account Book 1836–1875. It may be that Jackson was paid for supplying a small group of performers. 30. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878. 31. Obituary in British Medical Journal 22 February 1902, 488. 32. Journal, 22 November 1861. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 25 May 1863. 35. Ibid., 9 February 1863 and 29 March 1863. 36. Report 1862, 4. 37. Ibid., 5. 38. Ibid., 14. ‘Carriage of musical instruments’ was paid at the sum of 4 s on 24 December 1861. See SAH 350 Master’s Account Book 1836–1875. 39. Brass instruments were most frequently purchased: see SAH 131 Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878 6 February 1867: ‘One of the brass instruments used by our band is worn out, and it is necessary to replace it; a second hand one can I learn be procured for £2 10’; 27 July 1868: I am anxious to obtain permission to use a portion of the legacy (£19..19) left to the asylum a short time since, in purchasing a second hand cornet for the band, a set of croquet implements, paper for no 3 women corridor and 3 or 4 associated bed rooms, all of which are much required’; and 23 April 1869: ‘Two new brass instruments are much required for the band, the cost of which with the old one (which are useless) in exchange, will be £4..10 – I beg to be allowed to purchase these out of the bazaar fund, as well as permission to spend the further sum of £5..10 in flowers, ornaments &c for the wards.’ A bass violin was acquired on 18 November 1872, and another new cornet on 26 October 1873. A new Bombardieu was purchased in 1874, with the comment ‘A new instrument (Bombardieu) is required for the band, the cost of which will be £18! In the course of 8 or 9 years, we have had 2 of the same kind, these were second-hand and have not proved durable.’ See Superintendent’s Journal 26 March 1874. 40. Medical Superintendent’s Journal 1888–1902, 12 October 1888. 41. E. J. Gaul’s payment is recorded in the Master’s Account Book. Hodds’ payments were noted in the Accounts of the Treasurer bound in with

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42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

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the Annual Reports for the relevant years. Edward J. Gaul is identifiable in the 1871 census, where he is listed as ‘Bandmaster and Licensed Victualler’. See https://www.freecen.org.uk. Commissioners in Lunacy Report, in Report Christmas, 1869, to Michaelmas, 1870, 8. Report 1872, 6. Ibid., 22 September 1872. A further report of 25 October noted that he had resumed his duties ‘as far as the maimed finger will allow’, and he reappears as bandmaster in later records. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878, 23 December 1871. See Report Christmas, 1869, to Michaelmas, 1870, 7. Other expenditure from the fund included trees, birds and cages, band music, musical instruments, and copies of the Illustrated London News. See SAH 131 Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878, 6 January 1872. The fund was also used to hire external musicians and other entertainers. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878, 31 December 1872 and 26 December 1873: it was noted that the band master ‘who bestows much of his spare time in improving the others’. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878, 27 December 1864 and 13 June 1866. Ibid., 27 November 1866. Ibid., 3 January 1870. W. Howlett was a piano maker, instrument seller and music dealer in Norwich. Howlett’s regularly supplied the Asylum with their musical requirements, including the loan of an organ in the 1850s. Ibid., 25 November 1875. Superintendent’s Journal 1878–1888. Superintendent’s Journal 18 November 1872. Cherry, Mental Health Care, 112. See also ‘Obituary’, in Journal of Mental Science, April 1923, 276–278. Report 1889, 16. Ibid., 13 and Ibid., Treasurer’s Account, 3. Report 1894, 10. Report 1887: Medical Superintendent’s Report, 11. Report 1891, Commissioners’ Report, 19. Report 1891, Accounts, 21. At this time day attendants were paid between 10 s 6d and 14 s per week; the Head Attendant’s wage was £40 p.a. SAH 75 Wages Book 1854–1890. Medical Superintendent’s Journal 1888–1902, 31 January 1894. SAH 323 D. G. Thomson, The Norfolk County Asylum, Thorpe, Norwich, 1814–1903, Written for the occasion of the Inspection by the Norfolk County Council, on 17th September, 1903, 11.

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64. Medical Superintendent’s Journal 1878–1888, 18 July 1887. 65. Thomson records that the attendant Fox had served six years. This is likely to be Frederick Fox, who was appointed in October 1880. He was later reprimanded for breach of discipline and deserted the asylum in January 1893 (Medical Superintendent’s Journal 1888–1902, 2 January 1893). The attendants also included a Charles Fox, appointed in May or June 1882, who went on to become head attendant and band leader. Unfortunately both the Wages Book and Master’s Account Book are incomplete for the 1890s. 66. Ibid., 24 November 1887. 67. Medical Superintendent’s Journal 1888–1902, 22 May 1899 and 7 December 1899. 68. See Medical Superintendent’s Journal 1888–1902, 6 June 1901, Medical Superintendent’s Journal 1903–1915, 2 May 1906. 69. I am indebted to David Juritz, whose hospitality allowed me time and space to explore a small proportion of this large collection. 70. SAH 350 Master’s Account Book 1836–1875, 24 November 1854. 71. SAH 129 Master’s Report Book 1849–1860, 14 July 1854 and Report 1855, Accounts, p. 10: ‘Hire of Organ, &c. £12 13 s 3d’. 72. Report 1859, 4. 73. Master’s Account Book, 8 September 1859 and 9 December 1859. 74. See census data for 1851 and 1861 at https://www.freecen.org.uk. 75. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878, 26 October 1861. Robert Owen’s departure at the same time as the Master, Ebenezer Owen, suggests a possible familial connection, but I have not be able to trace any evidence that the two were related. 76. Ibid., 22 November 1861. 77. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878, 18 March 1864 and 1866. 78. Report of the Medical Superintendent, with the Accounts of the Treasurer, of the Norfolk Lunatic Asylum, for the year 1863, Treasurer’s Account, 14. 79. Report 1882, Treasurer’s Accounts. A further £60 was required for ‘Repairing and Fixing Organ’. 80. Ibid., 9. 81. Superintendent’s Journal 1861–1878, 27 July 1868. 82. Chaplain’s Report Book 1860–1882, 27 July 1873. 83. Ibid., 20 February 1873. 84. Ibid., 26 October 1875. 85. SAH 351 Master’s Account Book 1875–1899, 17 July 1893. 86. Ibid., 22 December 1877. 87. Master’s Account Book 1875–1899, 22 January 1879. 88. Chaplain’s Report Book, 25 February 1878 and SAH 352 Master’s Account Book 1875–1899, 27 December 1879.

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89. Master’s Account Book 1875–1899, 24 December 1886. 90. Sargeant’s case is mentioned in Julie Jakeway, Manifestations of Madness: A study of the patients of Norfolk County Asylum 1846–1870 (unpubl. MA in English Local History, University of Leicester, 2010), 84. 91. SAH 264 Case Book December 1865-April 1870, 1054. 92. Report 1898, Commissioners’ Report 12. 93. Thomson, The Norfolk County Asylum, 10–11, 19. The Asylum annexe housed men only. 94. Report 1874, 6. 95. Report 1875, 10. 96. Report 1887, 11. 97. Report 1891, Superintendent’s Report, 13. 98. Report 1900, 11. 99. Thomson, The Norfolk County Asylum, 11. 100. Ibid., 4. Thomson’s account of the early history of the asylum was rather overblown, emphasising the horrors of treatment: ‘the dismal Madhouse of nearly a century ago has been gradually converted into a Hospital for Mental Disorders with all that the word Hospital implies, in bright surroundings, light, air, sanitation, and skilled attendance and nursing.’

CHAPTER 5

West Riding Asylum: Music and Theatre in the Large-Scale Pauper Asylum

The pauper asylum for the West Riding of Yorkshire, located just north of Wakefield, was closely associated with the nearby Friends’ Retreat at York, a Quaker foundation. The connection with the Tukes, who founded and managed the Retreat, fed into a strong Christian ethos for the Wakefield institution. Aspects such as work therapy were central from its inception, but the Quaker influence and general concern over the appropriate treatment of paupers meant recreational activities and entertainments were slow to be included in the asylum’s programme until its transformation in the 1860s under Superintendent John Cleaton. Later in the century, West Riding Asylum itself was also recognised as a model, particularly under the influential Superintendent James Crichton-Browne, and its programme of theatrical entertainments led the way from the late 1850s through the second half of the nineteenth century. Crichton-Browne is best known for his pioneering research into mental health treatment, but he was also key to developing the approach to moral management pursued at Wakefield and elsewhere. The West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum was founded in 1818 at Stanley, just outside Wakefield. After the foundation of three further sites over which asylum provision was spread, the Wakefield site became known as the Stanley Royd Hospital, working together with the South Yorkshire Asylum in Middlewood in Sheffield (1872), High Royd Hospital © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_5

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in Menston (1888) and Storthes Hall in Kirkburton (1904). The Wakefield asylum was the sixth to be built under the County Asylums Act of 1808. Its design and construction were overseen by Samuel Tuke (1784–1857), grandson of William Tuke, the founder of the York Retreat. Samuel Tuke’s book Practical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic Asylums was aimed specifically at the architects responsible for planning the new asylum at Wakefield and included a sketch of his preferred layout.1 His aim was to outline the principles which had proved successful at the Retreat, with consideration for how these might be scaled-up to meet the requirements of a large public institution. Tuke’s primary concern was for the care, cure and comfort of patients, and he made clear his deliberate move away from previous emphasis on security— for patients, employees and the public. As with the Asylum at Norfolk, this example illustrates the roles music took within a developing system of moral management. Tuke’s core principles addressed the everyday operation of asylum management according to the following points: 1st, The complete separation of male and female patients. 2nd, The separation of patients in proper numbers, and in distinct apartments, according to the state of their minds. 3rd, A system of easy and constant superintendence over the patients, by their attendants, and over both, by their superior officers. 4th, That the accommodation for the patients should be cheerful and afford as much opportunity for voluntary change of place and variety of scene, as is compatible with security.2 Tuke’s design gave plenty of space for patients to exercise, whether indoors or outdoors, and to enjoy a measure of independent choice over their surroundings. The accommodation was to be comfortable and pleasant, with both day rooms and galleries in addition to airing courts. There was a large chapel in the centre of the building, which was likely to be the only location where male and female patients would meet. But there was no provision for large gatherings of a secular nature, no general recreation space outside and no large hall, dining hall or gymnasium which might hold entertainments or functions. Tuke’s dislike of large patient gatherings was made explicit: he believed family-sized groups

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of around 15 patients were best for reproducing domestic comforts and encouraging social relationships.3 Samuel Tuke’s role may also have influenced the appointment of William Charles Ellis (1780–1839) as first Medical Superintendent of the Asylum. Ellis was a notable proponent of moral treatment and particularly the place of employment in patient care. Prior to his appointment at Wakefield, he gained experience at the Sculcoates Refuge in Hull, which was also modelled on the York Retreat.4 With a background as a surgeon and apothecary, Ellis also qualified as a physician, the first director of a public asylum to do so.5 Both he and his wife (who was appointed Matron) were devout Methodists. The Ellises were appointed at West Riding Asylum in 1817, a full year before the asylum opened, and were therefore able to have considerable influence on the organisation and fitting-out of the buildings, as well as sourcing supplies and employing staff. During the early period, the asylum was focussed on employment and religious instruction as core components of the moral treatment of patients. From the earliest Director’s Report in 1819, Ellis emphasised the importance of work, beginning with employment in the garden and in clothing manufacture.6 By 1822, employment options had been extended to include shoemaking, brewing and baking, and in 1823 he reported purchasing cows for the patients to keep, with a specific therapeutic intent attached to the activity for the first time: But it is not in a pecuniary point of view only that the money has here been profitably laid out. It has furnished a source of interesting employment for some of the Patients, which attracts their attention, occupies their minds, and prevents the intrusion of many painful thoughts and musings on the past, which harass and distress them when unemployed.7

Religious worship and attendance at chapel were also directly linked to the paupers’ unfortunate mental state. ‘Moral and religious truths’ were, according to Ellis, part of the instruction given to appropriate patients from the opening of the asylum. Such instruction was particularly necessary, for many of the paupers, being ‘taken from the very dregs of society, in addition to their being insane, are frequently found to be as ignorant of these Truths, as they are depraved and abandoned in their conduct’.8 In addition to religious learning, Ellis suggested that attendance at chapel services was beneficial in instilling self-control and order among the

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patients. The patients’ schedule outlined in the 1838 report confirms religion, meals and employment as the main substance of the day’s activities. Rising at six in the summer, and seven in the winter, patients and servants attended morning prayers at eight, followed by work both morning and afternoon.9 Supper was served at seven, and bedroom doors and window shutters locked at eight, with no mention of recreational time specifically set aside. Of the 366 patients resident in the asylum at the end of 1838, 298 were engaged in work.10 Other factors in the early Reports at Wakefield suggest a strong connection with religion and religious practice. Among the causes of insanity recorded during the asylum’s first twenty years are ‘Consulting Wise Men’ (4 females), intemperance (303 males and 39 females; by far the largest single cause), pride (3 males and 6 females), pecuniary disappointment (34 males and 18 females), political excitement (4 males), religious anxiety (45 males and 63 females; the largest cause for females), reading plays, novels, & c (1 female), study & c (21 males and 3 females) and unkindness of husband (26 females).11 Ellis moved to Hanwell Asylum in 1831, where he resigned in 1838 in protest at plans to expand the patient population.12 There is no information in the Reports regarding music or other sources of entertainment during Ellis’s time at the Wakefield institution. Employment continued to be an important source of occupation for the patients under Ellis’s successor, Charles Caesar Corsellis (1800– 1876), who was Medical Director between 1831 and 1853. In 1834, Corsellis reported that nearly half of the patients were employed in some way, whether in the house, on the land or in their own trades, which included shoemakers, weavers and tailors.13 Corsellis again made the direct link between employment and mental recovery, noting ‘that habits of Regularity, Industry, and Cleanliness, are no less essential to Man’s health and Prosperity, than to his Cheerfulness and Peace of Mind’.14 Corsellis’s work was also influential in both political and medical quarters. In 1839, for example, he recorded that over 700 visitors had inspected the asylum, among them ‘many foreigners, medical men, and persons of rank’.15 The early 1840s marked a turning point in the attitude towards recreational activities at the West Riding institution, and the rhetoric in use at this time is worthy of close attention. Corsellis’s Report of 1840 records that Christmas entertainments, held separately for staff, male patients and female patients, ‘have regularly been kept up for many years’, and

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these had included an amateur musical performance or singing, the party being opened up to local benefactors.16 Funds from the sale of items produced in the asylum had supported a similar event in the summer. Yet entertainment, on the whole, was firmly discouraged. Corsellis explained that. Recreations, such as music, dancing, playing draughts, &c are chiefly confined to the incurable patients, and seldom desired by the rest. In a community of lunatics, taken from the labouring classes, a taste for trifling amusements usually the result of want of occupation, has but in a few instances been acquired, and the contentment and cheerfulness they evince, whilst engaged in their several useful avocations is of a nature more conducive to permanent soundness of mind, than the feelings induced by the more exciting but less satisfactory exercises, termed “recreation”.17

Despite the mental weaknesses of the asylum’s patients, Corsellis argued, most retained a sense of place and status and this directed them towards ‘cheerful industry’ rather than the indulgences of recreational activity. He further warns against the temptation to focus on the trappings of ‘walks and gardens, the music and dancing’, which all too often obscured the deep unhappiness and despair of asylum patients.18 Despite such warnings, and a continued ambivalence over their appropriateness for pauper patients, recreational activities continued to receive increased attention in the annual reports. The tension inherent in providing leisure activities the paupers would not have been able to experience at home was clear in the reports. In 1843 Corsellis recorded that. Recreation, when it is essentially innocent in its tendency, is so necessary to the presentation of mental health, that it has always formed a part in the treatment pursued in all well conducted Asylums. Games in the open air, such as quoits, skittles, troco, &c. have been most encouraged, and are enjoyed, when the weather is fine, by a large proportion of the patients. In-doors they have drafts, German tactics, solitaire, musical instruments, &c. In the summer, many are allowed to take walks in the country, and to visit their friends at proper seasons and under suitable attendance.19

In the same report, however, he continued by suggesting that ‘trifling games’ would represent degrading treatment for paupers used to significant responsibility and hard work. In addition, paupers needed

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preparation for their rehabilitation, and this required consideration of their status and means once returned to their homes: ‘it would be doing him but a questionable service did we surround him by indulgences that would afterwards inspire him with discontent at the inferior accommodations of his own humble home’.20 Offering entertainment for the chronic patients, who were not expected to recover, was quite different from allowing the majority of patients to experience too much luxury and enjoyment, though the stigma and other hardships of the asylum meant there is no suggestion patients might deliberately seek to remain in the institution. Nevertheless, parties on the lawn, books, newspapers and periodicals, together with outdoor games and indoor amusements, were increasingly part of the asylum’s provision for the occupation of patients. Amusements gradually took on importance alongside employment and came to be described as part of the same therapeutic culture, with similar concerns for the social status of patients and for maintaining a calm and controlled atmosphere. Corsellis’s 1844 Report reflects this change in his reflection that. Occupation, whether as labour or recreation, will materially diminish the necessity for restraint, whenever it can be employed.’21 The asylum’s development also tended to be planned with both aims hand-in-hand. In 1845, for example, a plot of four acres was purchased with the dual purpose in mind of cultivation as a market garden, for agricultural employment, and as a source of ‘cheerful recreation.22

Corsellis continued to emphasise that it was labour, rather than mere occupation, that was best suited to his particular group of pauper lunatics due to their social origins—but that the occasional game or dance was nonetheless effective in bringing a measure of cheerfulness to the patients he aimed to cure. The same perspective was reiterated in Corsellis’s 1848 Report, where he suggested. Amusements have been less encouraged amongst us than they have been in some other Institutions, for the plain reason that the household if composed of a class by whom they are not very readily appreciated, and who having learned to labour for their daily bread, and to find their happiness in the patient discharge of their duty are apt to consider amusement as an evidence of idleness or dissipation. Without doing violence to so innocent a prejudice, some of the most morose have been beguiled into

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cheerfulness by the sight of their companions enjoying a game of skittles, &c.; the gloomy and inactive have been aroused and persuaded to join in the dance so productive of pleasure to the rest.23

It is not clear whether there was a financial imperative behind the pressure on Corsellis to focus on employment, rather than entertainment. Certainly many pauper asylums operated with very tight financial constraints and Wakefield’s expansion during the period would have left little budget for non-essentials. In the non-conformist north of England, the influence of more austere religious practices would also have been felt, together with the Quaker influence of the nearby York Retreat. The inclusion of music among these amusements was particularly mentioned with reference to observances on a Sunday, when there would be no regular employment. On these days, Corsellis records, there was a ‘greater tranquillity’ on the wards: ‘In the evenings they frequently sing in concert, or discuss according to their several powers of understanding, the subject of the Sermons they have been hearing’.24 Music, particularly singing, was perhaps one form of recreation which could achieve the desired calming effect, as well as suiting the social background of the patients in residence. ∗ ∗ ∗ The West Riding Asylum went on to become one of the largest of the Victorian era. Between 1846 and 1859 the asylum more than doubled in size from 445 to 930 patients, and the approach taken by its Medical Superintendents moved away from their Quaker inheritance towards the more generous treatment typical of other institutions in the second half of the nineteenth century. A massive programme of expansion between 1846 and 1849 saw the provision of space for 400 additional patients. Under Superintendent John S. Alderson (b. 1817/18, in post1853–1858) the emphasis remained on calm and orderly occupation, which included instruction in ‘schools’ under the Chaplain, and improvements to furnishings and decorations.25 Alderson’s successor, John Davies Cleaton (1825–1901), who held the post between 1858 and 1866, oversaw a second wave of building work, which provided a large dining hall, kitchens and offices, and a new church, the chapel of St Faith. The large dining hall, situated to the West of the main buildings, held 700

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patients and would also be used for parties, dances and other entertainments.26 This offered an opportunity for large-scale recreational activities and the meeting of male and female patients for organised activities for the first time since the asylum’s inception. Cleaton had begun his career as House Surgeon at Lancaster County Asylum, moving to a post as Superintendent of Rainhill Asylum, near St Helens and serving the Liverpool area, in 1853. At Lancaster he worked under Samuel Gaskell (1807–1886), who was innovative in implementing the non-restraint system at that institution. Following his eight-year term at Wakefield, Cleaton took on the post of Commissioner in Lunacy, retiring in 1894 but continuing his association with the role until his death.27 Cleaton made immediate improvements to the condition of patients at Wakefield, issuing new clothes and shoes, improving the diet and outdoor spaces, providing infirmary space for ill patients, increasing washing facilities and re-furnishing and decorating the wards.28 Like his predecessors, Cleaton was a religious man: a Methodist by birth. But in contrast, he was a Welsh Methodist, therefore drawing on a strong tradition of communal music and singing rather than the more austere heritage of his earlier counterparts. It may well have been this influence which led to the revolution in music and entertainments experienced at Wakefield during Cleaton’s eight-year residency. On Cleaton’s arrival, criticism of entertainment or recreational activities by the Visitors appears to have continued. The new Superintendent rebuffed any potential criticism for the new turn in arrangements for the occupation and amusement of his charges, arguing. There appears to have been a disposition on the part of some persons, to question the soundness of the modern system of making the unfortunate inmates of the Asylum so extremely comfortable, and of accustoming them when in the Institution also to periodical recreation, lest on their recovery and return to their humble homes they should, from the withdrawal of those comforts and amusements, suffer a revulsion which would bring back their mental malady. This apprehension is not, according to my experience, in any degree supported by the records of the causes of relapses in insanity.29

As Cleaton noted in his Quarterly Report to the Committee of Visitors in July 1858, amusements were by this stage ‘generally recognized as Elements of Medical Treatment in Insanity’, and he took steps to align

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Wakefield with other asylums in this respect.30 Going further, however, Cleaton suggests that the potentially harmful effects of sporadic largescale entertainments could be mitigated by a more frequent offering. Writing to the Visitors, he reflected. It has been too much the habit at some of our large asylums, to have recourse to these meetings but once or twice a year, at which periods large numbers of strangers are admitted; under these circumstances the whole scene becomes little more than a mere spectacle to feed the curiosity of the public, while the value of the meeting as an element of treatment is lost. These gatherings, to be remedial in their influence on the minds and feelings of the patients, must I believe be repeated periodically and with moderate frequency.’31

The Asylum must have been under strained financial circumstances, given Cleaton’s spending on food, clothes and refurbishments for the patients. Yet he advocated entertainments with a strong link to a long-term scheme of treatment. Music took on a new importance under Cleaton. Two weekly events were held for patients, one for practice and instruction in singing glees and madrigals, and the other for music and dancing; he reported in 1859 that both were ‘much appreciated by the patients of both sexes, and are in a variety of ways accompanied by beneficial results’.32 Expanding on this suggestion in his Quarterly report in 1858, Cleaton recorded that the meetings had. already in many instances been productive of marked benefit not only by breaking the general monotony of asylum life, but in many individual cases by arousing the dormant energies and diverting the gloomy brooding of the lethargic and melancholic on the one hand, and on the other by fixing the attention and developing the self control (the exercise of which is a necessary condition of participation) of the flighty and maniacal.33

At this stage, prior to the completion of new building work, the meetings were held in a large day room in the new laundry building, and were attended by about 140 patients—only a small proportion of the resident population. Cleaton’s report suggests that the musical evenings were perhaps used as an incentive for good behaviour, not only selecting the better-behaved patients for attendance, but actively changing behaviour with the promise of the new recreational opportunities. Looking forward

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to the completion of new buildings for dining and recreation, Cleaton anticipated a larger proportion of patients accessing the ‘remedial influence produced by these meetings’.34 From the start of his tenure, Cleaton reported a preference for employing attendants with musical ability, who would take a part in the band or assist in the glee singing, allowing the meetings to proceed without additional cost to the institution.35 The weekly events were soon followed by other special events, all following a musical theme: Christmas Carols in December 1859, followed by a concert of ‘Messiah’ by a choir or professionals and amateurs accompanied by piano, who performed to 200 patients together with officers and servants.36 The new dining hall was used for a Christmas party in 1859, accommodating 700 patients and visitors.37 Yet the asylum continued to grow, reaching over 1000 patients in 1862.38 It was during this early period of Cleaton’s tenure that a band was formed, the funds for purchase of a set of brass instruments being released by the Committee of Visitors, together with permission to purchase a Collard piano.39 However, the following report records that the brass band was swiftly replaced by newly purchased string instruments, which were considered more suitable for playing for dances in the new hall.40 By July 1861 the band was recorded in attendance at the women patients’ ‘Annual frolic’, and by 1863–4 it had developed into an orchestra of 22 players, performing weekly at the dances and other entertainments.41 The band was led by Emos Berry, one of the attendants described as ‘being of superior education and intelligence to most of the men servants’.42 Music also began to play a more extensive role in religious observances. Hymn books were among the expenses recorded in 1859, and some music was evidently part of the services prior to the opening of a new chapel in 1861. An entry from 1865 suggests that there had been a small organ in the women’s chapel, prior to the building of the new church.43 However, the organ had perhaps fallen out of use, for the Chaplain’s Journal from 1853–4 notes that the women’s service, held in the afternoon, had ‘no instrumental accompaniment to the singing’, and that singing and responses were led by one of the Ward nurses.44 Cleaton’s 1861 plea for an organ for the new church refers to the ‘large number of patients among the usual congregation who join in singing the psalms and hymns’ and the importance of ‘leading, sustaining and keeping together [their] voices’.45 He took a personal interest in the specification for the new organ, taking advice from his friend the precentor of Durham

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Cathedral John Bacchus Dykes, and seeking a number of draft proposals from organ builders.46 Dykes was on hand to open the new organ on 29 January 1862.47 In contrast to the earlier history of music in the asylum, theorgan was evidently a fine addition to the chapel, described by Cleaton as ‘an exceedingly good instrument’ and designed and built ‘in a very liberal manner’.48 It later became clear that the builders had added a trumpet stop, which had not been in the original specification. However, Cleaton reported that ‘the organist is very anxious to retain the Stop as being very useful in producing the necessary amount of contrast in the Voluntaries of which he plays four every Sunday’.49 The organ was played by one of the male attendants, George Brook, who received no regular payment for his services, despite giving up his free Sundays and undertaking the extra expense of lessons from Mr Broughton of Leeds.50 From 1863 Brook’s contribution was recognised by a small gratuity. The musical part of the service was described as. very good and attractive. On the Sunday mornings it is plain, and consists mainly of vocal unison with organ accompaniment; but in the afternoons, with the kind assistance of the leading members of the principal Church Choirs of the town, full Choral Service, with an anthem, is regularly performed, - the antiphonal chanting of the Psalms being led by a choir of twenty-four to thirty voices.51

The balance of singers evidently shifted as new staff were appointed, and the Annual Report for 1863–1864 suggests that the choir was predominantly drawn from the Officers and Servants, ‘kindly assisted by several highly efficient vocalists from Wakefield’.52 The chapel held 600, and its generous size made it appropriate for performances as well as services. In November 1861 Elijah was performed by the combined voices of the choirs of Wakefield Parish Church and Trinity Church, together with the Asylum Choir assisted by professional and amateur friends and a band, with the proceeds going towards the asylum organ fund.53 Both members of the public and ‘the more intelligent’ patients were admitted to the audience, the proceeds from ticketed sales going towards the organ and choirs.54 This was followed in June 1862 by a ‘Handel Festival Selection’ given by a choir of fifty voices ‘comprising the leading amateurs and professionals of the town and neighbourhood’, which took place in the dining hall.55 In November

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1863 Messiah was performed once more, with the Asylum Church Choir joined by ‘many Amateur and professional friends’ and accompanied by the band.56 Again, the performance took place in the hall and allowed between ‘300 and 400 patients and servants’ to attend. It is clear that the expansion of the asylum’s buildings allowed it not only to include large musical events among its internal programme of activities, but also to contribute in significant ways to the musical life of the local area. Thus within the period of eight years, and under the careful eye and enthusiasm of John Cleaton, musical life at the Wakefield asylum was transformed by the introduction of singing and dancing, the organ in the new chapel, the accompaniment of the band and full-scale choral performances. Cleaton’s connection with Dykes at Durham cathedral must have assisted him in securing the services of local professional musicians, and the regular references to contacts with local benefactors suggest he was also effective in engaging individuals who might offer their services, whether participating in concerts and events, offering the loan of grounds for picnics or helping to fund the chapel organ. Cleaton’s approach to appointments also clearly paid off, with both sacred and secular musical activities largely staffed from within the asylum. But what is most striking is the change of tone and approach to treatment for the pauper residents. The austere emphasis on suitable employment and preparation for rehabilitation is replaced by variety and quality of amusement. The apologetic tone is gone from discussion of music in the Reports, and it is clear that Cleaton gained support (both financial and practical) for his endeavours through both individual donors and large-scale public events. ∗ ∗ ∗ Dr James Crichton-Browne was elected Medical Superintendent following Cleaton’s resignation in June 1866. Crichton-Browne’s interest, and contribution to the recreational activities available at the asylum, was in theatre, but the overall tone of his time is of a medicalisation of mental health care. Crichton-Browne considered insanity a ‘physical disease’, though he did not immediately discount the importance of moral treatment.57 Of occupation in general, Crichton-Browne noted that it had been ‘sedulously encouraged, not merely as a means of reducing the expenditure, but as a mental medicine of rare potency and value, and a necessary element of bodily vigour’.58 Music in the chapel, he wrote, ‘heightened the seemliness and beauty of our services, and

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rendered them more directly beneficial to the afflicted but susceptible beings who take part in them’.59 Crichton-Brown once again nodded to the earlier concerns about entertainment leading to over-stimulation among the pauper patients. Readings and theatrical entertainments had been added to the dances and other musical events, but had. not, as might have been feared, produced excitement in any one instance, but have cheered many drooping and depressed spirits, and have become no slight adjuncts to discipline and to self-control from the anxiety with which they are anticipated, and the knowledge that admission to them is to be procured through good behaviour.60

The amateur theatrical company put together by a number of the officers and attendants took further steps to address the monotony of asylum life.61 Crichton-Browne reaffirmed the place of moral treatment at Wakefield, noting that ‘The most remarkable and beneficial results have accrued from all such efforts. Books, games, and concerts have been found to contribute to recovery and to promote propriety of demeanour where recovery could not be looked for’.62 Moral treatment was considered in the broadest possible sense, for while Crichton-Browne acknowledged the use of recreational activities, education and religion, he suggested the general atmosphere, routine and moral influence of officers and attendants, were primary elements in establishing an overall therapeutic context: ‘every impression made upon the senses of the lunatic, - every mental pleasure or pain to which he is subjected,- every pursuit in which he is induced to take part, - and every recreation provided for him’.63 Crichton-Browne’s assessment of the role of dance is particularly interesting for our purposes. He noted that the weekly balls were attended by about 600 patients, a ‘great proportion’ of whom were engaged in dancing. For those who did not dance, however, the ball continued to act as a beneficial mechanism. Patients enjoyed the atmosphere, the music and the movement. Crichton-Browne concluded therefore that the dance was ‘twice blessed’, both as an opportunity for active participation and via the benefits of passive watching and listening.64 If the causes of mental health were to be found in the physical body, it was a logical move to advocate for physical exercise and treatment to form a core part of the therapeutic scheme. The emphasis on recreation that had been so evident from Cleaton’s reports disappears. Crichton-Browne’s notes and formal reports are

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largely focussed on medical issues, together with the practicalities of accommodation and changes in staffing. In his Annual Report of 1868, he argued. We must insist that Asylums should become hospitals more and more; and should subordinate safe custody and comfortable lodging, to cure and scientific exploration: for it is but reasonably to hope that a careful, sustained, and general inquiry into the causes, pathology, and treatment of mental derangements, would multiply our resources and give precision to our efforts in dealing with them, and enable us to warn against circumstances that conduce to create them, and to guide to prophylactive measures.65

Moral treatment was to remain part of this, as Crichton-Browne’s vision was of a minutely ordered and controlled approach, encompassing every aspect of asylum life in an attempt to re-develop lost faculties and habits. The 1868 Report suggests that entertainment, employment and recreation came under this new, scientific, regime: Moral treatment has been extended and improved in 1868 as opportunities have permitted, and has aimed at the substitution of robust and harmonious, for sickly and disordered ideas, at the evolution of dwarfed or blighted faculties, at the development of self-regulation, and at the gradual elaboration of sound and normal habits and processes of thought. All the surroundings of the patients, all their occupations and amusements, are devised with a view to these great objects, and even the demeanour of the medical officers towards them, and the remarks addressed to them, steadily tend in the same direction. To those unfamiliar with Asylum life it is impossible to convey any notion of the amount of thought, tact, and ingenuity expended in the organization of moral treatment.66

The 1871 Report continued to note the balance of activities involved in moral treatment. It is evident that the role of entertainments and amusements was becoming something of a theme among portrayals of the asylum, perhaps leading once again to negative comments circulating regarding use of public funds for the institutions and their work. In response, Crichton-Browne assured: It must not be supposed to consist solely in concerts or balls or dramatic entertainments; nor is it summed up when educational classes and religious

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consolation are added to these. Highly serviceable as these are, they must take rank after what might be termed the moral atmosphere of the house, its quiet routine, and lessons of gentleness and forbearance, and after the moral influence which the Officers can exert, and which is individual in its application.67

Despite this, the role of entertainments remained important to asylum life, both for the patients, and the relationship between the institution and the surrounding world: The more conspicuous branch of moral treatment – that embracing amusements and recreations – has been supported with unflagging spirit by several Officers, who have given much time and labour to the preparation of entertainments that have been keenly relished by the patients, and that have been most creditable to all concerned in them. Such entertainments are attended by large numbers of patients, and visitors are also admitted to them.68

However, subsequent Reports give little indication of developments in these areas, with focus firmly on the scientific and experimental activity for which Crichton-Browne has since become best-known. Crichton-Browne was particularly encouraging of theatrical ventures and the first few years of his time as Medical Superintendent witnessed an enormous growth in the frequency and scale of such activity. A newspaper article dated September 1868 reported the opening of the Asylum theatre for its third season: Browne had clearly wasted no time in making the innovation on his arrival in 1866.69 The audience for the opening night was largely composed of ‘inmates of course, for whose special delectation these performances are arranged – with a sprinkling of visitors’. Among the plaudits for the acting skills of the asylum’s cast, special mention was made of music. The chorus was described as ‘the best rendered part of the performance, and it was much appreciate by the audience’, while the band ‘under the conductorship of Mr. Berry, treated the audience to some delicious music’. The role of drama as a therapeutic agent was given greater consideration in a second report, dating from 17 April 1875, and much of the writer’s assessment could equally have applied to music: ‘a means of dissipating painful self-consciousness, of rousing dementia into intelligent perception, and of relieving the tedium of prolonged confinement

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in lunatic asylums’.70 The writer refers to the pleasure afforded to patients by dramatic performances, but also suggests such entertainment places in the hands of those who control them a beneficial form of restraint. It not unfrequently happens that a troublesome patient, whose excitement would only be intensified by stern measures or solitary confinement, is subdued at once by the promise of a visit to the asylum theatre, or the threat of a deprivation of that privilege.71

Other aspects were perhaps more particular to the dramatic form: the writer suggests that the relationship between patients and attendants lent special interest to the theatrical context. The theatre offered opportunities not only for the patients to ‘lose themselves’ in a fictional world, but formed an important connection with the nearby town. Indeed, the asylum managed to host significant events: also reported in the 1875 article is the input of one W. S. Gilbert, already a well-known dramatist, who not only suggested that the asylum company stage his play Pygmalion and Galatea, but also condescended to train many of the cast himself, and even played a small part onstage. Such a coup confirms that asylum recreations cannot be dismissed. Not only was the programme at the theatre an important part of asylum life and therapy, it contributed significantly to the social life of the nearby area. Extant programmes and playbills attest to a wide variety of entertainments at the asylum, particularly in the newly christened ‘Theatre Royal, Stanley-cum-Wrenthorpe’ which carefully disguised the location and nature of the venue. Internal musical performances were ambitious and large scale. Between 1871 and 1877 the choir and band performed concerts which featured a large sacred work (or selections thereof) in the first half, followed by a miscellaneous programme in the second. Programmes are extant for the following works performed in this model: 11 20 16 19 13

April 1871 March 1873 December 1875 December 1876 September 1877

Mendelssohn, Elijah Haydn, The Creation Handel, Judas Handel, Messiah Gounod, Messe Solennelle

An additional concert in this vein was held in 1872, when the Wakefield Glee and Madrigal Society choir members combined with the Asylum band to perform Haydn’s Mass in D (“Imperial”), again followed

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by a miscellaneous selection. Solo vocalists were drawn from the local community of professionals and talented upper-class amateurs.72 From late 1877 the preference for large-scale works appears to have been dropped and the choir and band concerts continued with miscellaneous programmes. The concert on 16 October 1877, for example, included glees and songs, with the band opening each half of the programme. The concert began with an overture, ‘La domino noir’ by Daniel Auber; the second half was introduced with a selection from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.73 From 1878 the main choir and band concert appears to have been a Christmas event, held in late December. The first half of each programme is dedicated to madrigals, glees and solo songs, while the second half featured carols as well as festive solos and part-songs. The band continued to provide an overture to each part of the concert. The band also featured in the theatrical entertainments which became a feature of the Wakefield asylum. The earliest extant programme is from 16 November 1866 and features ‘His Last Legs!’, a two-act farce, followed by ‘Bombastes Furioso!’, described as ‘a Burlesque Tragic Opera’. The latter included a military band in the summary notes, though no specific mention of songs or choruses. The exact nature of the musical contribution to the two pieces is not clear, but at the bottom of the programme Mr. Berry is listed as ‘Leader of the Orchestra’. There was plenty of enthusiasm to be found, for another programme was staged within a few months, on 17 January 1867. This combined the farce ‘High Life Below Stairs!’ with a song ‘The Death of Nelson’ and Verdegris’ ‘Classical Opera’ ‘The Wandering Minstrel!’74 The show included both music and incidental dances, though on this occasion no bandmaster is credited. In addition to formal concerts and theatrical performances, the band played regularly at asylum events and celebrations. One key event in the year was the summer fete. The earliest programmes denote this as ‘Whitsuntide Festivities’, combining sporting events with dance tunes (it is not clear whether any dancing was expected). The band’s repertoire is typical of this period in focussing on Continental light music. For the 1884 Whitsuntide Festivities they opened with an unnamed Quickstep to the Green and Overture, before interspersing the athletic events with the following repertoire75 : March, ‘Cannon’ Valse, ‘Mariana’ Quadrille, ‘Le Carnival’ March, ‘La Foi’

Gung’l Waldteufel Herman

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Valse, ‘Travenliebe’ Polka, ‘The Letter Box’ Valse, ‘The old Love and the new’ March, ‘The Wedding’ Lancers, ‘Operatic’ Valse ‘The Source’ ‘Sir Roger De Coverley’

Lamotte Coote Caroline Lowthian Reyloff Lamotte

In 1884 the Whitsuntide Festivities were joined by another festival, the Annual Gala, which took place later in the summer, at the beginning of August. On this occasion, the band’s dances were interspersed with comedy acts and other entertainments such as maypole dancing, followed by fireworks. The choir also took part in this event, singing during teatime. The two events seem to have been amalgamated, since the Grand Annual Gala in July 1887 combined music, sports and entertainments. The ubiquitous band was also in attendance at more unusual events. Records show the band, or a subset of members, accompanied patients on outings, picnics and treats. Yet their presence was also felt as the asylum became known for its medical advances and training. Two medical conversaziones, taking place in 1872 and 1875, were held to showcase the latest experiments and ideas, and to bring together experts from the region.76 Each event comprised a lecture by a visiting expert, followed by an opportunity to examine various exhibits drawn both from the asylum’s pathological museum and its day-to-day apparatus and from visiting scientists and businesses. On each occasion the band performed, possibly both before and after the lecture, opening with an overture before a series of dances and opera selections, finishing, as always, with the National Anthem. The 1872 repertoire drew on English, Italian and Germanic repertoire: Overture Valse Selection Valse Overture Valse Selection Valse Cavatine from Valse

‘Rob Roy’ ‘Journalisten’ ‘Il Trovatore’ ‘Am Schönen Rhein gedenk’ich dein’ ‘Maritana’ ‘Carnavals Botschafter’ ‘La Traviata’ ‘Beautiful Danube ‘Barbier de Seville’ ‘Princess Louise’

Jackson J. Strauss Verdi Keler Beler W. V. Wallace J. Strauss Verdi J. Strauss Rossini C. Godfrey

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By 1875, however, the band’s repertoire had shifted to include a large proportion of French composers and more popular genres with less reliance on arrangements of opera melodies: Overture Valse Quadrille Selection Valse Bousquet Overture Valse Prophete Fantasia

‘Nabucodonosor’ ‘Immortellen’ ‘Hyde Park’ ‘St. Cecile’ ‘La Manola’ Polka ‘La Domino Noir’ ‘Isar Lieder’ ‘Triumphal March’ ‘Atala’

Verdi Gung’l Riviere Lamotte Waldteufel ‘La Prevenche’ Auber Gung’l Meyerbeer Blancheteau

The band’s activities and the large-scale events formed only part of the musical life at the asylum during this period. These were complimented by a series of smaller entertainments, given by both asylum staff and visiting performers. Internal talent was exhibited at the Officers and Attendants’ concerts, which were of a miscellaneous character, including performances by wives and sons of asylum staff. The earliest programme dates from 15 April 1879, when the programme was introduced by the band with Auber’s Overture ‘Masaniello’, followed by Glees and solo songs. Drs. Birt and Geoghegan performed a piano duet, Cherubini’s ‘Ladioska’, while Master Brook (son of the chapel organist) performed a piano solo, a ‘Rondo’ by Beethoven.77 The vocal repertoire is mainly English, with songs by Braham, G. H. Hunt and Macfarren. Later concerts also include a few instrumental items; on 7 December 1880 the concert featured cornet and violin solos, while on 15 February 1881 a Haydn piano trio was programmed. The band continued to provide overtures and on 6 March 1883 this role was taken by the Andante and Finale from Haydn’s Symphony no. 2. On 9 March 1882 a ‘comic negro sketch’ was included for the first time, and this item formed the basis for the foundation of the Asylum Minstrels whose first recorded separate entertainment was given in December 1885. Finally, the programme of recreational activities was completed with visiting musicians, actors and entertainers. Wakefield Military Band would have given a familiar programme at their concert on 22 January 1885, which included guest vocalists. Groups such as the Royal Excelsior Handbell Ringers, who visited from York in 1879 and 1881, offered musical

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experiences not available within the asylum’s own means. Others were sole operators or duos providing the familiar miscellaneous content. Mr D. I. Smithson, for example, visited from London on 31 August 1880, together with the Soprano Mdlle. Fabriani. Their Entertainment comprised a mixture of songs, piano solos, sketches and recitations. W Kingsley’s Royal Handbell Ringers & Vocal Concert Party similarly travelled from London for their concert on 23 August 1883, while Mr. J. H. Manley’s Vaudeville Company, who performed on 18 October 1881, offered the Musical Operetta ‘The Waterman’ by Dibdin together with ‘A Burlesque Operatic Absurdity entitled Fixtures Fix’. Herbert North, who performed earlier in 1881 on 21 April, presented a ‘Histrionic, Mimetic and Musical Entertainment’ which included songs and sketches as well as a short play. Yet even on these occasions the band was not relieved. For Mr. J. H. Manley the band played an overture as well as an operatic selection part-way through the evening. Similarly, when Mr G.A. Foote staged his ‘Mimetic & Impersonation Entertainment’ entitled ‘Funny Fancies’, the band provided an overture to each half of the programme. The band could also form an integrated part of the evening, such as the ‘Aptommas’ Harp Recitals, ‘assisted by eminent Amateur Talent and the excellent Band belonging to the Institution’, which was the entertainment on offer on 1 December 1881. The only dated photo of the band from the nineteenth century captures its membership in 1899 (Fig. 5.1). At this point, the instrumentation consisted of eight violins, two cellos, two double basses, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two clarinets, two cornets, two horns, one trombone, one euphonium and one drummer.78 The photo lists the names of the attendants participating, together with the youthful ‘Dr McRay’, seated with a violin. Dr Douglas McRae [sic] was Assistant Medical Officer at Wakefield between 1896 and May 1899.79 Another photo of a similar age (Fig. 5.2) shows just five violins, two flutes, two bassoons, two clarinets, two horns, one cornet, two double basses and one drummer.80 A third photo (Fig. 5.3), also of a similar vintage but showing the band without their uniform caps, includes sixteen upper strings, three cellos, three basses, two flutes, two oboes, one clarinet, two bassoons, one cornet, two trombones, two horns and two timpanists.81 These are significant forces and the variety of engagements, together with the demanding schedules of the officers and attendants, may have meant that the full complement was not always present.

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Fig. 5.1 West Riding ‘Mental Hospital Band, 1899’ C85/1401 (Reproduced by permission of West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield)

The diet of dances, concerts and theatricals established at the outset of Crichton-Browne’s tenure continued to flourish under his successors Herbert Major (1876–1884) and William Bevan Lewis (1884-1910). Bevan Lewis had arrived at Wakefield as assistant medical officer in 1875 and worked his way through the ranks under Major; among his own innovations were provision for education and training, and the establishment of an outpatient department.82 Informal music making opportunities were also added; in 1879 the Commissioners for Lunacy reported that after dinner in the male dining hall, ‘they all remain in the dining hall, and chat, play music, and sing,

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Fig. 5.2 West Riding Asylum Band [c. 1900] C85/1400 (Reproduced by permission of West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield)

until it is time for them to go out to work again’.83 Such an opportunity was not afforded to the female patients. A stage was added to the recreation hall by 1878, with the Corps Dramatique composed of Asylum Officials, together with the addition of several patients, and ‘under the direction of Mr. Bracey, the Dispenser, who continues to act as stage manager’.84 However, the focus on theatricals and formal productions may have been at the expense of informal musical making and recreational opportunities. References to musical instruments throughout the asylum suggest they were in poor shape. The Commissioners’ Report of 1891 notes that, on the male side, the single musical instrument (presumably a piano) was ‘ancient’ and ‘unplayable’.85 The following year the Commissioners noted that ‘The pianos, musical boxes, and the church organ have been put into better repair and tuned, but the organ could be still further improved’.86 Wards were described as ‘shabby’, with sparse

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Fig. 5.3 West Riding Asylum Band [c. 1900] C85/1402 (Reproduced by permission of West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield)

furnishings, few books or newspapers and little decoration.87 A new piano was purchased in 1896, but the Commissioners criticised the asylum for providing only two pianos on the female side. A further two were purchased in 1897, one in 1898 and a final purchase in 1899.88 The choir continued to flourish under the leadership of Attendant John Whipp, who had been engaged as an attendant in January 1880 (and was also active as a stage manager and leader of the minstrels). Composed of attendants and nurses, it suffered from the regular turnover of staff, but the Chaplain reports in 1897 that ‘The Services in the Church on Sundays are as usual attended by a large number of the Patients, and judging by the hearty manner in which the responses and hymns are joined in by them I believe they are highly valued’.89 George Brook retired in 1892 after 30 years as organist, at which time the choir consisted of 11 boys and

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16 men.90 There is no information on whether the boys were connected with the asylum, or drawn from local communities. However, it is likely that some of the boys were the same as the soloists in secular concerts, most probably the sons of officers and attendants or drawn from the local cathedrals. Throughout this period, the rich programme of musical entertainment on offer at the West Riding Asylum is notable for its variety and invention. Particularly striking is the level of cooperation between internal and external performers, both professional and amateur, as the asylum called on local singers and instrumentalists to boost its own endeavours, while providing the band, an accompanist or an occasional extra item to fill in the programmes of visiting performers. The 1870s, in particular, offer striking examples of ambitious, large-scale choral events which must have been significant features in the Wakefield musical calendar. The miscellaneous nature of most programmes meant patients and staff were exposed to a wide variety of musical styles and genres, from chamber music to minstrel songs, drawing on repertoire from the UK and Continental Europe, both popular and Classical. By 1900 the pauper asylum housed nearly 1500 patients, and it was perhaps the sheer numbers that stalled further developments in terms of the practical application of moral management, music and entertainments within a therapeutic scheme. Yet the rich theatrical and musical life at Wakefield continued to thrive into the twentieth century, supported by and integrated into the local community via the theatre. The work of Wakefield’s two mid-century Superintendents, Cleaton and CrichtonBrowne, was key to this legacy in terms of music and theatre, respectively. It was their vision, and their willingness to engage with the community, that allowed for such impressive results throughout the second half of the nineteenth century—not only enabling large-scale performances drawing on a wide range of talent, but also cementing music and theatre as key to the successful running of a pauper lunatic asylum.

Notes 1. Practical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic Asylums; Including Instructions to the Architects who offered Plans for the Wakefield Asylum, and a Sketch of the most approved Design (York, 1815). 2. Ibid., 11. 3. Ibid., 15.

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4. Leonard D. Smith, ‘Ellis, Sir William Charles (1780–1839)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [accessed online 11 July 2019 at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref: odnb/53734]. 5. Leonard D. Smith, Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody, 67. Ellis’s qualification and attempts to gain overall control of asylum management were behind his increasingly fraught relationship with the visiting physician Dr Caleb Crowther. See ibid., 67–69. 6. First Report of the Director of the West Riding of York Pauper Lunatic Asylum (1819) (West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield C85/1/12/1), 1–2. Subsequent Annual Reports from the shelfmarks C85/1/12/1–6 are referred to by date. 7. Report 1823, 18. 8. Report 1824, 21–22. 9. Report 1838, 103–104. 10. Ibid., 104. 11. Report 1839, 112. 12. Andrew Howe, ‘The resignation of Sir William Charles Ellis’ in Journal of Medical Biography vol. XXV no. 4 (November 2017), 245–251. 13. Report 1834, 80. In 1840 Corsellis reported that the asylum had purchased looms so that female patients could pursue their usual employment. See Report 1840. 14. Report 1834, 80. 15. Report 1839, 112. 16. Report 1840. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Report 1843, 15. 20. Ibid., 16. 21. Report 1844, 10. 22. Report 1845, 6. 23. Report 1848, 7. 24. Report 1844, 9. 25. Report 1856, 6–9. The schools were recorded as having ‘the salutary influence of checking outbreaks of excitement’. 26. Both the dining hall and the new chapel are shown on a large-scale detailed drawing of the buildings and grounds made in late 1861 by James Walker, a patient at the asylum between 1861 and 1863. See ‘Patient’s “Drone” Survey of West Riding Lunatic Asylum’, 10 October 2016, at https://www.earlyasylumlife.uk. [accessed 11 July 2019]. 27. See Obituary in British Medical Journal 7 September 1901, 653. 28. Report 1859, 16. 29. Report 1859, 24–25.

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30. Quarterly Report to the Committee of Visitors 29 July 1858, Medical Director’s Journal 1858–1867. 31. Printed Report of the Committee of Visitors for 1858, 14. 32. Report 1859, 22. 33. Quarterly Report 28 October 1858. 34. Ibid. 35. Report 1859, 22. 36. Quarterly Report 27 January 1859. 37. See Report 1859, 23. 38. Report 1862 records 1020 patients, an increase from 979 the previous year. 39. Quarterly Report 28 April 1859. 40. Quarterly Report 28 July 1859. 41. Quarterly Report 25 July 1861, and Report 1863–4, 17. 42. Quarterly Report 28 January 1864. 43. ‘Some pipes which we have laid by belonging to a small organ which was formerly placed in the women’s old chapel and which at one time it was intended to erect in the gallery of the dining Hall’. See Quarterly Report 26 October 1865. 44. Chaplain’s Journal 1853–4, 377. 45. Quarterly Report 31 October 1861. 46. Ibid. 47. John Bacchus Dykes was a well-known composer and writer on music, alongside his church career. He is best known for his numerous hymn tunes, many of which are still in use today. Dykes is one of several musicians to have spent time in asylums himself, and he died at the private asylum at Ticehurst in 1876. 48. Quarterly Report 30 January 1862. 49. Quarterly Report 29 January 1863. 50. Ibid. 51. Report 1862, 19. 52. Report 1863–1864, 17. 53. Report 1862, 20. It is not clear whether the band was drawn from the asylum or elsewhere. 54. The concert took receipts of £51, but with expenses of £30 the benefit to the institution was ‘not great’. See Quarterly Report 29 January 1863. 55. Report 1862, 20. 56. Quarterly Report 28 January 1864. 57. Report 1866, 19. 58. Ibid., 17. 59. Ibid., 18. 60. Ibid., 19. 61. Quarterly Report 25 October 1866.

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62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

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Report 1867, 25. Ibid., 24. Report 1873, 25. Report 1868, 27. Ibid., 33–34. Report 1871, 30. Ibid. ‘Amateur Theatricals at the Asylum’, newspaper cutting contained in C5/1382. ‘The Drama in Lunacy Treatment’ in Medical Times and Gazette, 17 April 1875, newspaper cutting contained in C5/1382. Ibid. Programme, 10 May 1872, C5/1382. The Auber opera was popular throughout the nineteenth century and appears in the band’s repertoire in 1875. I have not been able to identify the final piece. The opening farce was a popular drama written by James Townley, first performed at Drury Lane on 31 October 1759. Annual Whitsuntide Festivities on 2 June 1884 (C5/1382). Programmes for these and subsequent events are contained in C85/1382 Scrapbook of Entertainments 1866–1940. Ernest Birt was Medical Officer at the Asylum; Edward George Geoghegan, son of the renowned Dublin Surgeon Thomas G. Geoghegan, was at this point Clinical Clerk; after several posts at the level of Assistant Medical Officer, his promising career was cut short at the age of only 29. See Obituary in Journal of Mental Science, vol. 27 (January 1882), 636. Photo held at Wakefield archives C85/1401. The photo is captioned ‘Mental Hospital Band, 1899’. Obituary in Journal of Mental Science, vol. 90 no. 2 (April 1944), 678– 679. The obituary notes his love of music, particularly the violin. C85/1402. C85/1400. See Obituary in British Medical Journal, vol. 2 (1929), 833. Report 1879, 11. Report 1879, 22. Report 1891, 36. Report 1892, 33. Commissioners Report 1893, 34. Reports 1897, xxxi (Accounts), 33 (Commissioners’ Report); 1898, xxxii (Accounts); 1899, xxxii (Accounts). Report 1897, 37.

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90. A presentation photo of the individual choir members also contains photos of Brook himself, the chaplain and the church. See Wakefield archives C85/1399.

CHAPTER 6

Gloucester Asylum: Private, Charitable and Pauper Patients

The asylum at Gloucester dates back to 1793 when governors of the Gloucester Infirmary began raising funds for an independent lunatic asylum in the city, on the model of the York Asylum.1 The subscribers made a number of purchases of buildings and land but lacked sufficient capital to found an institution. In 1813 they agreed to work jointly with the City and County authorities, under the new terms of the 1808 Act, and building began in 1814 on a 45-acre site in Wotton, just to the east of the old city. The asylum was opened in 1823 with three classes of patients. Its provision of care for different groups of patients brings to the fore the question of class and status in mental health treatment, particular as regarded recreational activities and therapeutic approaches. From the 1860s under Superintendent Ebenezer Toller, music was put on a firmer footing with an ambitious programme involving many staff and patients. The joint venture adopted features from both private and state-run asylums, although with low levels of funding the original subscribers were unable to support significant numbers of charity patients. Nevertheless, the separate parts of the asylum were organised and financed separately (with both city and county taking shares in the pauper part of the institution), with a common fund providing for joint facilities. Despite the difficulties caused by this complex arrangement, the Gloucester institution became known as a well-managed and successful endeavour. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_6

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The first-class, wealthy patients from the upper and middle classes, were able to pay for their care and contributed towards the overall running costs of the asylum. The second class comprised patients from respectable backgrounds who were unable to afford care in private institutions. The cost of their stay in the Gloucester asylum was subsidised by money donated by subscribers to the institution and by first-class patients. The third class were paupers, who were supported by their home parishes. Initially, the three classes were housed separately, with distinct sections of the building for sleeping and day quarters for each class. An imposing three-storey crescent stood at the centre of the institution, with further wings to the north, west and south. First-class patients were allocated private rooms and their own living spaces in the central crescent and could bring a personal servant with them, as well as receiving a superior diet.2 The concern among friends and family for the proper separation of patients is evident in correspondence; for example, William Cullis, seeking a reduction in payments for his wife’s care, begged ‘for Gods sake [do] not place her among the Parish people’.3 In 1838 the asylum housed 20 wealthy, 3 private and 167 pauper patients; the number of charity patients increased in the 1840s but pauper demand grew steadily and, with new buildings required, it became clear that this element needed separate provision. In 1856, therefore, the subscribers were bought out by the city and county management, and a dedicated private asylum founded at nearby Barnwood House. The subsequent history of the Barnwood House Asylum is covered in Chapter 11. The early management committee of the Gloucester asylum drew on a number of sources, including the experiences of the local aristocracy and superintendents at other early pauper asylums. Sir George Onesiphorous Paul, a prison reformer and instrumental in the development of the 1808 legislation, led proposals for the Gloucester institution in the 1790s. The first House Surgeon and Superintendent, Mr. G. Poynder, and the first matron, Mrs. Chambers, were both employed from the Bethlem Asylum. The distinguished medic Dr Hardwicke Shute, from the Gloucester Infirmary, was engaged as visiting physician. The Gloucester Committee sought the advice of John Garrett from the Stafford Asylum and William Ellis at West Riding (both of which had opened in 1818), particularly as regarded employment for the patients. Ellis recommended ‘The employment in some way or other, of every Patient capable of it’, both in order to occupy the residents and to save money on employing servants or buying goods.4 A later comment from the management committee

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confirms that as many pauper patients as possible would be employed, whether in making clothing and linen, in operating machinery, or in the laundry.5 Provision was also made for recreation: the early minutes refer to day rooms and a sitting room, though a large recreation room was not part of the original plans. Separate day rooms were provided to divide the sexes, classes and patients in different mental states, while first-class patients each had both a bedroom and a sitting room. By 1825 the Visitors were able to report ‘a great proportion of the Male Patients are constantly employed in the gardens and grounds, and of the Female Patients in sewing, knitting, and other suitable avocations’.6 Thus, the occupation of the patients from all classes was a focus from the outset. The Gloucester Asylum’s important place in the development of mental health treatment and care in the first half of the nineteenth century was established by its appointment of Samuel Hitch (1800–1881) as Medical Superintendent in April 1828. Hitch did not hold a formal position prior to his Gloucester appointment but worked independently treating patients from his own home in the Gloucester area.7 He was much influenced by the principles of moral management developed at the York Retreat, West Riding Asylum and elsewhere. At Gloucester, Hitch worked as House Surgeon and Superintendent alongside the Physician Hardwicke Shute, who was in post from the asylum’s foundation until his death in 1845. The division of duties meant that Hitch was free to focus on the management and care of patients, rather than medical treatment. Hitch went on to found the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane in 1841, a precursor to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was his innovative approach and subsequent influence that gave Gloucester such a key role in asylum practice. Hitch worked to improve facilities and everyday life for patients, with particular concern for high-quality facilities for the private patients. Alongside addressing practical issues such as heating and safe water supplies (both recurring problems in most asylum institutions) he promoted walking as a recreational practice for patients.8 Although his work was built on a firm belief that most mental disorders had a physical basis, he avoided the more drastic treatments (such as leeches, blisters and head-shaving) and focussed on the holistic approach at the core of moral management. Among Hitch’s innovations were granting trial periods of leave prior to formal discharge, and appointing female nurses, including a female nurse on a male ward.9 His approach aimed to soften the regime

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of the asylum, giving patients a gentler routine and allowing a measure of independence, moves which were not always welcomed by the committee and authorities. When Connolly’s policy of non-restraint at Hanwell asylum was publicised in 1840, Hitch spared little time advocating the same course of action be adopted at Gloucester.10 Patient occupation continued to play a central role: Leonard Smith suggests Gloucester’s employment arrangements were ‘probably second only to Wakefield’.11 An equivalent policy was in place for private patients, who were ‘offered the alternative of a range of indoor and outdoor recreations and amusements, including musical evenings and country walks, according to their states of bodily and mental health’.12 The division between pauper and wealthy patients gave rise to comment from the Belgian Physician Dr Constant Crommelinck, who visited Gloucester in 1841. In his report on British asylums, Crommelinck noted that many of Hitch’s innovations were enjoyed primarily by the richer patients; paupers remained in the dark and ill-equipped old wings, with little access to recreation or opportunities for social engagement.13 Another innovation extended only to the wealthier patients was the introduction of young medical men and well-educated ladies as companions, to give general care and comfort. The 1842 Report recorded that these new employees, together with the first-class patients and the medical staff and families, were gathered into ‘one domestic party’, assembling daily for meals and amusement.14 The successes of Hitch’s new arrangements were publicised via the Provincial Medical Journal, with significant portions of the 1841 Report being printed and circulated in May 1842.15 The printed Annual Report from 1841 gives an overview of Hitch’s approach to asylum management, of the position of the patients and of their activities, as well as the earliest indication of the level of musical activity to be found: Balls and other amusements, occurring in Lunatic Asylums, have been of late publicly mentioned as a matter of admiration and astonishment. In this Asylum, large parties for Dancing have always been promoted; as well as dinner and evening parties, when proper, and pleasurable excursions, for many hours, in the country. Musical entertainments within the walls, and attendance on public amusements, are of so frequent occurrence, that they constitute the practice rather than form the occasional source of amusement in this Asylum. Indeed, to so great an extent does our superintendent

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endeavour to make his patients feel that they belong to the great community of mankind, and are only temporarily separated for their health’s sake, that he encourages a great proportion to attend to their religious duties, on Sundays, in the places of worship in the city and neighbourhood; and induces all who can or will separate themselves from the Asylum, to take their exercise in the surrounding country; whilst, to give encouragement to those who are include to be industrious, he employs all he can, without the walls, in various ways, and cultivates nearly twenty acres with the spade in the fields adjoining and belonging to the Asylum, with scarcely any other check upon their escape beyond the good feeling subsisting between himself and them.16

The role of music in the general principle of ‘home-from-home’ was clearly important. Notably there is no distinction made here between the activities of the different classes of patients, although it can be assumed that agricultural labour was largely confined to the lower classes. Although the report does not specify that the amusements described were restricted to the wealthier patients, Crommelinck’s account from the same period describes a dance and supper which included just twenty patients together with Hitch and his family, the lady companions and other guests.17 Crommelinck further comments that the privileges of exercise, independence and entertainment were largely confined to the wealthier patients.18 Crommelinck’s record also includes a suggestion that Hitch was considering the therapeutic use of music and dancing at social occasions. On the night mentioned in his description, he writes ‘During the evening Dr. Hitch succeeded in getting a young lady to dance whose state of melancholia had made her incapable of uttering a word for six months; her mutism was also dispelled, so that Dr. Hitch felt most hopeful about her prospects’.19 Music became more specifically part of the asylum’s regime in 1842, when sessions for singing were introduced. These were open to patients from all classes. The different responses of the different classes were noted, however, in the Visitor’s report from this year: To the accustomed round of balls, evening parties, &c. our Superintendent has for some time past added the Mainzerian system of singing for his patients, and of all the amusements calculated for a Lunatic Asylum, it is perhaps one of the best that could be devised. It may not be the most perfect mode of teaching the art – it may not be so essential to the individuals whose station in society, and whose means may have enabled them to

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cultivate music on a more extended scale – but, to the less favoured, and the most numerous class of patients in the Asylum, it is the greatest treat; and no evening in the week is looked forward to with so much pleasure as the “singing” one. It is valuable, not as an amusement only, but as an occupation – for the patient has something to do – something to prepare himself for – and many an hour in the week, which, perhaps, might have been painfully passed, glides pleasantly away as he cons over his part for the ensuing concert. But the practice calls out also the kindlier feelings of those patients, to whom such a mode of singing is less acceptable for their own amusement; it leads the better classes to enter into it, and to encourage it, because it gives delight to the poorer and less informed; and thus the strongest feeling in insanity – selfishness – is in a material degree subdued and corrected in their mind.20

This account suggests a more directly therapeutic use of music, treating the misaligned moral priorities that were a frequent feature of mental disturbance. In addition, the introduction of music classes—in particular, the active participation of patients in structured exercise requiring selfdiscipline and practice—helped solve the problems of occupying patients, particularly those for whom physical work was impossible or inappropriate. Musical philanthropy was common outside the asylum, and singing classes for the poor often encouraged by the middle classes as part of newly established mechanics’ and literary institutes. In bringing together the different classes in the Gloucester asylum Hitch was mirroring this form of social engagement and cultural endeavour within his society-inminiature. Elsewhere in the same report the Visitors note the gradual change in attitudes towards treating the insane. Accommodation for private patients had ‘been made nearly resembling their homes’, and even the pauper wards made much more homely. The emphasis turned to ‘comfort and cheerfulness’ rather than simplicity and austerity. The Visitors also noted that they would prefer the asylum to be known as the ‘Hospital for the CURE of the Insane’. In the same way that the 1840 Report had set out their commitment to the principles of non-restraint, the 1842 account followed contemporary thinking in identifying the asylum’s work primarily as that of cure, rather than custody.21 From this time music began to appear among the incidental expenses of the asylum’s private patients, including payment for the hire of a piano from 1846 onwards. Hitch left the asylum in 1845, being retained as a visiting superintendent until 1847, when he cut ties in order to set up his own private institution. However, his legacy continued both through the work of the Association

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and at Gloucester under his successors J. E. Huxley (who remained less than a year) and W. W. Williams. ∗ ∗ ∗ Fortunately for the Gloucester patients, both Dr. Williams (1815–1880, in post 1845–1863) and his wife (who was appointed Matron) were supporters of the musical life of the institution. Hitch’s approach of allowing patients of all classes to participate continued, and in 1849 the Visitors reported ‘The various sources of amusement and relaxation which have been long in use, with such good results, at Hanwell, and also in this Institution, have been continued during the year, and the Pauper Patients appear to have benefited by being allowed to participate in them’.22 One wonders how generous the provision for pauper patients might have been had the asylum not also housed patients from higher social classes. Although the formal reports continued to give the impression that patients of all classes were given access to the same recreational activities, we can be sure that the domestic comfort of intimate dinners and amusement was not extended beyond the private patients. Nevertheless, the functional aspect of entertainment remained important, no doubt justifying both the place and the expense of music in a charitable institution. In 1851, for example, the Visitors reported that The general comfort and cheerfulness of the patients have been much promoted during the past year by frequent entertainments afforded to the paupers, as well as other inmates of the house, by Dr. and Mrs. Williams, who have spared no exertions or trouble in making these recreations useful as well as agreeable.23

Miscellaneous expenditure recorded in the accounts also suggests a more lenient approach to the comfort and occupation of patients. Among items listed for 1852 are to be found expenses for books, cutting hair, combs and brushes, evergreens for Christmas, ‘Entertainment for Pauper Patients’, food for birds, hire of horse, hire of piano, newspapers, postage and stationery, spectacles, and subscription to a library.24 The efforts of Dr. and Mrs. Williams were again noted in the 1852 reports, when the Visitors recorded Much has been done during the past year to promote the increased comfort and enjoyment of the patients, and many evening entertainments

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have been given, where music, dancing, the magic lantern, and other enlivening recreations have been provided for their amusement by the indefatigable exertions of Dr. and Mrs. Williams, who have spared no pains nor personal sacrifices which could tend to promote the improvement or enjoyment of the patients.25

The results of the Williams’ endeavours were also remarked upon, having ‘not failed to produce their natural influence upon the general tone of the patients, whose increased contentment and willingness to work have been very apparent’.26 Such an effect was positive, of course, not only for the recovery of the patients, but also for the smooth running of the asylum. The reference to work also suggests that some of the recreational activities described were on offer to the lower-class patients, rather than restricted to the private residents as appears to have been the case earlier. It may be, though, that ‘work’ referred to the activities provided in order to keep the private patients occupied, rather than the labour expected of pauper patients. Accounts from the later 1840s and 1850s show further disparities in the treatment of the different classes of patients, particularly where recreational facilities were concerned. The piano continued to be hired, and then was purchased, but both were listed in accounts against the expenses for private patients, and there is no record of similar provision for paupers. It is likely that many of the first- and second-class patients would have some degree of musical training. Certainly, leisured women coming into the asylum could be expected to have learnt the piano or another instrument as part of their upbringing. Many of the second-class patients are also listed as holding occupations which suggest intellectual and artistic backgrounds and exposure to music, if not practical ability. It was not unusual for one or two governesses or schoolmistresses to be admitted each year (though these might be the same ones arriving and leaving multiple times). In 1852 the admissions included six gentlemen, two professors of languages, one clergyman, three innkeepers and two schoolmistresses. Therefore, we can imagine that the differences in musical talent and training, as well as the opportunities provided within the asylum, also led to a discrepancy in access to music and other entertainments. The asylum had been built without a chapel, and in the early years select groups of patients (probably also from the higher classes) had been entrusted to attend church in Gloucester. In 1851, however, a dedicated

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chapel was completed within the asylum site at a cost of £750. In 1852 representation was made to the management committee ‘that it would be a great satisfaction to the patients if there was an Organ in the Chapel, and Dr. Williams having stated that Mrs. Williams would be willing to play it – Ordered that a Finger Organ be obtained if a sufficient one can be procured at an expense not exceeding £40’.27 In 1852 it is recorded that ‘An organ has been erected in the Chapel, and an able choir formed out of the inmates of the establishment; and the patients manifest an increasing interest in the services’.28 If the choir was indeed formed of patients, rather than attendants, then it represents an unusual case; it is possible at this time that the singers were from the wealthier patients (perhaps some of the governesses or school teachers, although music was not at this time a regular part of elementary education), but no further information on the early choir survives. The organ (together with installation and initial upkeep) was purchased at the significant cost of £32 from a Mr. Thomas, who had also received small sums for supplying music to the asylum and hiring the piano; in the same year a piano was bought for the private patients at the cost of £12 7s 6d.29 Ongoing expenses for repairing and tuning the organ suggest it was well-used throughout the 1850s and 1860s, but no further details are given of musical activities in the chapel during this period. Expenses related to musical instruments from the 1850s and 1860s also suggest that secular music making was regularly taking place within the asylum’s day-to-day activities, despite the departure of the private and charitable patients in 1856.30 The purchase of musical instruments is testimony to a good deal of internal music making. In 1853, for example, the Accounts record purchase of ‘Clarionet, part of, and Reed for Clarionet 5s 4d’ as well as ‘Strings for Musical Instruments 1s 1d’.31 Further ‘Musical Instrument £3 3s 0d’ and ‘Violin Strings 1s’ were bought in 1856, and again in 1857 funds were spent on ‘Repairing Musical Instrument 7s’ and ‘Strings for Musical Instruments 8s 11d’.32 For the pauper patients, the emphasis remained on work rather than recreation, with a direct connection made between the former and patient recovery or wellbeing. The 1857 Report recorded, for example, that The healthful tone and cheerfulness of the patients have been materially promoted by the increased employment which has been afforded them during the past year, the new offices admitting of a much larger number of women being employed in washing and other household duties, and the

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additional quantity of land in occupation affording abundance of the best and most healthful employment to the male patients.33

Despite an emphasis on employment, the same report noted that the increase in ‘useful labour’ had been matched by an increase in the provision of ‘ordinary amusements’.34 The following year further details were given, suggesting that organised entertainments for the main body of patients were normally a regular occurrence: The usual winter parties were commenced with a theatrical entertainment, which afforded great pleasure and amusement to a large assemblage of patients. The repetition of this performance or of other such meetings for amusement or instruction, has been since prevented by the prevalence of small-pox among some of the patients.35

Other amusements were provided by visiting performers. In 1859, with the smallpox evidently defeated, the patients were entertained by ‘a concert of Mr. Morgan and his Juvenile Band’ and ‘recitations by Mr. Walter Montgomery’, as well as regular parties.36 Throughout the late 1850s and first half of the 1860s musical instrument repairs, and strings for musical instruments, feature in each set of accounts; 4 shillings was spent on ‘patients attending a concert’ in 1861 and a flute was purchased in 1863.37 It is not clear whether the instruments were for the use of patients or attendants; there is no information about small-scale concerts within the asylum, but it is unusual for significant numbers of instruments to be purchased for informal use. The increased musical activity culminated in the founding of an asylum band in 1864 on the arrival of a new Superintendent. Dr. Williams became an external Consulting Physician in 1863 and the post of Superintendent offered to Ebenezer Toller (1831–1906; in post 1863–1881). Toller had a wide range of experience, having held posts in quick succession at a private asylum in Bury St Edmunds, at Colney Hatch Asylum in Middlesex, and latterly as Medical Superintendent at St Luke’s Charitable Lunatic Hospital in London. Toller’s obituary records that he was ‘the pioneer in providing in asylums those entertainments which are now held in every asylum. His musical ability helped him in organising concerts for the patients when he was at Colney Hatch Asylum in 1862, and these

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and other entertainments received the recognition of the Commissioners in Lunacy’.38 The band, together with the formalisation of recreational activities, was part of a new impulse towards cultural and educational opportunities for the pauper patients who now formed the only concern of the asylum. A school for male patients was also opened in 1864, offering daily classes for 20 patients with instruction sometimes carried out by another of the patients.39 The band consisted of fourteen musicians ‘comprising attendants and patients’ and was organised and directed by the Superintendent himself. The band was engaged at the Winter Evening Recreations, which took place two or three times a week, and were ‘considered as forming quite a part of the Asylum treatment’.40 As with the earlier reference to a patients’ choir, the combination of attendants and patients in the band is relatively unusual and speaks to a more integrated population than is found elsewhere. The arrival of Toller and the foundation of the asylum band mark a new role for music within the institution. Whereas music and recreational activity had previously formed an important but separate part of asylum routine, under the new Medical Superintendent recreation became central to health and wellbeing. Musical ability was a desirable attribute in new attendants and the entertainment of the patients became part of the role of each member of staff. The 1865 Report, for example, recorded ‘Music, some acquaintance with which is now generally sought for in new attendants, is made largely available, and all are taxed to assist in the entertainment of the patients, while at the same time the Superintendent and medical staff lend their full share of assistance and co-operation’.41 The Commissioners in Lunacy Report of 1865 confirmed that thrice-weekly entertainments had continued throughout the winter, including a dance attended by ‘about 240 or 250 of both sexes’ (the asylum held an average of 600 patients during this year).42 In the summer, patients could hear the band in the airing courts, and some attended other entertainments in the city.43 The band had expanded to sixteen performers including one patient, being trained by an ‘Under Steward’ and conducted by Mr. Toller himself ‘who takes much interest in these amusements, and in selection of the pieces played’.44 Theatrical entertainments followed, with a stage erected in the ballroom for regular performances.45 Other improvements included a new day room provided with bagatelle boards, books and papers, and a school for the female side, which was directed by one

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of the few remaining private patients.46 Meanwhile, the male school was taught by one of the attendants and had grown to 30 regular patients.47 As a result of the increased activity, large sums were spent on music and instruments during the 1860s and 1870s. Supplies were purchased from Novello & Co, Metzler & Co and Boosey & Co as well as the local music business E. G. Woodward (who supplied instrumental parts and repairs as well as tuning). Several of the new attendants appointed during this period appear to have been paid extra to supply their own instruments. In July 1867 Jaspar Fowler was paid £15 salary plus £4 10s for a musical instrument, and J. H. Simpson was paid £25 salary plus £3 10s for a musical instrument. It is possible that reimbursement for instrument costs may have been accepted in lieu of any honorarium for performing in the band. Fowler was listed in 1876 as an Assistant Steward, possibly the ‘Under Steward’ responsible for training the band.48 The increases in both patient numbers and the scope and regularity of entertainments also called for an improvement in facilities. In 1870 the Visitors proposed extending the Recreation Hall and building a new Chapel (the Chapel could only hold 230 patients, less than half the total number), and the new Hall was completed along with the foundations for a new Chapel in 1871. On this occasion the Visitors also commended the asylum management on the positive effects of the entertainments on offer, ‘which are found from experience, not only to cheer them and promote good feeling among all parties, but to conduce actively towards cure’.49 Williams remained as Consulting Physician until 1879 and Toller as Superintendent until 1881. However, Toller suffered extended periods of ill-health during the later period and, together with the demands of expanding patient numbers and required reforms, attention and energy seem to have been diverted away from music and other entertainments. With the departure of Mrs. Williams the post of organist needed to be filled and, again, the management were able to draw on internal talent. In the mid-1860s the organ was played by one of the attendants, Samuel Hewett, who was not remunerated for his contribution. Hewett’s role is recorded as the result of an unfortunate incident which, had he not been such a valuable member of the workforce, might have ended his employment: A complaint having been made against Samuel Hewett, an Attendant, for his conduct, in having while in charge of a Patient in the Town, taken him to a public house where both became intoxicated, - He was called

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in and acknowledged the offence which the Visitors were only prevented punishing with dismissal by his extremely good general conduct ever since his admission, more than a Year ago, in consequence of which the Superintendent had been about to recommend him to the Visitors for a gratuity for playing the Organ in the chapel at each service. They therefore agreed to try him for another 6 months, and if no other cause of complaint occurred, and he was still recommended for good conduct, they would consider the matter of affording him some remuneration for playing the Organ.50

Hewett does not reappear in the minutes, but there is no further record of an organist either within the staff or employed separately until the 1880s. Among the in-door servants listed in 1881 is an ‘organist and schoolmistress’ on a salary of £18, suggesting that both aspects of the Asylum’s educational and cultural programme were now addressed by a specialist member of staff.51 ∗ ∗ ∗ With the arrival of a new Superintendent, Frederick Hurst Craddock (1851–1906), in 1882, the Gloucester Asylum took on the routines familiar from other County Asylums in the late nineteenth century. Craddock was formerly Clinical Assistant at St Luke’s Hospital and Senior Medical Assistant at the Worcester County Asylum.52 The dance was held weekly throughout the winter (in the ballroom) and summer (in one of the airing courts), with concerts and theatricals performed mainly by the staff during the winter. A professional musician, Mr. T. W. G. Cooke, of the Cathedral Choir, was engaged to train the singing class, but this again appears to have been directed at the attendants of both sexes. A new piano was purchased, ‘the old one formerly used at concerts being useless except for patients to strum on’.53 The institution continued to rely on internal members for these developments: Craddock noted that ‘I am glad to say that the staff has been found adequate to provide all this class of recreations’.54 Thus musical training and access to good-quality instruments became restricted to the attendants, and patients largely relegated to a listening role. If patients wanted to make music themselves, the old piano was available, but little in the way of training or formal performance opportunities. Indeed, the Commissioners complained in the same year that ‘Means of amusement in the wards are very sparingly provided’.55

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The formal programme of visiting performers also further developed under Craddock’s influence. In his 1888 Report he noted that the internal provision of music and other entertainments constituted ‘a not inconsiderable addition to the duties of the staff’, particularly in Winter when sports and walking were replaced by dances, concerts and theatricals.56 Among the external performers in 1887 were ‘Conjuring, Marionettes and Mr. Foote’s Impersonations’, while ‘The All Saints’ Christy Minstrels again kindly gave a N— Performance’.57 Reports from the Chaplain, William George Box, reveal a regular musical service staffed again by the staff of the asylum. Officers and attendants were involved in the choir, although the Responses, Chants and Hymns were sung congregationally and, the Chaplain reported, the ‘devout and hearty manner’ in which they were sung testified to ‘the pleasure which the people have in the offices of the Sanctuary’.58 A new organ was purchased in 1885 which further enhanced the musical aspects of services.59 For much of the remainder of the century innovations in music were to be found within the chapel, rather than the recreation hall, although both required changes in practice to cater for further expansions in patient numbers. As at many other institutions, management attention turned towards dealing with the increase in numbers, together with the poor state of the earlier buildings. A second site was founded at Barnwood in 1883, although the two sets of buildings acted as one institution. The Barnwood site, which later became known as Coney Hill, catered for County paupers only, while the Wotton site retained both County and City lunatics. The large Barnwood pauper asylum site backed onto the private Barnwood hospital founded by the original Gloucester subscribers in 1860. A second chapel and recreation hall were built, though some patients continued to travel between the two sites. Music in chapel was closely allied with the emphasis on self-control and behavioural norms as an outcome of moral management. In 1888, for example, Box commented I must exceedingly praise the orderly and reverent behaviour of the patients during Divine worship. It is very remarkable that even those who are most troublesome and noisy in the wards, should so restrain their natural impulses as to remain perfectly quiet for more than an hour at Chapel. They take evident delight in the musical portions of the Divine Offices and show singular devoutness and earnest attention throughout the Services.60

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The congregational, participatory nature of religious music making was clearly important and drew a strong contrast with the passive experience of music elsewhere in the asylum. In 1893 Box again commented on the enthusiasm for music among the chapel congregation: As to Public Worship. We have bright and reverent Services, with short sermons. We have plenty of singing, and what is best of all, it is congregational, and that of the most hearty kind. We make no attempt at any ambitious musical effort. Perhaps we may be considered behind the times in not having classical music, but, although we have a fair choir we cannot indulge in Oratorios and the higher productions of the masters of song. Our efforts are directed to a hearty rendering of simply, yet ecclesiastical music, and notwithstanding the surplice choirs and a taste for difficult anthems and “anthemic” Canticles which form the rule in parish Churches, I feel emboldened to say that our simple music is, at least, as suitable and effective, because it is congregational, and not done by proxy.61

From the 1890s Box extended his commentary to secular activities. In 1890 he wrote ‘There can be no question that the various amusements and recreations provided for them are great factors in appeasing the unstrung mental faculties, and in drawing the morbid mind into healthier channels of thought’.62 Box’s 1892 Report further draws on the moral management tradition, as well as the potential benefits of recreational activity: Our inmates are happy in their occupations and appear only too glad to be employed… Many of them, too, are excellent workmen, and look upon it as a privilege to move about freely on the outer premises instead of being confined to the house or airing courts… They are happy too, in their recreations. The evident zest with which they enter into the out-door amusements provided for them, and the keen rivalry which they exhibit in contending in the various sports, and the equal pleasure of the onlookers, clearly demonstrate that their affliction does not cut them off from the pleasures which affect the spirits of other people, so that the latter have no monopoly of healthy enjoyment. The discrimination, also, which they show at concerts, in according their applause to certain songs or singers, or to particular actors, passages, or situations in theatrical performances, has frequently struck me, and their judgment, in my opinion, has been mostly justified.

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Box’s surprise at the discrimination shown in the responses of patients to the music is telling. The music, perhaps together with the social setting of the concert, led patients to align their behaviour with normal expectations. Both ‘discrimination’ and ‘judgment’ imply music engaged not only the emotions but also the intellect. Music is distinctly linked, here, to the remnants of coherent thought and criticism so important within the context of the lunatic asylum. Patients who were unable to act rationally or control their behaviour were demonstrating a sense of discrimination worthy of the sane. Again we see the close connection between cure and control, as patients’ self-control engendered curative behaviour. Such a glimpse of sanity, revealed through response to music, was a crucial part of treatment and potential cure and may have acted as an important measure of recovery to both medical and lay staff. At the very end of the nineteenth century, two further developments reveal that the musical life of Gloucester asylum continued to change with the available resources and personalities. From 1894, an ‘Asylum choral class’ is mentioned in the Annual Reports; in 1894, they performed two Christmas concerts, and in 1896, we learn that the group was trained and conducted by Fred Renshaw, the Steward.63 The class continued to give two concerts a year, and from 1899 a third concert was provided by members of the asylum staff at the Barnwood site.64 There is no indication in the records of whether any patients were involved in the choral class. Its designation as a ‘class’ rather than a choir, and its separation from the chapel choir, suggests perhaps this was an opportunity for patients to engage with musical training and performance. However, a later report dating from 1905 refers to the ‘numerous musical performances, chief of which, naturally, were the concerts provided by our own staff, carefully trained and rehearsed by our steward, Mr. Renshaw’.65 Glees and songs were also included as part of the weekly dances, but the documents suggest patient singing remained largely confined to the congregational portions of the chapel service. The Asylum band also continued its regular commitment to the weekly winter dances and outdoor performances in the summer. The bandmaster for many years was Edward Cramp, a charge attendant who retired on ill health after 27 years’ service in 1899.66 Cramp’s influence on the composition of the band was evidently important, for its character was altered as a result of his retirement. Craddock reported in 1900 that

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A violinist and pianist were engaged, and the formation of a string band commenced. The hall porter (Moore) was appointed bandmaster, and with one or two more strings we hope to turn out a band more fitted for our recreation hall than the old brass one. As it is, the music discoursed at the weekly dances has decidedly improved. Your Committee sanctioned a fixed addition of £3 yearly to the wages of each member of the staff who qualifies to become a member of the Asylum band.67

Craddock’s account suggests the band was put on a more professional level with the engagement of additional players and a fixed remuneration for internal band members. As at other institutions, there are few detailed indications of the perceived role of music or other recreations or entertainments in the curative process. Box’s comments give his own perspective, but the medical officers confine their reports to the activities provided for patient amusement, rather than their effects. Craddock offers a reminder in his 1903 Report, noting that Much attention has been devoted to the recreations of the patients, and it must be acknowledged that next to the regular employment of various kinds in which all our patients are encouraged to occupy themselves, and the regular life which they are perforce accustomed to lead, a suitable amount of diversion is the most potent factor in the re-establishment of the mental balance.68

Thus music and recreational activity remained part of the overall routine at Gloucester, with increasing regularity in the arrangements and patient involvement largely restricted to dancing and chapel services. The combination of private, charitable and pauper patients being cared for at the Gloucester institutions gives an insight into some of the ways in which the inclusion of music in the day-to-day life of asylums was connected to social class, financial structures and individual members of staff. The division was most evident in the joint asylum of the 1820s and 1830s, with the level and quality of entertainment, together with expectations regarding employment, remaining distinct for the two sets of patients. Alongside the common practices which developed across asylum provision in the second half of the nineteenth century, there remained the individual input of members of staff, particularly where leading a band or choir was required. Hitch’s innovative work in the development of moral management, Williams’ and Toller’s establishment of both sacred

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and secular musical activity, and Craddock’s systematisation of music and recreation, all contributed to the steady presence of music within the asylum from its early years through until the end of the nineteenth century.

Notes 1. An outline history is given at N.M. Herbert (ed.), ‘Gloucester: Hospitals’ in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 4, the City of Gloucester (London, 1988), 269–275 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/ vol4/pp269-275. [accessed 8 July 2015]. The general history in this and subsequent paragraphs is drawn from this source. 2. Gloucestershire County Asylum: Minute Book 1813–1851 [Gloucestershire Record Office HO22/1/1], 10 July 1823: the diet for the different classes of patients was set out as part of the plans. First-class patients were to receive four meals a day, including meat every day, puddings and beer. Second- and third-class patients received the same diet: three meals, with meat on four days a week. Keepers (attendants) and servants had the same meals as the second and third-class patients, but with meat every day. 3. See Leonard Smith, ‘‘Your Very Thankful Inmate’: Discovering the Patients of an Early County Lunatic Asylum’ in Social History of Medicine Vol. 21 no. 2, 245. 4. Extract from report in Gloucestershire County Asylum: Minute Book 1823–1851 [HO22/1/1], 1 August 1823. 5. Ibid., 13 August 1823. 6. Annual Reports 1824–1847 [HO22/8/1/1]: Second Annual Report of the Visitors of the General Lunatic Asylum for the County and City of Gloucester. 1825. Subsequent Annual Reports from the shelfmarks HO22/8/1/1–4 are simply referred to by date. 7. See Thomas Bewley, Madness to Mental Illness. A History of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Online archive 4, Samuel Hitch (1800–1881) accessed online at https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/ about-us/library-archives/archives/samuel-hitch-1800-1881-founder-ofthe-association-of-medical-officers-of-assylums-and-hospitals-for-the-ins ane.pdf?sfvrsn=216e4f80_4. [27 July 2019]. 8. Smith, ‘A Worthy Feeling Gentleman’, 484. 9. Bewley, Madness to Mental Illness online archive 4, 6. 10. See Statement of the Visiting Committee of the County Lunatic Asylum, near Gloucester, 1840, in HO22/8/1/1 Annual Reports 1824–1847. 11. Smith, ‘A Worthy Feeling Gentleman’, 487. 12. Ibid. 13. Bewley, Madness to Mental Illness online archive 4, 7–8.

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14. Statement of the Visiting Committee of the County Lunatic Asylum, near Gloucester. 1842, 1. In HO22/8/1/1 Annual Reports 1824–1847. 15. See ‘Instruction at Lunatic Asylums’ in Provincial Medical Journal Vol. IV no. 8 (28 May 1842), 157–158. 16. HO22/8/1/1: Statement of the Visiting Committee of the County Lunatic Asylum, near Gloucester. 1841, 1. 17. Quoted in Bewley, 8. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. HO22/8/1/1: Statement of the Visiting Committee of the County Lunatic Asylum, near Gloucester. 1842. Joseph Mainzer, a German musician who settled in the United Kingdom, was best known for his work in massed singing education based on the fixed-doh system of notation. 21. See HO22/8/1/1: Statement of the Visiting Committee of the County Lunatic Asylum, near Gloucester, 1840. 22. 1849 Report, 6. 23. 1851 Report, 6–7. 24. Ibid., 23. 25. 1852 Report, 6. 26. Ibid., 6–7. 27. HO22/1/2 General Minutes with Index, 1852–1880, 27 April 1852. 28. 1852 Report, 7. 29. Ibid., 23. 30. The subscribers made various arrangements for the insane of the upper and middle classes between 1856 and 1860, when the new private asylum at Barnwood was opened. 31. 1853 Report, 34. 32. 1856 Report, 30 and 1857 Report, 32. 33. Ibid., 6–7. 34. Ibid. 35. 1858 Report, 8. 36. 1859 Report, 7. 37. 1861 Report, 33; 1863 Report, 31. 38. ‘Ebenezer Toller, M.R.C.S.ENG., L.S.A.LOND’ in British Medical Journal 19 January 1907, 177. Toller’s musical interests are not detailed. 39. 1863 Report, 7. 40. Ibid. 41. See p. 7. 42. 1865 Report, 10, 12. 43. 1868 Report, 7. In 1876, 70 patients attended a circus in the city while 48 attended a pantomime. See 1876 Report, 8. 44. 1865 Report, 10. 45. 1866 Report, 9.

176 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

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1865 Report, 8–9. Ibid., 9. 1876 Report, 3. 1871 Report, 6. HO22/1/2 General Minutes with Index, 1852–1880, 28 December 1865. 1881 Report, 34. In 1885 this changed to an Organist employed at £15 per annum. See ‘Frederick Hurst Craddock, M.A. OXON., M.R.C.S.ENG., L.S.A.’ in British Medical Journal (27 October 1906), 1158–1159. 1883 Report, 24. 1883 Report, 24. 1883 Report, 13. 1887 Report, 26. Ibid. My redaction. 1884 Report, 33. 1885 Report. The Organ, described by the Chaplain as ‘sweet-toned’, was bought second-hand at a cost (including installation) of £65. 1888 Report, 36–37. 1893 Report, 26. 1893 Report, 26. 1894 Report, 19; 1896 Report, 24. 1899 Report, 74. 1905 Report, 23. 1899 Report, 7. The Visitors Report noted ‘To Edward Cramp, who has been 27 years in our service, we have granted a pension of £48, subject to confirmation by the County Council. Cramp has become too inform for efficient work, and this infirmity has been aggravated by an injury he received some time ago from a patient’. 1900 Report, 21. 1903 Report, 22.

CHAPTER 7

Worcestershire County Asylum: Patients, Staff, and Professional Musicians

The County and City Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Worcester is the only asylum widely known for its music, due to the involvement of Edward Elgar (1857–1934) as member, and subsequently, master, of the asylum band in the 1870s and 1880s. Elgar’s position illustrates the asylum’s engagement with the world of professional music making, although his role is perhaps testimony to his need to piece together a living as a young musician, rather than necessarily to a high-quality musical offering at Worcester. Elgar’s involvement in the latter quarter of the century belies the difficulties experienced by earlier Superintendents in accommodating music and other entertainments within the asylum during the 1850s and 1860s, when the cost of additional resources was resisted by the institution’s Visiting Committee. The rich detail of the extant reports and accounts relating to the band and chapel give particular insight into the mechanics of music within a state-funded institution, and these will form a special focus of this chapter. The Worcester asylum was built several miles outside the city near the village of Powick. As with many institutions, it commanded spectacular countryside views, intended, together with the fresh air of the Malvern Hills, to aid in mental and physical recovery of the patients.1 The asylum was not built until after the 1845 Act, when provision of asylum facilities for the insane poor became mandatory, and it was shared between the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_7

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City and the County. Planned to accommodate 200 patients (split evenly between men and women), it grew rapidly from the 178 patients housed on its opening in 1852, doubling in size within ten years and expanded to well over one thousand patients by the end of the century. The first patients were largely taken from workhouses and private homes, as well as moved from Druitwich and Fairford private asylums.2 The Worcester Asylum was founded on the basis of moral management and run according to many of the routines and procedures that had grown to be common practice at older establishments. The Visitors responsible for planning the Asylum and its facilities were anxious that both its position and design would contribute to the treatment and cure of patients. The main buildings were organised to maximise space and light while promoting efficient use of staff in overseeing the activity of patients.3 In particular, the idea of a ‘Community of Patients’, believed by the Visitors to have been approved by ‘Mr. Tuke of York’, developed, with an emphasis on the shared use of galleries and day rooms by both patients and staff.4 In this way, the social aspect of the Asylum was present from the very outset in its design and construction. Patient employment was, similarly, factored into early plans, both contributing to patient wellbeing and reducing the need for staff in the wards during the day time. Facilities for farming and workshops were incorporated into plans, with further assumptions that female patients would find employment in the laundry or kitchens.5 While pleasant surroundings formed an essential part of early plans, a dedicated space for entertainments in the form of a recreation hall was not provided. Although the Asylum Visitors had recommended such a space in line with other institutions, they were unwilling to spare the cost associated with a separate building. During 1851, the possibility of altering plans for the Chapel to provide a dual-purpose facility was considered; the Commissioners of Lunacy found the chapel ‘admirably suited for this purpose’ and alterations to modify it for use as a Recreation Hall were estimated at £600. Nevertheless, perhaps even this cost proving too substantial, the Visitors were adamant such a move would be ‘sacrilegious’ and the proposal was abandoned in December 1851.6 The first Superintendent, Dr John Robert Grahamsley (1826–1854), was appointed in January 1852, while the Asylum was still under construction and before key decisions about the organisation of the patients and the institution’s work had been taken. Grahamsley had previously been employed at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum in Morningside as

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Honorary Assistant-Physician and brought with him a Steward, Mr James Smith.7 Once Grahamsley was in place detailed preparations began, from the appointments of further staff to a survey of potential patients from across the County and contracts for provisions. Supplies were sourced and delivered, including a selection of books chosen by the new Asylum’s Chaplain, for use by the patients. Following the Asylum’s opening in August 1852, Grahamsley reported on the immediate effect of specialist treatment and new surroundings on some of the patients. Within the first year, he was able to relate stories of patients being allowed to follow their trades and being more contented than previously.8 A bowling green was under construction, and staff were preparing the ground for a farm and vegetable garden.9 Grahamsley recorded that. The general plan of treatment pursued in the Asylum is that of the industrial and non-restraint. The arrangements adopted are those which experience has shown to be most conducive to the care and cure of the insane. They combine every practical feature calculated to make the Institution resemble, as near as possible, that of a cheerful, industrious and well-regulated home.10

In setting up the therapeutic approach to be taken at the new institution, he had avoided mechanical restraint altogether: ‘Many who had been under mechanical restraint for several years previous to admission now enjoy their liberty unfettered, and have become under their new treatment cheerful, happy, contented, and industrious inmates.’11 Grahamsley’s Report, contemporaneous with the detailed measures recorded at the Norfolk Asylum and elsewhere, similarly encapsulated the essence of moral treatment. Amusements, including music, were immediately part of this new environment. Grahamsley detailed the generous selection of games and amusements available to patients, the large stock of books (though the Commissioners noted this was ‘almost exclusively of a religious nature’) and recent excursions to the countryside.12 One particular occasion, a ‘Grand ball and concert’, had been given on 28 October 1853 for the occasion of the marriage of the head male attendant: ‘the visitors joined in the amusements with the Patients, gave several songs, and assisted the orchestra on the piano-forte. Dancing commenced at seven o’clock, and

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the patients retired at half-past eleven, highly delighted with their entertainment.’13 As at other asylums, balls and concerts formed a regular part of the recreational activities, though at this point, the absence of a large recreation room meant gatherings were largely held in the wards or galleries. The chapel had been provided with hymn books and ‘The Patients are also permitted and encouraged to join in the Psalm-singing in the Chapel, accompanied by the harmonium, clarinet, violin, and concertina.’14 It is notable that one of the first recorded musical events at the Worcestershire Asylum, the October 1853 Ball, involved both patients and outside visitors. The Chaplain, Rev. Edward Horton, advocated in his 1855 report a change in the general attitude towards asylums and their work. He wished to encourage a ‘lively personal interest’ in the wellbeing of the insane, not just from those with formal responsibility for their livelihood, but from their families, friends, employers and the church.15 He further considered the support and provision of entertainments a key way in which the asylum’s benefactors and management might enhance its treatment and care: I now venture to suggest that the sanction of the occasional festivities at the Asylum by the presence of influential persons would very much enhance their relish by the poor Patients. It seems to be allowed that such entertainments are an important element in the successful treatment of the insane, and it is but reasonable to suppose that, with greater encouragement, they might produce even more beneficial results.16

Thus, music and entertainments were promoted as a part of the social and cultural mission of the asylum, and an opportunity to engage visitors, as well as a form of patient treatment. The chapel itself had been situated in a temporary room until a purpose-built space could be planned and erected. Nevertheless, Grahamsley pressed ahead with plans to purchase an organ, having identified one for sale at a good price.17 It is not clear whether the purchase was made. His tenure came to an unpleasant and sudden end. Grahamsley produced the rules and regulations for the Asylum in June 1854, and in response, the entire female staff refused to sign and resigned their posts.18 In August, the Committee of Visitors recorded his unfortunate death by suicide.19

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It was under Grahamsley’s successor, James Sherlock (1827–1881), that music at Worcester flourished. Sherlock, like Grahamsley, had seen previous employment at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, and more recently served as Principal Superintendent of Perth Asylum. Appointed on 4 September 1854, Sherlock retained the focus on a combination of moral and medical treatments according to the individual patient. Medical treatments were used more frequently in newer, and more complicated, cases, while moral treatment was the preferred option for chronic cases.20 Warm baths, sedatives, exercise regimes and carefully controlled diet were among the approaches taken during this period. Sherlock also restated the role of recreational activities as a part of treatment: As an adjuvant to their bodily occupations, it has been attempted to extend somewhat the amount of mental exercise afforded to the Patients, whereby it is hoped that still further benefit will result to them. This is accomplished by a more free circulation of books of a light and instructive character, of which an additional supply has lately been added to our Library, and by more frequent meetings of the sexes for the purpose of amusement, whereby much self-control is called into action and a greater hold taken of their minds, preventing the concentration of their thoughts, during a part of the day not necessarily occupied by labour, on subjects of a delusive or morbid character.21

Sherlock’s early plans included a weekly evening of entertainment to include dancing, music or ‘other light entertainments’.22 The occasions would allow for the patients of both sexes to come together. Sherlock was keen to advise the Visitors that the events would not incur additional expense, save for particular celebrations such as Halloween, New Year or Christmas. However, the asylum still lacked an appropriate space for such activity, and Sherlock could only identify the laundry as a potential location for his proposed entertainments. The recorded educational level of the earliest patients gives a clue as to the necessity to provide a wide range of entertainment options. The large stock of books was noted by both the Superintendent and visiting Commissioners, but of the 289 admissions in the first eighteen months, 48 patients could neither read nor write, and the abilities of a further 64 were unknown.23 Only 18 were recorded as having a ‘good’ standard of education and 15 with a ‘fair’ standard. 72 could both read and write and

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another 72 could read but not write. In addition to their mental aberrations, therefore, low standards of literacy would prevent many patients taking part in the more intellectual activities. The rapid growth of the Asylum may also have contributed towards the need to embark on recreational opportunities that would appeal to patients en masse. Within two years of its opening, plans were being drawn up for enlargements and extensions to the buildings, and by January 1856, the Asylum was capable of holding 330 patients.24 A focus on the practical problems of housing and catering for a vastly increased body of patients no doubt took precedent over new facilities for recreational activities. Nevertheless, the second half of the 1850s saw many developments similar to those found in other institutions at the same time. In September 1855, a year into his 27-year term as Medical Superintendent, Sherlock requested funds to form a brass band ‘for the amusement of the Patients’.25 Eight instruments were bought from Messrs Distin & Co for £33 16s 9d.26 By the end of 1855, Sherlock could report that the band was ‘already advanced sufficiently to enable them to entertain the Patients on the evenings of their balls, and in the summer evenings it will be found a great acquisition in inducing the Patients to march regularly in the grounds.’27 Encouraging the patients to exercise in the form of a dance was a common use of music, but this is possibly an early form of musical drill, an exercise that became popular in the 1890s.28 The band accompanied patients on excursions: an account of a visit to Leigh Court in 1856 records that the band, composed of ‘warders’ from the institution, was already remarkable efficient due to the work of Mr Langdon of Worcester, who had been charged with their training.29 Mr Hume, the steward, is also referred to as ‘an excellent musician’.30 Musical entertainments were frequent. In addition to the weekly balls, Sherlock suggests an almost daily offering of evening activities: ‘dancing, singing, recitations, an occasional farce acted in character, and the performances of the band, generally form the basis of the entertainment, which is varied from night to night by omitting some and rendering others of the elements more prominent.’31 Beyond the band and associated entertainments, singing was encouraged and offered an opportunity for patients to participate in music making, rather than listening or dancing. A singing class was instituted in summer 1855, practising sacred music with the effect of improving the music in the chapel room.32 In 1857, Sherlock reported that ‘Instruction

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in sacred and secular music has been continued to the Patients on two evenings of the week.’33 Space remained a problem. The room intended as a recreation hall was still in use as a temporary chapel until 1857, due to technical problems with the new building work. A gallery in the residential wing was used instead, but it could only accommodate half of the patients otherwise able to take part in the entertainments.34 Soon after the chapel was moved out, the recreation hall was requisitioned as extra female dormitory space, and once again in 1860, the asylum found itself unable to cater for all the patients wishing to attend recreational activities.35 The asylum’s location at a distance from Worcester was also recorded as a hindrance, particularly in the early days before the band and other musicians were trained; by 1856, Sherlock recorded that the institution was ‘in a great measure independent of foreign aid’.36 Purchase of a piano for £20 and payment of an organist, both in 1858, confirm that music was deemed a core part of asylum business.37 As the asylum’s management made efforts to furnish the rooms with comforts and distractions, music and musical instruments continue to feature annually in the accounts. In 1858, Sherlock recommended a gratuity of £5 be paid to the male attendants who had become involved in music both in the chapel and other amusements.38 From 1862, a Band Instructor was employed at the salary of £12 annually.39 Both employment and recreational activity were recorded as beneficial to patients’ health. Writing his 1855 Report, Sherlock noted. The employment of the inmates has been carried out very fully during the past year, and in many instances has been instrumental in their recovery, and productive of great benefit even in those cases where it did not lead to that result, as it contributed much to their health, happiness, and tranquillity.40

The effects of entertainments in particular were traced both to the direct influence of music and dancing, and the indirect need for selfcontrol required for attendance. The weekly balls were given particular prominence in the therapeutic effect of amusements: The amount of discipline and self-control which these reunions exercise on the Patients is productive of the happiest effects, and they have dispelled the gloom and cheered on the breast of many miserable sufferers;

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many, under the influence of deep melancholy and despair, look on with delight, or even take a part in these meetings, from which not a few have dated their first signs of convalescence. Patients who have been for a time unable to attend these meetings on account of restlessness and excitement, frequently make strong efforts to control their passions, so as to regain their admission, while many look upon no infliction so seriously as that of depriving them of this privilege.41

Indeed, in the absence of other recognised and effective treatments, Sherlock set out his case for music and the weekly amusements as the most beneficial approach. In 1857, for example, he reflected ‘no other means of recreation have been observed capable of realizing a similarly curative influence, and their value is enhanced by the large proportion of the Patients who can participate in them.’42 The particular use of recreational activities as part of the therapy provided to patients situated music in the centre of the Medical Officers’ work. In the 1860 Report, moral treatment was reaffirmed as the core approach in this asylum. Sherlock had recruited an Assistant Medical Officer, Dr W. J. Hunt, which would allow for ‘more vigilant supervision of the Inmates, and more constant efforts can be made for carrying out their moral treatment by means of amusements, conversation, and industrial employments, in which a considerable portion of his time is occupied.’43 Sherlock’s Report for 1860 reflects on the key importance of a number of elements of ‘moral therapy’, including general surroundings, employment, and recreation. The condition of a patient’s surroundings was particularly linked to his or her state of mind: It still continues to be an object to render the wards of the Asylum attractive and comfortable for the Patients. By such means claims are established, through the surrounding objects, on their thoughts and attention; propriety of conduct is encouraged, and the lost power of self-control over their minds is sought to be re-established by such agencies, as recal [sic] them to little acts of usefulness and care. Contentment and tranquillity of mind, states favouring their recovery, are promoted; they consider themselves to be more cared for, and they appear less degraded and shut out from the usages of life, than they had been led to anticipate would be the case.44

Employment was associated with relieving tedium, distraction, self-esteem and physical exercise, particularly among patients ‘accustomed to gain

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their livelihood by their own exertions’.45 With regard to leisure activities, Sherlock focussed on the inadequate size of the present hall, reflecting on the ‘general usefulness’ and benefits of entertainments in relieving tedium and promoting recovery.46 A larger room was required ‘daily… during the winter months for purposes of instruction in music, dancing, and for every occasion when it is necessary to bring the Patients of opposite sexes into contact.’47 It is clear that the Visitors were less-than-generous with the funding allowed to the Asylum, and that Sherlock was required to justify expenditure, particularly on entertainments and other non-essentials for the patients. On applying for the funds to purchase instruments for the band, he was allowed a budget of £30, and the Visitors’ disapproval is palpable and their acquiescence grudging when the additional sum of £3 16s 9 was requested. Reporting on the move, they noted that the instruments had been provided ‘for the amusement of the Patients, the beneficial effects of which will be detailed in Dr. Sherlock’s Report’.48 Thus, we can be sure that Sherlock was obliged to report on the positive role of music and entertainments in the asylum in order to secure funding and the continued goodwill of the Visitors, emphasising both general and individual cases of improvement and recovery. A new recreation room was opened in December 1863 and was reported to be in use three or four times a week, with up to 350 patients in attendance.49 At this point, the band had been enlarged to 14 instruments, and an Instructor was engaged.50 Music classes were introduced, although there is no detail regarding their content.51 Sherlock took the opportunity to remind the Commissioners of the importance of recreational opportunities to the patients, being. of much greater value than to those in a sound state of mind and good health: in the latter they tend to continue these blessings, while in the former they act as adjuvants for their restoration, and where this is impossible, they are found to promote tranquillity, and relieve the tedium of their life by presenting rational subjects for the exercise of their attention, while delusive thoughts, and other indications of Insane habit and action, are controlled by the restraint they necessarily impose upon themselves while agreeably occupied in such a manner.52

Sherlock was rather evangelical about the benefits of recreational activities, suggesting they be promoted in a range of public institutions and

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‘wherever numbers of people are thrown together’.53 The positive effects of music, in particular, were re-asserted four years later, when Sherlock referred to the contributions made by both the band and the choir to the ‘rational enjoyment of the Patients’.54 In this case, the combination of ‘rational’ and ‘enjoyment’ captured the dual purpose of musical entertainments, acting on both the mind and the soul. Again, it is difficult to judge just how far Sherlock was exaggerating his case in the context of arguing for better facilities. Male employees continued to take a central role in the musical activities in the asylum, with the band staffed by attendants and strongly supported by a number of the senior officers. Dr Hearder, who was appointed as Assistant Superintendent and Medical Officer in 1863, was closely involved in the band and choir. Just four years later, Sherlock wrote ‘He has also added much to the efficiency of our amusements, from the time he has spent and the energy he has introduced into the performances of our Band’.55 ∗ ∗ ∗ It was in the chapel, and the realm of choral music, that most musical developments took place over the final third of the nineteenth century. Horton, who remained Chaplain until 1868, reported on improvements in the singing in 1866 following an increase in interest among the officers and attendants. The choir was enrolled with the Diocesan Choral Society, and began to receive instruction from their choir master. The prognosis was optimistic: ‘the material he has to work upon he considers good, and there seems to be a fair promise that, in course of time, we shall get up a very respectable choir.’56 A year later, the singers were pronounced to be ‘really an excellent Choir, when they can be collected together; but this, unfortunately, can be seldom the case at Church, owing to the majority being Attendants, who are frequently absent on duty, or their reasonable recreation.’57 The progress of the choir was further disrupted by the departure of Hearder to a post at Carmarthen Asylum, though by this point, instruction from the Diocesan choir master was able to overcome the loss of a leading force from the asylum.58 In 1869, a new Chaplain, Arthur L. Gore, was able to report that ‘The members of our Choir enter cheerfully into their duties, and, by painstaking practice, do justice to the excellent material of voice which they possess.’59

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Later reports give some further indication of the types of music performed during chapel services. Another new chaplain, Alfred Bond, who arrived in 1872, reported on ‘the admirable manner in which the Choir has rendered the hymns, chants, and responses generally has much pleased me; the patients also seem on the whole to join heartily in the entire services, and the remarks they frequently make to me prove they have not been inattentive listeners.’60 Bond took immediate steps to improve participation in singing in chapel, with the purchase of new Hymn books.61 Mrs Bond also made an important contribution, from 1873, playing the harmonium in a further bid to improve interest and standards of musical performance.62 Another key member of the asylum management, Edward Marriott Cooke (1852–1931), who was appointed as Deputy Superintendent in 1875, also took part in chapel music: in the 1876 Reports, he is reported as having ‘given us his able assistance’ while in 1878, Bond recorded thanks for ‘continuing to preside so efficiently over the choral part of our Sunday afternoon services’.63 Cooke continued to be involved in the choir after his promotion to Superintendent on Sherlock’s death in 1881; for a time, the leadership was taken over by the new Deputy Superintendent, Mr J. Harrington Douty, but on Douty’s election to Superintendent of the Berkshire Asylum in 1886, Cooke resumed his previous role.64 Cooke remained as Superintendent until his appointment as a Commissioner in Lunacy in 1898.65 Bond’s report in 1887 made reference to the ‘Sunday organist’, Miss Holloway; the Superintendent; the Junior Medical Officer, Mr Little; and Mrs Cooke, who played the organ on Wednesdays.66 Jessie Holloway first appears in the Accounts as an Organist and Pianist in 1888, at a salary of £7 10s per Quarter.67 She was the daughter of the Asylum’s Engineer, William Holloway. Prior to her formal employment, she played occasionally for the chapel, receiving thanks and gratuities in the early 1880s. Bond himself sang with the choir. It is clear that the talents of senior officers and their families, as well as external employees, were essential to promoting and sustaining musical activity in the asylum chapel. Bond continued to develop the musical components of services and the efficacy of the choir. A new chapel was completed in 1886, able to seat 720 of the 822 patients in residence. An organ was provided through general asylum funds and subscriptions from the staff and associated patrons.68 The organ was installed within six months of the opening of the new chapel at a cost of £249 6s, more than half of the cost being met through private donations.69 At the services on 4 July, the

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organ was inaugurated by Mr Box of Worcester who ‘voluntarily gave the congregation the benefit of his musical talent, and evinced the capabilities of the instrument in an admirable Organ Recital after the Evening Benediction.’70 The new space offered by the chapel, together with the development of the choir, was matched by a growing interest in music as a core part of the services. Special choral services were held at Christmas, Easter and Harvest Thanksgiving, and a monthly Litany with sung responses by Barnby was introduced to add variety to the chapel’s activities.71 The Chaplain offered a number of reasons for the importance of music as part of the liturgy, particularly on special occasions. Firstly, it ensured patients were ‘in no way isolated from their fellow Christians even in matters of such detail, but, on the contrary, possessed of every religious privilege they could enjoy in the outer world.’72 Secondly, the regular Litany services were a source of ‘enjoyment and edification’ to the congregation, as well as promoting ‘a constant spirit of efficiency’ within the choir.73 In 1892, the regularity of sung services was further increased: the Litany continued to take place on the afternoon of the first Sunday in the month, and in addition, a choral service was instituted in the morning of the third Sunday.74 Both choir and band were, at this time, open to attendants and patients alike. In 1869, the singing class included 20 patients, about the same number of attendants, and ten officers, while the band of 16 included two or three patients.75 By the late 1880s, the chapel choir had settled on around 20 members, roughly two thirds female.76 A change in practice day from Saturdays to Thursdays in 1889 resulted in the choir growing to 13 males and 26 females; this would have been connected with the working patterns of nursing staff, suggesting they still formed the majority of choir members.77 The Chaplain’s report from 1897–1898 confirms that by this time, all the choir members were staff, rather than patients.78 In addition to the organists hired externally, and from within the resident staff, an organist was drawn from within the patients for the 8 a.m. service on a Sunday: Bond reported in 1895 ‘It is worthy of remark that it has seldom happened within the past 22 ½ years of my Chaplaincy that we have not been able to rely on the instrumental talent or one or more Patients.’79 Summaries of patient admissions show that a musician was often among the new cohort each year, including piano tuners, music teachers and performers. In addition to the benefits of music for patients, musical activities were considered a positive step for employees.

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Attendants were usually drawn from the labouring classes, for the role was challenging and poorly paid, though they could occasionally find opportunities for advancement. Sherlock suggested in his 1868 report that ‘the cultivation of the musical talents of the performers has had a favourable influence on their tastes and character, as well as afforded relaxation from responsible duties.’80 The recruitment process for Attendants began to reflect the increased importance of skills and attributes beyond the primary nursing duties. An application form for appointment as a male attendant in the 1890s included the information that. An Applicant for the post of Attendant should be not less than 5ft. 8in. in height, proportionately well-built, and without physical defect. He must bear an excellent character as to trustworthyness [sic] and sobriety, be good tempered and of fair education. Following upon these requirements some knowledge of music or singing is a recommendation.81

The final question of the form asked prospective applicants: ‘have you any knowledge of Singing or Music, or can you play any instrument?’ It is notable that music, rather than general domestic skills or ability in sport, took priority in this case. ∗ ∗ ∗ After initial reticence, during the later decades of the century, the asylum management was not afraid to spend funds on music and musicians. A Band Instructor first appears in the summary accounts in 1862, with a salary of £12 per annum, a generous amount suggesting a significant time commitment, probably a rehearsal and performance each week. The salary halved in 1866, possibly due to Dr Hearder’s input reducing the need for external time, but was raised again to £8 in 1869 and £10 in 1875. Expenditure on music and instruments at this time was also substantial, particularly towards the end of the 1860s, as the following extracts from the accounts suggest: 1867 Music and Instruments £15 16s 0d. Tuning and Repairing Piano £1 2s 0d. Repairing Harmonium £3 10s 0d.82

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1868 Music and Instruments £31 1s 9d. Tuning and repairing piano 14s.83 1869 Piano and Repairs £31 16s 6d. Music for Band and Choir, and Musical Instruments £11 10s 10d.84 Expenditure on musical instruments and repairs, in particular, continued at a surprisingly high rate, averaging over £30 per annum until the late 1880s.85 Formal musical responsibilities were divided between internal staff and external professional musicians. Between 1878 and the end of the century, the Asylum employed a number of musicians on a variable basis, including regular salaries, piecemeal rates and gratuities. In 1876 and 1877, a gratuity was issued to the Band and Attendants, possibly also covering attendants taking part in the choir.86 In 1895, an allowance was paid to Attendants for participation in the special services, totalling £25, but this does not appear to have been repeated.87 There is no record that the officers involved in running the choir and band were paid additional salaries, but from 1878, the post of bandmaster was taken by John Roberts, a Carpenter Attendant, who received a salary of £10 per annum for these duties in addition to his basic salary of £40.88 At this time, two external professionals were also employed using piecemeal rates dependent on the number of visits. Frederick Spray was engaged as Band Instructor in 1878 at a Quarterly salary of between £8 14s and £9 13s, while Oliver Millward acted as Choir Master between October and May with a total salary in 1878 of £24 9s 6d.89 The titles of Band Instructor and Bandmaster may have referred to slightly different aspects of the work, and Barry Collett refers to Roberts as an ‘assistant’ who ‘put out the music stands and gave instruction to the wind players’.90 However, the roles are reversed or duplicated later in the accounts, and the precise division of labour is not made explicit. Similarly, it is not clear how the paid role of Choir Master intersected with the work of the senior officers cited in the Annual Reports. It is notable that paid professionals receive no mention in these latter documents, which focus instead on the (largely unpaid) work of the asylum’s regular staff.

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The band at Worcester is best known through the connection with Edward Elgar, who served among the violins from 1877 and as Band Instructor from 1879 to 1884. The band is generally referred to as a ‘brass band’; at its inception, it was formed from eight brass instruments and the summary Accounts contained in the Annual Reports between 1886 and 1889 refer to a ‘Brass Band Instructor’. However, it is clear that in-between times, not least from Elgar’s involvement, that a wide range of instruments were included. Elgar was appointed in January 1879 at a slightly lower salary than Spray, receiving a total of £33 7s in his first year. Elgar was replaced by P. Quarterman in November 1884, and the role of bandmaster taken on in 1885 by William Henry Leek, a Painter Attendant.91 Roberts continued in his post as Carpenter Attendant, and may have continued to play in the band. From January 1890, Leek is recorded as ‘Band Instructor’, and from March 1890 as simply ‘Band and Choir’; conversely Quarterman is logged as ‘Band Master’ from April 1891. From this time, Quarterman also began to earn additional fees for engagements such as playing at a ball or other entertainment. In 1893, it appears Arthur Quarterman took over his father’s duties and also began to take on the work of Choir Master, as well as receiving additional fees for composing.92 Millward ceased employment in June 1893, at which point the choir instruction was split between Leek and Quarterman. By 1901, Jessie Holloway, the organist and pianist, was earning £45 per annum, an impressive increase from her original wage of £15, no doubt also reflecting the dramatic increase in musical activity both sacred and secular during her 13 years of employment. The records show that music was a joint effort between internal staff members and local professionals, hired from Worcester both to instruct and enhance the band and choir. While for some the opportunity of regular work clearly supplemented other income for relatively short periods of time, for others the association with the asylum was more extensive and could develop into a significant source of remuneration. For attendants, musical activity offered a reasonable option for enhanced pay as well as an opportunity for relaxation, while the officers became involved as part of their philanthropic responsibilities. Elgar’s role at the asylum, and the music he composed for the band, were for much of the twentieth century something of a skeleton in the composer’s reception cupboard.93 The dances, early works and of a frivolous character, were considered by many scholars not worthy of

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attention and performances were discouraged. In more recent years, both the music and Elgar’s context have received attention. Barry Collett, for example, identified in the ten dances composed for Powick many traits that were later to become recognisable fingerprints in the Symphonies and character pieces of Elgar’s mature writing.94 The extant music consists of four sets of quadrilles, one of lancers, and five polkas.95 The full instrumentation, used in only four pieces, is for piccolo, flute, clarinet, two cornets, euphonium, first and second violins, viola, cello, double bass, and piano. In one polka, the euphonium is replaced by a trombone. Some of the sketches and scores show a bombardon, but there is no surviving part book. It is likely that the bass parts were shared or moved between instruments, depending on the availability of players: as we have seen, musical activity was required to be flexible according to the schedules and employment patterns of asylum staff. Andrew Lyle notes that the asylum compositions show Elgar’s developing talent in orchestration, but the strict formal requirements of the dance forms leave little room for creativity and the music is, on the whole, unsophisticated.96 Among the dedicatees are George Jenkins, the Asylum Clerk who played Violin 1 in the band, and the pianist Jessie Holloway. ∗ ∗ ∗ As at other asylums, the later formal reports have little specific to say about the impact of music on the patients, or its role as treatment or therapy. Cooke’s 1888 Report commented generally on entertainment, recreation, employment and chapel services, reflecting on the large number of patients engaged in these activities as a sign of the success of moral approaches within the institution. Regarding the difficulties of achieving such participation, Cooke suggested ‘It must not be imagined, however, that those results are obtained without constant perseverance, but the pains taken are amply repaid by a diminution of excitement, an increase of contentment, and general mental and physical improvement.’97 In this case, he considered activity, whether domestic, physical or social, to contribute towards measures of calm and control, helping to regulate the Asylum’s day-to-day patterns of life. Cooke continued to innovate and develop the role of music at the Asylum. In 1891–1892, he reported that a class for ‘training in musical knowledge’ had been instituted under the instruction of the Assistant Medical Officer, Mr Tanner.98 Prizes were offered to the Junior class

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members and Cooke considered the move ‘undoubtedly a good one’. The band and choir continued to flourish, and external performers were also invited.99 Within the wards a number of pianos had been bought and the Commissioners in Lunacy reported in 1893–1894 that an ‘American orchestrone’ had been gifted to the institution, giving much pleasure within the Male Ward ‘to many even of the idiot class’.100 The central presence of music at Worcester is largely due to the dedication of three long-standing senior officials at the Asylum: the Superintendents Sherlock and Cooke (who between them covered most of the second half of the century), and the Chaplain Bond. This was particularly important in the early history of the asylum, when the Visitors showed little enthusiasm for expenditure on recreation and entertainment. As the asylum at Worcester grew dramatically from 178 patients in 1854 to 1146 in 1899, the facilities, including the recreation hall and chapel, struggled to keep up with the demand for both social and spiritual activity. Providing the organ in the chapel, pianos in new accommodation and a series of spaces for social gatherings demonstrates the importance of music in the asylum’s life, and this is further confirmed by the inclusion of musical experience in the appointment process for new attendants. The success of musical activities was no less down to a number of other talented officers and Attendants and their wives. It is notable that Mrs Cooke and Mrs Bond were key to the provision of music in the chapel. The contribution of patients, too, is perhaps more central than at other institutions. Patients, attendants and officers working together in the choir embodies many of the ideals of the moral treatment system, with good conduct and self-control modelled by the behaviour of the senior staff and the experience of singing in a group. Conversely, the standard of music making was often adversely affected by the availability of attendants and their frequent movement between employment opportunities.101 Finally, although receiving little mention in the Annual Reports, the substantial sums paid to external musicians reflect a further significant contribution towards training and directing the efforts of internal staff, as well as boosting the standard of the ensembles. From inauspicious beginnings, it is clear that music took on a central role in the day-to-day life of the Worcestershire Asylum, perhaps coming to represent the moral treatment system at its most effective.

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Notes 1. See First Annual Report of the County and City of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum (1854) (Worcestershire Record Office 499:9/9665/1/1), 7. Subsequent Annual Reports from the shelfmarks 499:9/9665/1/1–6 are referred to by date. 2. Ibid., 38. 3. The foundation of the Worcester Asylum is detailed in Frank Crompton, Lunatics—The Mad Poor of Worcestershire in the Long Nineteenth Century: Writing ‘History from Below’ of Patients in a Pauper Lunatics Asylum (Worcester: George Marshall Medical Museum, 2013). 4. Ibid., 18. 5. Ibid., 26. 6. See Ibid., 33. 7. Ibid., 37. 8. Report 1854, 22. 9. Ibid., 24. 10. Ibid., 21. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 27, 33. 13. Ibid., 27. 14. Ibid., 27–28. 15. Report 1855, 28. 16. See Chaplain’s Report in Report 1856, 37. 17. Minutes & Proceedings of Visitors (499:9/10371/1/1), 108: 5 June 1854. 18. Report 1855, 8. 19. Minutes & Proceedings of Visitors, 124: 7 August 1854. A full account of the affair is given in The Asylum Journal Vol. I no. 7 (August 1854), 105–106. 20. Report 1855, 22. 21. Ibid., 24. 22. Minutes & Proceedings of Visitors, 149: 6 November 1854. 23. Report 1854, 46. 24. Crompton, The Mad Poor of Worcestershire, 67. 25. Minutes & Proceedings of Visitors, 194: 3 September 1855. 26. Ibid., 195: 1 October 1855. 27. Report 1856, 33. 28. See Erin Johnson-Williams, ‘Musical Discipline and Victorian Liberal Reform’ in Sarah Collins (ed.), Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 15–36.

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29. Illustrated London News Vol. 808 (28 June 1856), quoted in Andrew Lyle, ‘‘When I was at the Lunatic Asylum…’: Elgar at Powick, 1879– 1884’ in Elgar Society Journal Vol. 15 no. 3 (November 2007), 13–28: 16. 30. Ibid. 31. Report 1856, 34. The 1857 Report refers to ‘weekly amusements’ with additional musical instruction and other evenings. 32. Report 1856, 33. 33. Report 1857, 43. The Sixth Report clarified that ‘A singing class assembles two evenings each week for the practice of sacred music and glee singing.’ See Report 1859, 31. 34. Report 1856, 34. 35. Report 1861, 13. 36. Report 1857, 33. 37. Report 1856, 13, 68. 38. Minutes & Proceedings of Visitors, 287: 11 October 1858. 39. Report 1863, 90. 40. Report 1856, 30. 41. Ibid., 34–35. 42. Report 1857, 43. 43. Report 1860, 37. 44. Report 1861, 93–94. Among the additions carried out by Sherlock were easy chairs, dressing tables, washstands, carpet, two bagatelle tables for the male patients, prints and engravings. 45. Ibid., 95. 46. Ibid., 96–97. 47. Ibid., 96. 48. Report 1856, 6. 49. Report 1864, 12. 50. Ibid. 51. Report 1862, 8. 52. Report 1864, 97. 53. Ibid. 54. Report 1868, 83. 55. See Report 1867, 76. 56. Ibid., 78. 57. Report 1868, 84. The band had also been affected by the propensity for attendants to change position frequently: in 1868, Sherlock noted that the band had ‘somewhat subsided, from the loss occasioned by the departure of some of its members.’ See Report 1867, 76. 58. Ibid., 83. 59. Report 1869, 17. 60. Report 1873, 16.

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61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

84. 85.

Ibid., 15. Report 1874, 18. Report 1876, 14 and Report 1878, 16. See Report 1885, 21 and Report 1887, 3. Obituary, The British Medical Journal, 31 October 1931, 829–830. Report 1888, 10. See B499:9/10271/30 1878–83 County and City of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum: Servant’s [sic] Record, July–September 1888. Report 1885, 20. The Asylum saw significant expansion during this period: in the same year an annexe providing an additional 210 beds was opened. Report 1887, 4. The chapel was opened on 15 January. Ibid., 8. Box does not appear to have had a connection with the Cathedral, but is likely to be the William C. Box listed in the 1891 census as a Professor of Music. He appears in an advert for organ recitals in 1895 as a ‘popular Corporation organist’. See Worcester Journal 27 April 1895. Report 1887, 8. Report 1888, 10. Ibid. Report 1892, 11–12. Report 1869, 7. With a total population of 38 attendants, this represented a significant success in involving the lower-paid members of staff in musical activity. It is not clear how this singing class related to the previous twice-weekly meetings for sacred music and glee singing. Later reports show the Saturday rehearsal was for the choir which sang in the chapel. Report 1887, 9. Report 1890. Report 1898, 11. The average attendance at this time was 31. However, the choir continued to suffer from the variable working patterns of the attendants, who were often engaged elsewhere in the asylum, or on leave. Report 1895, 10. Report 1868, 83. Contained in B499:9/10127/3 Salaries and Wages April 1893–March 1898. Report 1867, 54. Report 1868, 56. Other expenses listed under ‘miscellaneous’ included coffin boards, bird seed, killing rats, croquet, repairing clocks, tobacco and snuff, and bird cages. Report 1869, 56. The piano was bought for the new building completed in 1868. Information from Account summaries contained in Annual Reports.

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86. Report 1876, 22. The Accounts summary lists ‘Gratuity to Band, Attendants, &c.’. 87. Report 1895, 59. 88. County and City of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum: Servant’s [sic] Record 1878–83 (B499:9/10271/30), January 1878. 89. Ibid. Spray is listed in the 1871 census as ‘Musician’, while Millward appears as Milward in 1881, a Lay Clerk at Worcester Cathedral. See https://ukcensusonline.com/. 90. Collett, ‘A Strange Apprenticeship: Elgar at Powick’ in Elgar Society Journal (November 1996), 284–295: 285. 91. Salaries and Wages Roll (B489:16/8343/128 1884–93). 92. Salaries and Wages April 1893–March 1898 (B499:9/10127/3). I have been unable to trace further information regarding the Quarterman family. One Arthur R Quarterman, a Professor of Music, is listed in the 1881 census aged 41. It is possibly this Quarterman to which the ‘P’ refers. This record also includes an Arthur Quarterman aged 11. By 1891 there is no record of the elder Arthur, but there appears an Arthein Quarterman aged 21, now Professor of Music. See https://ukc ensusonline.com/. 93. Collett, ‘Strange Apprenticeship’, Collett ‘Elgar’s Music for Powick Asylum’ in The Elgar Society Journal Vol. 18 no. 3 (December 2013), 53–54 and Ken Crump, ‘Edward Elgar at Powick Mental Hospital’ in The Elgar Society Journal Vol. 19 no. 2 (August 2015), 25–30: 29. 94. Collett, ‘Strange Apprenticeship’, 285–293. 95. Lyle, ‘Elgar at Powick’, 19–20. 96. Ibid., 24. 97. Report 1889, 22. 98. Report 1892, 12. 99. Ibid., 30. 100. Report 1894, 13. 101. Chaplain Bond noted that the problem continued in 1893–1894, though the enlargement of the Choir meant a good standard could generally be maintained, ‘not withstanding one-third of the Staff are off duty.’ See Report 1894, 11.

CHAPTER 8

Brookwood Asylum: Music at the Centre of Moral Therapy

The asylum at Brookwood, opened in 1867, was the second pauper asylum to be founded in Surrey, after the Springfield asylum in Wandsworth became insufficient for the county’s requirements. It thus presents a further opportunity to examine an institution set up once asylum practice was established. In the case of Brookwood, tried-andtested approaches to asylum management, which developed in an iterative way at earlier institutions, were implemented from the outset. The asylum site was situated well away from London, where the growing urban area had made it impossible to expand existing asylum provision. The 150acre plot was bought with the intention of incorporating a farm and other employment options for patients as well as offering the scope for further expansion. It was built to house 650 patients, with 328 admitted between its opening in June 1867 and the end of the year.1 Brookwood’s first Medical Superintendent, Dr. Thomas Nadauld Brushfield (1828–1910), was recruited from Chester Asylum and was in post at Brookwood in 1865. From well before its opening, therefore, he was able to take a keen oversight of all aspects of the asylum’s preparation, from the fitting out of the buildings to employment of officers and attendants. Brushfield brought with him extensive experience and enthusiasm for the more liberal approaches to asylum management. However, the asylum’s design neglected to take into account all the requirements of the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_8

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typical mid-century institution. The planners omitted a recreation hall, in order to save costs, and it was several years before a satisfactory building was added to serve this purpose. Brushfield remained at Brookwood until 1882, when he retired following an assault from a patient.2 Brushfield had been House Surgeon at the Cheshire County Asylum from 1852, and Medical Superintendent between 1854 and 1865.3 He drew on his own experience, the expertise of colleagues from elsewhere, and the nearby Surrey County Asylum at Wandsworth in organising the new institution. From the outset, the ‘Rules’ he created for the asylum at Brookwood emphasised the importance of employment and recreation that had become central to moral management at many other pauper asylums, including his former institution in Cheshire. Outlining the General Management of the institution, Brushfield directed that During the day the Patients of both sexes shall be employed as much as practicable out of doors; the men in gardening and husbandry, the women in occupations suited to their ability; and as a principle in treatment, endeavours shall be continually used to occupy the minds of the Patients, to induce them to take exercise in the open air, and to promote cheerfulness and happiness among them.4

As elsewhere, books, both religious and secular, were to be provided, together with ‘various methods of in and out door amusements.’5 The Chaplain was to play a particular role in the rational recreation opportunities offered to patients by directing the Schools, as well as ‘classes for instruction in the Bible and in singing; and shall take charge of the library, and control the issue of books and periodicals.’6 Recreation also featured prominently in the Rules stipulated for the conduct of Attendants and other staff, also published before the asylum was opened. Attendants were instructed as follows: They must distinctly understand that the general meetings for recreation are for the especial benefit of the patients; and that the active and personal attention of the Attendants in furthering all the means of amusement is as necessary a portion of their duty as any other which they may be called upon to perform. They are therefore required to join in them, and to persuade all who possibly can to participate in them. As many Attendants as can be spared must accompany and be present with the patients in the place of recreation. When the inmates who are left in the various wards are

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put to bed, the remainder of the Attendants must attend the recreation meeting, and render whatever assistance may be required.7

Among the categories of staff detailed in this document is the post of Bandmaster. The incumbent was instructed to have oversight of the band and instruments, to rehearse the group twice a week and ensure the band was available to ‘assist’ at recreation meetings. In the summer, the band was to practice on the south terrace. The ‘Rules’ go further to illustrate the extent of Brushfield’s interest in all aspects of the asylum’s operation. The Bandmaster was to ‘consult with the Medical Superintendent as to the music to be played, or required to be purchased, to write out and transpose such as may be necessary, and to keep a register of the Band practices.’8 In addition to setting up the band as an integral part of asylum management, Brushfield was personally involved in procuring the instruments required. Early in 1867, he applied for a grant to supply decorations and objects of interest for the wards, as well as instruments and music for a small band.9 Correspondence with a contact at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum (the Wandsworth establishment) suggests that the instruments were bought chiefly from the Paris firm of instrument makers Gautrot, ordered on Brushfield’s behalf by the Surrey correspondent. The letters give advice on the composition of the band, as well as the choice of instrument makers. The correspondent explained: I fancy you ought to have an intermediate instrument between the Eb horns & the euphonium, as the trombone does not fill up the gap. We find the great advantage of a baritone horn in Bb. Also I would suggest, without wishing to interfere with your views, that it will be out of proportion to employ 3 treble Eb instruments in so small a band, viz. piccolo, flageolet, & clarinet. Our ordinary band consists of Piccolo in Eb; Clarinet in Bb; 2 Cornets; 2 Tenor Sax-horns in Eb; Tenor Trombone; Barytone in Bb; Euphonium; & Bombardon. On extraordinary occasions we add an Eb clarinet.10

Outlining the typical prices for good-quality instruments, it was suggested that Brushfield might equip his band for the total sum of £30, ‘so that you would have £5 left for music’.11 A second note regarding exchange rates confirms that the instruments were bought via the Surrey institution from France, but does not give the final selection.

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Brushfield came with the experience of organising ‘intellectual entertainments’ at Chester Asylum: his theatrical performances formed a core component in his treatment of the patients, and he believed they assisted their recovery process and the return to normal life. Through participation and observation of such social occasions, patients were offered the opportunity to exhibit rationality and social competence, which in turn could lead them to rehabilitation in society. As such, the entertainments were a component of moral treatment and thus a humane reintroduction into the many aspects of everyday life.12

An obituary of Brushfield in The British Medical Journal of 31 December 1910 suggests he played an important part in establishing recreational activity in asylums. Indeed, he took a full part in the entertainments at Brookwood as ‘play writer, composer, stage manager, and actor of no mean capacity’.13 Another memoir records his skills as a conjuror, an actor, a singer ‘of very wide range’ and a writer, as well as ‘a very good friend’.14 Brushfield’s legacy was to be found in his organisation of recreational activities; as the obituary records, ‘His kind and thoughtful solicitude for the welfare of his unfortunate patients caused him to promote schemes for their entertainment which have been adopted in every asylum since that time’.15 Nevertheless, the claim that he ‘practically introduced a new era in the treatment of the insane’ rather overstates the novelty of Brushfield’s actions. The brass band was formed on the asylum’s opening in June 1867 and in its first Annual Report, the Asylum Committee was able to record that the first general entertainment, a Concert and Ball, had been held two months later on 19 September, being attended by more than threequarters of the patients. The entertainments continued on a near-weekly basis, focussed around concerts, dances and conjuring performances. Congratulating Brushfield, the Committee suggested the activities ‘appear to have had a most beneficial effect upon the patients. These entertainments break the monotony of asylum life, and the privilege of attending them may be held out as a reward for good conduct. The patients seem to anticipate them and look back upon them with much pleasure.’16 Brushfield echoed these sentiments in his own first Report, linking entertainments more directly to patient well-being and recovery:

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Of the marked benefit which has been derived from these gatherings, there has been ample testimony; more than one recovered patient has alluded to their beneficial operation at the time when convalescence began to be established. Several of the noisiest patients remain quiet for several days preceding an entertainment, and behave well during the time it is taking place. It is true that on the following day they are just as turbulent as ever, but even a few days quiet, whilst proving a boon to the wards generally, must in the end permanently benefit the individual patients also.17

In both Reports, entertainments were also connected to a system of reward for good behaviour. As in other institutions, recreational activities had a twofold influence on patients, both directly, in providing a distraction and occupation, and indirectly, through the anticipation and encouragement to practice self-control and restraint in advance. Although some Medical Superintendents were sceptical about the overall benefits of discrete events, in this case, both the Committee and Brushfield refer to the ongoing benefit of the organised weekly activities. In addition to the entertainments, patients were provided with cards, dominos and draughts, pictures and caged birds, and illustrated periodicals. A library was being founded, and during the following year bagatelle tables, tonneau boards, German billiards and other games were purchased.18 Employment was also much advanced: two-thirds were engaged with some form of daily work, ‘the males in clearing and cultivating the land, and helping in the wards and workshops; the females in the kitchen and laundry, needlework, &c.’19 Entertainments therefore formed part of a full programme of therapy-by-occupation which was set up from the outset at Brookwood. Nevertheless, care was taken not to place a heavy burden on the asylum’s budget: as Brushfield’s friend Dr. Moreton notes, local friends and neighbours were enlisted, and the entertainments largely self-supporting.20 The formal entertainments continued to develop as the patient base, and therefore the staff and financial resources of the Asylum, grew. Despite the lack of a large recreation hall, the rooms in the workshop block could be combined to form a large space for balls and concerts, and visiting performers became more frequent. The Fifth Annual Report, published in 1872, included the following summary of entertainments, demonstrating the rich schedule of musical and dramatic activity on offer to patients:

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Christmas Tree Distribution; Moving Panorama, with Lecture, aided by a Vocal and Instrumental Concert by the boys of the Bisley Refuge; Conjuring Entertainment; Negro Concert, by the “Coloured Rhododendrons of Brookwood;” Four Miscellaneous Concerts; two Exhibitions of Dissolving Views; two Readings; one Marionette Exhibition; one Miscellaneous Pictorial, Vocal and Dramatic Entertainment; five Card Parties; four Theatricals and eight Balls. Of these only four were given by paid entertainers… During the summer season the brass band, composed entirely of the staff of the Establishment, played on two evenings weekly on the southern terrace.21

Although many of the concerts and entertainments were presented to the patients, rather than involving them in active ways, there is some evidence which suggests a more engaged role. The programme from a concert dated 11 April 1871 includes the printed text for a number of the songs, including Lloyd’s Song with an Operatic Chorus ‘Dada’, Graves’s Cumberland Hunting Song ‘D’ye ken John Peel’, Hunt’s Abyssinian Song ‘Chickaboo Chum’, Liston’s Modern Page’s Song ‘Raspberry Jam’, B. Hill’s Amsterdam Graoule ‘The little wee dog’ and B. Richards’ National Song ‘God Bless the Prince of Wales’.22 The inclusion of text suggests perhaps patients were encouraged to join in the choruses to these numbers. Unfortunately, no further programmes from this period are extant and by 1874 the practice appears to have been dropped. In addition to Brushfield’s direct encouragement of the band and visiting performers, the Chaplain, Rev. J.M. Gillington, took on responsibility for moral and educational activities as outlined in the initial Rules. By the early 1870s, Gillington had successfully established a good collection of books, evening classes and a twice-weekly choral practice attended by patients, attendants, and a few boys, sons of Asylum staff or others connected with the institution.23 Gillington was also positive about the effect of his own provisions, reporting These various means of improving, entertaining, and interesting the inmates of the Asylum, which fall within my province, no less than the entertainments regularly provided in the Winter half-year, in which I have often the pleasure of taking part, are well appreciated by many of our afflicted charge, and undoubtedly tend to the well-being of all, and the recovery of some.24

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Gillington’s choir was set up to provide music for the chapel on Sundays, again in place from the Asylum’s foundation in 1867. As elsewhere, chapel services provided another opportunity for patients to exercise the selfcontrol considered so central to their rehabilitation. The First Annual Report records The devout behaviour that prevails [at the services], the warmth with which the Psalms and responses are sustained, and the Chants and Hymns sung, and the attention shown to the reading of the Scriptures and to the Sermon, would do honour to any congregation, and make it difficult to believe that the majority present consists of insane persons.25

The Housekeeper, Mrs. White, was appointed organist and was responsible for the musical part of the service, taking charge of the choir together with the Chaplain. Hymn books were included besides Bibles, prayer books and moralistic literature in the new library. When Mrs. White was replaced as Housekeeper by Mrs. Goodwin in 1868 and then Miss Franklin in 1870, the new incumbent also took on the role of organist. Although the advertisement for the role cannot be traced, it appears to have included a wide range of accomplishments among the requirements. Eliza Louisa Franklin’s letter of application for the post of Housekeeper addressed the various aspects of the post, claiming I am twenty nine years of age, a member of the Church of England and have lived in public institutions since I was sixteen. At Bucks County Asylum I filled the situation of Needlewoman and Attendant combined. I thoroughly understand cutting out and the distribution of needlework. I passed the Civil Service examination for a first class Attendant at Broadmoor Asylum where I had charge of the whole refractory block and eight attendants; and for the last two years in H.M. Female Convict Service as Asst. Matron – but chiefly employed as school room Officer and organist. My salary has been £57 per annum. I am a good pianist and capable of leading a choir. I have been in the habit of playing the Harmonium at Bucks County Asylum and elsewhere for some years past.26

The Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy from 1870 noted ‘On the female side a Housekeeper has charge of the domestic arrangements and cutting out, and is also organist and pianist.’27 On Miss Franklin’s departure in January 1872, the musical duties were taken up by Jane

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Mindenhall, a female attendant, who continued in that role for a further seven years.28 In addition to the formal arrangements made for entertainments, a reasonable budget allowed them to be properly resourced. Expenses on music and musical instruments are recorded in a number of Annual Reports, for example, £17 19 s 2d spent in 1869.29 A bandmaster also employed as a second class attendant could expect to earn significantly more than his colleagues: in 1872, the bandmaster’s pay was £34, compared with a range of £25–£28 for other second class attendants. Mindenhall, the organist at this time, was also a second class female attendant, earning £19 compared to £14–£16.30 When a separate organist was employed, the salary was £8 per annum.31 Full members of the band received £2 per annum as a gratuity, which even in the early 1870s cost the Asylum nearly £30 a year.32 Finally, during 1873, a Recreation Hall was built, opened on New Year’s Eve and able to hold sufficient patients for weekly entertainments, as well as the daily morning chapel services.33 The chapel was less fortunate in its musical equipment. The Chaplain’s Report continued to reflect his enthusiasm for music within the services. In the 1876 Annual Report, he commented ‘The hymnody has been improved by several of the attendants taking part in the choir, by which the congregational singing, always hearty, is led more effectively than ever. Many of the patients shew an interest in this, and all matters belonging to the religious services and teaching’.34 A hymn was added to the daily morning service in 1872, with accompaniment played on a piano by one of the patients once the new Recreation Hall was in place. The chapel was also extended in 1877, but the harmonium then became insufficient for the new building, which now seated 450 patients. Over the next eight years, Gillington repeatedly petitioned for a new organ to replace the harmonium, connecting the chapel music directly with patient well-being. In the 1881 Report, for example, he recorded We are much in need of an organ for the chapel, the harmonium being almost worn out; besides that it is too weak an instrument for so large a building. An improvement in this respect would be welcomed by the congregation, most of whom take a keen interest in church music and psalmody, and upon whom these influences have a powerful and wholesome effect.35

In a further plea in the 1883 Report, he argued

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We also stand much in need of a good organ, in place of the present harmonium, which is utterly insufficient for the present building. This would be very welcome to the congregation, to many among whom I am sure superior Church music would be directly beneficial, exercising a powerful and wholesome influence upon the mind and feelings.36

No doubt Gillington emphasised the role of music in the chapel in order to bolster his arguments for a new instrument, but the beneficial effect of music and its potential, therefore, to become a core part of therapeutic treatment, is made clear. It is evident from the 1872 summary that the asylum drew on both visiting performers and home-grown talent for its programme of entertainment. However, it was the theatricals, combining music and drama and making use of the talents of the officers and attendants that became particularly prominent in the 1870s. Programmes from November 1874 attest to a seam of talent exploited effectively by Brushfield, who often played leading roles himself.37 In this first ‘Entertainment’ of 4 November 1874, the proceedings began with Offenbach’s Operetta The Blind Beggars, followed by a Scene from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Cox and Box, with the evening concluded by a ‘Musical Burletta’, The Waterman by Charles Dibdin, which included nine pieces of incidental music. The incidental music for entertainments labelled operas typically included an opening chorus, a number of solo songs and small ensembles, an instrumental piece and a closing finale. The band also played a selection of pieces heavily weighted towards Italian opera, including Rossini’s Overture ‘Tancredi’, selections from ‘William Tell’ and a cornet fantasia on ‘The Barber of Seville’, and a selection from Verdi’s ‘Ernani’. Subsequent theatrical performances often included operettas or sketches featuring incidental music, and the band continued to perform substantial numbers at each evening. The programmes reveal an impressive frequency to the theatrical shows: within the 1874–1875 season, for example, six largely different programmes were performed, with four of these repeated a week after the first performance. The full programmes for these demonstrate the breadth of repertoire and extensive commitment made by the asylum’s staff to the recreational programme: 1874 4 November Operettas Offenbach, Operetta The Blind Beggar; scene from Sullivan, Cox and Box; Charles Dibdin, Musical Burletta The Waterman

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Band repertoire: Rossini, Overture ‘Tancredi’ and Fantasia ‘Il Barbiere’; Verdi, Selection ‘Ernani’; Rossini, Selection ‘William Tell’; Brepsant, ‘Air Suisse’; Jackson, Glee ‘Sisters of the Sea’ 9 and 16 December Theatrical Entertainment T.J. Williams, Farce Ici on parle Francais; Alfred Thompson, Japanese Opera-Bouffe The Happy Despatch with twelve items of music Band repertoire: Boieldieu, Overture ‘Caliph of Bagdad’; Zikoff, cornet solo ‘Mazurka’; Strauss, Valse ‘Wein weib und Gesang’; Donizetti, Overture ‘Gemma di Vergi’; Bishop, Glee ‘Mynheer van Dunck’; Suppé, Quadrille ‘Flotte Bursche’ 23 December

Christmas Concert

31 December

New Year’s Festival

1875 27 January and 4 February Theatrical Entertainments Brough, dramatic sketch Number One Round the Corner; pantomime Harlequin Little Red Riding Hood Band repertoire: Rossini, Overture ‘Tancredi’; Carrill, Valse ‘Corisande’; Labitzky, Gallop ‘Glocken’; Auber, Overture ‘Fra Diavolo’; Zikoff, cornet solo ‘Mazurka’; Donizetti, Selection ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ 24 February and 3 March Programme of Entertainment W. Blanchard Jerrold, Farce Cool as a Cucumber; W.B. Rhodes, Opera Bombastes Furioso with nine items of music Band repertoire: Auber, Overture ‘Le Dieu et la Bayadere’; Basquit, Valse ‘Pastoral Songs’; Verdi, Fantasia ‘Attila’; Auber, Overture ‘Le Maçon’; Strauss, Valse ‘Beautiful Danube’; Verdi, Selection ‘Il Trovatore’ 31 March and 6 April Programme of Entertainment T.H. Bayly, Vaudeville The Swiss Cottage; C. Selby, Farce The Boots at the Swan Band repertoire: Rossini, Selection ‘William Tell’; Wagner, Fantasia ‘Lohengrin’; Strauss, ‘Doctrinen Waltz’; Suppé, Overture ‘Poëte et Paysan’; Bellini, Cavatine from ‘La Sonnambula’; Lecocq, Selections ‘Les Pres Saint Gervais’ 26 April Programme of Entertainment T.H. Bayly, Vaudeville The Swiss Cottage; J. Hollingshead, domestic farce Birthplace of Podgers Band repertoire: Marie, Overture ‘Les Fées aux roses’; Basquit, Fantasia ‘Gems of England’; Strauss, Valse ‘Wein Weib und Gesang’

While the band repeated some repertoire, across the season it covered nearly thirty different pieces, and alongside the Italian composers, pieces by Germans Wagner and J. Strauss II, Frenchmen Auber and Basquit, and the English composer Sir Henry Bishop, were included. The inclusion of glees in the repertoire is not explained: it is not clear whether the glee was performed by band members or another group. Both theatrical

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performers and bandsmen evidently committed a great deal of time and effort to preparing and rehearsing the patient entertainments during the winter season. Furthermore, the asylum obviously spared a great deal of expense on music and theatrical material. Newspapers from the same period give further details on the theatricals and other entertainments. An article in the Surrey Advertiser dated 9 January 1875 captures the festivities from the New Year, at which patients, staff and visitors combined to celebrate with songs, dances, recitations and a masque. The article reveals that several patients, as well as staff, were involved in performing, with Mr King and Mrs. Wilde providing songs and Dr. Evans a recitation. Female attendants also contributed to the solo songs, while the masque was chiefly acted out by male officers, including Dr. Brushfield. As the writer noted, the New Year was a time for fresh starts, and ‘nothing can conduce to this healthful state of feeling, more than cheerful and rational amusement, a thing so especially desirable to those whose minds from one cause or another have taken an erratic turn and who need “the good physician’s” care and attention to restore them to a right balance.’38 Further newspaper articles noted the particular use of music and entertainments as part of the regime of moral management in place at the asylum. An article from April 1875 referred to Dr. Brushfield’s particular use of ‘intellectual entertainments’, recalling He has long since taught us to regard these treats as a regular part of the system, his system at least of the treatment of the insane with a view to their recovery or improvement. However, though no longer novel or surprising, these entertainments are always interesting, not only from the fact of a lunatic audience conducting itself well, but also from the artistic skill and the felicity with which they are performed at Brookwood under the guidance of Dr. Brushfield.39

The particular performances under review included a vaudeville and farce, interspersed with music provided by the band ‘which is formed by a number of the attendants, several of whom are skilled musicians.’ The actors on this occasion were Dr. Brushfield, Dr. Barton, the Assistant Medical Officer and Miss Flint, the Head Female Attendant. A further cutting from the Surrey Advertiser dated 1 May 1875 is marked as having been ‘Reported by J. Ives (patient)’, although the patient view is not given

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away by the text. The report here again emphasises the established nature of the theatrical entertainments, noting Many persons are under the impression that these curious and pleasant experiments, to arouse the intelligence and quicken the mental powers of the patients, are of a late date, but we are informed by authority that Dr. Brushfield instituted as far back as twenty years ago at Chester Asylum, and has constantly continued and improved these entertainments for the benefit of the unfortunate persons committed to his care40

The writer reveals that at this event on 9 April, ‘country gentry… attended in large numbers’; the article also refers to a further theatrical event on 26 April at which ‘The Hall was crowded with male and female patients, with an imposing attendance of gentry and visitors.’ Such entertainments clearly provided an opportunity for connection with the local community, possibly in search of philanthropic support for the institution, as well as a space for patients to make some headway towards rehabilitation into society. A final cutting, referring to a performance on 29 November 1876, again made the link between entertainment and therapy, as well as an indication of the importance of the event for cementing relationships between the asylum and the wider world.41 Among the guests were the Hon. F. Scott, Chairman of the Asylum Committee, as well as parties attached to several of the senior officers and their wives. Also present were medical officers from nearby asylums and hospitals: the Berkshire County Asylum near Wallingford, St. Luke’s Hospital in London, the Three Counties Asylum in South Bedfordshire (whose Medical Superintendent, Dr. Swain, had recently moved from Brookwood), the Broadmoor, Wandsworth and Colney Hatch Asylums and the Royal Margate Sea Bathing Infirmary. As the writer noted, these ‘gentlemen… doubtless carried away with them valuable hints, which they in their turn will put to use for the general good.’ Writing more directly on the practice at Brookwood, the reviewer reflected The spacious Recreation Hall at Brookwood Asylum may be said to be a vital lung of the establishment, for it is made weekly, and sometimes nightly, a place where hundreds of patients are soothed and amused, and bought as near as possible into the domain of reason… those admirable theatrical entertainments… are not only of immense advantage to the patients, but are heartily enjoyed by many visitors.

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As Shepherd suggests, concerts and other entertainments offered a good opportunity for the public, and particularly the wealthy supporters of the institutions, to share a space with the patients within a controlled environment, only exposed to the better-behaved who were allowed to attend.42 Concerts during this period featured the band together with a number of solo singers and instrumentalists. Repertoire was of a miscellaneous nature and usually divided into two parts, each part opening with an overture or similar piece performed by the band. Songs, glees, duets and recitations followed, with the vocal numbers naturally dominated by English composers. Unfortunately, programmes do not specify the performers, but we might assume that the mixture of patients, officers and staff described in the 1875 article took part. On other occasions, the concert was combined with dancing, the band providing the dance music interspersed with songs and instrumental solos.43 The programme from the Entertainment offered during the evening of 13 December 1876 gives a typical example of the range and variety of musical and other acts to be experienced during this period: Part I 1. Instrumental – Full Band 2. Comic Song 3. 4. 5. 6.

Duet Comic Song Ballad Descriptive Duet from Cox and Box 7. Song 8. Glee 9. Recitation 10. Ballad 11. Ladies’ Duet 12. Stump Oration 13. Glee Part II 1. Instrumental – Full Band 2. Humorous Song 3. Serenade Duet from Cox and Box 4. Son

“The Guards Quadrille” “Tommy Make Room for Your Uncle” “On the Blue Wave” “They All have a Mate but Me” “Philip the Falconer” “Stay Bonner, Stay” “Early in the Morning” “The Fair Flower of Northumberland” “The Field of Waterloo” “The Three Ravens” “Strictly Confidential” “On Things in General” “Canadian Boat Song” “Fascination Valse” “Toby Brad” “The Butterfly Dwells on the Lowly Mead” “Silver Threads Among the Gold”

Godfrey

Panofka Geoghegan Loder A. Sullivan Maccabe Old English Melody Lord Byron Old English Melody Palmer Moore D’Albert A. Sullivan Danks

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5. Comic Song 6. Domestic Duet 7. Glee 8. Medical Song 9. Nautical Ballad 10. Pathetic Ballad 11. Humorous Song 12. Glee

“He gets like his Dad every day” “The Latest Thing that’s out” “The Friar of Orders Grey” “Medicine Jack” “Nancy Lee” “Three Sailors of Bristol City” (Words by Thackeray) A. Lee “The Two Obadiahs” “To all You Ladies now on Land”

Cherry Callcott Gatty T. Adams

Lyste Callcott

God Save the Queen

The two songs taken from Cox and Box followed on from the scene delivered in November 1874; the full operetta was performed on 21 February 1877 together with the farce The Lottery Ticket by Samuel Beazley. During that evening, the band offered three further musical numbers: the overture ‘Le Dieu et la Bayadère’ by Auber, a selection from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and the clarinet solo ‘Air Variè’ by Brespant. The band’s own repertoire of continental instrumental music offers a striking contrast to the British songs and glees of the miscellaneous concert. By 1875, the band numbered sixteen attendants and frequently played as part of visiting acts, providing an overture and other interludes, as well as its regular role at dances and concerts.44 Repertoire was focussed around popular operatic tunes, incidental music, overtures and dance music. Although the band is always referred to as a ‘brass band’ during this period, other instruments were in use at the asylum: receipts for instruments and repairs between 1868 and 1872 include repairs to a concertina (1868), purchase of a violin bow and strings for a violin and ‘cello (1869), a Raoux Horn, 4 valve Baritone, ‘cello bow and further violin bow (1871) and repairs for two cornets (1872).45 An undated photo of the band contained in a photograph album belonging to Mrs. Brushfield shows ten players, including three baritones, one cornet, two clarinets, one piccolo, one French horn, a bass drum and a side drum (Fig. 8.1).46 One copy of the photo includes the label ‘Scott (Hallporter)’ under the clarinettist fourth from the right. A Thomas W. Scott was included in the gratuity lists for 1871–1874, and is listed in the Staff register as having been employed as a Second Class Assistant

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Fig. 8.1 Brookwood Asylum Band [1873–1883] in Photograph Album 3043/1/20/7, 38 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre)

in 1871, appointed to Hall Porter in 1873 until leaving the Asylum’s employment in 1883.47 Among the other members of the band named in the gratuity lists from 1871, 1873 and 1874 are Philip Tugwell, 2nd Class Attendant 1868–1884; John Tozer, 2nd Class Attendant 1868, promoted to 1st Class in 1869 and 2nd Assistant Head Attendant from 1899; James Risebrook, 2nd Class Attendant 1869–1876 and again 1876–1888; Thomas Churcher, 2nd Class Attendant 1869 and promoted to Charge Attendant 1872–1876; James Hoskins, 2nd Class Attendant 1870–1874; George Musty, 2nd Class Attendant 1870–1871; John Bedford, 2nd Class Assistant 1871–1873 and again 1873–1875; and John Evans, 2nd Class Assistant 1873 and promoted to 1st Class Assistant 1876–1878. The band was populated with the lower classes of attendant, rather than the medical officers, and many of these employees remained at the asylum no longer than three or four years before seeking to improve their position at another institution or tiring of the all-consuming role. Others remained

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at Brookwood for remarkably long careers, providing continuity both in their role as attendants and in the musical life of the institution. While membership of the band carried a financial gratuity, it did not excuse poor behaviour. One band member, John William Seal, worked as a 2nd Class Attendant between 1871 and 1876, but was dismissed from his post for applying for another position without leave.48 On a later occasion the bandmaster, Joseph Silas Sells, was dismissed for being absent without leave. Sells was appointed to the Asylum staff as a joiner in February 1870, and on his dismissal in February 1871, nineteen members of the band protested against his treatment, petitioning The undermentioned are the names of attendants who would deem it a kindness if you would look over Attendant J Sell’s misdemeanour. Thanks is but a faint expression to convey what would be felt by us all for the noble and generous forgiveness of our erring but penitent fellow servant J Sells.49

Surviving applications for employment as bandmaster give an indication of the skills of some of the men employed in this post. The Asylum authorities wasted no time seeking a replacement for poor Sells, a letter from James Brown to Dr. Brushfield dated 31 January 1871 stating Having observed an advertisement in the “Echo” that there is a Bandmaster required for a County Asylum, Wages £30 rising to £40 per annum, I wrote to the address mentioned and received a reply from Messrs Chapman & Potter, directing me to write to you, and in doing so, I enclose two testimonials from my late Colonels the original of one (Colonel Thompson’s) has been mislaid for the present by Mr Distin. I beg to state that, if the situation is not already taken, I would accept it. I have been in the Army since a Boy, and always brought up to Music. I was sent to Kneller Hall School of Music and obtained a first class Certificate and appointed Bandmaster to the 54th Regiment and held that appointment for more than eight years until my time with the Army expired. I can refer now to General Moore, of the “Junr United Service Club” Pall Mall, who has known me since a boy, for what I have stated. I can only say further, that I can compose and arrange for a band of any description of all Instruments required for a band, I am a single man, nearly 38 years of age, a Protestant and anxious to be employed in Music. I have a pension from the Army.50

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Brown had not chosen his referees carefully, however. A subsequent letter from Mr. Elliott dated 6 February 1871 informs Brushfield that, while ‘James Brown is an excellent judge of music and plays well’, he had ‘drunken habits’: ‘the moment he got his Pension he used to drink it away, or loose it in a brothel!’. The unfortunate Brown was not hired. In February 1871, another letter followed swiftly on from Joseph Sells’ dismissal, this time from a John Morrisey to Dr. Brushfield. Like Brown, Morrisey was a military man, writing Having heard through Messrs. Chapman & [?] that you are in want of a Bandmaster. I am requested by them to forward to you a letter stating my ability and the instruments on which I perform solo clarinet, cornet, flute and violin and I have a perfect knowledge of arranging for a military band. I have been Sergeant and solo Clarinet player for ten years in H.M. 28th Regt of foot. and solo Clarinet and leader on board H.M. Ship Revenge.51

On this occasion, Morrisey was also unsuccessful. The bandmaster who was appointed lasted only from April to June 1871: George Eschrick was employed as a 1st Class Attendant alongside his bandmaster duties, but resigned quickly due to ‘being unfit for attendants duty’.52 It is clear that musical talent and experience did not always sit alongside suitability for the rigours of attendant duties. Another applicant, John Daniels, wrote on 28 May 1871, presumably as news of Eschrick’s resignation spread. Daniels’ letter is marked 12-671 to 10-12-77, denoting his engagement in the institution; the Staff Register records that he was also employed as a 2nd Class Attendant during this period, although his role as Bandmaster is not noted there. His application stated Having heard their [sic] is a vacancy in your Asylum I am Drum Major & play the solo clarinet or lead a band & I offer myself as a candidate. Testimonials in hand from the under mentioned gentlemans…53

The military was an important source of employees as attendants and it is not surprising that military bandsmen likewise sought employment in the asylums, with music fulfilling a similar function in the two sets of institutions.54 Little further information is available about the later bandmasters apart from their entries in the Staff registers. These show most were attendants appointed in the first instance as second class Table 8.1.

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Table 8.1 Bandmasters at Brookwood 1889–1907

Bandmaster 1889–1896 1896–1897 1897–1898 1898–1907

William Chequers David Lewis William Appleby Charles Carpenter

Status

Overall employment

Second class attendant Second class attendant Second class attendant Second class attendant

1885–1896 1893–1897 1896–1898 1884–1911

Other aspects of musical life are captured in Mrs. Brushfield’s photograph album, dated 1881 but possibly drawing together photos from the previous decade as well as others added later.55 A group of nine blackfaced minstrels includes the inscriptions Frank Budd, Hardy and Chas Thompson (Fig. 8.2).56 Frank Budd, Thompson and Hardy were among the N—Troupe performing in December 1896, all three remaining unusually long in the employment of the asylum, and none progressing to more senior levels of employment. Frank’s brother, William, was promoted to Head Male Attendant in 1888; he remained until 1911 and the two performed together at weekly entertainments. Master B Budd also appeared in the 1896 Troupe, again emphasising the role of families in the voluntary activities of asylum staff. A further photograph (Fig. 8.3) from Mrs Brushfield’s album shows the contemporary band, taken between 1889 and 1896. The bandmaster, William Chequers (2nd Class attendant 1885–1896), can be seen reclining in front of the bandsmen, while among the performers labelled are Charles Carpenter (2nd Class attendant 1884–1911) and Robert Windebank (2nd class attendant 1885–1903; stable attendant from 1889). This group is smaller and more informal than the other band photos of the late-1880s and 1890s (see Figs. 8.4 and 8.5). It also appears to include a patient in the role of flag bearer and may therefore present the band in the context of a performance rather than a formal, posed photograph. ∗ ∗ ∗ Musical and other entertainments formed an important part of asylum life at Brookwood until well into the twentieth century, partly helped

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Fig. 8.2 Brookwood Minstrels in Photograph Album c. 1896 3043/1/20/7, 37 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre)

by a continuity of senior management. James Edward Barton (1843-?), who joined the institution as Assistant Medical Officer in 1874, succeeded Brushfield in 1882 and went on to remain in post as Medical Superintendent until 1910. Barton continued to place great weight on entertainment as a form of treatment, despite increasing medicalization of practice at other institutions. In his first Annual Report in 1883, for example, he explained. Although there are here, as in other Asylums, a certain number of noisy and destructive patients, who resist all efforts at improvement or amelioration, tranquillity and good order have been the rule throughout the Asylum. This is to be greatly attributed to the amount of employment, amusement, and exercise provided, and which have also aided in producing the low rate of mortality which has distinguished the year.57

Despite Barton’s claims, the Commissioners in Lunacy Report two years later recommended purchasing a piano for the nurses’ sitting room,

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Fig. 8.3 Brookwood Asylum Band [1889–1896] in Photograph Album 3043/1/20/7, 37 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre)

as well as working to increase the numbers of patients employed and attending the amusements.58 At this stage, only around a third of patients were actively occupied, a relatively low proportion compared to other asylum records. The issues were swiftly addressed, and by 1887, Barton was able to report that two-thirds of patients were regularly employed, with 400 attending weekly entertainments and 280 walking out daily ‘beyond the airing-courts’.59 Barton continued, During the year three new pianos were obtained for the female wards, to replace worn-out ones, and several others were thoroughly repaired. These instruments are a source of great enjoyment in the wards. Dances are frequently held under the superintendence of the female officers, and undoubtedly assist in promoting cheerfulness and contentment. They also, by rousing lethargic patients, conduce to mental improvement, and are looked forward to by all as a great source of relief to the monotony of the winter evenings.60

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Fig. 8.4 Brookwood Asylum Band c. 1890 [1885–1889] in 3043/10/2/7 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre)

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folder

Barton recognised that it was opportunities for occupation rather than productive labour that produced positive results as a part of therapeutic treatment. Writing in 1889, he suggested my great aim has been to induce as many patients as possible to employ themselves usefully, especially at outdoor occupations, which I regard as holding the most prominent part in their treatment. I do not look for a great amount of work from them, as I recognise that a large proportion are unable to do much on account of their mental or physical condition.61

Barton had little more to say on the benefits of organisation of musical entertainments, arrangements continuing much as before save for the improvement of facilities within the wards and the replacement of instruments and bandsmen as necessary. In 1895, his report again alluded to the positive benefits of occupation for the patients: ‘the employment

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Fig. 8.5 Brookwood Asylum Band [1895–1896] in folder 3043/10/2/7 (Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre)

and amusement of the Patients continue to receive the same attention as formerly, the advantages accruing from them in diverting Patients thoughts from their troubles and stimulating their minds to better and healthier action being fully recognized.’62 By this time, the regular pattern of entertainments had settled into a weekly performance by the band which combined dances and songs, allowing both active participation and passive enjoyment among the patients and staff. Detailed records from 1889 show that large numbers of both groups attended the weekly gatherings, with attendants expected to accompany their charges, and the senior officers supporting the performances both in the audience and via participation.63 An average of 189 men and 228 women attended the 1889 entertainments, held weekly during the winter season, accompanied by 46 male attendants and 40 female attendants. Entertainments were held on Wednesday evenings, commencing at 8 pm. The majority of entertainments were in the form of a dance, alternating dance tunes performed by the band with solo songs

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and instrumental numbers—often also arrangements of vocal music. The programme for 13 February provides a typical example of the repertoire in use during this period: 1. Lancers 2. Song 3. Polka 4. Song 5. Valse 6. Song 7. Quadrille 8. Recitation 9. Schottische 10. Song 11. Lancers 12. Comic Song 13. Valse 14. Song 15. Polka

“Royal Edinburgh” “Love’s Arrow and Bow” “Go as you please” “Darby and Joan” “Fairie Voices” “Sunshine” “Merry England” “The Execution” “Happy Hearts” “Molly’s Answer” “Dorothy” “I can’t get at it” “Daddy” “Friar of Orders Grey” “Yes or No”

Godfrey Levey Winterbottom Weatherby Crowe Pigot Williams Ingoldsby Round Bernstone Bucalossi Randall Bucalossi Isaac Linter

The repertoire reveals simple dance forms and subject matter of a day-today concern, although the topic of ‘The Execution’ for a recitation seems particularly sombre for the institutional setting. None of the composers represented here have survived into the modern canon, which is not unexpected given that the forms and genres of the miscellaneous dance are little heard today. The Italian-British composers Procida Bucalossi and his son Ernest, Alfred Crowe and the elusive Round were regularly heard at the evening entertainments. Among the composers well-known today, Sir Henry Bishop was often featured, together with Percy Scholes and Sir Arthur Somerville. Music was almost exclusively British. Among the few exceptions were the French composer Émile Waldteufel, whose waltzes were heard on a regular basis, while the Viennese composer Philipp Fahrbach’s “Tanzjubilaten” formed a core part of the repertoire. The names of performers are not included. However, we might surmise that some of the officers were among them, as the senior medical staff were also regular attenders at the evening events. Drs. Barton, Gayton and Shepherd (the two Assistant Medical Officers) were present most Wednesdays, together with the Chaplain, Revd. Skelton, the female Officers Misses Fernandes (the Matron), Flint (Housekeeper), Rogers and Collins (Assistant Matrons), and the male Officers Messrs Clark, Robinson, Budd (Head Male Attendant), Jenkins, Barton and Bray.

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The band also increased in size. A photo dated 1890 shows the ‘Establishment 15’ who formed the core of the band at this time (Fig. 8.4).64 The line-up includes three clarinets, three cornets, two tenor horns, two baritones, a euphonium, tuba, double bass, side drum and bass drum. Labelled on this photo is Daniel Summers (bass drum), a 2nd Class Attendant between 1881 and 1898. Other long-term members of the band, Charles Carpenter (cornet, seated) and William Chequers (clarinet, reclining front right), both also 2nd Class Attendants, can be identified. The bandmaster, far right, holds a baton. Since Chequers was in the band between 1885 and 1896 and bandmaster from 1889, but is not bandmaster in this photo, the image can be dated to between 1885 and 1889. This, then, is likely to be the ensemble that played for the regular dances throughout the season in the late 1880s, as well as outdoor fetes and other entertainments. A further photo shows 21 bandsmen, including Summers, Carpenter and Chequers, together with Bill Hicks (2nd Class Attendant 1892– 8 and Plumbers’ Labourer 1899–1903, clarinet) and George Carpenter (2nd Class Attendant 1895–?, double bass) (Fig. 8.5).65 Although pencil markings indicate David Lewis as the Bandmaster, staff records indicate that Lewis only took over running the band when Chequers resigned his attendant post; furthermore, Chequers’ stance at the edge of the group with his hand resting on a music stand is in keeping with the authority of the bandmaster and it is likely, therefore, that this photo dates between the arrival of George Carpenter in 1895 and the departure of William Chequers in 1896. This group includes six clarinets, one flute, two cornets, one trombone, a bugle, four tenor horns, two euphoniums, the double bass, side drum and bass drum. One instrument is hidden from view. Few visiting performers disrupted the regular patterns of dance-based entertainments. In 1889, a concert by the Band Boys of the Farm School in Bisley on 17 April was the only recorded anomaly.66 The boys’ concert combined entertainment on the handbells, a cornet solo and a bagpipe solo with demonstrations of the latest educational innovation, the drill. Among the gymnastic accomplishments exhibited were the Musical Club Drill, the Dumb Bell Drill, the New Military Physical Drill, the Vaulting Horse Exercise, the Horizontal Bar, the Walking and Running Maze and The Nodding Song. Other changes to the schedule were based around home-grown entertainment. On 24 June 1889, the annual Anniversary Fete drew in a

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larger-then-usual crowd of patients and attendants for the programme of races (with prizes), games and sports.67 The event was attended by the Asylum band, the Asylum Minstrels and the Royal Punch and Judy Show, with dancing after tea served outside at 4.55 pm. The Fete attracted 240 male and 376 female patients, helped no doubt by its being scheduled for the summer, when fewer would have suffered from routine illnesses, as well as the extra space afforded by the outdoor location. Entertainments for the Christmas and New Year period also took on a special character. On Christmas Eve 1889, the Brookwood Minstrels made another appearance, providing the first half of the evening’s entertainment with a series of popular songs. Among the all-male minstrels were some of the officers, W. Robinson, J. Clark and L. Jenkins, as well as attendants C. Thompson, H. Milliard, J. Bowe and F. Budd. The Budd brothers, Frank and William, also performed a song in the second half, where character songs and acts were interspersed with dances played by the band. The New Year’s Eve entertainment took on a similar character, the first half being taken by a one-act Farce (performers included both Dr. Barton and Dr. Gayton), the second part consisting again of dances, songs and other acts. During the 1890s the pattern continued, with the usual programme of dances and concerts interspersed with occasional visiting performers or a home-grown farce, operetta or miscellaneous programme of dramatic and musical acts. In January 1893, for example, the first half of the programme comprised an operetta ‘Breaking the Spell’ by H.B. Farnie with music by Offenbach, performed by James Shaw (2nd Class Attendant, 1889–1898), Thomas Comer (2nd Class Attendant, 1890–1893) and Clara Gladys Lyons (2nd Class Nurse 1892–1893). Similarly, in February 1894, the operetta Forty Winks by the same librettist and composer, was performed by Shaw, David Lewis (2nd Class Attendant 1893–1897 and Bandmaster from 1896) and Sarah Lovell (3rd Class Attendant 1892–1895). On each occasion, the second half of the programme offered the usual mix of dances and solo items. In March 1894, a broader spectrum of staff appeared in ‘Living Pictures’, the different characters being portrayed by the Misses Ray (Margaret, Assistant Matron 1893–1909), Crowther, Tribe and Kemp (Emily, 3rd Class Attendant 1893–1895) and the Messrs Gayton (Francis Garford, Assistant Medical Officer 1883–1908), Skelton (Charles Arthur, Chaplain 1888–1913), Thomas (Charles, 2nd Class Attendant 1890–1905; later Assistant Hall Porter), Hicks (William, 2nd Class Assistant 1892–1898

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and Plumbers Labourer 1899–1903), Shaw, Budd (probably Frank, 2nd Class Attendant 1886–after 1905) and Dovey (possibly Thomas Dove, 2nd Class Attendant from 1894).68 There was little overlap between membership of the band and those who appeared as minstrels, actors, solo singers and other performers. The band remained restricted to the attendants, perhaps through the choice of instruments and repertoire which linked it to working-class movements in the brass bands of northern England. Although many of the bandsmen remained 2nd Class Attendants, rather than progressing up the ranks, some remained for significant periods of time at the Asylum. Charles Carpenter, for example, was employed as a 2nd Class Attendant between 1884 and 1911, promoted to bandmaster in 1898 and relieved of his bandmaster duties in January 1907. Charles had been recorded in the 1881 census as a militiaman, though at age 22 at that time did not remain long in the army. By 1891, Charles and his wife, Jane, had three children and by 1901, Jane was also working as an asylum attendant. On one photo of the band contained in Mrs. Brushfield’s photo album (Fig. 8.3), pencil markings suggest a second Carpenter, who bears a resemblance to Charles, while a further Carpenter, George, began work as a 2nd Class Attendant in 1895, and is shown holding a double bass in the 1895–1896 photo. While some bandsmen moved quickly through their employment at the asylum, therefore, those who remained were perhaps held by family ties, lack of prospects elsewhere, or indeed the musical opportunities afforded by membership of the ensemble. During the 1880s and 1890s different sets of performers were advertised as Minstrels or named groups. An ‘N— Troupe’ appears to have evolved from the Minstrels in the early 1890s, after the latter began including blackface sketches and songs in their programmes. The ‘Brookwood Snowflakes’ was a separate group which existed concurrently. In an 1888 programme some of the Minstrels performers were also part of the Snowflakes, but a later programme dating from 1898 shows a completely different set of performers which overlapped with band members. Charles and George Carpenter were both part of the Snowflakes performance on New Year’s Eve 1898.69 The two groups performed similar repertoire. The 1898 New Year’s Eve performance given by the Snowflakes featured songs and comic songs in the first half, accompanied by ‘Bones’ and Tambourines, followed by a second half of dances and songs performed by staff from outside the group. Similarly, the N—Troupe’s New Year’s

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Eve 1896 performance combined songs and comic songs from the troupe with a miscellaneous second half. Music in the chapel also benefitted from relative continuity. The Chaplain John Maurice Gillington was replaced by William Stanley Sutthery in 1884, and his successor, Charles Arthur Skelton, served from 1888 to 1913. In his inaugural report Sutthery refers to moving the organ to a new chamber; there is no direct reference to a new organ being purchased for the chapel but it seems possible that Gillington’s pleas for a new instrument were finally recognised. Sutthery also noted a number of practical problems affecting music in the chapel, speaking both to its precarious position and to the importance of its place in religious practice: On all sides I hear that there is a marked improvement in the singing in Chapel. Often the duties of those composing the Choir (Nurses and Attendants) interfere materially with the attendance at the Choir Practice. It is much to be wished that those who form the Choir could come more regularly to the practices and also that they could attend both morning and afternoon services in the Chapel on Sunday. As it is, the Choir is divided through those attending in the morning, for the most part, not being able to attend in the afternoon on account of duty, or vice versa. The consequence of this is that sometimes the Choir is very strong and sometimes very weak. This, I need hardly say, has a bad effect on the general tone of the Services.70

While the choir was not paid a gratuity to match that given to members of the band, singers were rewarded with a summer excursion each year. In 1885, for example, the choir visited the International Inventions Exhibition in South Kensington, while in 1886 a party of 21 was taken to Southampton and Cowes for the day.71 By his 1889 Report Sutthery was able to record ‘The Singing at the Sunday Services has, I think, improved; the whole of the Choir are most regular in their attendance at practice and appear to take a real interest in their duties.’72 Sutthery’s replacement, Charles Arthur Skelton, further consolidated the role of chapel music in asylum life. Music was promoted as a deliberate method of attracting and engaging patients in religious worship. Informal gatherings increased, with prayers and hymns taking place on Sunday afternoons within the infirmary; in 1895 Skelton reported that in the Male Infirmary ‘the Patients join very heartily in the singing.’73 Music, rather than text, was accessible to patients in the asylum, and

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Skelton noted in 1890 that ‘The Services, as far as possible, are choral, as the patients join more readily in singing than in reading.’74 Since the 1880s the chapel had employed a series of female organists connected with the Asylum staff. When in May 1890 the incumbent organist left, Skelton recorded that the duties were shared between Miss Collins, Assistant Matron, and Dr. Brushfield, who was evidently still in close contact with the Asylum.75 At other times the chapel made use of female relatives of employed officers or Attendants (Table 8.2). The three ladies, Mary Gillington, Mary Georgina Cappe and Emily Hobley, were relatives of male Officers. Mary Clarissa Gillington was the eldest child of the Chaplain John Gillington (1867–1884) and was just seventeen when she took up the post of Organist.76 Mary Cappe was daughter of the Steward Walter Cappe (1867–1887), and is listed as 18 years old and a ‘Student in Music’ in the 1881 census, while Emily Hobley was sister of the 2nd Assistant Clerk Edwin Hobley (1887– 1891).77 There is a lacuna in the records between Emily Hobson stepping down and the appointment of Frank Harper in 1894. Annual Reports record that an appointment was made in October 1890 and that a 2nd Class Attendant held the role in 1891.78 This led to ‘considerable improvement… in the musical part of our Services’ but the holder of the post has not been identified.79 The institution clearly struggled to hold onto its male attendant organists during the 1890s, with longevity even worse than was normal for employees at this level. With appointments made at the lower scale, it is most likely that the organists were able to find higher-paid roles elsewhere within a short time of arrival at Brookwood. It is possible that, like the Bandmaster Eschrick, asylum attendant work proved too taxing and dangerous. Frank Harper cited ‘Own resignation for a change’ as his reason for leaving in 1895, which was commonly given as a motivating cause, while Martin Boyle resigned to take a ‘private base’.80 The matter of finding suitable staff for the choir also continued to be problematic, particularly towards the end of the century. A large number of male attendants were registered as army reserves (unsurprising, given the military background of many) and many were called up to rejoin their regiments during the Boer War. The problem extended to nurses, perhaps due to the rapid turnover of staff, who continued largely to leave service once married, or the increased demands of day-to-day work. Singing was still voluntary and unremunerated, and as nursing work became professionalised through formal training and certification, female attendants

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Table 8.2 Organists at Brookwood 1867–1905 1867–1868

Charlotte White

1868–1870

Julia S. Goodwin

1870–1872 1872–1878

1878–1884

1884–1887

Housekeeper and Organist

Housekeeper and Organist Eliza Louise Franklin Housekeeper and Organist Jane H. Mindenhall 2nd Class Attendant 1871–1875; 1st Class Attendant 1875–1878 Mary Gillington

1887 [−1890?]

Mary Georgina Cappe Emily Hobley

1894–1895 1894–1896

Frank E. Harper Alfred D. Ashley

Organist Attendant Stores Clerk

February–August 1896 March 1896–May 1897 November 1896–March 1897 January–October 1897

J.J. O’Connell

4th Assistant Clerk

Martin Boyle

2nd Class Organist Attendant Organist Attendant

November 1897– after 1905

Richard Edmund Jones

Albert Victor Lines James Lewis Townsend

Salary

£8 per year

Increased to £15 per year from 1881

£14 per year gratuity 2nd Class Attendant paid £40 per year as Organist in 1891

2nd Class Attendant and Organist Organist Attendant

£10 per year as organist; increasing to £15 from 22 January 1895 and £20 from 18 May 1895

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may have been less willing to engage in unrecognised roles. In 1900 Skelton reported. Throughout the year there has been considerable difficulty in finding nurses willing and competent to sing in the Choir; my best thanks are therefore due to all members of the Choir who, under considerable discouragement, have done their best to render the musical parts of the services as efficiently as possible.81

Similarly the following year, he complained ‘It is a matter of extreme difficulty to find among the nurses whose who are willing and competent to sing in the choir.’82 Usually among Asylums of this period, Brookwood had a large number of Roman Catholic patients, and it was necessary to make more than the usual cursory arrangements for their religious needs. In 1891, the Roman Catholic Clergyman Chas. Conway recorded 55 Catholics among the patients, with an average attendance at services of 21. Musical portions of the service were dependent on appropriate talent among patients and staff. In the same report, Conway notes ‘Ever since the decease of the Patient Lutgen, who accompanied on his violin the singing of the hymns, the Catholic Patients have been deprived of this devotion for want of accompaniment to the singing, in which they seemed to take great interest.’83 The following year brought similar disappointment: ‘the Patients had for several Sundays the services of Nurse Graves at the piano to accompany them in the singing of the hymns; but since she has transferred to the duty of night nurse they have been deprived of this devotion.’84 By 1893 the Assistant Matron, Miss Alexander, had taken on the role of piano accompanist, to the ‘great satisfaction’ of the patients, and in 1894, the role was transferred to another Assistant Matron, Miss Ray.85 Music was clearly important in many aspects of everyday life at Brookwood, from the weekly entertainments and chapel services for different denominations, to providing enough of a diversion to keep the nurses from the soldiers camped nearby. The asylum’s own resources, particularly in the support and talents of the officers and senior attendants, were rich, with a strong lead coming from the Medical Officers. An inventory dating from 1908 includes a three-manual organ in the chapel, grand piano and harmonium in the Recreation Hall, seven cottage pianos (including one in the nurses’ room) and eight grand pianos.86 Towards the lower

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end of the aesthetic spectrum, the last few decades of the century saw the Brookwood Minstrels, the N—(blackface) Troupe and the Brookwood Snowflakes performing character songs, sketches and other acts. The established routine of dances, anniversary and harvest celebrations and Christmas novelties was enhanced with some of the same acts found in other institutions, such as Mrs. Walter Searle, ‘Comedienne, Vocalist, Instrumentalist, Composer and Authoress: Drawing Room Entertainment’, G. A. Foote’s ‘Funny Fancies’, the S. C. Cecilia Hand Bell Ringers and Glee Singers, and the Field-Fisher Quartette.87 From its mid-century foundation to the turn of the twentieth century, the two Medical Superintendents at Brookwood pursued a deliberate programme of situating music centrally within the practice of moral management, and the therapeutic regime. Instruments, buildings and staff were coordinated to ensure high standards and a proliferation of musical opportunities, both sacred and secular. With the support of some dedicated chapel staff, talented attendants and a series of skilled female relatives, both Brushfield and Barton were able to maintain musical activity without too significant an expense, or reliance on external performers. Brushfield’s continued contribution as organist beyond his retirement speaks volumes about the personal connection and commitment felt by senior asylum staff, and the importance of the individual within the institution for music.

Notes 1. First Annual Report 1868 (Surrey History Centre, 3043/1/1/1/1), 22. Subsequent Annual Reports from the shelfmarks 3043/1/1/1/1–15 are referred to by date. 2. Harry Topley-Soper, ‘Brushfield, Thomas Nadauld’ in Dictionary of National Biography 12th Edition and ‘Thomas Nadauld Brushfield, M.D.’ in The British Medical Journal Vol. 2 no. 2609 (31 December 1910), 2054. 3. I am grateful to Elaine Walker for her assistance with archival research on the Cheshire County Asylum. 4. ‘General Rules for the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum at Brookwood’, 25–26, bound in with Annual Reports 1867–1870 at 3043/1/1/1/1. 5. Ibid., 26. 6. Ibid., 16. 7. ‘Rules for the Guidance of the Attendants, Servants, and All Persons Engaged in the service of the Surrey County Asylum, at Brookwood,

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8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

new Woking Station’, 19, bound in with Annual Reports 1867–1870 at 3043/1/1/1/1. Ibid. The Medical Superintendent’s Report Book 1867 records ‘I beg to apply for a small sum for birds, birdcages & plaster casts wherewith to add to the general decoration of the wards and to afford objects of interest to the patients. With respect to instruments for a small band, I have seen Dr Grantham of Wandsworth Asylum on the subject & believe that a sum of £35 could furnish all the necessary instruments & a supply of music.’ Quoted in Alison Craze, From Asylum to Community Care: A history of Brookwood Hospital told by those who worked and lived there (Alison Craze, 2014), 20. Letter dated 12 October 1867 in Folder of papers relating to the brass band, 3043/9/1/6/7. Ibid. Anna Shepherd, Institutionalizing the Insane in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), 34–35. Dr. G.H. Savage, writing in The British Medical Journal Vol. 2 no. 2609 (31 December 1910), 2054. From A Memoir of Dr. T.N. Brushfield by his Life Long Friend Dr. J.E. Moreton quoted in Craze, From Asylum to Community Care, 61. ‘Thomas Nadauld Brushfield, M.D.’ in The British Medical Journal Vol. 2 no. 2609 (31 December 1910), 2054. Report 1868, 26. Ibid., 43–44. Report 1869, 22. Report 1868, 25. See A Memoir of Dr. T.N. Brushfield by his Life Long Friend Dr. J.E. Moreton quoted in Craze, From Asylum to Community Care, 63. Report 1872, Superintendent’s Report, 28. The Chaplain lived in nearby Bisley, perhaps facilitating this visit. Programmes and Correspondence relating to Entertainments [3043/9/2/2]. Report 1868, 57, and Fourth Annual Report, 1871, 44. Report 1871, 44. Report 1868, Chaplain’s Report, 56. See Craze, From Asylum to Community Care, 76. Report 1871, Report dated 17 June 1870, 48. Report 1873, Chaplain’s Report, 38. Report 1870, 11. Figures listed in Report 1873, 47–48. Report 1868, 85. The Organist was listed among the officers in the table of wages. The wage of £8 was reinstated when an external organist was employed again from 1878. See Report 1879, 69.

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32. Lists of gratuities paid are extant for 1871, 1873 and 1874, though each list accounts for only half a year. See 3043/9/1/6/7. 33. See Report 1875, 40. 34. Report 1876, 43. 35. Report 1881, 43–44. 36. Report 1883, 47. 37. Scrapbook of programmes 3043/1/11/2/1. 38. Newspaper cutting contained in Scrapbook of programmes 3043/1/11/2/1. Subsequent references are to articles in this collection; the origin of each article is not always indicated. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Shepherd characterises the events as ‘an excellent public relations exercise’. See Institutionalizing the Insane, 130. 43. See, for example, the programme for the ‘New Year’s Festival Entertainment’, 1 January 1877, contained in Scrapbook of programmes 3043/1/11/2/1. 44. See Commissioners in Lunacy Report in Report 1875, 40: ‘they provide a Brass Band of sixteen’. 45. Receipts and other documentation contained in 3043/9/1/6/7 Correspondence and Papers relating to the Band. 46. Photograph Album 3043/1/20/7, 38. 47. See gratuity lists 1871–1874 in 3043/9/1/6/7 and Register of Officers, Attendants & Servants, 3043/1/8/1/1. 48. 3043/1/8/1/1 Register of Officers, Attendants and Servants, 43. 49. Letter contained in 3043/9/1/6/7. 50. Letter contained in folder 3043/9/1/6/7. It is not clear why this letter responded to an advertisement apparently placed before Sells was formally dismissed. 51. Letter contained in folder 3043/9/1/6/7, dated 28 February 1871. 52. Register of Officers, Attendants & Servants 3043/1/8/1/1. 53. Letter contained in folder 3043/9/1/6/7, dated 28 May 1871. 54. Anna Shepherd notes that ‘A military background was seen as advantageous as it demonstrated the ability to both administer and receive discipline. Recent military experience also increased the likelihood that the applicant had retained the level of health and fitness that was deemed so necessary for coping with asylum work.’ See Institutionalising the Insane, 50. 55. Correspondence retained inside the album refers to photos commissioned in the early 1870s. The photos certainly span a number of significant events, and two separate photos of the band are included (Figs. 8.1 and 8.3). See 3043/1/20/7 Photograph Album.

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56. Ibids., 37. 57. Report 1883, 24. 58. Report 1885, 57. One of the reasons for improving the provisions in the nurses’ room was to detract from competing interests in the nearby military camp. In the 1892 Report the Commissioners had linked the problem with the rapid turnover of female staff: ‘The proximity of the Guards camp at Pirbright may be the reason why such frequent changes take place among the nurses, out of 50 nurses more than half have not lived here over twelve months… The short service of the nurses is attributed in some degree to the proximity of the camps; and if this really be a cause, it is an argument for providing a comfortable sitting room with a piano and other means of amusement, as an inducement to the nurses to spend their evenings at home rather than go out.’ See Report 1892, 48. The following year the Commissioners again wrote ‘The Medical Superintendent still complains of the attractions of the soldiers in the neighbouring camp for the nurses, yet no steps have been taken to create any counter attraction in the Asylum, by provision of a comfortable room with piano, &c., for the nurses [sic] evening’s amusement.’ See Report 1893, 48. The 1905 Report records that the nurses’ room was still not provided with a piano. 59. Report 1887, 25. 60. Ibid. 61. Report 1889, 31. 62. Annual Report 1895, 14. 63. Register of Entertainments 1889–1896 [3043/1/11/2/2]. 64. Photo contained in folder 3043/10/2/7. 65. Ibid. 66. See Programme in ‘Record of Entertainments 1889–1896’ 3043/1/11/2/2. 67. Ibid. 68. Employment information is taken from ‘Register of Officers, Attendants and Servants’ 3043/1/8/1/1. I have been unable to trace all the named staff; it is possible some were not employed by the institution. 69. See 3043/1/11/2/2 ‘Register of Entertainments 1889–1896’ and 3043/1/11/2/3 ‘Programme of Entertainment for New Year’s Eve 1898’. A postcard (3043/10/3/3) showing the Minstrels is likely from a later date. 70. Report 1885, 50–51. 71. Report 1886, 59 and Report 1887, 57. 72. Report 1889, 61. 73. Report 1895, 40. 74. Report 1900, 17. 75. Report 1891, 41.

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76. Mary Gillington became a poet and author of children’s stories, biographies and cookbooks. She married George Frederick Byron, a distant cousin of the famous poet. 77. Both Emily (age 9) and Edwin (age 14) appear in the 1881 census living in Woking together with their parents; by 1891 only Edwin is recorded, still in Woking, though it is not clear from the records whether he is employed at the Asylum. 78. Report 1891, 41, 55. 79. Report 1891, 41–42. 80. Register of Officers, Attendants and Servants. The meaning of ‘private base’ is unclear. 81. Report 1900, 18. 82. Report 1901, 20. 83. Report 1891, 43. 84. Report 1892, 42. 85. Report 1893, 45 and Report 1894, 47. 86. See Craze, From Asylum to Community Care, 118. 87. 3043/1/11/2/2 Register of Entertainments 1889–1896.

PART III

Case Studies: Private and Charitable Asylums

CHAPTER 9

Bethlem Hospital: Talented Staff in an Urban Setting

The Royal Bethlem Hospital is the oldest established institution for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. The priory from which it stemmed was founded in 1246, with the first mentally ill patients taken into care in 1377. In 1675, a new, purpose-built site was acquired at Moorfields, the institution moving again to St. George’s Fields in Southwark in 1815. The hospital was moved to its current location in Beckenham, South London, in 1930. During the nineteenth century, Bethlem remained distinct from the large, state-run asylums and the development of psychiatric care found there. Music and recreations flourished on a small scale, with particular success due to the interests and talent of senior medical officers in the 1890s and beyond. While the urban setting of the hospital made largescale grounds and venues impossible, it also meant the institution was embedded in its community to a far greater extent than any of the other private or pauper institutions. Local support added to in-house talent, providing an astonishing array of musical opportunities. Although innovative in providing a dedicated space and charitable support for mentally ill patients, the hospital gained a reputation in its early years for poor conditions and ill-treatment. Indeed, the phrase ‘Bedlam’ is a corruption of the name, used to refer to both the internal management of the institution and the state of mind of its inmates. It was famously depicted as one of the images in William Hogarth’s ‘A Rake’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_9

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Progress’: men and women, some in a state of undress, cavort wildly. One is held down by a keeper with chains at the ready, while another sits staring vacantly on the stairs. Even music is present here, firmly part of the disorder. One unfortunate inmate plays a fiddle, a music book on his head, confirming his state of lunacy.1 Until the mid-nineteenth century, Bethlem continued to take in a wide range of patients from different classes, growing to around 400 patients in 1845. From then, however, the growing numbers and sizes of County and City pauper asylums meant the poorest inhabitants were offered space elsewhere. In their 1843 Report, Medical Superintendents Dr Edward Thomas Monro (1790–1856) and Sir Alexander Morison (1779–1866) commented on the admission of a class of patients unable to afford private asylum care yet not eligible for pauper asylums.2 This included clerks, schoolmasters, architects, artists, clergymen, medical students, brokers, tradesmen; among the female patients were schoolmistresses, governesses, and wives, widows and daughters of tradesmen and white-collar workers. The management was clear that the overall class of patients had risen as a result of the additional provision made by County pauper asylums. At this time, most curable patients could read and write, but few were counted as ‘well educated’. Of the 284 patients admitted in 1843, for example, 209 could read and write, but only 23 were recorded as well educated and 26 could only read.3 Bethlem failed to keep pace in size with the state-supported institutions, with numbers dropping steadily to between 200 and 300 from the 1860s until the end of the century. Its focus became educated, middle-class poor, who could not afford treatment in the smaller private asylums, but for whom a stay in a pauper institution would represent a significant blow to dignity and status.4 Bethlem differed from the County asylums in other aspects. Until 1874, and the opening of the dedicated Criminal Asylum at Broadmoor, Bethlem was home to a significant number of criminal lunatics, housed and treated separately from the other patients, yet with considerably more freedom and better conditions than a prison would afford. Early in the century, incurable and curable patients were supported separately, with numbers roughly divided into one-quarter incurable, one-quarter criminal and one-half curable.5 Patients were admitted as curable and then transferred to the incurable list after 12 months. From the 1860s, financial support for the incurable patients diminished and many were transferred to pauper asylums, or discharged uncured, after the 12-month period. In 1882 paying patients were first admitted, with a scale of fees allowing the

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friends and families of the patients to contribute according to their means; at around the same time, a system of voluntary boarders was introduced, with a mixture of paying and funded patients.6 Throughout the nineteenth century, Bethlem Hospital was managed in close connection with two other institutions: the Bridewell Hospital Prison and the House of Occupations, later King Edward’s Schools. The three institutions worked together, the prisoners at Bridewell grinding corn for use in all three, while the girls in the House of Occupations made clothes for the patients at Bethlem. These connections and associations with other nearby hospitals, churches and organisations as well as individuals, allowed for opportunities that would otherwise have been denied the small foundation. A convalescent home at Witley was opened in the early 1870s, which allowed the Bethlem patients to experience some of the benefits of countryside air and open views, deemed so important for the location of County asylums. For the most part, though, Bethlem was a city institution, lacking the extensive grounds, farmland and isolation that characterised the majority of asylum institutions at this time. It maintained close connections with local medical establishments, particularly St. Luke’s Hospital and the pauper asylum at Hanwell. Until 1852, the Bethlem Hospital had no resident physician, with management firmly in the hands of the lay Committee. Therefore, while practical matters were in hand, it was not until the 1840s that the innovations found elsewhere began to be introduced. Bethlem’s small size and charitable foundation also meant the schemes for recreation and music found at most County asylums could not be replicated. There were neither the funds nor the people to support internal music and theatrical productions. In an 1837 Report, the Governors suggested ‘music might be introduced with advantage into the house, and… would be a source of gratification and enjoyment, melancholy and mopish patients being frequently greatly revived by the sound of music’, but the proposed solution was a musical clock or self-acting piano-forte rather than a playable instrument or live performer.7 The hospital lacked dedicated recreational spaces, both inside and outside. On the other hand, its location in easy reach of London’s theatres and concert halls, and the close support and interest of a wealth of upper-class philanthropists as well as friends, relatives and former residents, meant patients were not denied the pleasures of entertainment. The nature of the patients also meant musical ability was abundant, particularly among the women. Throughout the nineteenth century, it was these resources

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that were exploited in order to provide activities and entertainments for the patients. The move away from physical restraint and towards ‘moral management’ which characterised asylums of the early nineteenth century was linked to a reputation of ill-treatment at Bethlem itself. It is therefore not surprising that steps were taken early in the nineteenth century to address the poor condition of the buildings and the patients themselves. The new buildings in St. George’s Fields, opened in 1815, reflected the principles that would become typical of the new County asylums: long, symmetric wings with male and females separated either side of a central administrative edifice, and division into a number of wards or sections with associated recreational areas and airing courts, allowing at least some of the patients a measure of freedom of movement and access to fresh air. An 1878 publication describes the buildings as ‘light and cheerful’ with pictures, plants and bird cages, patients playing with pets or engaged in other worthwhile pursuits.8 Despite the opportunities offered by the new location, it was not until the 1840s that serious consideration was given to the recreation and occupation of patients at Bethlem. Reports from 1843 and 1844 attest to the new approach taken to patient care. In June 1843, the Committee of Governors narrowly approved a recommendation for ‘other musical instruments in addition to a Piano Forte’ together with furniture for the workwomen; the same meeting disallowed funds for a billiards table.9 In their 1843 Report, the Physicians commented on both employment and amusement for the first time as recent introductions to the hospital’s day-to-day management. Employment was a challenge for the institution: patients were generally only resident for a short time as convalescents, and Bethlem lacked the large gardens and grounds used elsewhere to provide employment opportunities.10 Nevertheless, patients were employed in gardening, carpentry, knitting, cleaning and manual work such as painting, plumbing and bricklaying. Female patients were engaged in straw-plaiting, bonnet-making, lace-making and other handicrafts.11 Workshops were being erected to allow for other trades such as blacksmithing in order to increase the opportunities available: ‘employment is given as an auxiliary to the other curative means of the Hospital, as a means of promoting order among the patients, of withdrawing their attention from their own distempered ideas, and of alleviating the monotony of their confinement.’12

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The report on amusements suggests the introduction of a library, games, reading, writing and drawing and rooms set aside for these pastimes, were also recent innovations. On the female side, the pianoforte purchase is noted, with positive effects: On the evening of the last Saturday of the year nearly thirty of the female patients were assembled to celebrate the festive period. There being several who understood music well, quadrilles were played and danced by some of the patients, while others were engaged at a round game of cards… Nothing could exceed the order which prevailed, and the pleasure which was then communicated.13

Once again ‘order’ is included as a desirable feature of patient life. As elsewhere, the use of recreational activities was also claimed to mitigate the overwhelming monotony of asylum life, as well, in this case, of reminding patients of the benevolence and generosity of their charitable support, and the well-meaning nature of the medical and management staff: On both sides of the Hospital the introduction of employment and amusements has effected a marked change in the habits of the patients, and the appearance of the galleries. The patients, especially those who have been long in the Hospital, appear extremely sensible of the value of these means, and which, beyond the obvious advantage of relieving the tedium and irritation of their residence, have deprived that residence of much of the feeling of confinement, and excited a very pleasing sense of gratitude to the Governors, and those who are charged with their management. They see around them the evidence of the anxiety of the Governors for their comforts and amusements, and their acute and sensitive feelings are soothed and consoled when they do so.14

The general principle on which treatment was based was centred around withdrawal from homes and relatives on the one hand, but on the other, ‘as far as practicable, [that] their treatment, habits, and occupations within the walls should be assimilated as closely as possible to the habits and occupations adopted and followed out of doors.’15 These early pointers towards the use of music and recreation as a part of patient treatment were echoed in the Physicians’ Report for 1844. Here, Monro and Morison noted

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The encouragement of occupations and amusement has been on a very extended scale throughout the past year a fact which the weekly reports of the numbers occupied and engaged in various employments will amply corroborate and which tends much to the recreation and advantage of many cases. The new apartments on each side of the House which are set apart for these purposes have an air of great cheerfulness and it must be very pleasing to every visitor to witness the decorum and the quiet and the diligence which pervades the patients there assembled. In a few instances the amusements provided are highly appreciated and must present a solace of a very beneficial tendency and diminish the monotony of a residence invariably irksome and unpleasant.16

Occupation and recreation are identified as a definite ‘advantage’ to many patients, and cheerfulness an aim for the day apartments. The Physicians further boast of the ‘decorum’, ‘quiet’ and ‘diligence’ to be found here, associated with the new opportunities for occupation and amusement: a direct link is made between the new facilities and the behaviour of patients. In some cases, the effect is more pronounced. Amusements lead to solace and diminish monotony, further addressing the afflictions troubling Bethlem’s residents. The role of music in patients’ every-day lives was also acknowledged in its place in religion. Chapel attendance had grown during the preceding years, taken as evidence of the effectiveness of the new regime, but the chapel lacked an organ and therefore the opportunity for patients to sing. Introducing music to chapel services would offer a twofold benefit. It would align the experience with patients’ expectations (‘The previous habits of the patients render the omission and not the introduction of singing a novelty’), and it would extend the benefits of chapel attendance to those who might not gain advantage from the more cerebral aspects of a service: It must also be evidence, that many of those who attend chapel are incapable of deriving much advantage from the service, beyond that which arises from change of scene and occupation, and from the habits of decorum and self control which such attendance always produces: and the introduction of singing, under those proper precautions which are of course inferred, might be of service to this class.17

An organ was purchased for the newly enlarged chapel in 1846 at a cost of £200, with an organist engaged from at least 1849.18 The practice

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of religion outside chapel already included music, with New Testament readings and hymns forming part of the evening routine in the individual wards.19 Despite the support for homeliness and recreational activities, it is apparent that, once supplied with relevant resources, activities were largely left up to the patients themselves. In 1845, the Physicians reported that male amusements were ‘enlivened occasionally by some little musical effort on the part of any patient who may happen to be skilled in this art’ while on the female side ‘a few are possessed of sufficient musical talent to use the piano, which is occasionally a source of lively entertainment’.20 Musical instruments are noted again in 1846, while in 1851, it is reported that ‘Now and then a piano enlivens the scene.’21 Among the reports of employment, patients occupied in reading, writing or music were also included: on 26 June 1846, six of the curable female patients are returned with Music as their primary occupation.22 With patients drawn from the middle classes, it is not surprising that many, especially females, were skilled in music, and it is possible that patients would bring with them musical instruments, though there is no record of this. The ad hoc nature of the recorded activity certainly suggests music and other amusements were not used in a formal way as part of a dedicated effort to keep patients occupied during the day times. The lack of serious management at the hospital during this period is confirmed by an obituary of Dr William Wood (1816–1892), who was resident medical officer between 1845 and 1852.23 The author, no doubt exaggerating in exoneration of Wood’s role, recalled ‘the organization of the staff, medical and non-medical, resident and non-resident, was most unfortunate, and worked disastrously. The rules crippled the action of the resident surgeon, and vested too large an authority in the visiting surgeon and physicians, who, it must be admitted, utterly failed in their duty.’ Thus, he continued, ‘it was impossible that Bethlem could be managed satisfactorily’. ∗ ∗ ∗ It was the arrival of William Charles Hood as Physician in 1852 that put amusement on a more organised footing, with additional opportunities and an increasingly structured approach in place. Hood (1825–1870; in post at Bethlem 1852–1862) had begun his career as resident Physician at Fiddington House, a large private asylum in Wiltshire, before a brief

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appointment as first Medical Superintendent of the second Middlesex County Asylum at Colney Hatch in 1851 at the same time as John Conolly was Visiting Physician to Hanwell, the first Middlesex County Asylum. Conolly’s reforming tendencies are clear in Hood’s work at Bethlem. Hood immediately proposed significant changes to the appearance of the wards, with an emphasis on increasing light and removing indications of the asylum’s custodial role, such as the heavy iron bars on windows.24 He also made a direct link between recreation and treatment, arguing Occupation is one of the most important curative agents, and those amusements which exhilarate and divert the attention have always a most beneficial effect. It is therefore, also determined that social parties shall take place on the female side, twice a-week, at which rational amusements will be encouraged: and similar meetings will be more frequently held on the male side – a practice which has been adopted with very great advantage at Hanwell, Colney Hatch, and other large asylums.25

Hood’s focus was on ‘mental recreation’, but this extended to cover new gardens, laid out for bowls and skittles, as well as enlarging the library and purchasing addition pictures, birds and flowers. Recreation was considered ‘only another term for mental employment, and judiciously promoted, cheers the mind, and excited a healthy tone of feeling.’26 Conversely, lack of occupation was distinctly ‘injurious’ to the minds of men suffering from mental illness.27 At this stage, it was appropriate to take his cue from the new County asylums: Bethlem had accommodated around 400 patients during the 1840s, making it similar in size to its state-run neighbours. However, in other ways the higher social class and location of Bethlem in relation to the capital made a different set of amusements possible and appropriate. Patients were encouraged to go on trips, walks and visits to museums and galleries with the accompaniment of attendants or other chaperones. Recreation was granted to patients as a privilege to be earned by good behaviour, and it was this self-discipline and control that was at the heart of moral treatment and recovery during Hood’s tenure. Hood made attempts to classify types of patients by social position, occupation and mental state. He considered ‘Schoolmasters were too often placed in an unsatisfactory social position, which tended ‘to fret and irritate their minds’, while musicians, ‘more excitable than the majority

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Fig. 9.1 The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam], St. George’s Fields, Lambeth: the female workroom. Wood engraving probably by F. Vizetelly after F. Palmer, 1860 (Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International [CC BY 4.0])

of the population’, were in the opposite danger, ‘being flattered in that society where they are constantly welcomed’.’28 During the 1850s larger, formal amusements operated on a monthly basis, with music provided by one of the former patients.29 Informal recreational activities were far more frequent; indeed, Hood reports that ‘Each evening, in one or other of the wards, the piano may be heard accompanying the dance or the song.’30 Although other forms of amusement were developed, music was best suited to the talents of the patients, the space and resources available, and the ad hoc nature of activities. Music also accompanied daytime activity, as can be seen in an engraving dating from c. 1860, in which a woman plays a square piano to the side of the female work room (see Fig. 9.1). A second female stand beside her, and the arrangement of lines on the open sheet music suggests it may be a song in progress. Under the Medical Superintendents William Helps (in post 1862– 1865) and William Rhys Williams (1837–1893; in post 1865–1878), the

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scope of recreational activities on offer broadened, first to include more excursions, and subsequently an increase in visiting performers, particularly theatrical groups. Balls continued to be held on a monthly basis, with additional weekly dances in the wards. A further tranche of improvements were made to the buildings during this period, the Commissioners reporting in 1869 on the ‘liberal and cheerful provision made here for the ordinarily daily life and entertainment of the inmates of all the best galleries’.31 Among other amusements, a piano was added to the men’s side. Additional musical opportunities were also introduced in the Chapel. In 1863 the Chaplain, C. Parsons Hobbs, introduced a weekly singing class, described in 1864 as ‘numerously attended’, and used this to support the introduction of chanting at the Sunday services.32 Helps reported that ‘The patients join very heartily in the responses, and seem to appreciate the alteration.’33 Despite these developments, the asylum lacked a dedicated recreation room until the 1890s. Even the larger balls were held in a gallery on the women’s side of the building, and while up to 120 patients attended the monthly occasions, the majority of these were women.34 The most severe cases were housed in the basement, which suffered from low light levels and poor decoration. The Commissioners advocated the potential value of recreation for treatment of the illnesses afflicting such chronic cases; several were able to attend ‘much to their profit’ and it was recommended that others might be ‘admitted from time to time, under proper rules and limitations, to profit by its advantages.’35 By 1871 the Commissioners were able to report that ‘We are glad to learn, as respects the patients in the basement wards, that as many as five or six of each sex partake of the weekly and other evening entertainments and class meetings for singing, reading, &c.’36 Among the visiting performers, the hospital welcomed both amateur friends and well-known professionals. In 1868 Rhys Williams recorded that ‘Mr George Buckland voluntarily gave a Musical Entertainment to the patients in the summer, which was the source of great pleasure to a large audience, and there have from time to time been meetings for music, singing, and reading.’37 The soprano Florence Lancia gave two concerts at the height of her career in 1872.38 The support of associated friends and relatives continued to prove crucial both to these visits and to internal provision. In 1874, for example, a ‘magnificent grand piano’ was donated to the hospital, which allowed a piano to be kept in each of the female wards. Entertainments were also an opportunity

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for friends, relatives and supporters to visit the asylum and mix with the patients, providing another important source of contact with everyday life. Madame Lancia’s visit, for example, meant ‘all the patients and friends enjoyed a very agreeable evening’, while the annual ball in 1875 was ‘honoured by the pleasure of the Treasurer and a large party of friends.’39 The value of such connections was here made explicit, the Superintendent Rhys Williams arguing The advantages of these entertainments are great and serve as a connecting link with the outer world. Every patient that was able to attend was present, and the night Att report shews that there was great freedom from excitement during the latter part of the night. One pleasing feature was the presence of old discharged patients, who were much gratified with being allowed the privilege of attending.40

Reports of this time record visiting performers, patients attending outside venues, and frequent outdoor walks. Lack of entertainment and opportunities to walk was considered to lead to an increase in excitement among the patients; diversion was therefore key to maintaining order in the hospital. Among the other visiting performers were junior staff from Guy’s Hospital, adjacent to the St. George’s Fields site, who gave a musical entertainment in 1872, and the choir of St. Jude’s church, who gave two concerts in 1876–1877.41 The weekly reports also record regular trips by small numbers of patients to concerts, the opera and the theatre, with tickets often donated by friends of the institution. In late 1877, for example, ‘Three patients went to the opera on Wednesday last and on Monday two patients went to the Folly Theatre’ while the following week ‘A large number of patients went to a concert at the Temperance Hall in the Blackfriars Road last Evening which was conducted by Mr. Wilson [an attendant]’.42 The convalescent home at Witley in Surrey was opened in 1870, on a site adjacent to the boys of the King Edward’s Schools. The 1873 Report records a garden party held on the asylum’s Witley grounds, at which patients from London attended and the school band played.43 In general, however, numbers at the annexe were low (between 10 and 20 patients, often visiting for short periods of time) and formal entertainments are rarely recorded. It might be imagined that pianos and other instruments would be popular pastimes for convalescent patients, but again there is

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no record of musical activities at the home until 1895, when a ‘homelike, social evening’ organised by the patients at Witley with around 30 visitors, featured dancing interspersed with music and recitations.44 In 1878, Dr. Rhys Williams took up a post as a Commissioner in Lunacy, and the Assistant Medical Officer George Henry Savage (1842– 1921) was promoted to Medical Superintendent. Savage had trained in London, beginning his career at Guy’s Hospital. He published widely, including over 60 articles in The Journal of Mental Science and Brain on the causes and treatment of mental illness. At Bethlem, Savage again boosted the importance of recreational activities, with the significant assistance of the new Assistant Medical Officer Dr. Ramsden Wood, and others of the senior officers. Under Savage both formal and informal entertainments were extended. Wood initiated a weekly singing class, which for a time was conducted by the Steward’s clerk Mr. C. Wilson. It may have been this group that formed the Bethlem Glee and Madrigal Society which performed a concert of choruses, solos and vocal ensembles at the hospital on 17 March 1879 (Fig. 9.2).45 The programme itself reveals the often-delightfully small-scale and amateur nature of the entertainment, being hand-written and illustrated, while the repertoire reflects the miscellaneous nature of an ad hoc gathering: Part 1 Chorus Trio Chorus Song Quartette Chorus Part 2 Piano Chorus Song Chorus Violin solo Chorus

‘Gipsy’ Rondo ‘Since first I saw your face’ ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’ ‘The Chafers’ ‘O! By Rivers’

Rossini?46 Haydn Thomas Ford Frederick Crouch [The Three Chafers by H. Truhn] Henry Bishop

Trio (Tancredi) ‘From Oberon in Fairy Land’ ‘The Death of Nelson’ ‘All among the Barley’ Theme and Variations47 ‘To all you ladies’

Rossini R.J.S. Stevens John Braham Elizabeth Stirling John Wall Callcott

Savage was acutely aware of the importance of occupying the patients; in his 1879 Report he noted ‘Theatricals are useful and so are singing classes, but they occur at rare intervals, and what is needed is the daily influence of some employment. I propose to try drilling and gymnastics this year.’48 Occupation remained a particular problem for the male patients,

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Fig. 9.2 Bethlehem Royal Hospital Glee and Madrigal Society Concert Programme 17 March 1879 in BEN-01 volume of programmes and ephemera (Reproduced by permission of Bethlem Museum of the Mind)

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relating both to employment and recreational activity. In contrast to the pauper asylums, where men of the lower classes could easily be employed in manual work, middle-class women were better suited to institutional life. As Savage noted, the women can work with their needles, play the piano, draw and be content; men on the other hand roam hopelessly about the galleries or airing courts, often smoking more than is good for them, and fretting at the enforced idleness; they cannot dig and are not fit for mental labour.49

Amusements continued to comprise a combination of home-grown and external performances. The number of pianos was increased as wards and galleries were divided into smaller segments, and the male side also supplied with instruments.50 Theatrical performances were given by amateurs; 1880 saw performances by Captain D’Arcy and his Thalian Company, and Lady Monckton and Sir Charles Young.51 Connections with local institutions also continued to enhance the asylum’s offering, with concerts by the St. Thomas’s Hospital Orchestral Society and Walworth Choral Society.52 A scrapbook of programmes suggests that visits were frequently made to other hospitals, schools and venues, the asylum’s management and network of supporters clearly taking advantage of its city location.53 In defending the role of amusement in the asylum’s work, Savage echoed the words of his predecessor W. Charles Hood. Hood had reported that both the preparation for, and the remembrance of, amusements, were part of their beneficial power.54 Savage was more deliberate in his claims, using the suggestion as a basis for his argument for improved facilities, for the asylum remained without a dedicated recreation hall: The relationship of entertainments to insanity seems to puzzle many who have not special knowledge; but Superintendents look to entertainments, not only for the good done at the time, but for the good service they do in rousing patients to prepare for them; and they are good as leaving memories which take the patient’s attention away from himself. I trust that we shall still increase and improve our entertainments, and I should be very glad if I saw any plan by which a good recreation-hall could be built.55

The recreation hall would have the added advantage, Savage noted, of keeping the attendants occupied and entertained during the evenings, and away from the temptations of the city.56

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During the 1880s, Savage made a number of changes to the way entertainments were organised. In 1884, he reflected on an increase in paid performers (rather than visits to theatres and concerts), which had been found to ‘give more pleasure, to cause less trouble and cost less money.’57 In 1885, he expressed the intention to involve attendants more fully in the entertainments in order to develop a sense of family and homeliness in the wards.58 Subsequently in 1886, he noted the tendency during the year to increase the number of entertainments, while simplifying their nature.59 Among the internal events, performances were arranged by the officers alone, or together with patients, both of which were successful. Visiting amateurs continued to be of ‘varying experience’.60 As was the case elsewhere, female members of the resident families also became important parts of the institution’s recreational programme. Savage married twice, the second time during his tenure at Bethlem to Adelaide Sutton, whose father was also a medical man. As one obituary records, ‘Mrs. Savage was a lady of great personal charm, and her advent was an enormous addition to the social amenities of the Hospital. The dances and other entertainments for the patients became delightful gatherings and she was much beloved by all with whom she came in contact.’61 The schedule of entertainments during the 1885–1886 winter season reflects a similar diet to that enjoyed in the pauper asylums at this time: 12 Oct Chetwynd Operatic Company 12 Nov Lotus Club Performance 20 Nov Home Concert 14 Dec Radcliffe’s Company 28 Dec Chester’s Performance 8 Jan Dr Savage Magic Lantern ‘The Alps’; Home Concert 19 Jan Bethlem Troupe, Theatricals 11 Feb Amateur Theatricals 21 Feb ‘Dodo’ minstrels 24 Feb Concert 28 Feb Maurice’s Conjuring Tricks During weeks without a formal entertainment a dance would be held. ∗ ∗ ∗

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The development of home talent characterised entertainments for the rest of the century, particularly with the arrival of musically gifted medical officers. Smoking concerts on the male side, and ‘Home’ concerts on the female side became staples of the weekly schedule, with the majority of contributors drawn from the patients and staff. Among the more varied programmes were the concerts given by the Minstrels, which offered a range of songs, dances, jokes and sketches (see Fig. 9.3). Another piano was donated by ‘Mr. Stanton, one of our most constant visitors’.62 In 1885, Wood was replaced as Assistant Medical Officer by Robert Percy Smith (1853–1941), who in turn succeeded Savage as Medical Superintendent in 1888. Smith had been at St. Thomas’s Hospital, whose Band had visited Bethlem in 1881 and 1883 (he appears as a ‘cellist in the programme for the 1883 concert).63 He contributed to both the Musical Evenings in the Ladies’ Galleries and more varied performances on the male side. At a Musical Evening in No. 3 Ladies’ Gallery on 29 January 1886, for example, Smith played a ‘cello solo and performed in a trio. The female attendant Miss Schnell also contributed a number of piano accompaniments; other pieces included songs and instrumental solos. At another Musical Evening, in Ladies Gallery no. 4 on 1 April 1886, Smith contributed two ‘cello solos and a piano duet. On 27 February of the same year, he acted as Musical Director to an Entertainment given by the male attendants, including choruses and songs, solos, a comic farce and a ‘lecture on temperance’. On Smith’s appointment to Medical Superintendent, Theophilus B. Hyslop (1863–1933) took over as Assistant Medical Officer, until his own promotion to Medical Superintendent in 1898. Hyslop had already performed with Smith at several hospital musical events, including an evening of music and readings on 25 November 1886 and a Concert on 24 February 1887, at which the pair had opened proceedings with a piano duet arrangement of Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture. In the same concert, they had performed the Allegro Moderato from Mendelssohn’s String Quartet Op. 1 and Beethoven’s Kakadu Variations for String Trio, involving the violinist Mr. Easton and the ‘cellist Mr. G.H. Makins (Smith had played viola in the Mendelssohn and ‘cello in the Beethoven). Both Easton and Makins performed with Smith in the ‘Plowden Bijou Orchestra’ as well as the ‘Band’ which had provided concerts at both St. Thomas’s and Bethlem, and both continued to make regular appearances at the Bethlem concerts. The Plowden Orchestra, a small group

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Fig. 9.3 Bethlem Nubian Minstrels Programme 15 January 1889 in BEN-01 volume of programmes and ephemera. Reproduced by permission of Bethlem Museum of the Mind

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combining medical staff from across London and professional musicians, made regular appearances at Bethlem and elsewhere. Smith’s and Hyslop’s contributions were not restricted to classical music: on 2 December 1887, Smith acted as piano accompanist for the ‘Bethlem Eccentric Exotics’ in a concert of character songs and sketches, while at the ‘Eldon Club Smoking Concert’ in 1891, another short-lived faux-society, Hyslop played the Street Piano Organ in a concert of light and comical music which included a whistling solo among sketches, solos and songs. Two programmes from the period illustrate the variety of genre and style within the repertoire: Concert, Thursday 20 March 1889, 8 p.m.64 Part 1 1. Trio

2. Song 3. Song 4. Song 5. Pensee Fugitive no. 4 ‘Lied’

6. Cavatina 7. Song Part 2 1. Pianoforte Duet Walzer-Capricen Op. 10

2. Song 3. Song 4. Song 5. Concerto in D Minor: Largo Ma Non Troppo; Vivace

Andante Con Variazioni; Rondo Alla Turca Violin Mr. W.A. Easton, Violoncello Dr. Percy Smith, Pianoforte Dr. Hyslop ‘Douglas Gordon’ Miss Sibyl Bristowe ‘The Shadow of the Cross’ Mr. T. Phillips Figgis ‘Wohin’ Miss Amy Ranke Heller Violin Mr. W.A. Easton, Pianoforte Dr. C.E. Sheppard ‘Nobil Signor’ (Gli Ugonotti) Mdlle. Doria ‘Punchinello’ Dr. H.C. Bristowe

Hummel

Lawrence Kelly Barri Schubert

Meyerbeer Molloy

Nicodé Dr. C.E. Sheppard and Dr. Percy Smith ‘Little Dustman’ Miss Sibyl Bristowe ‘The Devout Lover’ Mr. T. Phillips Figgis. ‘The Merry Old Maid’ Miss Amy Ranke J.S. Bach Mr. W.A. Easton and Miss Fanny Woolf

Brahms M.V. White Diehl

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6. Song 7. Rondo from Piano Quartett no. 1

‘The Page’s Song’ Mddle. Doria Mozart

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Arditi

Violin Mr. W.A. Easton, Viola Dr Hyslop, Violoncello Dr. Percy Smith, Pianoforte Dr. Sheppard

Eldon Club Smoking Concert, Thursday 19 February 1891.65 Part 1 1. Overture 2. Song

‘La Chevalier Breton’ ‘What am I, Love, without thee?’ Mr. M.A. Santley

Hermann S. Adams

3. Whistling Solo 4. Gavotte 5. Song 6. Flute Solo

Mr. Charles Caper ‘First Primrose’ ‘Margarita’ Mr. A. Lionel Scott ‘Fantasia on Scotch Airs’ Mr. R.H. Tomkins

R. Eilenberg Löhr J.H. Young

7. Sketch 8. Waltz ‘Beatrix’ Part 2 9. Marche Aux Flambeaux 10. Song 11. Violin Solo 12. Song 13. Intermezzo 14. Song

Mr. Morten H. Cotton J.M. Smieton Scotson Clark ‘The Tar’s Farewell’ Mr. M.A. Santley ‘Tarantella’ Mr. H.H. Lawless ‘La Serenata’ Mr. A Lionel Scott ‘Rozane’

S. Adams C. Fowler Tost E. Beggett

Mr. Morten H. Cotton 15. Street Piano Organ 16. Polka National Anthem

Dr. T.B. Hyslop ‘Kettledrum’

A. Skrimshire

Although it is not possible to trace all the performers at the concerts held at Bethlem, it is clear that the entertainment programme relied heavily

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on the talents and energy of internal staff—particularly the medical officers—as well as visiting professional musicians and others associated with the hospital. Smith provided piano accompaniment in many concerts through the 1890s, and members of the Plowden Bijou Orchestra were prominent in their instrumental performances. The close association with other medical institutions, particularly Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals, was also important as musical-medical staff made their way from one to another in order to perform at orchestral and chamber concerts. Both Smith and Hyslop were to prove pivotal in embedding music in Bethlem’s culture around the turn of the twentieth century. The two physicians brought with them acquaintances from the band at nearby St. Thomas’s Hospital for occasional concerts, as well as their own highquality amateur ensemble, the Plowden Bijou Orchestra. This Orchestra of amateurs gave regular concerts from the mid-1880s through until the twentieth century. In its early concerts, it focussed on Classical repertoire; the March 1893 report in Under the Dome records ‘The programme throughout bears strong evidence of the high aims of this Musical Society and the artistic manner in which the various pieces were rendered gave the utmost satisfaction to a large and enthusiastic audience.’ The programme included orchestral pieces by Rossini, Mascagni and Hyslop himself, as well as Mozart’s D major Symphony ‘heard for the first time at a London Concert’, together with violin and ‘cello solos. Later in the 1890s it took on a more popular character, both in the performance of largescale works during its short amalgamation with the Hospital Band, and in collaboration with other groups and soloists. The Steward’s Clerk, Wilson, also made significant contributions. Building on his work with the singing class, he became conductor of the small band set up in 1891 to play at the men’s smoking concerts, and soon extended to perform at dances and theatrical entertainments.66 The band began with just four members, playing violin, clarinet, viola and piano.67 Music was specially arranged to accommodate the unusual instrumentation and mixed abilities of the band members. The following year a cornet, ’cello and flute were added. It was some time before the attendants were fully-trained, but the Hospital magazine Under the Dome records a combined dance and concert on 12 September 1892 at which the players were ‘to be highly commended on its efficiency, and also for the rapid improvement they have made during the short time the Band has been in existence.’68 Later that year at a dance on 24 November, ‘the Hospital band played throughout the evening for the first time at one of

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the regular winter dances, and are to be greatly congratulated on their performance.’69 Reporting in 1891, Smith commented regarding finding suitable players for the band in the early stages. In contrast to some of the County asylums, he suggested We have always avoided taking attendants whose best qualification is that they can play a musical instrument well, as such men are apt frequently to change their situations. Several of the attendants in our band have learnt instruments while here, and they are more likely to remain permanently here than if they came first as professional musicians.70

While Bethlem sometimes struggled to appoint new attendants, employees tended to remain for much longer periods than at the County asylums. Within the city, the opportunities for professional musicians were no doubt more varied than in provincial areas, and it is possible that, as elsewhere, trained musicians found the work of the asylum attendant unpalatable, or used it to fill gaps in seasonal performance work. The approach did not last, however, as in 1898 Theo. B. Hyslop commented in his first Report as Medical Superintendent that ‘It has been strengthened by the engagement of attendants, who are also musicians.’71 His 1901 Report noted that ‘of late years bandsmen have been more difficult to find’, although this may have been more directly connected with the loss of male attendants to the Boer War; the connection was also suggested in Under the Dome’s December 1899 report, which recorded that ‘Our band this year is not quite so strong in the number of instruments as in former years, but the Transvaal way has to answer a good deal for this.’72 The band was quickly put to work at a variety of events. By the end of 1893, they played at fortnightly dances, at Smoking Concerts and dramatic performances. Early in 1894, they played at a dance at King Edward’s School, and members of the band joined the Plowden Bijou Orchestra for an Entertainment at the School the following month.73 Under the Dome reported in December 1893, ‘The band has as usual added very greatly to the pleasure and brightness of these important social functions, and has been strengthened by an additional 1st violin. Our best thanks are due to those who have devoted so much time and care to the preparation and execution of the music.’74 For dances the music was

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shared between the band and a piano/violin duo, ensuring all were able to join in the dancing and share the social aspect of the evening. The band’s influence was also felt as part of the therapeutic work of the hospital and beyond its function as a basis for dancing. In 1894, Under the Dome’s writers recorded that The band is playing better than ever, and it is very pleasant to know that the dances are now very fully attended, not only by dancers, but by others whose dancing days are long over, but who like to listen to the band. In other words the band ‘draws’ those who did not care to attend in the days when there was merely a piano.75

It was perhaps the spectacle of the instruments, as well as the impression made by the large gathering, that drew patients in, but it is interesting that the writer cites music and listening, in addition to dancing, as the key activities. By 1896, the band numbered 15 and the music library extended to ‘several hundreds of orchestral works’.76 Many members of staff had taken up music and gained considerable proficiency in order to join the band’s ranks. This included a number of officers; in March 1896 the Under the Dome writer commented We noticed in the band our two senior physicians. So, as was the case last year, the whole of our medical staff was, thus, engaged in the performance. The Band played with great spirit throughout the evening, the baton being held by the usual conductor, Mr. Wilson, who also did much of the orchestration of the music. We much, also, congratulate and thank Miss Wilson for the able way she presided at the piano. Dr. Rudall, who, we grieve to hear, has now returned to Australia, was of great value for his oboe-playing; and we must also thank Mr. Slattery, and all other members of the Band for the trouble they took to afford us a pleasant evening.77

At the time the magazine was published, however, a more fundamental change was about to take place. The Plowden Bijou Orchestra, which featured several members of hospital staff and made regular visits to the institution, had been in danger of ‘an untimely end’, and the proposal had been made, and accepted, to incorporate the orchestra into the Hospital’s Band. This promised to expand the band into a significant force, particularly adding to the string section.

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The orchestra outlined in the magazine would consist of twelve first violins, twelve seconds, five violas, six ‘cellos, three double basses, two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, one bassoon, one bass clarinet, two cornets, two horns, one trombone, one euphonium, bass drum, side drum, timpani and further percussionists. With such a boost in both size and talent, a regular rehearsal was set up on Monday nights, with an open invitation to attend rehearsals. With this in mind, the proposed repertoire for the season was set out in advance, to include Storch, Overture ‘Undank’ Windeatt, Overture ‘Meditation’ Windeatt, Suite for Orchestra ‘Life in the Mountains’ Humperdinck, Overture ‘Hansel and Gretel’ Stretton, March ‘The Sûdras’ Haydn, Symphony no. 5 Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto E. Bach, Romance ‘Frühlings Erwachen’

The piano solo was to be played by Mrs Percy Smith, wife of the Superintendent and evidently a talented pianist in her own right. Mr. Corelli Windeatt, a professional musician whose compositions featured in this first programme, was leader of the orchestra.78 The decision to encourage attendance at rehearsals further attests to the important role of exposure to music at the hospital, besides the excitement and physicality of dances and the formality of the evening concerts. The writer alluded to the pleasure afforded to both the performers and any attending the practices. Repertoire was ambitious, and the larger pool of players meant that chamber concerts and bands for theatrical productions were also extensive. On a concert given to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee in 1897, the Under the Dome writer commented ‘we can now, I think, fairly claim the possession of, perhaps, the most efficient orchestra of any similar institution in the kingdom.’79 The amalgamation with the Plowden Bijou Orchestra turned the Hospital Band into a large ensemble for a few years, but it is clear from concert programmes that the Plowden group was resurrected within a few years, and was back performing at Bethlem in its own right in March 1898.80 While the larger orchestra had been conducted by Hyslop, the restored band was returned to Mr. Wilson (perhaps due to Hyslop’s increased duties as Medical Superintendent from 1898). Programmes from the 1890s suggest that the musical repertoire continued in a similar vein to the example examined earlier in this chapter.

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Chamber concerts, more formal affairs, featured a mixture of vocal and instrumental music, with performers largely drawn from the medical officers and friends. Smoking concerts offered greater variety. In place of the Classical sonatas and chamber pieces are unnamed instrumental solos, recitations, dance tunes and character songs. In the programmes, performers and not composers are listed, the names of pieces are all in English, and female performers are conspicuously absent. Thus the patients and staff at Bethlem enjoyed a range of both art and popular music on a regular basis, contributing to an exceptionally rich cultural environment. ∗ ∗ ∗ A new Chaplain appointed in early 1892 was assiduous in developing music within the religious work of the asylum, as well as supporting outings and events. The Rev. Geoffrey O’Donoghue evidently had a good network of connections, drawing on local churches to provide visiting choirs and organists for festival services. Among the first visiting choirs were the boys from St. Bride’s Choir, O’Donoghue’s former parish, who sang as part of the Harvest Festival in 1892: As for the music, it was hearty and enthusiastic, and was rendered by the boys of the St. Bride’s Choir, assisted by friends of the Chaplain. The Hospital Band (conducted by Mr. Wilson) assisted the organ in accompanying the hymns. But on the following Sunday morning something like a musical treat was provided by the full choir of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, their Organist and Choirmaster presiding… at the organ.81

The Christmas Festivities in 1892 also saw a new departure. The newly formed hospital band opened a concert with the March of the Priests from Mendelssohn’s Athalie, followed by further band pieces and carols sung by the congregation and a choir from Cassell & Co., accompanied by the band and organ.82 O’Donoghue’s early efforts were noted in Smith’s Report for 1892, which recorded ‘He has been assiduous in attending to the spiritual wants of the patients and has introduced more Choral Music into the Services… Both these services [Harvest and Christmas] were better attended than are the usual Sunday services, the chapel being practically full on both occasions.’83 St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate, in which parish the original Bethlem Hospital had been sited, went on to form a closer connection with the

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Hospital chapel. The Bishopsgate church was closed for several months for repairs in early 1893, during which time small groups of singers sang anthems at Bethlem on three occasions. The full choir sang canticles, anthems and hymns for Palm Sunday in 1893; Under the Dome reported that ‘The congregation enjoyed the service so much that it is a pity that this choir has now resumed its ordinary duties elsewhere.’84 During the 1890s, further relationships developed. The choir of the publisher’s Cassell & Co. regularly sang for the Christmas Carol service, being treated to tea by the hospital’s management in recompense. Referring to a later service sung by the St. Botolph’s Choir, Under the Dome’s writer noted It was a great treat to some of us to hear the Psalms sung, but all appeared to appreciate the result of good voices excellently trained. Processional and recessional hymns, with an anthem, helped to brighten the service as much as in another way palms and flowers gave a touch of lightness and beauty to our little chapel.85

Other visiting choirs included St. Thomas’s, Regent Street and St. George the Martyr, Southwark. Referring to visiting church choirs, Under the Dome’s writer noted that the hospital was ‘beginning to raise up friends in all directions near our gates’.86 During this period, the chapel also began to boast its own music; there was a regular organist, Mr. Freeman, and from early 1893, a choir was formed from the girls of the King Edward’s School. Under the Dome reported that, ‘Thanks to the training of Mr. Freeman, and to the interest taken in them by others, they have succeeded in giving us a very bright and cheerful Service twice every Sunday. They have lately learnt to sing the Litany, and their efforts are much appreciated by a critical congregation.’87 In the second half of the 1890s, chapel music extended to larger performances of sacred music. In 1895, the choir from St. John-theDivine, Vassall Road in Brixton visited to perform Part 2 of Gounod’s Redemption, considered by Under the Dome’s writer to be ‘a firstrate performance’.88 In 1896, the choir from St. Mary’s, Newington performed selections from Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Handel’s Messiah, while in 1897 the choir of Christ Church, Southwark visited to sing selections from Messiah, Elijah and Mendelssohn’s St. Paul. The Harvest Festival continued to grow. In 1896 the music, including Hymns, Magnificat, and three Anthems, were sung by the Sung by the Choir of the

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School for the Blind, ‘accompanied by the organ and other instruments’; in 1897, there was no visiting choir but several orchestral pieces and instrumental solos were included; in 1898, the choir visited from St. John’s Walworth.89 ‘Sacred Music’ also began to feature as a theme for concerts: songs with sacred or moral texts, and Classical instrumental repertoire from deceased composers. It is clear that music was fundamental for the Rev. O’Donoghue. This was particularly true in his report in Under the Dome from 1896, which gives a rare taste of the popularity of music performances at this time: Some years ago I was privileged to hear the music of our own band in our own little place of worship, and I have never forgotten what pleasure their playing gave to me and to all of our patients present. It has been my ambition ever since to unite voices and instruments in one of our occasional services, but I had to go further afield before I could realise the dream engendered in me by the haunting memories of the Bethlem Band. However, things sometimes come to those who wait, though not unfrequently under other names and forms, and on Sunday afternoon, April 12th , our little church was filled, as it has never before been filled at that hour (many unfamiliar faces both of patients and attendants were there), and many members of our congregation described that as one of the happiest Sunday afternoons they had experienced within or without. Our friends brought with them a well-trained band, and a band accustomed to play in public and before critical audiences. The sacred songs were not lacking in good poetry or spiritual sentiments, and the vocalists included Miss Stella Maris, Miss Lena Law, Mr. Herbert Emlyn, and Mr. R. Grice. Among the items of the programme were “God is a Spirit” (Sterndale Bennett), selections by the band from Handel, Mendelssohn, and Donizetti – “The Holy City” (Adams), “The Heavenly Song,” “The Voice of the Father” (Cowen), and the “Plains of Peace” (Cornet Solo). This hour of music-worship cost our friends nearly £10, but, nevertheless, they are not only anxious to come again, but even ready to bring a choir with them!90

In addition to his work in the chapel, O’Donoghue was influential in the home-grown musical events held in the wards and galleries. In 1896, he began organising fortnightly ‘Working-parties’ (also known as ‘sewing parties’) meeting in the female galleries, where patients, staff and visitors provided musical and other entertainment. Students from the Guildhall School of Music and Trinity College of Music were engaged to sing and play alongside friends and other visitors at the sewing parties.91 In

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particular, he enlisted the assistance of members of the Kyrle Society, a philanthropic group instituted in 1875 to provide books and artwork to hospitals and schools, as well as preserving open spaces around London. The Kyrle Society contributed individual visitors for smaller events, and put on a Sacred Concert in the new Recreation Hall in February 1897, consisting of vocal and instrumental pieces with moral and religious themes.92 O’Donoghue also took over organising the Smoking concerts, which took on a more miscellaneous character and were opened to both men and women.93 Finally, he sought to organise trips for small groups of patients, covering public buildings such as the Houses of Parliament, museums and galleries, theatres and concerts. In his notes for Under the Dome in March 1896, for example, he reports excursions to Ballad concerts as well as a concert at the School for the Blind.94 The hospital continued to attract further talented medical staff, perhaps through direct connection with Smith and Hyslop. At a Musical Evening on 7 March 1894, for example, the Assistant Medical Officer Dr. Corner appears as a solo cornet player.95 Visiting medical men included Dr. Howard Distin, who completed his training at King’s College Hospital in 1892, and Dr. Scholefield, both of whom contributed songs to the ‘“Musical Evening” or Home Concert’ on 20 November 1891. Among the attendants, Mr. Steele is noted as a member of the Band who also performed clarinet solos at a concert on 21 January 1894.96 The institution’s supporters also played a direct role in arranging entertainments, both formal and informal. In March 1891, Smith recorded that ‘Miss Margaret Hinton came yesterday to play the piano to patients.’97 In January 1892, Mr. Philip Steele ‘most kindly brought a number of friends and gave a Concert, which consisted of Madrigals, Glees, Part Songs and Solos, and in addition Mr. Marshall Steele recited “Membranous Croup,” and two other pieces.’98 In December the following year, ‘the family of Mr. S. Green, one of our Governors, gave a dramatic and musical performance’ including sketches, songs and recitations.99 As Hyslop noted in 1898, sponsoring or performing at entertainments formed part of the ‘practical interest’ shown by Governors; others donated concert or theatre tickets, or simply attended events to show their support.100 Among the amateur groups visiting the institution were the Ladies’ Guitar and Mandoline Band, founded in 1886 by Lady Mary Hervey and Miss Augusta Hervey to give performances in aid of charitable causes. In 1898, they performed in a joint concert with the

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Plowden Bijou Orchestra, focussed on characteristic pieces, dances and light repertoire.101 Professor MacCann, ‘the Concertina King’, was one of the professional performers who cultivated a particular arrangement with the asylum and organised several variety concerts, making use of his own connections. A ‘Drawing Room Variety Concert’ in March 1893 featured variety acts including Miss E. and Miss M. George, ‘Charming Mandoline Duettists’, singers and Professor MacCann himself, ‘Solo English Concertinist, by appointment to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.’102 While most of the soloists were visitors, piano accompaniment was provided by Dr Hyslop. The concert was reported in one of the early issues of Under the Dome, where it was recorded that ‘Bethlem Hospital became a Music Hall, pro. Tem., when Professor MacCann kindly brought some of the “élite of the Profession” to give a Variety Entertainment’; the early start of 3 pm meant that ‘many who have never been to a Music Hall in their lives had the opportunity of seeing and hearing some of the ‘stars’ who nightly give amusement to crowded audiences.’103 Professional musicians and artistes often gave their services free or at a reduced rate, perhaps relying on the free publicity via hospital friends and supporters. Among the eminent artistes visiting the hospital during the 1890s was Madame Enriquez, a popular operatic and oratorio soloist, who performed as part of a concert of ‘accomplished vocal and instrumental artists’ in February 1894.104 The concert had been arranged by Bethlem’s Steward, Mr. A.H. Martin, who evidently had influential connections in the musical and theatrical world. The magazine’s writer recorded the concert as ‘one of the best concerts that had been given within the Hospital for some time’ and suggested ‘We must congratulate the Hospital upon having obtained for the said concert so eminent a singer as Madame Enriquez’.105 The Field-Fisher Quartette, a variety act, Mr. C.H. Weatherley’s private orchestra, and Mrs Henry Hetley’s Choral Society were further regular visitors, together with numerous individual performers and dramatic groups. The problem of a dedicated space and sufficient resources for entertainments remained. In 1892, Smith reported ‘Upon the occasions when the band plays at the dances the space is found to be very cramped and hardly large enough for our requirements’; furthermore ‘Many of the pianos in the Hospital are getting very much worn, and when a good concert is given we always need to hire one’.106 A dedicated recreation hall was opened in 1896. Among the verses of a poem published in celebration of

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the new Hall in Under the Dome is a stanza focussed on the important place of music and dance in asylum life: We look into the future, and we see Fond merry couples in their mirth and glee; We hear the sound of music and the dance, Where belles and bachelors coquette and prance. There to forget earth’s weariness and woe, While lightly tripping the light fantastic toe, Spectators watch, nor deem the moments long, While others warble forth a glee or song.107

The Hall was an important part of the hospital’s bid to draw in performers; in the March 1899 issue of Under the Dome, one writer expressed the hope that ‘as our new Hall gets known, that we shall in future years have the pick of all the best amateur dramatic companies in London.’108 The musical resources of the asylum continued to be renewed: five new pianos were purchased in 1893, while a ‘cello for use in the band was presented by the friends of a patient in 1896 and a gramophone gifted in 1898.109 ∗ ∗ ∗ While little is written by the medical officers on the direct impact of music on the hospital’s therapeutic work, it is clear from the space and energy accorded to music and entertainment that it occupied a crucial place in institutional life. Throughout the 1890s, the input of Smith and Hyslop turned the hospital into a centre for high-quality music making, with a full and varied programme of orchestral and chamber concerts, light music, dances, operetta and sacred choral performances. The Under the Dome list of entertainments given in January and February 1898, for example, includes four dances, four sewing parties, one lecture, two visits by dramatic companies and one formal concert. This means that music was performed at least weekly throughout the winter season, in addition to the music of the chapel service and informal opportunities and gatherings within the wards. With the new recreation hall, the winter season could stretch from the beginning of October to mid-May. As elsewhere, Music is occasionally cited as a cause of mental disorder. In the 1843 Report, one male patient is recorded as having been admitted to the asylum due to ‘over study of music’.110 In 1850, unusually detailed

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reports of causes for admission include one patient whose insanity was triggered by ‘Excitement in attending Hullah’s singing class’.111 Similarly, most years saw the admission of a small number of musicians, or associated music teachers, piano makers or music sellers. ‘Want of employment’ and ‘losses in business’ were among the most-cited causes of admission, and the precarious existence of many professional musicians certainly exposed them to these dangers. The Physicians’ Report of 1847 referred explicitly to the large numbers of artists, teachers and governesses resident in the asylum, due to being ‘subjected to many trials and much painful competition.’112 Although the archives are rich in detail about the music performed within the hospital, there is little written about individual patient activities, or music’s explicit role as part of the therapeutic environment. The management at Bethlem cultivated particular relationships with former patients, with friends and relatives of patients, and with the many supporters who gave time, money and other resources towards the smooth and successful running of the charity. The enormous wealth of talent among the medical officers, as well as the generosity of those associated with the institution, may account for the relatively slow development of formal arrangements for music, such as the asylum band. While concert programmes, both internal and external, demonstrate a rich musical life, the ad hoc events, collaborations between patients and staff with often no more than a hand-written programme, continued to proliferate up until the turn of the century. Despite the institution’s charitable status and sometimes shaky finances, it was well able to provide for the tastes and customs of its educated, middle-class inhabitants, and the later decades of the century are testimony to a surprisingly rich musical microclimate reflecting the special characteristics of both patients and staff.

Notes 1. Background to the depiction of Bethlem, together with some interpretation of Hogarth’s image, is found in Jane E. Kromm, ‘Hogarth’s Madmen’ in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Vol. XLVIII (1985), 238–242. 2. General Report for the Royal Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, 1843 (Bethlem Royal Hospital Archive BAR-03), 53. Subsequent Annual Reports from the shelfmarks BAR-01 to BAR-38 are referred to by date. Monro was the last of four generations of the Monro family to serve as Physician to the Bethlem Hospital. Morison was an Edinburgh-trained

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3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

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medic, with prior experience as inspecting physician to the Surrey private madhouses and as consulting physician to Hanwell pauper asylum. See 1843 Report, 67. The Medical Superintendent Hood reflected in his 1854 report on the difficult circumstances of the insane educated middle classes. See 1854 Report, 48–49. See 1843 Report, 42. Andrews et al., 520. Voluntary residents did not need medical certification, thereby avoiding the stigma of a formal medical diagnosis of insanity. The same system was introduced at another institution catering for middle-class patients, the Holloway sanatorium. F. O. Martin, The Report of the Commissioners for Enquiry into Charities for 1837 (London, 1837), 526, quoted in Jonathan Andrews, Asa Briggs, Roy Porter, Penny Tucker and Keir Waddington, The History of Bethlem (London: Routledge, 1997), 449. Edward Walford, ‘St George’s Fields’, in Old and New London: Volume 6 (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London, 1878), pp. 341– 368. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-newlondon/vol6/pp341-368 [accessed 22 February 2017]. Court of Governors Minutes, 26 June 1843. A total of £32 was spent in 1843 on ‘Musical Instruments & Pianoforte’: see 1843 General Accounts in Ledgers 1840–1853, 406. 1843 Annual Report, 39. Ibid., 41. Ibid., 40. 1843 Annual Report, 43. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 48. See Court of Governors Minutes, 29 January 1844. A separate printed Report for 1844 does not survive. Ibid., 49. 1846 General Accounts in Ledgers 1840–1853, 412. 1843 Report, 50. 1845 Report, 7–8. 1846 Report, 7 and 1851 Report, 50. The Ledgers show that a piano forte was bought in 1851 for £33 10s; its purchase is not noted elsewhere in the records. See Ledgers 1840–1853, 422. 1846 Report, 23. ‘William Wood, M.D., F.R.C.P.’ in Journal of Mental Science Vol. XXXVIII no. 163 (October 1892), 650. 1852 Report, 47. 1852 Report, 48. 1853 Report, 51.

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27. Ibid., 53. 28. Hood, Statistics of Insanity, Embracing a Report of Bethlem Hospital, 31–34, quoted in Andrews et al., History of Bethlem, 497. 29. 1859 Report, 40. 30. 1860 Report, 36. 31. 1869 Report, 38. 32. 1863 Report, 37, and 1864 Report, 40. 33. 1863 Report, 37. 34. 1872 Report, 34. R. Percy Smith explained in 1891, ‘At present, the stage has to be put up temporarily each winter in Gallery 3, on the female side, and is taken down in the summer, thus doing away with the possibility of having theatrical and other entertainments in the summer months, while it deprives us of room for 8 female patients, and renders it necessary, on the occurrence of each entertainment, for a large number of male patients and attendants to go into one of the female galleries.’ See 1891 Report, 51. 35. 1869 Report, 38. 36. 1871 Report, 38. 37. 1868 Report, 36. 38. 1872 Report, 33. 39. Physician’s Weekly Reports 1871–1887, 11 March 1872, and 17 February 1875. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 5 April 1872 and 28 March 1877. 42. Physician’s Weekly Reports 1871–1887, 12 December and 19 December. 43. 1873 Report, 37. With many of the boys at the King Edward’s Schools destined for the armed forces, training in band music was a key part of the school’s activities, and a bandmaster employed as part of the staff. 44. UtD 31 December 1895, 141. 45. BEN-01 volume of programmes and ephemera. 46. Many of the names of composers are presented as visual riddles; I have been unable to identify the composer of the song ‘Gypsy’. 47. I have been unable to identify the composer of this item. 48. 1879 Report, 41. 49. Ibid., 40. 50. 1880 Report, 35 and 44. 51. Ibid., 37. 52. 1881 Report, 33. 53. BEN-01 Volume of programmes 1879–1899. 54. 1859 Report, 40–41: ‘The preparation for each monthly party, and the recollection of it when past, are subjects of thought and interest to many.’.

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55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65.

66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

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1882 Report, 40. 1884 Report, 40. 1884 Report, 41. 1885 Report, 40. 1886 Report, 39. Ibid., 40. R. Percy Smith, ‘Sir George Henry Savage, M.D., F.R.C.P.’ in Journal of Mental Science Vol. LXVII no. 279 (October 1921), 399–400. 1887 Report, 43. Volume of Programmes 1879–1899. Programme in BEN-01. Mr. W.A. Easton was a professional musician and member of the Plowden Orchestra. T. Phillips Higgis was an Irish architect, based in London. His connection to Bethlem is unclear. Dr H.C. Bristowe was senior physician to St. Thomas’s Hospital; Sibyl was his sister. Dr Charles E. Sheppard was anaesthetist at Guy’s Hospital Medical School and other institutions, although he died young at the age of 35 in June 1891. See British Medical Journal no. 104 (11 July 1891), 105. Programme in BEN-01. The overture, waltz, marche and polka were likely played by the musical officers and friends. Mr. M.A. Santley, for example, was a violinist with the Plowden Bijou Orchestra. Likewise, Mr. Morten H. Cotton was a professional musician. Mr. H.H. Lawless was a barrister and well-known amateur musician, one of the founders of the Oxford and Cambridge musical club (see obituary in The Times 40,384 (2 December 1913), 11). A Charles Caper, aged 16, appears in the census for Bermondsey parish for 1891 but no occupation is given. 1891 Report, 52, and 1892 Report, 45. Under the Dome [UtD] 30 September 1896. A short article outlines the history of the band. UtD 30 September 1892, 41. At the same concert songs were performed by Mr. Wilson and Dr Distin, while Dr Hyslop played ‘The Lost Chord’ on the Saxe-horn. Under the Dome was a collaboration between patients and staff, with a number of the patient boarders among its most prolific writers and contributors. UtD 31 December 1892, 38. 1891 Report, 52. 1898 Report, 33. 1901 Report, 40; UtD 31 December 1899, 155. UtD 31 March 1894, 36. UtD 31 December 1893, 123. UtD 31 December 1894, 149. UtD 30 September 1896, 136–7. UtD 31 March 1896, 33.

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78. Biographical information on Corelli Windeatt is found at ‘Mr. Corelli Windeatt – 1911 biography’ http://www.windeatt.f2s.com/windeatt/ horrabridge/corelli_bio.htm#intro [accessed 7 August 2019]. 79. UtD, 30 June 1897, 79. 80. Programme together with the Ladies’ Guitar and Mandoline Band on 10 Feb 1898. See UtD 31 March 1898, 32. 81. UtD, 31 Dec 1892, 38. 82. Concert programme 19 December 1892 in BEN-01. 83. 1892 Report, 48. 84. 31 March 1893, 51. 85. UtD 30 September 1894, 31. 86. UtD 29 June 1895, 87. 87. UtD 31 March 1893, 24. The girls would not have received payment, but were treated nonetheless: in the 1893 report it is noted ‘The Chaplain lately took them over the Houses of Parliament and elsewhere.’. 88. UtD 29 June 1895, 87. 89. Programmes in BEN-01. 90. UtD 31 June 1896, 88. 91. 1899 Report, 34. 92. Programme in BEN-01. 93. The Annual Report for 1897 suggests that he ‘started a monthly Smoking Concert for male patients’, but the record of a concert on 29 November 1898 in Under the Dome notes ‘The Rev. E.G.Donoghue had prepared a most excellent programme. Many ladies and gentlemen kindly came to sing, play, or recite. The Gramophone also gave several performances.’ See UtD 30 December 1898, 163. 94. UtD 31 March 1896, 42–43. 95. UtD 31 March 1894, 37. 96. UtD 30 March 1894, 32. 97. Physician’s Weekly Reports 1887–1907, 18 March 1891. 98. UtD 31 March 1892, 23. 99. UtD, 31 December 1893. 100. 1898 Report, 32: ‘Several of the entertainments have been provided through the kindness of some of the Governors, and the practical interest they have taken has been productive of gratifying results.’ In 1899, Hyslop noted ‘It was gratifying to note the attendance of Governors at several of these social gatherings.’ See 1899 Report, 31. 101. See Programmes BEN-01. 102. Programmes, BEN-01. The programme also featured ‘Clive’s Wonderful Dog. The most marvellous performance in the world’. 103. UtD 31 March 1893, 52. 104. UtD 30 March 1894, 37. 105. UtD 30 March 1894, 14.

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106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

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1892 Report, 44, 47. UtD 30 September 1895, 118–119. UtD 31 March 1899, 23. 1893 Report, 50, 1896 Report, 35, and 1898 Report, 32. 1843 Report, 69. 1850 Report, 67. 1847 Report, 8.

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CHAPTER 10

The York Retreat: Moral Management and Music in a Quaker Context

The Retreat in York is well-known as one of the key sites for the instigation of the moral treatment approach in the late eighteenth century. The Retreat was not a typical asylum. Heavily influenced by the religious and moral views of its Quaker founder William Tuke (1732–1822), it avoided the enormous growth found in public pauper asylums and retained its small and idiosyncratic character well into the nineteenth century. Its 1794 foundation as a humane institution, in response to the apparent harsh treatment of a Quaker inmate at the York Asylum, set it apart as a progressive experiment. The Quaker principles on which the asylum was built put human needs and religious observance before medical attention, and it was this particular continued emphasis on ‘lay therapy’ and individual care which distinguished the Retreat from other institutions. Its two early Superintendents, George Jepson (1743–1836, in post-1797–1823) and Thomas Allis (1788–1875, in post-1823–1841), were appointed on the strength of their moral and religious characters and lacked formal medical training. Nevertheless, Anne Digby suggests the Retreat was not as special, or as successful, as some accounts (including those of its founders) suggest, and certainly in the second half of the nineteenth century its approach became closer to that found in the larger public asylums.1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_10

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Treatment and conduct at the Retreat exemplified its humane foundation. Kindness, mildness and benevolence were to prevail, following the belief that ‘the patient on all occasions should be spoken to and treated as much in the manner of a rational being as the state of his mind will possibly allow. By this means the spark of reason will be cherished’.2 The annual statement of 1823, commenting on the appointment of Allis as Superintendent and Hannah Ponsonby as Matron, noted ‘Comfort combined with economy, appears to mark the domestic management of the Establishment; whilst the system of gentleness united with firmness, in the treatment of the Patients, is fully supported’.3 The domestic routine adopted by the Retreat’s early managers was an attempt to recreate a sense of family and familiar surroundings, using psychological methods in preference to physical restraint or chemical treatment.4 According to Quaker principles, life and surroundings were simple, with walking, simple crafts, intellectual study and domestic work among the occupations available to patients in the early nineteenth century. Extravagant entertainments, excessive consumption of food and drinking and frivolous books and games were disallowed. The 1797 Annual Report recorded the practice of ‘occasionally using the Patients to such employment as may be suitable and proper for them, in order to relieve the languor of idleness, and prevent the indulgence of gloomy sensations’.5 This report also mentions religious meetings, but no other details on the day-to-day occupation of patients. Reports of the 1830s and 1840s reflect the slow introduction of facilities for recreation and employment. Extensions were built in 1837 with the intention of providing ‘rooms for the employment and convenience of the convalescent patients’.6 In 1839 nine acres of land were purchased, increasing the estate to 27 acres in order to allow for larger airing courts, gardens and walks.7 The same report noted the importance of employment to the Retreat’s management, although it had not been possible to introduce a ‘general system of employment’.8 Employment, fresh air and exercise were increasingly cited as important to patient well-being, but no attention was paid to other forms of recreation in the formal reports. John Thurnam, who was appointed to the new role of Medical Officer in 1838 and Medical Superintendent in 1847, pioneered a new approach, prioritising individual well-being over religious principles. Thurnam (1810–1873) was a Quaker but undertook medical training in London; his appointment marked the introduction of medical officers into the Retreat management.9 Thurnam clearly took much of his

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approach from the growing number of pauper asylums; unlike his predecessors he had both experience and training in medicine.10 Writing on the causes and treatments for insanity in 1845, he suggested. The means of mental cultivation and of innocent and healthy recreation occupy no unimportant part in the moral treatment of insanity. The cultivation of the mind should, as in some of our best pauper asylums, be provided for… Means of recreation, adapted to the capacity and suited to the taste of all, should be provided; and every effort should be used, by presenting various objects of interest to the mind, to call into exercise its remaining powers; and to prevent that monotony of feeling, to which the insane, as a class, are so peculiarly liable.11

By 1843, out of a total of 112 patients, 26 were employed in agricultural work of some kind, four in housework, 25 in needlework (plus 12 occasionally), ten in ‘Reading, &c.’ and four in ‘Drawing, Fancy-work, &c.’. A total of 81 were ‘More or less employed’ and 31 ‘For the most part unemployed, except in taking exercise’.12 A historical reflection on the fiftieth anniversary of the Retreat gives prominence to the recreational activities and provisions, including religious meetings, tea parties, employment, day rooms and gardens.13 Thurnam’s report of 1847 again cites recreational activities as a part of asylum life, including ‘Short excursions by railway and otherwise’.14 The question of occupying patients was clearly a vexed one. On the one hand, the Quaker principles forbade extravagant arrangements for their entertainment. On the other, boredom soon led to melancholia and tended to exacerbate the mental troubles of residents. Samuel Tuke reflected on these problems in a letter of 1850, suggesting that in the majority of cases ‘the extent to which monotony prevails in our and in most other Establishments for the Insane, is a great evil’.15 For Tuke, however, the kinds of recreational activities found elsewhere were not the solution: We are not to assume when we read the reports of great entertainments or theatrical exhibitions within the walls of an asylum, in which the Patients are the actors, that the remedy has been found and the evil removed. These great and very occasional efforts to occupy and amuse the Patients even if no objection could be taken to their character, are very transient in their pleasurable effect, and if not followed up by any corresponding efforts to please, may probably only induce a stronger feeling of restlessness and

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discomfort under the requisite restraints. What we want in Asylums is not (except in a few cases) the violent excitement of pleasurable feelings but the engagement of the mind in the pursuit of some rational object in which it can feel an interest or in which without much painful effort, it can be induced to engage.16

Tuke’s suggestions included making use of watering places for calming treatment, ‘quiet industry and domestic endearment… kindly looks and words and attention of friends and relatives’.17 In reply the Management Committee explained that the two main classes of patient needed opposite treatment: the manic needed objects of stimulation removed, while the melancholic were under-active, due to mental or physical lack of stimulation. Patients could not be compelled to work, so it was difficult to occupy them against their will.18 Despite such attitudes, music was to be found at the Retreat on occasion. The reminiscences of Elizabeth Pumphrey (nee Allis) cover the period from 1827 to 1841. She records that travelling musicians and other groups would play before the front of the house, including morris dancers, waits and ‘Dutch buy-a-brooms, in their short bright petticoats’.19 Religious observances also included some musical content, although these were not always a positive contribution to asylum life. Elizabeth Naish Capper was a patient at the Retreat in the first half of the nineteenth century, but eventually recovered after moving to a private asylum. In 1878 she wrote to a friend recording her experiences of life at the institution. Capper records a very dismal picture, claiming that patients were rarely allowed out of doors and frequently had nothing to occupy them. Describing an afternoon religious meeting she wrote. from week to week an attempt was made to induce this miserable company to sing hymns. The incongruous effect was not lessened by the knowledge that the lady who was usually asked to lead the singing with a piano was hopelessly melancholy… There was mostly a hymn sung, once if not twice during the time, when the lady I have spoken of played the piano. If she did not feel able to come down, which was occasionally the case, there seemed some difficulty about it. There were a few servants who could sing, but the general effect was to deepen the gloom.20

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The mid-nineteenth century saw significant changes in the character and management of the Retreat. Until this point day-to-day life had been conducted in the simple manner of the Quaker lifestyle on which the institution had been founded. Patients were largely accepted from Quaker families from across the country, and tended to be from the trade, artisan or professional classes. From the 1850s, partly in response to a series of financial difficulties, the asylum began to take on more non-Quaker residents from wealthier classes. Some of these were housed in new accommodation with spacious surroundings and a more relaxed approach to personal goods. This change coincided with the arrival of John Kitching as superintendent in 1849. Kitching (1812–1878, in post-1849–1874) was not new to the Retreat: he had been an assistant to Thomas Allis as well as apprentice to a non-medical officer, Caleb Williams, before leaving to run several private asylums.21 Like his predecessors he was also a Quaker. However, Kitching’s attention to the surroundings of patients and their amusement and occupation meant the Retreat began to look—and function—more like other asylums. His report of 1850 demonstrates an immediate change in attitude and practice, recording visiting lecturers and exhibitions, new books, drives into the country and increased employment in the farm and garden.22 By 1868 the list was extended to include evening entertainments and tea parties.23 Alterations were also made to the sparse décor and furnishings of the original Quaker buildings, introducing more colour, wallpaper, carpets, plants, photographs and prints.24 Despite the increased prominence of occupation and amusement, Kitching was clear that his approach remained within the original framework of the Retreat’s founders. In a letter to the Commissioners he confirms. There are some means of recreation used in asylums, which are not in accordance with the principles or practice of the religious Society of Friends, and which consequently have not been adopted in an asylum for its insane members, but the managers of the Retreat are desirous of promoting the same ends by all means which they consider suitable.25

The choice of appropriate activities was also linked to the patients’ need for mental engagement through intellectual pursuits. In 1863 Kitching reported that.

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interesting recreation and diversion of mind have been sedulously promoted. Diversion of mind consists in some object of attention for the perception and contemplation of self… Self-consciousness and selfcontemplation are the two inveterate mental habits which the provisions of an asylum and the efforts of the conductors have to meet and counteract, and this is best done, not by providing a round of frivolities and dissipations which can leave no satisfactory remembrance, but by a steady succession of duties and engagements occasionally interrupted by more stirring incidents.26

The later decades saw the transformation complete. As Digby suggests, ‘earlier Quaker inhibitions about the degree of comfort or the range of amusements permitted to Quaker patients had been relaxed in favour of a more materialistic, even hedonistic, regimen’.27 Digby also links the changes to an increase in long-term patients. Both the need to care for the ‘well-being’ of chronic cases and a loss of confidence in the mild methods that had characterised the earlier part of the century led to the introduction of more diverse occupations and amusements, both as diversion and as therapy. In some ways, the new character of the institution worked against organised recreational activity. The new patients from the upper classes were housed in luxurious accommodation, together with family members or servants, which kept them apart from the day-to-day work of the asylum. Status was important and the forms of philanthropy active in pauper institutions were not able to function in this smaller, more individual environment. Kitching noted the importance of catering for individual preferences in arranging occupations and recreations.28 Nevertheless, other new departures such as the building of a well-equipped Saloon, supported the offering of lectures and other wholesome activities now on offer. Music played an important part in this transformation. In contrast to the pauper institutions, wealthier patients from non-Quaker backgrounds might bring musical instruments and interests with them to the asylum. In 1863, with lectures and intellectual pursuits continuing to form the basis of recreational time, a ‘Musical Improvement Society’ was founded among the male attendants and servants, which was also attended by some of the patients.29 From 1870 music was regularly included among the lists of events and occupations. In this year Kitching reported:

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The Winter evenings have been enlivened by social parties, lectures and entertainments of different kinds. Music, perhaps, takes the first rank in these amusements, in its power of pleasing the largest number. We have to thank various friends of the Institution for their estimable contributions to our winter evening resources.30

Music was also included among the employments undertaken by patients: out of a total of 154 under the care of the institution during the year 1869–70, 34 were reported to be engaged in ‘Reading, Writing, Music, &c. principally’.31 Indeed, music was singled out for special attention by Kitching in his final report in 1874. Records of entertainments were, by this time, replete with musical activities such as soirees, concerts and dances. Kitching reflected: In the old days these things were not much encouraged, but views have changed; I might say, have become more liberal. In no respect has this change of view manifested itself more than in that of Music. Formerly one of two ladies had pianos of their own, and a gentleman or two might possess a flute, but the Institution supplied no musical instrument. There is not now on the women’s side a single division without at least one piano. The men’s side is still inadequately supplied with instrumental music, and I hope my successor will be able to remedy the defect.32

While both Thurnam and Kitching had received part of their training and formative experience at the Retreat, Robert Baker (1843–1910), who acted as Medical Superintendent between 1874 and 1892, was unfamiliar with its particular practices. Baker was a Scottish physician who, like Kitching, had worked in private practice before his position at the Retreat. He moved it much closer to the standard model of the large County asylums, with allowances for the higher status of the patients.33 Employment was increasingly inappropriate for the Retreat’s clientele, so recreational activities remained important in providing the level of occupation and structure found elsewhere. The content and language of Baker’s reports from this period mimic those of other superintendents in the larger public asylums. His 1877 Report, for example, records that patients were encouraged to take part in the entertainments on offer, which were ‘largely successful in pleasantly relieving the monotony of Asylum life, and have filled an important and essential part in the treatment of many of the patients’.34 Although the number of patients at the

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Retreat remained comparatively small at no more than 150, the provision of day rooms, other recreational facilities and outdoor space increased enormously. In other ways the Retreat remained set apart from the pauper institutions, as one might expect. In 1879 the first ‘Companion to the lady patients’, Miss Lucy A. Rous was appointed and took an important part in organising recreational activities.35 Baker had expressed a desire on his appointment that new staff, more highly educated than the attendants, might undertake ‘aesthetical’ duties.36 Two or three companions were employed at any time throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Moral treatment and the general conditions of asylum life remained relatively important in comparison with medical attention, and this is reflected in the content of annual reports and other documents. With the assistance of the companion, the lady patients gathered most evenings for ‘an hour’s reading and music, which has been a pleasant relief to the inevitable monotony of Hospital routine’.37 Reading, Writing and Music now occupied the largest proportion of residents, accounting 57 of the 120 ‘more or less employed’ patients. 58 patients were ‘for the most part unemployed, except in taking exercise’.38 The expansion of the Retreat, and its move away from Quaker philosophy, meant the family-like atmosphere of the early years and the accompanying individualism of ‘moral treatment’ were replaced gradually by more rigid systems of moral management and hierarchical structures. Under Thurnam, Kitching and Baker a gradual medicalisation took place, together with an increase in the standards of comfort and entertainment expected by the new affluent patients.39 The moral simplicity of work and exercise were replaced by more ‘sophisticated recreations’: the Turkish bath and Billiards room, sports pitches, carriages and excursions, musical and dramatic entertainments.40 As Anne Digby suggests, these new departures were less part of a system of therapeutic treatment of ‘coherent philosophy of living’ and more ‘trivialised into a recreational programme’.41 Concerts during the 1870s and 1880s were of a miscellaneous character, and performers might be drawn from the asylum staff or associated friends and relatives. A ‘Retreat Entertainment by Attendants’ which was held on 25 August 1874 combined solo songs, ensembles and readings of a popular character, obviously intended to entertain rather than enlighten42 :

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‘The Hardy Norseman’ Song ‘Maggie May’ Reading Song ‘Bright smile haunts me still’ Duet ‘Sailor’s Grave’ Reading Song ‘Charming Nelly’ Dialogue ‘Indigestion’ Song ‘Home in Kentuck.’ Dialogue ‘Five clever men of Ruetown’

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Altogether Wm. Gudgeon Wm. Lazenby J. Backhouse Lazenby & Dunning C. Dunning Gudgeon & Backhouse W. Lazenby

A later programme for a ‘Friends Retreat Concert’ held on 12 November 1880 reveals a more sophisticated offering from the asylum’s many associates, including instrumental music43 : Pianoforte Solo Song ‘Caller Herrier’ Song ‘Tom Bowling’ Pianoforte & Violincello Duet Song ‘When the Tide Comes in’ Song ‘Spear no foe’ Duet Song ‘I love my love’ Song ‘The Liten [?] Land’ Pianoforte Solo

Mr Oberhoffer Mrs Stephenson Mr Scott, Dibdin Miss S. Barry, Mr Oberhoffer Miss S. Barry, Barnett Mr Scott Miss Barry, Miss S. Barry Mrs Stephenson Miss S Barry, Cowen Mr Oberhoffer

Robert Werner Oberhoffer was a German settled in York, active as a teacher of piano, organ, violin, ‘cello and cornopean, as well as organist and choirmaster at St Wilfrid’s Pro-Cathedral and later Master of Music at Ampleforth College.44 Sadly the information is insufficient to trace the other performers. Mr Scott is perhaps related to an instrument dealer and cornet player active in the 1830s.45 The Misses Barry may well have been the daughters or nieces of Mr Thomas Barry, a retired army man who had studied as bandmaster at Kneller Hall in the 1850s and was later stationed at Knaresborough, York and Richmond. There were several Barnetts active as amateur musicians at this time.46 It is clear that the Retreat boasted supporters from across the professional and amateur musical communities, largely the middle classes of the local area. On the arrival of Bedford Pierce (1861–1932) as Superintendent in 1892, the evening activities were further augmented by weekly ‘Drawing Rooms’ attended by both lady and gentlemen patients and involving

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music, cards and other games.47 The events offered opportunities for patients to socialise with the asylum’s officers, who attended instead of the lower status attendants or nurses. Every impression is of a gentile existence, echoing life outside the asylum while offering structure and protection. Friends and family were also invited to join patients for ‘At Homes’, contributing with ‘songs, recitations and music’.48 Pierce’s appointment reversed the trend of the second half of the nineteenth century; he was a Quaker, with no asylum experience. Early on in his tenure he spent time at Bethlem and the introduction of more intimate musical experiences, together with the involvement of the officers, friends and families, echo developments made there in the 1880s and 1890s.49 Pierce remained at the Retreat until 1922, running a private practice alongside his work as Superintendent from the 1890s. Programmes from the 1890s continue the miscellaneous character, with the addition of longer pieces of drama and a wide variety of genre and style. For the Ladies’ Party of 28 December 1898, the programme promised that ‘During the evening Selections from Maritana and Der Freischutz [sic] will be played by a Quartette Party. Mr Arthur Rowntree will give a Reading from Dickens, and Mrs. Taylor and Messrs. F. Fryer and E. I. Gower will contribute Songs’.50 The Staff Entertainment organised to celebrate Christmas in January 1898 also included a variety of dramatic and musical pieces, and in addition the programme reveals a foray into operetta51 : Box and Cox—W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan (1866) Interval Violin solo… Miss M. Wilberforce Songs from Mr. Gower, Mrs. Pierce and Mr. Coates Scenes from “The Rivals”—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1775)

By the early twentieth century, the Retreat boasted a choral society, minstrel troupe and dramatic society.52 External visiting performers frequently included musical acts, and the annual reports list concerts, dances and miscellaneous musical entertainments. The 1898 Report, for example, cited weekly ‘At Homes’, ten lectures, five concerts, eleven entertainments ‘of various kinds’, ‘animated photographs, and the like’, dances, a chess match, and two billiard tournaments.53 In 1903–1904 a new regular Sunday-evening gathering was added after the religious service, which included vocal and instrumental music, readings and recitations.54 The move was intended to relieve tedium which remained

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a particular problem on Sundays when secular activities were restricted. Entertainments for 1904 included two Retreat Choral Society Concerts; Harry Rice’s Entertainment; Mr and Mrs J.C. Cussens’ Concert, Musical Recital and Entertainment; a musical Entertainment by the Blind School; Mr. Gordon Wilde and Mr. Lee Williams’ ‘Soiree des Variétés’; a Concert given by the Harrogate Celia Concert Party; a ‘cello and piano concert by Messrs. O.S. and G.E. Marshall; and the Nurses’ Entertainment. Almost all the events included piano solos and popular songs among miscellaneous musical and other items.55 The ‘cello and piano recital by the Marshall duo is particularly notable for its ‘serious’ repertoire, with a predominance of continental composers and a lack of songs or lighter items: Piano Duets ‘Cello Solos Piano Solos

‘Cello Solos Piano Solos

‘Cello Solos Piano Solos Piano Duets

Spanish Dances Andante Largo Aubade In the Meadows Berceuse Feuillet d’Album Preghiera Gavotte Valse Lente La Gazelle Chanson de Nuit Salut d’Amour Feuillet d’Album Wedding Day From Foreign Parts (Spain – Hungary)

Moszkowski Gluck Handel Strelezki Schytte Poppe Schubert Dupont Schutt Wollenhaupt Elgar Grieg Moszkowski

The Marshall family of musicians demonstrate the calibre of performers upon which the asylum was able to draw and its close links to local professionals. Oldfield Sherwin Marshall and George E. Marshall had both travelled long distances to perform their concert. Born in Yorkshire, their father, also Oldfield, had worked as a cigar manufacturer but changed profession to Music Teacher during the 1880s. Oldfield Sherwin is recorded as active as a conductor in Banbury and Abingdon in Oxfordshire in the 1890s and appears in the 1901 census as ‘Professor of Music (Vocal & Piano), while George E. Marshall was at that time living in Alfreton in Derbyshire, and is listed as ‘Professional Musician & Organist’.56 With a regular programme of performances, the Retreat must have

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offered important opportunities for paid employment among itinerant performers, perhaps also generating loyalty among local society and both professional and amateur musicians. In spite of its slow uptake of recreational activities, and particularly music, due to its Quaker roots, the Retreat’s middle- and upper-class patients of the late nineteenth century were spared no expense where entertainments were concerned. The Retreat also maintained its earlier commitment to moral treatment and a resistance to medicalisation of patient care. Despite this, there is little written during the period about the specific links between music, other recreations, and the care or cure of insanity. Such activities were discussed in terms of their social importance or the opportunities for friends and family to become involved. Only occasionally is the therapeutic activity of the Retreat linked with patient recovery, such as in the case of the gentleman who in 1894 credited the ‘continuous change of employment that he had been having’ with his recovery.57 Music and recreational activities were frequently simply registered as an aid towards relieving monotony: in 1900 Pierce noted that the ‘parties have been very helpful in lessening the ennui inseparable from Asylum life’ while in 1904 he recorded that entertainments were ‘a means of introducing fresh interests into lives that need every possible help. The first sign of approaching recovery is frequently seen at some social gathering or entertainment’.58 In 1908 he set out a more complete philosophy of the usefulness of occupation, linking the mental state of patients to their surroundings and sources of stimulation: patients tend in course of time to adapt themselves to their surroundings. If the rooms be dull and featureless, the patients will certainly sink into a deeper state of mental enfeeblement than they should do; if there are few interests their conduct will deteriorate, and there will be greater difficulties with respect to noise or violence.59

It was important to remember, he noted, that many patients would have refined appreciation for artworks or music, which was not lost on admittance to the asylum. Despite some similarities, the inclusion of music at the York Retreat follows a very different pattern from that seen at many of the larger pauper asylums. Here, music was part of the social and cultural work of the institution. Therefore, while the philosophy of Quakerism predominated in

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the first half of the century, music was rarely included among the occupations offered to patients. When it began to be included in the latter part of the century, it was largely as part of the relevant social activities suitable for the middle- and upper-class clientele now added to the Retreat’s population, rather than as an overtly therapeutic aspect. The Retreat made good use of its charitable connections, as well as the talents of friends, family and staff members, in attempts to recreate the forms of musical and other entertainment familiar to patients. Music formed an appropriate activity both for patients and for visitors and supporters. Like other private asylums, therefore, music primarily took on a social and cultural, rather than medical, role.

Notes 1. Anne Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), xiii–xiv. 2. R. Hunter and I. MacAlpine, ‘Samuel Tuke’s First Publication on the Treatment of Patients at the Retreat, 1811’ in British Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 111 (1965), 771. 3. See State of an Institution near York, called the Retreat for Persons Afflicted with Disorders of the Mind, 1823 [Annual Report, Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York RET 1/2/1/4], 5. Subsequent Annual Reports from the shelfmarks RET1/2/1/1-13 are referred to by date. 4. Digby, Madness, 33. 5. Report 1797, 9. 6. Report of General Meeting of Directors and Friends to The Retreat, held in York 29 June 1837, printed in Report, 1837, 4. 7. Report, 1839, 5. 8. Ibid., 6, italics original. 9. See G. H. Brown, ‘John Thurnam’, Royal College of Physicians ‘Lives of the Fellows’ accessed online at http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biogra phy/Details/4436. 10. Thurnam was appointed alongside Allis in 1838 as a medical specialist; Allis’s successors John and Mary Candler were appointed in 1841 but their role was largely administrative, and once Thurnam qualified as a Medical Doctor in 1846 he took over full Superintendence of the Retreat. See Digby, Madness, 112. 11. Thurnam, Observations and Essays on the Statistics of Insanity: Including an Inquiry into the Causes Influencing the Results of Treatment in Establishments for the Insane (London: Simkin, Marshall & Co, 1845), 107.

286 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

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Report, 1843, 21. Report, 1846, 11. Report, 1847, 12. RET 1/1/4/3 York Retreat Management Minutes 1840–73. Letter from Samuel Tuke dated 13 April 1850, 165. Ibid., 165–166. Ibid., 166. RET 1/1/4/3 Management Minutes 1840–73, 176–178. RET 1/9/1/1 Memoranda re The York Retreat Centenary Celebration May 6th 1892, 40. Patient Papers RET 6/1/19/1/34, 25–26. Digby, Madness, 114. Report, 1850, 17. Report, 1868, 22. Digby, Madness, 40. Report, 1854, 32. Report, 1863, 17. Digby, Madness, 41–42. Report, 1868, 22. Report, 1863, 19. Report, 1870, 14. Ibid., 24. Report, 1874, 22. See Digby, Madness, 115. Patients at this time were largely from the professional and trade classes, together with unemployed women. In 1892–3, for example, the occupations of patients admitted were one surgeon, one brewer, one manager of steel works, one proprietor of a ‘fancy repository’, one iron and steel merchant, one bank clerk, two males of no occupation, five housewives, two housekeepers, one female grocer and eleven females of no occupation. See Report, 1893, 35. Report, 1877, 14. Report, 1879, 16. Report, 1875, 22. Report, 1882, 14. Report, 1883, 30. See Digby, ‘The Changing Profile of a Nineteenth-Century Asylum: The York Retreat’ in Psychological Medicine Vol. 14 (1984), 747. Ibid., 746. Ibid. Handwritten programme held at RET 1/5/5/7/1. Programmes and ephemera collected at RET 1/5/5/7/2. ‘A List of York Musicians from early times to present day’ compiled by J.W.Knowles, 1924, accessed online at https://cyc.sdp.sirsidynix.net.uk/ client/en_GB/search/asset/1018062.

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45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

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See ibid. See ibid. Report, 1893, 16. Report, 1896, 28. See Digby, Madness, 117–119. RET 1/5/5/7/2 Entertainments 1880–1941. Ibid. Digby, Madness, 46. Report, 1898, 14. Report, 1904, 22. RET 1/5/5/7/2 Entertainments 1880–1941. See entries in 1881, 1891 and 1901 census data on https://familysea rch.org. 57. Report, 1894, 24. The case was used as a reminder of the importance of ‘suitable occupation for the patients’. 58. Report, 1900, 12; Report, 1904, 18. 59. Report, 1908, 7–8.

CHAPTER 11

Barnwood House: Music in the Small Asylum

The early Gloucester asylum (1823) combined pauper, charitable and private patients, with different classes residing separately within the same institution.1 By the mid-1850s, the demand for pauper places at the County Asylum was so high that the decision was taken to cater for paupers only. The subscribers’ portion of the Estate, paid for by charitable donations intended to support second-class patients, was bought out in 1856 and the old asylum became responsible to the parishes of the city and county alone. In 1858 the funds were used to purchase Barnwood House, a large manor about a mile to the east of the old asylum grounds and further from the centre of Gloucester, and the new institution opened as a private asylum in 1860. The new Hospital was advertised as ‘for the Insane of the Upper and Middle Classes, founded and in part supported by Voluntary Contributions’ and operated on a similar model to other charitable institutions, including the York Retreat. Both wealthy and charitable patients were to be accommodated with a sliding scale of fees according to means, and the asylum grew gradually from the admission of a handful of patients in early 1860 to 60 in 1865 and 129 in 1883.2 While the early years were financially unstable, by the 1880s the new asylum represented a thriving community and business. The records from Barnwood House demonstrate the ways in which music was included within an institution much smaller and more exclusive than © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_11

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the charitable asylums of Bethlem and The York Retreat, or the private Holloway Sanatorium. Although we might expect a large amount of recreational activity, including music, to have taken place at the new asylum, there is very little on record regarding the activities of the patients. As a private institution, Barnwood House was not obliged to produce detailed formal reports and, although it was visited by the Commissioners in Lunacy, the documentation that characterises archive records from public asylums is absent here. Nevertheless, records suggest a lively musical world, with substantial participation from patients. Within the first year of opening, a stables was converted into a room suitable for ‘a billiard room or a day room’, and books, newspapers and bows and arrows were purchased for the amusement of the patients. The Superintendent, Dr Alfred Joshua Wood (1808–1888), reported in 1862 that ‘The amusements on the male side have been Bagatelle, Books, Periodicals and Newspapers, Drawing, Music, Bowls and occasionally Cricket. On the Female side Bagatelle, Books, Periodicals, and Newspapers, Music and dancing; and many of the ladies have occupied themselves with useful and ornamental needlework’.3 The patients were provided with as much exercise as possible; ‘Family’ Prayers were said daily in the house, and patients were taken to the parish church when appropriate. Thus some of the routines from the old asylum were carried over to the new institution. In particular, ‘The practice of having some of the patients male and female to dine daily with the Superintendent and his family has been continued’.4 By the mid-1860s an abundance of entertainment opportunities was on offer to the privileged patients at Barnwood. Although the institution lacked a dedicated chapel, both a piano and a harmonium were hired (the harmonium was later purchased in 1863), and concerts provided alongside the less-structured activities of games, sports, books and country walks.5 At the start of 1863 there were 50 patients in the house, and up to half of these would attend organised activities such as the concerts. Facilities were also improved to allow patients to keep occupied, particularly when the weather was inclement. The Report of the House Committee on 1863, given at the Annual Meeting on 8 February 1864, made particular reference to these: The large glazed room at the west end was opened on the 17th of March by a concert in celebration of the marriage of the Prince of Wales and four

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concerts have been since given there which have been attended by from 25 to 30 patients besides all the attendants and domestics of the establishment who could be spared from their necessary avocation and to which friends and neighbours have been invited. Lectures have also been given from time to time on amusing and instructive subjects and we are much indebted to the chairman of the house committee for the great gratification which he on one of these occasions afforded to our inmates… Ample provision has been made for the recreation and amusement of the patients both indoors and in the ground. Croquet and a variety of indoor games for the ladies, Bagatelle for which we have now four tables in various parts of the house and cards, cricket, bowls, football and gardening occupations for the gentlemen.6

Alongside the concerts, given by visiting performers, entertainments included visits from Minstrel groups and miscellaneous entertainers. The Commissioners’ Report for 1865 records 17 ladies and 16 gentlemen at one concert, representing a similar proportion to those attending in the pauper asylums. The diet of recreations at Barnwood House increased exponentially after the initial financial problems were overcome and the institution began to become large enough to support its patients in a more lavish manner. New recreation rooms were added in 1865, and the glass room fitted with heating.7 In 1866 an orchestra was established ‘to increase the efficiency of the associated amusements, in which as many as 30 of both sexes have been able to take part’.8 The orchestra receives no further notice in the minutes, however, but represents an important and unusual attempt to involve patients in active musical activity. As at the pauper institutions, musical events provided an opportunity for residents to mix with members of the local community. Private institutions typically offered more scope for patients to experience local towns and beauty spots, and for friends and family to visit. With a mixture of private and charitable patients, support from local philanthropists was also important. The effect and role of music and other entertainments were described in similar terms to those found in the records of pauper asylums. In 1865 the Commissioners reported on a ‘very complete musical entertainment’ which was received by the patients with ‘manifest enjoyment’.9 The same year the Superintendent recorded. In literature and the arts, our inmates have been treated as being fully capable of appreciating to a high standard, and in books drawing & music,

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the best examples have been carefully selected & placed before them. We have abundant evidence that this kind of consideration has produced results both satisfactory and highly gratifying.10

While the types of amusement on offer were similar to other institutions, it is clear that the frequency or quantity of entertainments, together with their quality, were to be superior to the pauper asylums. The same intentions are evident in the Superintendent’s 1869 Report, where he notes. These entertainments involved a great amount of trouble in their preparation and arrangement and, I may add, considerable expense; but they are invaluable as a relief to the monotony of life in an Asylum. The pleasure they afford as well in anticipation as in reality, is ample to compensate for the efforts made to present them in a way that shall be creditable to the institution and which while affording passing interest and amusement shall appeal to the higher intelligence and more refined perceptions of our inmates which we conceive it to be our duty to arouse, to foster, & to gratify.11

As elsewhere, Wood reflects on both the intellectual and entertainment properties of music as a diversion for asylum patients. However, his reference to ‘higher intelligence and more refined perceptions’ suggests he believed music was acting differently in the private asylum to its effects in the larger pauper institutions. In contrast to some of the authors reporting from pauper asylums, Wood does not express surprise that his charges were able to conduct themselves appropriately or respond sincerely and justly to the experience of hearing music in a formal environment. Music was clearly a suitable stimulant for the forms of intellect and behaviour expected in Barnwood’s patients. With patient numbers relatively low until the 1880s and finances remaining precarious, the asylum was reliant on its charitable status and the assistance of local friends for part of the programme of entertainment, including some who would visit to perform.12 Two or three concerts were held each year, including a performance of ‘Messiah’ in January 1869, which was attended by 54 patients. In 1873, the Commissioners reported that lectures and concerts were held every three weeks with attendance of 50–60 patients.13 With manual work not an option for the class of patients resident in the asylum, the demand for appropriate recreations was high, and the same report recorded that four pianos were provided

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for the lady patients (one in each day room); other occupations included needlework and reading.14 Frederick Peacock Needham, who was Medical Superintendent at Barnwood between 1874 and 1892, was particularly instrumental in supporting entertainments. Needham (1836–1924) moved to Barnwood from the York Asylum at Bootham Park, where he had been Medical Superintendent since qualifying as a physician at the age of 22.15 Needham’s background in pauper institutions influenced his development and expansion of the hospital at Barnwood. He was a fervent proponent of the principles of non-restraint and personal liberty, contributing to later regulatory developments as a Commissioner in Lunacy between 1892 and 1919. A chapel had been built for the asylum in 1869, but it was not until Needham arrived in 1874 that a harmonium was installed and a regular organist engaged.16 The following year’s report records that the female Head Attendant played the new instrument. A choir, composed of both patients and attendants, allowed for choral services which rendering the chapel ‘more attractive to the greater portion of the patients’.17 The appointment of a Chaplain also helped extend both religious and secular opportunities; in 1876 Needham recorded that the new member of staff, ‘in addition to the able discharge of his duties proper, has rendered valuable service conjointly with his wide, in connexion with the entertainment & amusement of the patients’.18 A more substantial set of amusements was established, including outings, visiting performers, reading and musical entertainments and concerts. In contrast to the pauper asylums, dancing does not feature as a regular weekly entertainment at this stage. Among the entertainments listed for 1876 were Readings & musical entertainment; two concerts; harp recital; a single dancing party; and handbell ringers.19 The records point to continuous expansion and improvement in the facilities and opportunities available to patients during the late 1870s and early 1880s. In 1879, a cottage piano was bought, and in 1880 more pianos ‘obtained for the ladies’.20 In 1880, new building work involved replacing the old entertainment room with new rooms, including a ‘spacious entertainment room with a permanent raised stage at the end’.21 The 1878 Report lists five concerts and two dances, together with more informal reading and musical entertainments.22 Again, Needham admits his indebtedness to friends of the institution for assistance with the entertainments. By 1882, the Report records that there had been 63 regular entertainments throughout the year.23 Expenditure on purchases

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for patients, including amusements, in 1883 (by which time there were 129 patients in the house) was £1485 4s 7d, a similar sum to that spent in many pauper asylums housing upwards of 600 patients.24 The 1883 Report notes the constant and unfulfilled demand for places at the asylum, together with the institution’s excellent financial health. The larger number of concerts and smaller number of dances perhaps points to a difference in musical repertoire between the pauper and private institutions, but the information here is not sufficient to draw firm conclusions. Dances, and performers such as minstrels and handbell ringers, represented a more popular and commercial end of the musical spectrum. We have little information about the concerts given at Barnwood. Those specified during the 1870s and 1880s include Boyce’s band, the Jubilee Singers, the Glevum Quartette and the Cremona Musical Union. All four acts are likely to have presented a miscellaneous programme. The Cremona Musical Union, for example, was the performing name for the Greenhead family, who performed instrumental and vocal music (including a brass quartet) in exotic costumes.25 Needham was also open about the benefits of music and recreation for his patients. In 1877, he wrote: The occupations & amusements of the patients, which are so important, both as respects their curative influence, the avoidance of that idleness which in an Asylum necessarily implies either constantly recurring acts of destruction, or gradually increasing mental degradation, have received their due… attention. Several patients have been induced to occupy themselves regularly in gardening, some in sketching, & the usual large proportion in various out & indoors occupations & amusements.26

The same themes, particularly the avoidance of destruction, were revisited the following year: due attention has been paid to the employment and amusement of the patients with the usual result of securing comparative immunity from acts of destruction, and promoting the comfort and happiness of the patients. Several of the gentlemen have taken an active interest in gardening, and throughout the house there has been constant employment in needlework, drawing, music, or other in-door occupations and amusements, while cricket, football, lawn tennis, and bowls, have afforded outlets for surplus energy out of doors.27

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Needham’s reports recall one of the challenges of running a small, private asylum. Amusement, occupation and other ‘outlets for surplus energy’ (both mental and physical) were central to the sense of normality and structure at the heart of moral management. Without the use of physical work, entertainments were crucial to the safe and suitable occupation of patients. Yet for charitable asylums, this restriction was a double blow: not only were entertainments a considerable expense, the institution also lost the economy of having patients undertake some of the everyday work of housekeeping and manual labour needed to keep the asylum running. Despite the financial struggles at Barnwood House between the 1860s and 1880s, the types and level of entertainments available and the quality of treatment on offer for patients were clearly extensive and carefully managed. An anonymous account by ‘S.L.L’ dating from 1888 supports this assessment of the conditions at Barnwood, with patient life improving from the 1880s as suggested by other documents. The patient, 60 years old by the time of writing, had been born in India and spent time in a London asylum before transferring to Barnwood in the late 1870s. The account is revealing about the actual conditions faced by middle- and upper-class patients, who were apparently not treated with the opulence implied in some reports. He or she writes of the earlier period. Many ways have had to be complained of here. For a long time there used to be a great deal too much cold air in the house. Fires were allowed to get very low or go out; in warm weather often they were too strong. The food was badly cooked, much of the meat dry and hard, vegetables few; Tea & supper followed quickly on dinner.28

The noisiness of the asylum was a source of great distress: a noisy patient was often placed in my bedroom. Many nights I was kept awake a great deal for years. I did not understand the ways of the people & their hints, otherwise some things might have been stopped sooner. In the daytimenoises were frequent – banging of doors, shouting of dirty noises, or playing loud on pianos.29

However, the more recent period had seen pronounced improvements in practical provisions for the patients as well as recreational activities:

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After some years of these inflictions, a change for the better has been made in several respects. The noises are much lessened, the food is better. Warm air is sent through the house in winter, the windows being opened only as much as is required. Patients are kept out less in the cold; and the nights are quieter. Some room is still left for complaint. I have been writing about these matters many times in the 10 years I have spent in the house including the 2 months at the last. And I used to make a fuss sometimes & get sent to a work ward or incur some other punishment…. A great deal of building is getting the asylum to be a really well-provided place for a hospital, and it may be hoped it will approach nearer still to that, and a good one. The grounds are pleasant with unusually nice views. Games are now getting easier to join in. The reading at times becomes plentiful & better. Entertainments have sometimes been good.30

It is surprising to read of poor conditions for the wealthy and charitable patients, having seen the comparative luxury of their treatment as part of the larger asylum. However, it is clear from the financial situation in the 1860s that the subscribers were not able to support the demand for charitable patients until an increase in fees, and the small size of the institution meant the economies of the larger asylum could not be imitated. Together with food and heating, opportunities for recreational activities form a core part of this patient’s experience of the asylum and a clear indication of the improvements made during the late 1870s and 1880s. The contrast between the generous picture painted in the formal reports, and the impression of noise and poor conditions described by the anonymous patient, is a cautionary tale where archives and documents are concerned. No doubt the formal reports were intended to reassure subscribers and supporters of the efficient and successful running of the institution; not only were they expected to offer financial support for the charitable arm, they might be potential customers should friends or relatives need treatment. On the other hand, patient accounts of asylums were also notoriously skewed towards portraying the hardships and squalor of confinement, usually alongside protestations of sanity. S.L.L.’s account is unusually measured in its criticism and certainly suggests that conditions until the 1880s were far from comfortable for many of the patients. Despite the organisation of musical events as well as the provision of pianos for informal music making, the presence of music described by the anonymous account remained rather two-edged. Needham’s arrangements for regular performances from external groups appears to have remained the norm through to the end of his

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tenure in 1892 and beyond; little further information on musical activity is recorded in the archives. It is clear from reports that music was a key part of the provision made for recreational activities at Barnwood, within the restrictions of finances and space. Needham’s expansion of the institution made significant differences to the size of the asylum and the types of performance it could accommodate. Yet there remained limitations: a small institution could not support either the staff or the space associated with large-scale theatrical or musical offerings, and the reality of entertainments clearly lay well below the impression given in formal records, certainly until the 1880s. Thus, Barnwood gives a further indication of the ways in which music was shaped by the practicalities of asylum management, the resources available, and the social status and expectations of the patient body, as well as the ideologies surrounding music’s place in mental health treatment.

Notes 1. See Chapter 5. 2. Minute Book of the Subscribers to the Gloucester County Lunatic Asylum [D3725/ 135/ vol. 1–3], 11 August 1860, 8 April 1865, 1 January 1883. By 11 August only 14 patients had been admitted, and the Superintendent Dr Wood expressed concerns about the low numbers of private patients being insufficient to support the charitable cases. 3. Minute Book of the Subscribers to the Gloucester County Lunatic Asylum 1856 [D3725/ 135/ vol. 1], Superintendent’s Report for 1861 read to the Annual Meeting Thursday 11 February 1862. 4. Ibid. 5. Minute Book 1862–77 [D3725/ 135/ vol. 1], 2 February 1863. 6. Ibid., 8 February 1864. 7. Ibid., 8 April 1865. 8. Ibid., 31 October 1866. 9. Ibid., 8 April 1865. 10. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report for 1865, 159. 11. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report 8 February 1869. 12. The Superintendent’s Report of 1869 notes thanks to ‘several kind friends’ who give generously of their ‘accomplishments in various departments’. 13. Ibid., Commissioners’ Report 17 February 1878, 419. 14. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report for 1873, 454. 15. See ‘Obituary: Sir Frederick Needham, M.D.ST.AND., Commissioner of the Board of Control’ in The Lancet (20 September 1924), 627–628.

298 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

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Minute Book 1862–77, 23 November 1874. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report for 1875, 540. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report for 1876, 590–591. Ibid., 587. Minute Book 1877–85, 17 February 1879, Commissioners’ Report 19 May 1880. Ibid., Report of Committee 1880, 159. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report for 1878, 70. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report for 1882, 233. Ibid., Reports from 1883, 265. See ‘Two Concerts at the Assembly Rooms’, 1863, at wiltshire-opc.org. uk/items/holt/holt%20-%20Cremona%20Musical%20Union%20Conc erts%201863.pdf [accessed 5 July 2019]. Minute Book 1877–1885, Superintendent’s Report for 1877, 29. Ibid., Superintendent’s Report for 1878, 70. Autobiographical Account 1888 [D3725/box 111], 28. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 30.

CHAPTER 12

Holloway Sanatorium: The Middle-Class Experience

The sanatorium at St Ann’s Heath, Virginia Water, represents a type of institution quite distinct from the large public asylums, the older charitable foundations and the small private houses studied in the other case studies presented here. Thomas Holloway’s sanatorium was built in the 1880s, opening in 1885, and was intended to house a substantial number of patients from the middle classes: those not eligible for the pauper institutions yet unable to afford the luxury of a small private establishment. The sanatorium was a charitable work, not intended to make a profit, and was to charge patients according to their means. As it became established it was clear that many patients could not afford to pay at all; to balance this, wealthier clients were taken in and offered private accommodation, space for family and servants and a comfortable lifestyle at considerable cost. As such it combined many of the structural features of pauper asylums with the lifestyle and patient needs of other private institutions. The problems of provision for the middle classes had been raised at a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1859, which concluded that middleclass patients should be treated separately from paupers.1 The principle of larger private asylums for the middle-class insane was advocated by the Earl of Shaftesbury. He noted both the financial advantages of large asylums over smaller institutions run for profit and the importance of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_12

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restoring patients to the normal expectations of everyday life by providing opportunities for socialising. It was this challenge that was taken up by his acquaintance Thomas Holloway, looking for beneficial philanthropic projects on which to bestow a vast fortune. Dr Sutherland Rees Philipps (1848–1925) was appointed first Medical Superintendent at the Sanatorium, having gained experience at the Devon County Asylum, Three Counties Asylum in Bedfordshire and the private Wonford House Hospital in Exeter.2 Philipps arrived in Surrey in 1884 and was able to shape the final arrangements for the sanatorium’s opening, as well as the employment of staff and admission of patients. He was charged with the delicate task of creating a large institution on the scale of the pauper asylums, while maintaining the standards and individual attention appropriate to middle-class patients. The decision to use the term ‘sanatorium’ rather than ‘asylum’ or ‘hospital’ was just one indication of the attempts to distance the new establishment from madhouses and pauper institutions. With 162 patients and 33 boarders admitted to the Sanatorium between its opening in June 1885 and 31 December 1886, the institution was already larger than a private madhouse, but much smaller than any of the contemporary County asylums.3 In 1891 it was the second largest private hospital in the country, at 305 patients (not including boarders), slightly smaller than St. Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton and twice the size of the Friends’ Retreat in York, which housed 156.4 Boarders were an unusual but significant feature: voluntarily residing at the asylum, and taking advantage of its atmosphere, medical supervision and provisions, these men and women were often on the cusp of mental illness, suffering from stress or depression or simply unable to cope with a particular event or pressure. About a third were able to recover quickly, thus avoiding the stigma of certification. Others remained as long-term residents or were transferred to full-patient status. In time the asylum also catered for patients who had been declared well, but wished to remain within the familiar walls of the institution. The early reports confirm that, while most of the patients admitted were of ‘good social position’, the majority of applications were for free or low rates.5 Anna Shepherd’s comparison between the Holloway Sanatorium and its near neighbour, Brookwood Pauper Asylum, illuminates some of the key differences in the day-to-day running of the institution. The different social class of patients led to a new approach towards managing patient time and occupation. Brookwood successfully implemented work

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programmes as part of moral therapy. Holloway also attempted this, but manual labour was alien to most patients.6 In its place, the Officers at Holloway had a ‘stronger emphasis on recreation as a therapeutic device’: amusements were more frequent, more extravagant and not restricted to the space and talents of the asylum. The difference was also to be found in medical treatments: as Shepherd notes, ‘at Holloway, innovative treatments included massage, electricity and shower baths and medical staff used a wider range of chemical therapies on a regular basis than at Brookwood’.7 In many ways, though, the principles were the same. Patients needed structure and occupation, and the core values of respectability and morality were woven through the principles of management at both institutions, as elsewhere. The Holloway Sanatorium shared many of the characteristics of both public and private institutions in its carefully landscaped grounds, airing courts, recreation rooms and chapel. The Sanatorium’s management followed many of the principles established in other institutions, but with the needs of its particular class of patients. The importance of occupying the patients was carried over into the duties of staff, and small numbers of additional staff were employed specifically as ‘companions’. Whereas the nursing staff, manual workers and attendants were often drawn from the lower classes, the companions were genteel, employed for their moral and social standing. The surroundings and programme were intended to promote a sense of normality, and the companions were essential to this, participating along with the patients in entertainments and everyday life. One of the early reports noted that ‘Most of these subordinate officials possess musical or artistic tastes, which are of advantage in promoting the comfort of the patients and borders [sic]’.8 One such companion was Louisa Fowle, the daughter of a clergyman who was appointed in 1894 and ‘accomplished in drawing, dancing and needlework, spoke French fluently, played tennis and was reputedly a good organist and pianist. She was employed on a salary of £30 per annum, once it was established that she would also become the sanatorium’s organist and train the choir’.9 Extensive sporting facilities, classes in arts and handicrafts and opportunities for excursions were offered, including visits to theatres and amusements in London and Windsor, and the races at nearby Epsom and Ascot.10 The link between recreation and wellbeing was made from the outset. Excursions, in particular, were marked out as ‘curative agents’ and carriages and horses bought for the use of the patients.11 Wealthier patients might bring servants or family members and could make their

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own arrangements for activities; patients were given considerable freedom to visit local shops or walk in the surrounding countryside. Shepherd notes the resulting tension between patients’ high status and resulting independence, and the need to exercise control in order to ensure safety and security. The accounts reflect the commitment to a lavish scheme of entertainments; from £36 18s 11d spent on amusements in 1886 to over £100 in 1887, spending increased steadily to over £500 in 1895 and over £800 in 1898.12 The initial reports also include reference to music, offering the hope that ‘an endeavour will be made to form an instrumental band among the members of the staff’.13 By the 1880s this was common practice at pauper asylums and so it seems natural that the Holloway Sanatorium, with its use of the larger institutions as an operating model, should follow. However, the reports do not confirm the creation of a band until 1888, when the Medical Superintendent’s Report notes that ‘a string band was formed from the members of the staff’.14 While some activities were similar to those found at pauper asylums, therefore, others continued to reflect the different status of the sanatorium’s patients. The same year saw another new innovation in the form of a table d’hôte dinner hosted by the Assistant Medical Officers and companions, followed by tea and music.15 By the mid-1890s recreational activities were firmly under the remit of the two senior medical officers, again confirming the close relationship between day-to-day activity and therapeutic regime. William David Moore (1858–1926), a former international rugby player, county cricketer, and ‘a golfer of repute’ took charge of the sporting activities while Dr. Little commandeered the indoor amusements, although in time it was Dr. Moore that proved an important addition to musical activity.16 Little had transferred from Worcester asylum in 1888 and no doubt brought his experience of the rich musical and theatrical activity at that institution. Other prominent staff members included Dr. R.L.S. Nuthall, who had arrived from Hanwell Asylum in August 1890 as a junior assistant and was promoted in 1895 to Senior Assistant Medical Officer. The Medical Superintendent’s Report for that year commended his participation, recording ‘He has freely used his musical ability for the advantage of the patients, and as captain of the football team he has trained and brought forward some promising players’.17 The 1893 Report notes sixteen concerts had been given during the year, including six smoking concerts, together with thirty dances held weekly during the winter period.18 In 1894 concerts of sacred music

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were held in addition on Sundays, between tea and dinner.19 Full lists of entertainments are included in the annual reports from 1895 and include concerts, smoking concerts, concerts of sacred music, entertainments and theatricals.20 During the summer, activities were almost exclusively confined to sporting events, picnics and excursions, at which the band might perform. Informal musical activity took place in the ladies’ quarters on a regular basis, mimicking the salons and soirées that might be organised by ladies of the social position found among Sanatorium patients, and to which suitable gentlemen patients might be admitted. In this case, in contrast with the visiting performers of the organised entertainments, it was the patients themselves providing much of the entertainment. The 1894 Report recorded ‘A musical reception was held every spare evening by the ladies in the drawing-rooms from 8 to 9.30. The amount of musical talent among the ladies caused these receptions to be much appreciated’.21 Programmes from the Sunday ‘Musical Hours’ were printed in the Sanatorium’s periodical, St Ann’s Magazine, during 1895. The writer commented that ‘On three Sunday afternoons Dr. Moore and those whose names appear in the following programmes have delighted us with varied selections of Sacred Music. On each occasion, Miss Ginsburg kindly rendered valuable assistance’.22 As a gentle recreation for the Sabbath, the form and content of these concerts contrasted markedly with the glees and songs of the concerts held elsewhere. The programmes also contained a number of items specific to the spiritual character of the event, as in this example from 10 March: 1. Pianoforte solo ‘Lieder Ohne Worte’ Mendelssohn—Miss Laumann 2. Song ‘Caro Mio Ben’ Old Italian—Miss Marchant 3. Quartette ‘God is a Spirit’ Sterndale Bennett—Miss Cornaby, Miss Triphook, Dr. Moore, and Mr. Smyly 4. Pianoforte solo ‘3rd Concerto’ Sterndale Bennett—Miss Webb 5. Duet ‘God setteth fast the Mountains’ Smart—The Misses Triphook 6. Song ‘The Chorister’ Sullivan—Miss Cornaby 7. Duet (organ and pianoforte) ‘Largo’ Handel—Miss Fowle and Miss Laumann 8. Quartette ‘Whosoever drinketh of this Water’ Field—Miss Cornaby, Miss Triphook, Dr. Moore, and Mr. Smyly 9. Song ‘Tears’ Cowen—Miss Marchant 10. Song ‘Lead, kindly light’ Sullivan—Miss Ginsburg. Hymn 193, ‘Jesu, Lover of my soul’

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Little information is available about the staff named here, save for a note to identify Mr Smyly as one of the gentlemen companions. The list of events from March 1895 illustrates the variety of musical activities on offer at the Holloway sanatorium, but also underlines the more genteel, refined nature in contrast to the dances and entertainments held elsewhere. Tuesday 12th Sunday 17th

Monday 18th Sunday 24th

Thursday 28th

Sunday 31st

‘Songs of the West’ in Character and Costume. Morning Service, Anthem: Hymn 47, ‘Hark! A thrilling Voice is sounding!’. Musical Hour, Recreation Hall. Irish Songs and Glees in Music Room, Ladies’ Side by Miss Laumann, Miss Cornaby, Dr. Moore, Mr. Smyly and others. Morning Service. Solo Anthem ‘Come unto Me all ye that labour’ (Ignace Gibson), Miss Marchant. Musical Hour in Recreation Hall. ‘Concert in Recreation Hall: Miss Webb, Miss Cornaby, Rev. S. F. Vickers, Mr. A.J. Vickers, Mr. John Raynolds, Dr. Moore, and Mr. Smyly. Morning Service. Anthem ‘He was despised’ (Handel), Miss Marchant.

It is clear that the activities centred around the chapel and Sunday observance made up an important part of the musical experiences of patients and staff during this period. Although music was a key feature of religious practice elsewhere, at the Sanatorium it appears to have become a core element. It is also clear that the contributions of staff were essential to the music on offer. In addition to the recreation room, pianos were kept in a number of communal rooms on the men’s side. In around 1900 the dining room held a seven-octave upright piano, the No. 4 Ward sitting room housed another seven-octave upright, and the day room in the separate ‘Retreat’ accommodation was furnished with a seven-octave semi-grand piano in a mahogany case.23 The recreation hall housed a seven-octave grand in walnut, together with various music stands and holders, a ‘cello, guitar, big drum, bass violin and saxhorn. On the female side, no piano is listed in the smaller day rooms but the gymnasium contained a seven-octave upright, a six-octave semi-grand and a barrel organ with five stops.24 This is perhaps the ‘drawing room’ referred to as the location for musical evenings. The room was obviously used for a variety of purposes—it also held sewing machines and stuffed birds. Gymnastic apparatus included ladders, parallel bars, rings, ropes and vaulting horse. Swedish drill was

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introduced to the sanatorium during the 1890s and it may have been that the exercise routines were accompanied by piano or organ music.25 There is little further information about musical activity within religious services at the Sanatorium. A chapel was added to the Sanatorium’s buildings beginning in 1882, this having become a legal requirement for residential institutions. In his initial report, Philipps detailed the alterations and fittings made by him before the asylum opened in 1885, which included the addition of a ‘bimanual organ by Messrs. Bryceson’ erected in the gallery of the chapel. The organ was moved to the chancel in 1888, at which time choir seats were fixed into position.26 The 1895 Report includes a ‘choir excursion on the river’ (also reported in the St Ann’s Magazine) but there is no previous evidence of a choir in formal reports. The services were initially taken by local clergymen, but by 1887 Philipps recommended appointing a permanent Chaplain, suggesting such a man should be ‘of broad and liberal views, of some musical ability, genial in manner, and earnest in his work, one who can gain the confidence and respect of patients and staff’.27 During the 1890s both band and choir became established, performing regularly and often together. From 1898 the string band formalised its summer performances in a series of weekly promenades, in addition to occasional concerts, and during the winter it continued to play for weekly dances and theatrical performances. Dr. Harper, Assistant Medical Officer from 1895, took on the role of bandmaster.28 In 1899 a new organ was erected in the chapel, and the first large-scale concert combining the choir and band took place in the form of a performance of ‘Christ and his Soldiers’, the sacred oratorio by John Farmer, which was published in 1878.29 The performance was repeated in April 1900.30 In 1906, such ventures obviously proving popular and sustainable, an organ was purchased for the recreation hall in order to allow the choral performances to take place there.31 The total cost, including installation, came to £346 10s. The previous year a new Bechstein grand piano had been purchased for £102 8s. The Sanatorium’s management were clearly willing to spend significant sums on music in order to offer high-quality instruments for the use and enjoyment of patients. By the turn of the century the sanatorium’s resident population had grown to 363 patients and 28 boarders—enough to sustain a significant programme of events. The boarders, in particular, were more able to contribute to sanatorium life than many regular patients. Moore, who had taken over from Philipps as Superintendent in 1899, noted ‘Most

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of the voluntary boarders at present in residence are patients who, on recovery, preferred to remain here. I find them useful in many ways, and they take a prominent part in the social life of the Hospital’.32 The St. Ann’s Magazine, an occasional internal publication, gives a fuller picture of musical life in a surviving issue from December 1896, which includes a retrospective of the year as well as miscellaneous articles providing an irreverent perspective on life at the sanatorium. Music is present in almost every recorded aspect of institutional activity, from the Band of the East Surrey Regiment’s accompaniment to the Athletic Sports day, to the excursions, concerts and theatrical performances which often began with an overture or short piece as a prelude to spoken drama. A river boat excursion to Henley was made with the accompaniment of an on-board piano. Music ‘began at an early hour, a river-side harpist adding his tuneful endeavours to those of our own musicians; for we “took him in”!’, while on the homeward journey, ‘Songs were sung to the accompaniment of the piano, and a penny squeaker (thoughtfully laid in by a musically-inclined member of the party)’.33 Sacred concerts continued on Sunday afternoons during the winter under the direction of the companion Miss Fowle, a Miss Laumann and Dr. Moore. The St Ann’s writer considered these ‘not only very enjoyable, but, from a musical point of view, exceptionally good’.34 Miss Fowle was also responsible for training the choir, who were described as ‘greatly improved’.35 Where secular activity was concerned, formal performances evidently divided into two camps, the one being characterised by visiting performers offering concerts attended by both ladies and gentlemen, the other a more popular variety programme offered to the gentlemen’s smoking concerts.36 The St Ann’s writer unashamedly preferred the second format: The occasional performances given in the Recreation Hall by professional entertainers of the outer world are, no doubt, very agreeable by way of a change, and also because the pleasure is shared by the ladies, who seem to appreciate these “one-horse” shows even more than we men do – and certainly they are sometimes uncommonly good. But as far as we, on this “side,” are concerned, nothing affords us more all-round enjoyment than a good “smoker” with a strong variety programme.37

Variety shows and theatricals were also produced in-house. The April 1895 magazine offered an account of a farce ‘Ici on Parle Francais’, as

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well as a comedy ‘The Coming Woman’, both featuring female companions.38 The 1896 magazine included the programme for an entertainment organised by Miss Fletcher and Miss Chester, of the nursing staff. The entertainment commenced with an overture, ‘San Marco’, by the St. Ann’s Heath String Band, ‘the improvement in whose performance is more marked each time we have the pleasure of listening to it’.39 Part two paired songs and tableaux acted out by staff members. The band was obviously appreciated and a key part of institutional activity, though also a focus for gentle humour. It had expanded to fifteen instruments and was ‘rapidly becoming a powerful and indispensable factor of all entertainments in which music is a sine quâ non—as is generally the case; and as for the Tuesday dances – why, without the band they’d be simply nowhere!’40 Elsewhere in the magazine the band’s amateur status and lack of polish was teased; one contributor wrote ‘We should like to know… Why some members of the band try to play two tunes at the same time. We are not musical, but the effect seems to be as we indicate’.41 Another correspondent complained that the piano in the Hall was a semitone higher than that used in the theatre. The writer suggested. It would be an object of interest for visitors, and, if a brass plate were attached, could be made the vehicle of a few remarks which would confer a pretty considerable importance on the St. Ann’s Heath Orchestra, which it would take them a long time to obtain by their musical performances.42

Set against the overall positive reports the gentle mocking seems harsh. However, it serves as a useful reminder that, as at other institutions, the Holloway band no doubt suffered from changes in personnel, lack of rehearsal time, variable talent and little choice in the instrumental abilities of its players. ∗ ∗ ∗ As at other institutions, there is scant information in the patient case books about the activities and everyday life of those resident at the sanatorium. The vast majority of information focusses—as might be expected—on patients’ mental states and any physical effects or illnesses. Case book entries follow a standard pattern, the preliminary information including date of admission, occupation, religion, family status, etc. being followed by two letters from doctors, friends or relatives outlining the

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case for certification. On admission to the sanatorium, a patients’ physical and mental health were examined and recorded. Subsequent records were made over the following days and weeks, reducing to every few months after the patient had been in residence for some time. The female case books reveal that women were generally occupied with reading and needlework. Generally educated women, occupations are recorded as governesses, gentlewomen and ‘without occupation’. Many women had been at other institutions prior to moving to Holloway, including Bethlem and York Retreat. Occasional references are made to housework, ‘useful occupation’, pantry work and many references are made to doing needlework ‘if it is put in their hands’. Only a few women are recorded as attending the dances and other entertainments. Ellen Louisa Manthorp is one such example: admitted on 29 September 1885 age 33, she was a married gentlewoman with a mental state described as ‘weak minded, but memory is fair’.43 Shortly after admission the medical officer noted that Manthorp ‘seems to enjoy the dances very much, clings affectionately to any body she may be dancing with’.44 In this instance, however, the opportunity for mixing with the opposite sex through the controlled environment of the dance exposed a serious moral flaw, linked with mental degradation: ‘she is inclined to behave in a shameless and at times most indecent manner when in gentlemen’s society’.45 Agnes Elizabeth Cunningham was also documented as attending the musical activities. Admitted on 3 May 1886 aged 36, single and with no occupation, Cunningham made little progress during her years at the sanatorium; in 1891 the medical officer recorded ‘She remains demented. Does not occupy herself in anyway, but attends the weekly Ball + entertainments’.46 Occasionally a trained musician became a patient, but this background was not always reflected in the detailed records. Admitted 7 February 1887, Carolina Newman, age 41 and married, was listed as a teacher of music. She had previously been a patient at the small private asylums Fairford Retreat and Astwood House. The supposed cause of her mental state was ‘domestic trouble’. The first Certificate records ‘She has an excited and suspicious expression of countenance, believes her food is poisoned, that there are noxious fumes in the room + that unless the windows and doors are both open she will be suffocated. Has attempted to jump from first floor window’.47 The record makes no mention of musical activity at all, which suggests that musical ability was not always matched

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with participation in the recreations on offer. In 1892 the medical officer records that Newman spent her time doing housework and needlework, and playing with rag dolls; the ‘Patient remains weakminded, but able to make herself very useful’.48 When musical activity is specifically mentioned, it could be a sign of control and peace-of-mind or a symbol of derangement. One of the first female patients admitted to the sanatorium, Stella Marion James, was certified on 13 August 1885, aged 27. She arrived ‘In a state of Dementia. She sits and takes no notice of any of her surroundings. Utters a few words incoherently occasionally. She is rather stout’.49 A subsequent report on 1 September indicated no improvement: ‘Has grown several degrees fatter than she was when under reporters care at Wonford. At present she is in a state of dull stupor. Does not take the slightest interest in anything occurring around her. Sits or lies on the sofa all day doing absolutely nothing’.50 However, when James’s mental state began to change it was signalled by her engagement with music. The same report continued ‘Patients [sic] tendency is to be in the above state for months at a time, when she will suddenly change into a most lovely condition, dances and sings + plays the piano all day long. At these times she becomes somewhat eratic [sic]’.51 The pattern continued: on 27 November the record states ‘Since last report has livened up somewhat, but not to such a degree as formerly. She talks a little and plays the piano, but is too fat for any energetic display of exuberance of spirits’.52 However, the connection between music and an improved mental state was not to last: by the following March we are told ‘Has wakened up suddenly, is very objectionably lively now, dances about + sings at night keeping other patients awake’.53 James continued to sway between violent activity and lethargy; in April 1889, she is recorded as ‘Suffering from profound dementia, but can play the piano well without music’.54 Later reports indicate, however, that she had fallen further into a state of dementia, unable to occupy herself with anything more than light needlework. In this case music represented both mental clarity and a lack of selfcontrol. At times an engagement with music was the only indication of remaining cognitive faculties, and the only time at which the mind and body were under the control of the patient, allowing her to play the piano. At other times music was the worst extreme of a violent temperament, not only demonstrating a disturbed mind but also disturbing others through singing and dancing. Music was linked to both order and chaos elsewhere in the female case books. Edith Katherine Johnson, admitted

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aged 29 on 23 March 1887, is not recorded as playing any music, but was convinced she had invented a new type of musical keyboard and spent her time writing letters in attempts to have her design filed at the Copyright Office.55 For Alice Mary Pennel, admitted on 26 July 1886 aged 41, music was a rare glimpse of normality and self-control. Alice was admitted with dementia and her admission notes record that she was ‘Frequently incoherent’, ‘unable to answer questions correctly + seems quite deficient in memory both for recent and remote events’.56 After a trip to the seaside in October 1887, the notes record she ‘occasionally seems to waken up when she will play and sing at the piano’, and again in November of the following year she is reported ‘Slightly improved, plays the piano at times’.57 Further entries record in 1890 ‘No change to be reported, when in a period of excitement she will pace the gallery storming about the Devil who is fixed on her back, whilst at other times she will sit quietly down to the piano and render correctly some well known air’.58 In 1892 another entry recorded ‘Patient continues as eccentric as ever, she appears capable of enjoying a joke and sang some bits of comic songs the other day to the guitar’.59 In this example, music represented the only respite from an otherwise demented existence and was clearly linked to improved mental states and moments of lucidity and memory recall. Among the male voluntary boarders, participation in the amusements and activities on offer was closely linked to mental wellbeing. Most voluntary patients were recorded to be suffering from depression, listlessness and anxiety. Some rallied and left after a month or two, while others moved from depression to violence or mania and were certified, then readmitted as patients. ‘Takes little interest in anything’ is a common comment to be found among the depressed patients, and sports and dancing two of the activities most often given as an indication of return to health. The Reverend Denis Moore, for example, who was admitted on 21 October 1891, was a married Church of England Clergyman from Brighton. Moore suffered seizures, but was also depressed and described as weakminded. He was discharged within a month on 18 November, ‘improved by the course of medicine he has had for the month, + expressing himself highly benefited by the social evenings + by the agreeable companions he associated with (both Ladies + Gentlemen) during his month’s stay’.60 Football and cricket were most often cited as activities undertaken by the male boarders, but reports included men taking part in drawing and playing billiards.

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As with the certified patients, male boarders were drawn from the middle classes and occupations included clerks, tradesmen, fruit growers and clergy. Many, however, were listed as unemployed, having been unable to keep a job due to inability to concentrate and lack of energy. Alcoholism was a problem for many male patients. Men were more likely than women to become involved in work, the institution being able to provide opportunities that both fitted their social status and chimed with their previous experiences and skills. Individual case histories reflect on the place of both work and amusements in assessing and monitoring a resident’s mental state. One Bernard Stocks, aged 32, arrived as a boarder on 14 September 1893. The record of 15 December 1895 notes he ‘Has come out of his shell, and joined actively in the amusements of the place. Smoking concerts football etc. is very shy and nervous’.61 Richard Kettle is another example: arriving on 13 April 1896, his initial assessment records he was ‘a little dull and depressed, says he is sure he will recover himself if he stays here for a little while as he has done before’. By August 10 1896 he was ‘working in Stores. Cheerful + joining in the Amusements of the place’, and he left a year later on August 11 1897 ‘much improved’.62 A similar tale is told of Alfred Westcott, a deaf and dumb man who boarded from 1896 and was repeatedly recorded as ‘quiet and employed’. On 28 August 1903 the record gives slightly more information, noting that ‘He joins in all the amusements of the place and works well’; on 21 January 1904 he was described as ‘a clever carpenter and much interested in the entertainments of the place’.63 ‘Joining in’ was clearly a mark of good spirits, overcoming depression and a return to normal life, strongly contrasting with the lethargy and apathy of most boarders. As we have seen elsewhere, participation in entertainments was frequently linked to emergence from a depressive state. Participation also included the observance of normal social protocol at events such as dances. One patient, Charles James Barclay Milne, a young, single man admitted on 19 February 1892, was reported as much improved, but his disinclination to attend dances or to join the female boarders for social evenings remained as a sign of mental instability. The 20 April 1892 Report recorded. Patient has much improved: is in good bodily condition. His depression is not so great though it is still present to a slight degree. He converses more readily with the others + is much more cheerful; He is well read

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+ his intellectual faculties are good. When reporter asks him however to come to the dances or to go over to the Ladies’ side during the evenings he at once refuses saying it is not the place for him. He joins readily in a rubber at cards with other Gentlemen + amuses them much with his scotch anecdotes, which he seems to have a good collection of. He plays well in the cricket matches + practices + is becoming more companionable. He has ceased his sighing entirely. He is sleeping + taking his food well.64

Unfortunately, the improvement was short lived: on 6 May 1892 the record states ‘This morning patient left + he jumped in front of a train on Chertsey line + was killed’.65 Only a couple of entries in the male boarders case books give specific mention of music. As was the case with the female patients, music appears in two guises: as an indication of control and collaboration, and as a sign of madness. Arthur Goodman Bostock, who was suffering from depression following a serious fall, was described shortly after his arrival in October 1891: ‘Walks about the airing court quietly singing + laughing to himself + making various facial contortions… Plays football regularly and takes his food well’.66 Elsewhere music was a cause, rather than a symptom, of mental illness. In an unusual detail, Herbert Walter Cranwell’s notes reveal that ‘He often sighs greatly, + says music affects him very much; recalling to his mind past events + making him weep’.67 Occasionally references to boarders’ musical abilities are made, though these are rarely followed up with any information about performances, participation or the relationship between their musical activities or abilities and their state or treatment. Reginald Hambly, who was admitted on June 21 1894, had previously been a patient at the sanatorium.68 Age 21, single and a student, he is described as of ‘unsettled religion’. Hambly perhaps suffered from the weakness of mind and inability to focus so common among the male boarders: on 24 August 1896 his notes state ‘He employs himself in the Carpenters shops, but is uncertain + frequently disinclined to work. Is a talented musician, but is not sufficiently persevering’. Similarly, on 1 June 1897 he is recorded as ‘Weak + unstable. Very disinclined to work. His chief employment is with the band’.69 Unfortunately there are no further records which might indicate the extent of Hambly’s involvement with the band, nor whether the ensemble’s membership habitually included patients as well as attendants. This was certainly not common practice at other asylums, but the different perhaps points to the unusual circumstances surrounding the boarders at

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Holloway. Neither fully fit not sufficiently ill to be certificated as patients, they added a new element, particularly to the social activities of the institution, and were no doubt also partly responsible for the rich musical life led by patients as detailed in the pages of the St Ann’s magazine. In both males and females, then, music and participation in musical activity represented a range of states, in some cases signifying rare moments of lucidity and in others indicating mental disturbance. The evidence from the Holloway case books only serves to underline music’s potentially difficult position with regard to mental illness and the lunatic asylum. Noise could indicate illness, while music denoted presence of mind. Singing was often mad, but playing the piano sane. Music operated within strict social norms and straying away from these could indicate mental instability. The Holloway Sanatorium was unusual in maintaining a permeable wall between the mad and the rest of the world, through its open policies and the opportunities afforded for voluntary boarders. In a similar way, it allows us to view the careful ways in which music was balanced within asylum life.

Notes 1. Anna Shepherd, Institutionalizing the Insane in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), 16. 2. Ibid., 45. 3. 1886 Report, 8. 4. 1891 Report, 59. 5. Ibid., 9. 6. Report 1887, 10. 7. Shepherd, Institutionalizing the Insane, 10. 8. Report 1888, 29. 9. Shepherd, 63. 10. Report 1887, 10. The Medical Superintendent’s Report claimed ‘No week has passed without an entertainment of some kind or other’. 11. Report 1887, 10. 12. See Annual Accounts reproduced in General Committee Minutes. 13. 1888 Report, 10. 14. 1889 Report, 28. 15. Ibid. 16. 1893 Report, 89. Sports included cricket (men and women), tennis, archery, golf, croquet, athletics and football; hockey and ice skating were added the following winter.

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17. 1895 Report, 115. It has not proved possible to locate further information on either Dr. Little or Dr. R.L.S. Nuthall. 18. 1893 Report, 89. 19. 1894 Report, 101. 20. 1895 Report, 114. 21. Ibid. 22. St Ann’s Magazine April 1895, 71. 23. 2620/6/14–15 An Inventory of the Furniture & Effects at Holloway’s Sanatorium Virginia Water: Male Division vols. 1–2. 24. 2620/6/16 An Inventory of the Furniture & Effects at Holloway’s Sanatorium Virginia Water: Female Division. 25. See 1894 Report, 101. 26. 1888 Report, 28. 27. 1887 Report, 20. 28. 1898 Report, 147. 29. 1899 Report, 157, 160. 30. 1900 Report, 174. 31. 1906 Report, 237. 32. 1900 Report, 173. 33. St Ann’s An Occasional Magazine Written at St. Ann’s Heath Sanatorium, Virginia Water. Christmas 1896 (2620/6/23), 11–13. 34. Ibid., 16. 35. Ibid., 34. 36. Ibid., 16. 37. Ibid. 38. St Ann’s Magazine April 1895, 76–77. 39. St Ann’s Magazine Christmas 1896, 19. 40. Ibid., 16. 41. Ibid., 36. 42. Ibid., 41–42. 43. Case-book A: Females. Certified patients admitted August 1885– December 1887 (Wellcome Closed stores WMS 2 Shelfmark: MS 8159), 13, 1 October 1885, accessed at https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b19 129932. 44. Ibid., 10 October 1885. 45. Ibid., 31 October 1887. 46. Ibid., 29–30, 22 February 1891. 47. Ibid., 77. 48. Ibid., 78, 30 May 1892. 49. Ibid., 1, 19 August 1885. 50. Ibid., 1 September 1885. 51. Ibid., 2. 52. Ibid., 27 November 1885.

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53. Ibid., 20 March 1886. 54. Ibid., 3, 12 April 1889. 55. One such letter survives in the case files, which begins by explaining that she has sent copies of her design for a new keyboard to various people in order to have it filed at the Copyright Office. However, most of the letter concerns her detention against her will at the Sanatorium, and there is no further detail on the keyboard design. The medical note for 6 August 1895 reads ‘Is very lazy, cannot be made to do useful work, but writes letters similar to annexed + covers bits of newspaper with music, which she says is a new key-board she is inventing + wishes to have published’. See Ibid., 86. 56. Ibid., 130. 57. Ibid., 131, 31 October 1887 and 9 November 1888. 58. Ibid., 31 January 1890. 59. Ibid., 132, 15 May 1892. 60. Male voluntary patients admitted June 1891-March 1897 (Wellcome MS 5162), 17, accessed at https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b19077701. 61. Ibid., 95. 62. Ibid., 263. 63. Ibid., 309. 64. Ibid., 35–36. 65. Ibid., 36. 66. Ibid., 2 November 1891, 9. Arthur was single and a student at Cambridge on his admission on 1 October 1891. 67. Ibid., 27 June 1890, 48. Herbert was a single man, aged 39, who was employed as an assistant in his father’s carpet business. There is no further indication of reasons why music might have had such a notable effect on his mental state, nor any additional entries making reference to his complaint. 68. Ibid., 149. 69. Ibid.

PART IV

Conclusion

CHAPTER 13

Conclusion

Most asylums operating in nineteenth-century England offered a rich diet of musical opportunities, which by the end of the century encompassed concerts, dances and music in religious worship, as well as smaller and adhoc music making. What has been less easy to ascertain is the standards of musical performance (much of which was by amateurs), the experiences of patients and the extent to which this formed a meaningful part of the therapeutic activity of the asylums. Similarities in practice were supported by professional networks, visiting, career moves between institutions, and the work of the Commissioners in Lunacy. At the same time, local differences developed due to the locations and resources of asylums, their staffing (particularly the talents and interests of management), financial situation, patient population and size. Despite accessing a wide range of sources in order to address the role of music in day-to-day life and to move beyond the broad structural elements of the asylum network, this study is still largely missing the patient and lower-class voice. Music was encouraged within the asylums for medical, moral and social reasons. It was suitable as an amusement for illiterate and immobile patients, it supported exercise, and was connected to mental stimulation via its reputation as a ‘rational recreation’. It was central to the structural aspect of moral management and often a fixed point (or set of points) in the weekly schedule that helped regulate the rhythm of asylum life © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3_13

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and could be used as incentive or reward. It offered an efficient means of entertainment for large groups at little extra cost, particularly where the musical talents of officers, attendants and family members could be utilised. As well as benefitting patients, it entertained and occupied attendants in an appropriate manner. It allowed asylums to emulate the outside world, preparing patients for rehabilitation, as well as providing a link to local communities, functioning as an important means for engaging local support. And even when its links with moral management and patient wellbeing were not elaborated, it retained a status of something more than a form of entertainment. Other aspects of the asylum context mitigated against the introduction and use of music. In many cases, the spaces and finances available meant it was impossible to gather patients together for concerts or dances; in some cases this was a deliberate policy of not spending public funds on activities considered frivolous or unnecessary. Practical problems also included the availability of attendants and nurses, and the quick turnover of staff; the size of facilities such as the chapel or recreation hall meant music was often restricted to a selection of patients. Religious and moral objections at York and Wakefield restricted the use of music, as did the moral-medical opinions of authors such as Samuel Tuke, who advocated small, family-sized groups rather than large gatherings. Others expressed concerns about over-excitement, the short-lived nature of improvements, and anything that was not in keeping with a patient’s class or status. Indeed, in some cases music was directly associated with the cause or symptoms of mental illness. Thus music struck a careful balance between practical considerations, medical, religious and moral viewpoints, and the individual resources of asylums and their management. Despite the very real differences between institutions, locations, and individual management approaches, it is possible to trace a broad trajectory summarising music’s place in asylums across the nineteenth century. Most institutions introduced music in one form or another within the first half of the century; some boasted of regular dances and concerts, while others relied on the presence of individual patients or staff members for informal music making. In the 1850s and 1860s formal bands were gradually instituted, moving from paid external musicians to trained attendants, and the weekly dance became a more commonplace feature. Choirs and organs were more dependent on both the influence of the chaplain and the spaces available; many institutions relied on hired organs or harmoniums and lacked dedicated space for religious observance

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until purpose-built chapels became mandatory in the late-1880s. Choirs, like bands, were also susceptible to the changing availability of attendants. Visiting performers also formed a part of the regular schedule of events, the network of asylum institutions offering an important source of employment to some itinerant acts. Other more localised provision included singing classes, glee and madrigal clubs, chamber music or small-scale musical ventures, and the individual provision of instruments including pianos. Once established, music making generally continued to flourish, though with less attention paid to its sustainability. Some asylums saw continued innovation, with moves into theatre or large-scale performances; at others the increased interest in the physical treatment and understanding of insanity meant other forms of moral management were given less attention. An obituary of Sir Edward Marriott Cooke (1852–1931), Medical Superintendent at Worcester and subsequently Commissioner in Lunacy, sums up the later period: the author reflects ‘It was often Cooke’s lament, later on as a Commissioner, that in these matters of occupation, of amenities and comforts in the wards, of amusements, of the maintenance of a good band and a well-trained choir, many mental hospitals are not so enthusiastic as they once were’.1 Music was rarely considered in the journals that accompanied the professionalisation of psychiatry, and scientific consideration of the relationship between music and medicine in the 1890s gave little attention to the ways in which music was already embedded in moral management practice. The asylum network was one of the most significant supporters of working-class music making in nineteenth-century Britain, notable for its geographic spread and audience reach. Asylums were responsible for training many amateur bandsmen, offering employment to others, and disseminating the more popular forms of music to a wide cohort often spread across a range of classes and backgrounds. With over a hundred asylums in operation by the end of the century, and many housing over a thousand patients, the network also provided important employment opportunities to itinerant musicians and miscellaneous acts. With the average asylum band numbering between 15 and 30 performers, and around 50% of patients regularly attending dances and other musical events, this accounts for over 2,000 performers and a distributed audience of around 50,000. Although some asylums remained relatively set apart from their surrounding communities, others made important connections, often in the area of music and theatre. The facilities associated with

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music further extended the asylums’ reach, providing performance spaces for local groups and allowing external visitors to join the institutions’ own productions. Significant differences emerged between pauper and private asylums, both in the entertainments themselves, and the ways in which they were described or discussed. In the pauper asylums, music focussed around large-scale provision via the band and chapel, with the later addition of theatres and concerts in some institutions. Performers were largely drawn from the working-class attendants, with some trained up specifically for participation in these ensembles. The type of music provided matched the large-scale nature of the institutions, the small number of officers and their usual isolation from centres of population. The smaller private asylums differed in all these respects. Smaller patient numbers and proportionately higher levels of staff (including educated staff such as lady companions) meant more intimate musical events were a possibility, also mimicking the drawing-room concerts of the middle and upper classes that emerged as fashionable through the nineteenth century. The higher-class patients and staff also brought their own musical accomplishments, together with instruments and experience; the families and friends of patients and staff also brought their own accomplishments and connections, as well as practical assistance in procuring instruments or sponsoring performers. Finally, as high-profile institutions often situated within easy reach of towns and cities, private asylums were often within visiting distance for professional soloists and groups. Although pauper asylums began to be included on touring schedules for professional groups towards the end of the nineteenth century, the differences in size and nature of the two sets of institutions, together with increasing social class associations with musical genres, meant a division of repertoire. Pauper asylums were far more likely to link music and other entertainments with a therapeutic agenda, and particularly with the notion that listening to, or participating in, music could lead patients to develop self-control. The records from private asylums show music more readily associated with entertainment and enjoyment. While the differences are marked, this difference is largely to do with the ways in which reporting took place. It is likely that pauper asylum reports emphasised the therapeutic benefits of music and other entertainments in order to justify the public cost of such events. It does not follow that the benefits of music were entirely invented. Conversely, it is possible that private asylums emphasised the homely nature of their care to reassure anxious friends

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and family about the suitable social and cultural elements of patient life in those institutions. The difference in treatment was noted by an anonymous reviewer writing in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal in 1826. In a piece largely concerned with the asylum at Aversa in Italy, the author writes. In English mad houses, much reliance is placed in affording means of employing or amusing the convalescents. With this view, we provide the lower classes with the means of following their ordinary trades and occupations, while we offer to the rich the recreation of cultivating a garden, or reading in a library.2

The distinctions continued throughout the nineteenth century. In the case of music, however, there was a significant overlap in activity: both pauper patients and middle- and upper-class residents were entertained and occupied with in-house and visiting bands and musical acts. Similarities in the use of music between pauper and private institutions reflect music’s versatile status as both rational or improving, and entertaining. Music, particularly in the form of the dance and in religious observance, cut across class boundaries, offering shared experiences to patients and staff from a variety of backgrounds. The contrasts between pauper and private institutions also highlight the differences in the ways in which music was pursued and experienced across the spectrum of social class. In each set of institutions, the emphasis was on providing a suitable situation for the class of patients in residence, recreating the types of environments familiar to patients as well as the appropriate social opportunities. Music helped foster this sense of familiarity, often referred to as homeliness, as well as establishing the relevant social norms, constructing and enhancing the patterns of behaviour required for rehabilitation. Jonathan Andrews and Anne Digby contend that ‘strictly demarcated recreational and occupational activities’ were among the ‘sites where we might find signs of a significant role for class identity/consciousness among the pauper/private insane’.3 Where pauper patients were largely expected to conform to the strict behaviour of the dance or chapel service with little recourse to individual music making, patients from the middle and upper classes experienced more freedom, organising small gatherings or enjoying access to instruments within their own quarters. The autonomy of private patients can be further seen in

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the development of patient magazines and clubs and especially reflects the inclusion of voluntary patients at a number of private institutions. The examples discussed in my case studies also see music affirming gender roles. Bands and minstrel troupes were comprised of male attendants; female wives and daughters found roles in choirs and as organists, though not exclusively, as both men and women were employed as organists and chapel choirs might be all-male.4 At the private and charitable institutions, musical soirées were hosted by fashionable women while male patients enjoyed smoking concerts of an altogether less-genteel nature. At the same time, the carefully managed spaces of dances, concerts and chapel services were often the only times when male and female patients were allowed to mix. The close association between music and dance in the asylum calls for methodological reflection. As in the engraving which fronts this volume, the dance provided a vivid image of the asylum patients reacting to the music in an embodied form. There is no doubt that the physicality of the dance matched with the aural experience of music to place the asylum ball at the forefront of the provision of entertainment in many institutions. The weekly, or fortnightly, dance also offered the best showcase for the asylum’s work and was more frequently the subject of newspaper reports and the context for external visits. Although in many cases the band also performed in concerts and alongside other events, numerous accounts focus on the patients’ physical reflex response to the music, and it is in the dance that we see both the role of behavioural codes, and the potential for therapeutic benefit, reported most regularly. Is the example of the asylum band and dance therefore a case of dance, rather than music, therapy? We can be sure that the patients were responding to the music, even if it was the physical sensation of dancing that proved to have therapeutic value. Dance represented the behavioural response to music that demonstrated effective self-control. The association of music with dance also raises the question of whether music ought to be considered a physical or a mental stimulant. The broader relation of moral management to the physical and mental was complex: William A.F. Browne suggested ‘we cannot reach the mind when employing purely psychical means, when bringing mind to act upon mind, except through material organs’.5 Mental disease, he suggested, was ‘a symptom, an expression, of morbid changes in our bodies’.6 Yet in the same publication he stated ‘Moral treatment may be defined— every mode by which the mind is influenced through the mind itself;

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in contradistinction to medical treatment, in which the mind is acted upon remotely by material agents, and through the body’.7 At the same time, the early nineteenth century saw a shift in the conception of musical perception from the physical to the mental, at the same time as music became more closely associated with emotions. Wiebke Thormählen traces a growing separation between dance and functional music, given a lower status, and ‘pure’ music, independent of social function.8 In the case of the dance, it is the bodily engagement with music that is most clear. Accounts of concerts also mention patients responding physically, and chapel music involved both listening and involvement via singing. Thus in many ways music was an embodied, material aspect of asylum culture and the therapeutic environment. Elsewhere, Thormählen shows that listening to music has different psychiatrical and emotional effects from partaking in music making.9 It is likely, by extension, that dancing to music again has a different set of effects, perhaps located between the production and the reception of music, due to the physical and communal activity of dance, which combines musical listening with active response and engagement. Music was linked with both cure and control. The association of patient wellbeing with appropriate behaviour and self-control applied equally to musical events, where good behaviour was rewarded with attendance and further encouraged within managed social situations. Was music acting as a therapeutic agent in these cases? Within the Victorian practices of moral management, yes: it formed part of the regular structure so key to patient wellbeing, it formed a context for social engagement and interaction, it supported connections between patients and staff through shared experiences, it relieved monotony, boredom and depression, and it offered a carefully controlled link to the social and cultural world outside the asylum. Rarely, if ever, was the personalised approach to musical choice and exposure outlined by some of the early advocates of moral management achieved. Nor do we have much indication of the efficacy of music as a therapeutic tool, beyond the generalised effusiveness of official reports and anecdotal evidence. Music largely had a social and structural function: a way of occupying— or controlling—large groups of paupers with limited resources, providing rehabilitation opportunities, and a good means for liaising with the local Committee and society. Yet the care and expense given to musical activity, its pervasiveness through the asylum network, and the breadth of literature connecting it with mental and medical wellbeing, surely point to

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belief in a positive impact. Music was perhaps not a formal therapy, but it was a means of building community, giving meaning and structure, and of improving lives—and in these senses its therapeutic value cannot be underestimated. The identification of music as a form of controlling mechanism speaks, of course, to the mid-twentieth-century theories and discourses surrounding the nineteenth-century asylum most prominently developed by Michel Foucault. His construction of the asylum as a means of oppression and the subjugation of the lower classes painted moral management as a tool of social and cultural repression.10 Foucault drew together the medical history of psychiatry with its sociological and ideological context. In many ways the uses of music reflect the need to occupy large numbers of patients in an efficient manner; evidence shows that the training of internal bands was undertaken as a cost-saving measure, and that the dance and concert were considered effective means of engaging patients in the absence of work. Yet at the same time music represented considerable freedoms for patients, and the goal of self-control was a milestone on the route to recovery, discharge and rehabilitation. The duality of ‘order’ and ‘pleasure’ described at Bethlem during a festive celebration of 1843 captures the essential paradox. The author concludes, ‘Nothing could exceed the order which prevailed, and the pleasure which was then communicated’: from the perspective of management, order and control were aligned with pleasure and enjoyment, and music offered both.11 The ‘order’ of behavioural norms associated with musical experience may have been a form of oppression for some patients, but for others it allowed for emotions and experiences otherwise denied. More broadly, the restitution of mental order, physical wellbeing and moral stability via moral management led to a patient suitable for carrying those values back into society. These paradoxes feed back into our conception of moral management as a benign yet powerful tool, and further into an understanding of the balance between order, control and wellbeing that permeated many aspects of Victorian society. F.M.L. Thompson’s work on socialisation, social control and agency helps further delineate the ways in which histories of class and society need to take care when invoking the idea of control. The types of socialisation and social control to be found among asylum patient cohorts—focussed on morality, good behaviour and self-control—are strikingly similar to many other aspects of Victorian society explored by historians, most

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notably educational reform.12 Yet, as Thompson suggests, improvements in working-class ‘social habits’ were due to a range of factors, including the discipline of regular work and provision of structured recreational opportunities, improved living standards and elements such as increased policing, welfare and public health.13 He also cites the cultural agency of the working classes, which included ‘self-respect, self-help, and self-discipline’: ‘Cleanliness’, for example, ‘was not necessarily simply a bourgeois habit imposed upon, or taught to, the working classes. It was also a habit which some working-class groups were perfectly capable of discovering for themselves and valuing in its own right as one of the attributes of decent and respectable living’.14 Thompson takes the example of organised sport, which was promoted and supported by the middle classes, but quickly adopted by the working classes as a ‘ruling passion’ and ‘as an important part of their own self-determined culture’.15 The development of music in pauper asylums can be construed in a similar way. Although the introduction of music was the responsibility of the institutions’ middle-class, professional management, the musical genres which formed the core of secular practice were those more closely associated with the working classes: the brass or wind band, which flourished in working-class communities across England and in the military, and the music hall-style variety entertainment. The development of both brass and wind bands were closely connected with rational recreation, part of a drive for morally acceptable occupations, personal improvement and leisure pursuits. Despite these associations, however, the music available to patients in pauper asylums was largely of a popular character, confirming the slippery nature of music’s rational, moral and therapeutic identities. The emphasis on the moral and social influence of music in English asylums contrasts with a more medicalised approach at many continental European institutions. The examples explored in Chapter 1 suggest a systematised approach to music as a therapy, both in theory and practice, at a number of continental asylums which was absent in England.16 Although there was significant interest in the science of music throughout the century, and most notably from the 1860s with developments in both physics and evolutionary science, this appears to have had little practice outcome for an understanding of music and/as medicine. Similarly, the developments in neurology and psychiatry that took place in Britain as well as Continental Europe were independent of the work of asylums for the majority of the century. There is little on music in the medical and asylum journals until the 1890s, and it does not appear to have formed a

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topic in Crichton-Browne’s important experimental work of the 1860s– 1870s, despite the inclusion of musical accompaniment at his scientific events.17 Although music in asylums began to form the object of scientific study in the 1890s, along with developments such as Frederick K. Harford’s Guild of St Cecilia, the practice of music as moral therapy or moral management remained largely untheorised. Indeed, the asylums’ preference for dance music and popular concerts is at odds with the early experiments of Harford’s Guild, where soft music was preferred by patients exposed to both ‘lullabies’ and ‘allegros’.18 Why did an individual psychiatry of music not develop in England during the earlier period? Despite plenty of indications that music was justified on the grounds of its therapeutic value, the processes by which music worked on the brain, and the potential for developing a more nuanced approach to the use of music within asylums, were not pursued. For much of the first half of the century, psychiatry remained a nonspecialist medical option, with Medical Superintendents learning within their junior roles and by visiting other institutions. Until the 1840s there was no requirement for trained or accredited physicians to hear asylums, and little sense of professional identity within the group of Superintendents. Both music and psychiatry, among the aspiring middle and upper classes, were resolutely amateur. During the early nineteenth century continental influence—particularly German rationalism—was treated with suspicion and it may well have been that medical advances, though reported in the British press, were seen as alien to the methods become established.19 Despite the identification of moral management as a medical method, most practice remained focussed on general social and behavioural elements. At private asylums, where there may have been capacity for a more individual approach, the formal evidence points even further towards treatment based on comfort, familiarity, social status, and occupation, until the advent of medicinal treatments and physical therapies. The emphasis on order and conformity may also have worked against individualised treatment with music; English pauper asylums, at least, were run on a strictly regulated regime whereby all patients in a certain category were treated similarly. Manual employment might take account of personal preference, but there was precious little other time in the schedule for individual care. The growing use of music in the 1840s coincided with the expansion of patient numbers which also would have mitigated against personal treatment. Occasional notes in the case

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records identify patients who had specific reactions to music, but this does not appear to have led to an increase (or decrease) in exposure. Ongoing debates about music’s dual status, both intellectual-rational and emotional, may also have stymied its further admission into the asylum after the mid-century, with rational thought and empirical science both taking increasingly important guiding roles in the medicalisation of psychiatric care.20 Furthermore, the apparently widespread association of music with the rational and beneficial was not universal: the philosopher Edmund Gurney, for example, argued music ‘music be judged by us directly in relation to pleasure, and … pleasure is the only criterion by which we can measure the relative worth of different specimens of it’.21 At around the same time, with numbers of chronic patients increasing and moral treatment losing support, additional investment in the unproven science of music as therapy was unlikely.22 Although music was present in abundance, and regularly linked with moral management as a therapeutic tool, its use remained relatively unsophisticated well into the twentieth century. Does the position of music in lunatic asylums also give us further information about the ways in which music was considered and used more broadly in nineteenth-century England? I have identified the closed community of the asylum as a form of ‘ideal’ society, built around middle-class norms of order and control; moral management built on this idealism by creating a sanitised and ordered version of the world outside the asylum. Music’s identity as a rational or intellectual form of entertainment must have aided its entry into this space and worked in parallel with forms of musical philanthropy in other contexts. Yet music also had specific meanings for the patients and staff of the asylum. Music was used to articulate temporal structure, delineate spaces and assert gender and class identities. It formed part of systems of reward and incentive and was a key part of the idealised familiarity encompassed by the enclosed institutional world. It also helped navigate social norms by associating with certain behaviours, such as dancing, listening or singing. Transferring these ideas back outside the closed walls of the asylum, we can consider whether an interpretation of music as a form of social mediator is also valuable in a more general sense. There is no doubt that music carried important social signifiers, from the class-based structure of urban concert life, to its use for political and diplomatic ends.23 The potential for music to act as a vehicle for socialisation or social control challenges interpretations of music in both formal and informal settings.

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Similar ideas have been explored by Charles Edward McGuire in relation to Tonic Sol-fa, which was connected with both temperance and missionary movements.24 Philanthropic uses of music also extended into the realm of ‘people’s concerts’, which delivered cultural opportunities to some of the poorest urban areas, often along with missionary activity and practical aid.25 Music was essential to organisations such as the Salvation Army, which combined religious evangelism with social reform. Yet there was a delicate balance between paternalistic generosity and the import of middle-class values via the medium of music, which needs further investigation. The introduction of music as a component of elementary education merits similar questioning.26 Furthermore, we see ways in which music’s power and influence were discussed and used, and where the act of musical performance and listening came under scrutiny. Discussions on music and the brain from the 1870s onwards place significant weight on the relationship between music and language, and the potential hierarchies of musical expression, understanding and technical ability. An important part of this debate was the relative importance of emotion and intellect in musical perception, which drew on matters of education, musical taste and the drive for new musical audiences and identities in the second half of the century. Although this debate originated outside the asylum, many important players in the last two decades of the century drew on asylum experience and began to contribute valuable observational data making use of their status and interests.27 Its place in the asylum suggests that music can be considered to have formed an important wider contribution to the identities, structures and meanings of day-to-day life across classes and contexts. Furthermore, the role and significance of music within the asylum offer new perspectives on matters concerning the philosophy and value of music far beyond the closed walls of the institution. ∗ ∗ ∗ The present study could not exist in isolation from the increasingly important place held by Music Therapy and Music Medicine in modern medical practice, particularly with regard to treatment of mental illness and related conditions. The resources, structures, approached and theoretical underpinnings of modern practitioners are very much removed from the practices of the nineteenth century—many of which evolved somewhat organically, without significant reference to scientific or philosophical

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theory. Indeed, while music often formed part of a therapeutic practice or framework, it would be a stretch to refer to an autonomous ‘music therapy’ within this context. Peregrine Horden notes the ‘major discontinuity’ between music as therapy pre-1950 and the modern Music Therapy profession.28 Nevertheless, drawing parallels and contrasts between the practices of the nineteenth century and modern Music Therapy offers an opportunity to consolidate some of the trends evident from the material. It also invites us to test comparisons—both to note similarities and to affirm differences. For while it is convenient and tempting to make comparisons where possible, the differences in context (both social and medical) mean both resemblances and teleological approaches need careful handling. Is it possible, having examined a variety of asylums and sources in detail, to pursue meaningful dialogue with modern music therapy practices? Many of the more general aspects of music’s use in nineteenth-century asylums do find parallels in modern work. Music’s use as a social tool, via the medium of the dance or the concert, is echoed in Daisy Fancourt’s work on the relationships between emotional states, the nervous system and immunity, with regard to music’s influence. Fancourt identified four elements contributing to biological responses to music: the sound of the music, the physical act of making the music, the social context of making or listening and the personal responses such as memories and emotions.29 Fancourt’s work explores some of the links between modern-day understandings of the chemicals that make up our biological systems, and the responses or emotions that would have been more familiar to nineteenthcentury writers, such as laughter, happiness, joy, and relaxation.30 Some modern studies also use techniques familiar from the nineteenth century, such as the use of recorded music in hospitals examined by Claudius Conrad and colleagues in 2007.31 Conrad et al. cite numerous studies of the effect of music on communications, mental illness, sleep and sedation, anxiety and post-operative rehabilitation across a range of illnesses and conditions. This volume speaks both to Music Therapy and to Music Medicine, a distinction drawn by Daniel Leubner and Thilo Hinterberger in their 2017 review article on recent experiments in therapeutic uses of music.32 While Music Therapy refers to the structured, systematic use of music as therapy carried out by qualified practitioners, music is increasingly used in a range of health contexts by therapists, physicians and scientists. The

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latter, broader field is termed ‘Music Medicine’ and perhaps forms a counterpart to the ‘Health Musicians’—largely working in music rather than formal medicine—discussed by Even Ruud.33 Leubner and Hinterberger note that music has been shown to be effective in patients with dementia, chronic pain with depression, cardiology, insomnia and problems with memory and the immune system, as well as its effect on the conscious and subconscious through popular media such as advertising. This chapter is focussed on depression, and the use of music to address the psychological, physical and social elements of depression is shown to be positive.34 Leubner and Hinterberger consider research into patients of varying cultural backgrounds, ages and settings, as well as therapy taking place in both group and individual contexts; they also examine a range of musical types, including Classical, percussion and jazz, and both passive and active participation by patients. As they conclude, there is plenty of scope for further exploration of these diverse channels. Could the historical study of patients suffering from psychological illness add anything to this debate? There are further possibilities drawn from the world of the nineteenth-century asylum which might offer new avenues. The use of dance, for example, so central to asylum life, and music in religious worship, are two areas for investigation. Both carry the personal associations and social element shown by Leubner and Hinterberger to have featured in successful studies. Furthermore, the uses of music in asylums suggest aspects of the social context of care, the importance of routine and structure, and the roles of both groups and individuals, that invite reflection. The historical grounding of the study of music in asylums further reminds us of the social and cultural contingency of music and its effects. The heavy reliance on the asylum band, dances and concerts was situated in a world where Victorian middle-class values reigned supreme. Although these musical genres chosen for use in asylums may not have been the most familiar to all the patients, they represented both a core repertoire found throughout the country and across class boundaries, and an idealised version of society. Modern approaches, in Music Therapy, Music Medicine and Health Music, are usually more nuanced, taking account of patients’ cultural and personal backgrounds and preferences. The tension explored in my study (and reflecting the different approaches to asylum history), between individual agency and social assimilation, remains an important point for reflection today. Even Ruud emphasises the role of music in the formation (or re-formation) of identity: Music

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Therapy allows patients to transform their own identity, but the choice of music is therefore vital and personal in this process.35 Alan Beveridge’s 2014 reflection on the relationship between history and psychiatry offers a final prompt for considering the ways in which studies such as this, and the modern practice and research of Music Therapy, might interact.36 Beveridge notes the importance of historical contextualisation of psychiatry for his own work. In turn, he suggests that historians might find the expertise and experience of psychiatrists (including their own individual histories) of value. To be sure, the precision of modern psychiatry allows us to interpret the work of nineteenthcentury physicians in ways which escaped their own understanding or vocabulary. The haphazard use of terminology often poor records and generalisations make it challenging to piece together either the theory or practice of those caring for the mentally ill in the nineteenth century. At the same time, tempting as it is to apply modern theory to the extant records, the characters and work of those featured in this volume, as well as the wider body of publications on Victorian asylums, were of their own era, society and culture. Many aspects of human biology and psychology are immutable; others, such as the contextual causes and interpretations of mental illness, are deeply rooted in the time and place of the patient. Beveridge’s experience points to both the benefits of historical study for the modern practitioner, and the value of dialogue and open discussion for the further development of both historical and practical interests. Having opened this volume with a poem expressing the potential of music to move, express and soothe, I close with another powerful example, ‘The Song’ by A.C. Benson (1862–1925). Set to music in 1901 by Edward Elgar (1857–1934), the poet beseeches music to bring the rest and respite absent from earthly life. With his personal experience of music in the Worcester asylum during his most formative years perhaps Elgar, as much as any musician, was deeply aware of the potential of music as a source for social, medical and mental solace. Speak, speak, music, and bring to me Fancies too fleet for me, Sweetness too sweet for me, Wake, wake, voices, and sing to me, Sing to me tenderly; bid me rest. Rest, Rest! ah, I am fain of it! Die, Hope! small was my gain of it!

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Song, take thy parable, Whisper that all is well, Say that there tarrieth Something more true than death. Waiting to smile for me; bright and blest. Thrill, string: echo and play for me All, all that the poet, the priest cannot say for me; Soar, voice, soar, heavenwards, and pray for me, Wondering, wandering; bid me rest.37

Notes 1. The British Medical Journal 31 October 1931, 829–830. 2. Anonymous, ‘Review of Account of the Present State of Medicine in Italy, by Fr. W. Oppenheim’ in Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. XXV no. 87 (April 1826), 448–453: 451. 3. ‘Introduction’ in Jonathan Andrews and Anne Digby (ed.), Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody: Perspectives on Gender and Class in the History of British and Irish Psychiatry (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), 23. 4. The choir at West Riding Asylum included trebles rather than sopranos, drawing on the sons of asylum staff and management. See West Yorkshire Archive Service C85/1399 mounted photos of church choir, 1892, presented to Mr George Brooke on his retirement after 30 years as organist. The photos include 11 boys and 16 men. 5. ‘The Moral Treatment of the Insane: A Lecture’ in Journal of Mental Science Vol. X no. 51 (October 1864), 309–337: 311. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 313. 8. ‘Music and Dance’ in Susan J. Matt (ed.), A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Age of Romanticism, Revolution, and Empire (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 55–74. 9. ‘Framing Emotional Responses to Music: Music-Making and Social WellBeing in Early Nineteenth-Century England’ in Penelope Gouk, James Kennaway, Jacomien Prins and Wiebke Thormählen (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-being (New York: Routledge, 2018), 93–105. 10. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Pantheon, 1965, trans. Richard Howard). 11. 1843 Annual Report, 43. See Chapter 9.

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12. F. M. L. Thompson, ‘Social Control in Victorian Britain’ in The Economic History Review New Series, Vol. XXXIV, no. 2 (May 1981), 189–208: 190–192. 13. Ibid., 195. 14. Ibid., 196. 15. Ibid., 201. 16. See Carmel Raz ‘Music, Theatre and the Moral Treatment: The Casa dei Matti in Aversa and Palermo’ in Laboratoire Italien Vol. XX (published online, 2017); Andrea Korenjak, ‘The Use of Music as a Treatment for Gemüthskrankheit in Nineteenth-Century Viennese Psychiatry’ in Penelope Gouk, James Kennaway, Jacomien Prins and Wiebke Thormählen (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-being (New York: Routledge, 2018), 107–120; James Kennaway, ‘Anna O.’s Nervous Cough: Historical Perspectives on Neurological and Psychological Approaches to Music’ in Penelope Gouk, James Kennaway, Jacomien Prins and Wiebke Thormählen (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-Being (New York: Routledge, 2018), 121–133; and Kramer, Cheryce, ‘Soul Music as Exemplified in Nineteenth-Century German Psychiatry’ in Penelope Gouk (ed.), Musical Healing and Cultural Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 137–148. 17. See Michael Anthony Finn, The West Riding Lunatic Asylum and the Making of the Modern Brain Sciences in the Nineteenth Century (Unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 2012). 18. Harford, ‘Is Exhilarating or Soft Music Best for Invalids?’ in British Medical Journal Vol. II, no. 1605 (October 3, 1891), 770. 19. On resistance to foreign rationalism see Joshua Bennett, ‘A History of “Rationalism” in Victorian Britain’ in Modern Intellectual History Vol. 15, no. 1 (2018), pp. 63–91: 68. 20. Ibid., 74–80. Bennett’s article is focussed on the role of rationalism in the changing status of religious thought, but has broader applications for the development of bourgeois values and their influence on Victorian institutions. 21. Gurney, The Power of Sound (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880), 369. Gurney argued that music had passed the ‘utilitarian stage’, but acknowledged ‘the tremendous social influence which it can exercise’. See ibid., 374. 22. On the waning of moral therapy see Graham D. Bowrey and Ciorstan J. Smark, ‘Measurement and the Decline of Moral Therapy’ in H. Yeatman (ed.), The SInet eBook (Wollongong, Australia: SInet UOW, 2010), 168– 176. 23. On the ‘Class Hierarchy of Concerts’ see Derek B. Scott, ‘Music and Social Class in Victorian London’ in Urban History Vol. 29, No. 1 (2002), 60–73: 61. On the links between music, society and politics see,

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24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

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for example, Phyllis Weliver, Mary Gladstone and the Victorian Salon: Music, Literature, Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Music and Victorian Philanthropy: The Tonic Sol-Fa Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). A comprehensive account is found in Alan Bartley, Far from the Fashionable Crowd: The People’s Concert Society and Music in London’s Suburbs (Newbury: Whimbrel, 2010). See also Simon McVeigh, ‘‘Brightening the Lives of the People on Sunday’: The National Sunday League and Liberal Attitudes towards Concert Promotion in Victorian Britain’ in Sarah Collins (ed.), Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 37–59. Other key publications on philanthropy and the arts in the late nineteenth century include Diana Maltz, British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870–1900: Beauty and the People (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Geoffrey A. C. Ginn, Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). Among recent publications see Erin Johnson-Williams, ‘Musical Discipline and Victorian Liberal Reform’, 15–36, and Rosemary Golding, ‘Music and Mass Education: Cultivation or Control?’, 60–80, both in Sarah Collins (ed.), Music and Victorian Liberalism: Composing the Liberal Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). For example Richard Legge, ‘Music and the Musical Faculty in Insanity’ in Journal of Mental Science Vol. XL no. 170 (July 1894), 368–375; and Herbert Hayes Newington, ‘Some Mental Aspects of Music’ in Journal of Mental Science Vol. XLIII no. 183 (October 1897), 704–723. ‘Commentary on Part V, with Notes on Nineteenth-Century America and on Mesmerism and Theosophy’ in Peregrine Horden (ed.), Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy Since Antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 315–337: 318. Daisy Fancourt, Adam Ockelford and Abi Abebech Belai, ‘The Psychoneuroimmunological Effects of Music: A Systematic Review and a New Model’ in Brain, Behavior and Immunity 36 (2014), 15–26. Fancourt, ‘Understanding Music, Mind and Emotion from the Perspective of Psychoneuroimmunology’ in Penelope Gouk, James Kennaway, Jacomien Prins and Wiebke Thormählen (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-being (New York: Routledge, 2018), 183–184. Claudius Conrad, Hanno Niess, Karl Walter Jauch, Christiane J. Bruns, Wolfgang H. Hartl and Lorenz Welker, ‘Overture for Growth Hormone: Requiem for Interleukin-6?’ in Critical Care Medicine 35 (2007), 2709– 2713.

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32. Daniel Leubner and Thilo Hinterberger, ‘Reviewing the Effectiveness of Music Interventions in Treating Depression’ in Frontiers in Psychology Vol. 8 no. 1109 (2017) https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01109. 33. Ruud, ‘The New Health Musicians’ in R. MacDonald, G. Kreutz, and L. Mitchell (Eds.), Music, Health, and Wellbeing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 95. 34. Leubner and Hinterberger, ‘Reviewing the Effectiveness of Music Interventions’ 17. 35. Ruud, Music Therapy: A Perspective from the Humanities (Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers, 2010), ch. 3. Ruud uses the term to refer to music therapists, music educators and community musicians. 36. ‘The History of Psychiatry: Personal Reflections’ in The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Vol. 44 no. 1 (2014), 78–84. 37. Arthur Christopher Benson, ‘The Song’ from The Professor and Other Poems (London and New York: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1900) set to music as ‘Speak, Music’ by Edward Elgar in 1901 and published as Op. 41, No. 2.

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Merivale, Herman Charles, My experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by a Sane Patient (London: Chatto & Windus, 1879). Millingen, John Gideon, Curiosities of Medical Experience (London: Bentley, 1837). Stainer, John, Music in its Relation to the Intellect and the Emotions (London: Novello, 1892). Taylor, J., The Power of Music, in Which Is Shown, by a Variety of Pleasing and Instructive Anecdotes, the Effects It Has on Man and Animals (London: J. Harris, 1814). Thiselton-Dyer, Thomas Firminger, ‘Music and Medicine’ in The Gentleman’s Magazine Vol. CCLXI no. 1870 (October 1886), 375–385. Thurnam, John, Observations and Essays on the Statistics of Insanity: Including an Inquiry into the Causes Influencing the Results of Treatment in Establishments for the Insane (London: Simkin, Marshall & Co, 1845). Tuke, Samuel, Practical Hints on the Construction and Economy of Pauper Lunatic Asylums (York: William Alexander, 1815). Tuke, Daniel Hack, Reform in the Treatment of the Insane (London: John Churchill, 1892). Winslow, Littleton S., Manual of Lunacy: A Handbook Relating to the Legal Care and Treatment of the Insane in the Public and Private Asylums of Great Britain, Ireland, United States of America, and the Continent (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1874).

Newspapers and Journals Association Medical Journal (1853–56). The Asylum Journal (1853–1855). The Asylum Journal of Mental Science (1855–1858). The British Medical Journal (1857–1980). The Dictionary of National Biography. Journal of Mental Science (1858–1962) Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology (1848–1860 and 1875– 1883). The Lancet (1823–). London Journal of Medicine (1849–52). Magazine of Music (1884–1897). The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular (1844–1903). Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal (1840–1842; 1844–52). Provincial Medical Journal and Retrospect of the Medical Sciences (1842–44). St Ann’s Magazine (1895–6). Under the Dome: The Quarterly Magazine of Bethlem Royal Hospital (1892– 1930).

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D3725/box 111 S.L.L. Autobiographical account 1888. D3725/box 135 Barnwood House Minutes & Accounts 1856–1885. West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield C85/1/12/1–6 Annual Reports 1819–1904. C85/1/13/1–3 Medical Director’s Journal 1858–81. C85/187 Chaplain’s Journal 1853–4. C85/1382 Scrapbook of Entertainments 1866–1940. C85/1399 Photos of Asylum Church Choir (1892). C85/1400 West Riding Asylum Band (19th -20th century). C85/1400–3 Photos of Asylum Band (1899, n.d.). Surrey History Centre 2620/1/1 Holloway Sanatorium Minutes of General Committee 1886–1915. 2620/6/14–15 Inventory of the Furniture & Effects at Holloway’s Sanatorium Virginia Water: Male Division vols. 1–2. 2620/6/16 Inventory of the Furniture & Effects at Holloway’s Sanatorium Virginia Water: Female Division. 2620/6/23 St. Ann’s Magazine. 3043/1/1/1/1–15 Brookwood Annual Reports 1867–1900. 3043/1/8/1/1 Brookwood Register of Officers, Attendants & Servants. 3043/1/11/2/1 Brookwood Scrapbook of Programmes 1874–1880. 3043/1/11/2/2 Brookwood Register of Entertainments 1889–1896. 3043/1/11/2/3 Brookwood Programme of Entertainment for New Year’s Eve 1898. 3043/1/20/7 Brookwood Photograph Album belonging to Mrs Brushfield 1881. 3043/9/1/6/7 Brookwood Correspondence and Papers relating to the Band. 3043/9/1/6/26 Brookwood Papers relating to Attendants/ Nursing/ Music. 3043/9/1/6/28 Brookwood Papers relating to Chapel. 3043/9/2/2 Brookwood Programmes and Correspondence relating to Entertainments. 3043/10/2/7 Brookwood Photographs of the Band. Bethlem Royal Hospital Archive BAR-01 to 38 Annual Reports 1825–1948 (incomplete). BCB-28 box C03/2 Court of Governors Minutes 1841–1854. BEN-01 box D08/1 Volume of Programmes 1879–1899. BWR-01 to 02 Resident Physician’s Weekly Reports 1871–1907. GRD-05 box C05/4 General ledger 1840–1853. UTD-01 to 09 Under the Dome.

Index

A Alderson, John S., 135 Allis, Thomas, 273, 274, 276, 277, 285 amateurs, 7, 74, 78, 83, 95, 145, 256, 319, 321 Ancient Greeks, 13, 35 Apothecaries Act, 1815, 33 architecture, 43, 51, 158, 240 archive, 30, 93, 296 Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, 11, 53, 159 Astwood House, 308 Asylum Journal of Mental Science, 54 asylum management, 7, 28, 41, 44, 52, 54–56, 59, 60, 81, 94–96, 130, 142, 274, 319 attendants, 53, 58, 65, 73, 75, 77, 81, 98, 138, 169, 189, 320 Aversa Asylum, 17, 18, 59, 67, 323

B Baker, Robert, 279, 280 ballad, 25, 76 band, 4, 28, 58, 61, 69–71, 73–75, 77, 81, 82, 91, 92, 94, 95, 138, 166, 320–322 baritone, 222 Barnwood House asylum, 85, 86, 93, 158, 289 asylum management, 289, 290, 296 attendants, 291, 293 chapel, 290, 293 choir, 293 church, 290 concerts, 290–294 dance, 293, 294 expenditure on music, 293 harmonium, 293 lectures, 291 location, 289 minstrels, 291 music as therapy, 292, 294 noise, 85, 295

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Golding, Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum, Mental Health in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78525-3

359

360

INDEX

occupation (patient), 293, 294 orchestra, 291 organist, 293 patient accounts, 295 piano, 85, 290, 292, 293, 295 recreation, 290, 291, 295 recreation room, 291, 293 visiting performers, 291, 293 Barton, James Edward, 209, 217–219, 221, 223, 229 bass drum, 112, 222 bass violin, 112, 304 Bell, John, 18 benefits of music, 10, 21–23, 29, 50, 52, 60, 71, 72, 86–90, 121, 135, 137, 138, 141, 161, 163, 168, 171, 180, 183, 206, 218, 242, 247, 294, 310 Benson, Arthur Christopher, 333 Berkshire Asylum, 187 Bethel Hospital, Norwich, 42, 105 Bethlem Hospital, 7, 9, 38, 42, 44, 55, 64, 74, 78, 79, 82, 91, 93, 95, 98, 158, 237, 282, 326 asylum management, 238, 239 attendants, 250, 252, 256 band, 78, 252, 256–258, 260, 264 band repertoire, 258 ‘Bedlam’, 237 boarders (voluntary patients), 239 chamber music, 252, 259, 260 chapel, 225, 242, 246, 260, 261, 265 choir, 260, 261 class of patients, 238 concerts, 246–248, 250, 252, 255, 256, 259, 260, 263–265 concerts (external visits), 263 criminal lunatics, 238 dance, 241, 245, 246, 251, 256 employment (patient), 240, 244 employment (staff), 257

entertainments as therapy, 241 Glee and Madrigal Society, 248, 249 instruments, 83, 243, 250, 264 location, 237, 239, 240, 244 minstrels, 252, 253 officers, 256 opera, 247 orchestra, 259 orchestra repertoire, 259 organ, 242, 260 piano, 239–241, 243, 245, 246, 250, 252, 264 Plowden Bijou Orchestra, 7, 252, 256–259, 264 recreation, 237, 239 recreation as therapy, 244, 250 recreation hall, 250, 264, 265 religious contexts, 242 sacred concerts, 262, 263 singing, 242, 246 singing class, 246, 248, 256 smoking concerts, 254–257, 260, 263 theatre, 247, 250, 259, 263, 268 Under the Dome magazine, 264, 265 visiting choirs, 78, 260, 261 visiting performers, 246, 247, 263, 264, 256 Witley convalescent home, 239, 247 Bevan Lewis, William, 149 Bishop, Henry, 208, 221 Bly, Nellie, 80, 85, 100 boarders (voluntary patients), 56, 78, 79, 239, 300, 305, 324 Boer War, 226, 257 Boethius, 13, 34 bombardieu, 112 Box, William George, 170–173, 188 Brahms, Johannes, 254 Brain (journal), 53

INDEX

brain localisation, 17 brass band, 23–25, 327 Bridewell Hospital Prison, 239 Bristol Lunatic Asylum, 60, 71 Bristowe, H.C., 254, 269 Broadmoor Hospital, 97, 99, 205, 238 Broca, Paul, 17 Brookwood Asylum, 72, 78, 87, 90, 92, 199, 300 asylum management, 199 attendants, 200, 209, 225, 226 band, 201, 204, 207, 209, 211–213, 220, 222, 223 bandmaster, 90, 201, 206, 214, 215, 222 band members, 213, 224 band repertoire, 207, 208, 211, 212, 221 chapel, 205–207, 225, 226, 228, 229 choir, 205, 206, 225, 226, 228 concerts, 202–204, 211, 222 dance, 92, 202, 203, 209, 211, 218, 220, 223, 229 education, 200, 204 employment (patient), 199, 200, 203, 217 employment (staff), 199, 206, 213, 214, 216 entertainment, 202, 203, 220, 222 entertainment as therapy, 203 expenditure on music, 206, 209 harmonium, 206, 228 hymns, 206 instruments, 201, 206, 212 location, 199 minstrels, 216, 223, 224, 229 music as therapy, 207, 209, 218 music classes, 200 organ, 206, 225, 228 organist, 205, 206, 226, 227, 229

361

piano, 206, 218, 228 recreation, 200, 202 recreation hall, 200, 203, 206, 210, 228 religious contexts, 225 singing, 200, 204, 225, 228 theatre, 207, 210 visiting performers, 203, 222 Browne, William A.F., 48, 53, 54, 57, 63, 94, 324 Brushfield, Thomas Nadauld, 87, 199–204, 207, 209, 210, 214, 216, 217, 226, 229 Buckland, George, 246 Bucknill, John Charles, 58, 67 Bucks County Asylum, 205 Burney, Charles, 15 Burrows, George Man, 56, 57, 66 Burton, Robert, 14, 34 C California, 68 Camporese, Mme, 19 Carmarthen Asylum, 186 case notes, 5, 28, 90, 94, 307 Cassell & Co. choir, 261 causes of insanity, 81, 106, 132, 308 cello, 212, 252, 255, 256, 283, 304 chamber music, 74, 75, 83, 95, 147, 152, 252, 281, 283 chapel, 26, 69, 76–80, 84, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 95, 117, 165, 205, 304, 320–323, 325 charitable asylums, 42, 44, 50, 55, 60, 79, 82, 93, 157, 163, 237, 273, 289, 291, 296 Chester Asylum, 199, 202 choir, 28, 74, 77, 78, 81, 85, 91, 98, 113, 117, 118, 120, 144, 151, 165, 188, 191, 320, 321, 324 Church of England, 205 clarinet, 112, 180, 201, 222, 256

362

INDEX

class, 5–7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 24, 25, 27, 47, 51, 55, 56, 59, 61, 63, 76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 89, 90, 93, 96, 122, 157–159, 161–164, 173, 189, 215, 216, 238, 243, 244, 250, 277, 278, 282, 286, 289, 292, 296, 299–301, 308, 311, 320–323, 326–329, 332 Cleaton, John Davies, 89, 129, 135–141, 152 Clouston, Thomas, 95 Commissioners in Lunacy, 7, 11, 16, 29, 44, 49, 50, 54, 56, 60, 64, 65, 68, 89, 94, 111, 149, 167, 193, 205, 217, 290, 319 companions. See lady companion concertina, 180, 212 concerts, 4, 12, 18, 25, 28, 58, 59, 61, 69, 74–76, 78, 79, 84, 86, 87, 89–92, 94, 95, 144, 145, 152, 169, 208, 251, 279, 280, 283, 290, 292, 302, 322, 325, 326, 330 Conolly, John, 9, 33, 45, 46, 57, 59, 67, 73, 83, 99, 106, 244 control, 5, 7, 9, 11, 23, 24, 45, 48–51, 74, 85, 86, 88, 91, 172, 192, 244, 302, 325, 326, 329 Cooke, Edward Marriott, 187, 192, 193, 321 cornet, 112, 212, 222 Corsellis, Charles Caesar, 29, 39, 82, 132–135, 153 Cotton, Morten H., 255, 269 County Asylums Act, 1808, 10, 43, 105, 130 County Asylums Act, 1845, 44, 177 Craddock, Frederick Hurst, 169, 170, 172–174 Cremona Musical Union, 294 Crichton-Browne, James, 53, 94, 129, 140–143, 149, 152, 328

Crommelinck, Constant, 160, 161 cure, 6, 7, 11, 41, 45, 49, 51, 87, 91, 172, 325 D dance, 7–9, 26, 28, 52, 58, 60, 61, 69–71, 81, 84, 86, 88–92, 94, 302, 323, 324, 326, 329 Darwin, Charles, 17, 19, 54 Denbigh County Lunatic Asylum, 60 Derbyshire County Asylum, 17 Devon County Asylum, 300 Dickens, Charles, 9, 31, 72, 282 diet, 6, 14, 45, 46, 121, 158, 174 double bass, 222 Douty, J. Harrington, 187 drill, 47, 54, 182, 222, 248, 304 Dykes, John Bacchus, 139 E Earlswood Asylum, 85 Eastgate House Asylum, 61 education, 24, 25, 80, 330 Elgar, Edward, 177, 191, 192, 283, 333 Ellis, William, 46, 48, 59, 66, 106, 131, 132, 158 employment (patient), 6, 26, 45, 46, 49, 51, 56, 67, 81, 87, 93, 105, 131, 158 employment (staff), 7, 47, 58, 73, 74 English, national/musical character, 57 Enlightenment, 14 Enriquez, Madame, 264 entertainments, private asylums, 56, 61, 82 Esquirol, Jean-Étienne, 18, 91 Etchell, Mabel, 71 euphonium, 222 European asylums, 17, 18, 327

INDEX

evolution, 17, 54 exercise (physical), 6, 45–47, 51, 59, 121, 130 F Fairford Retreat, 308 Farmer, John, 305 Fiddington House Asylum, 243 Field-Fisher Quartette, 264 Fisherton House Asylum, 61 flute, 222, 256, 279 Foucault, Michel, 32, 50, 51, 65, 326 Fowle, Louisa, 301, 303 French asylums, 15, 58 G Galen, 35 Gall, Franz Joseph, 17 Gate Helmsley Retreat, 61 Gautrot, 201 gender, 6, 13, 18, 27, 47, 51, 71, 77, 79, 81, 83, 93, 94, 99, 100, 108, 159, 188, 250, 252, 311, 324, 329 genre, 5, 19, 25, 26, 71, 74–76, 254, 282, 322, 327, 332 Gilbert, William, 3, 31 Gilbert, W.S., 116, 144, 207, 282 glees, 137, 145, 147, 172, 208, 211, 304 Glevum Quartette, 294 Gloucester Asylum, 70, 80, 82, 86, 92, 94, 97, 98, 157, 289 asylum management, 158, 160 band, 166–168, 172 bandmaster, 172 Barnwood/Coney Hill site, 170 chapel, 164, 168, 170, 171 choir, 165, 170, 171 choral class, 172 concerts, 162, 166, 170–172

363

dance, 160, 161, 170 education, 167 employment (patient), 158, 160, 165, 173 employment (staff), 167, 168 entertainment, 163, 166, 167 expenditure on music, 162 female attendants, 159 Gloucester Cathedral, 169 instruments, 165, 168, 169 lady companions, 160 location, 157 minstrels, 170 music as therapy, 167, 168, 172, 173 music education, 162, 172 organ, 165, 170 organist, 168 piano, 164, 165, 169 recreation, 159, 160, 169, 173, 174 recreation hall, 168, 170 singing, 169, 172 theatre, 167, 169, 170 visiting performers, 166, 170 Goodall, Edwin, 22 Grahamsley, John Robert, 178–181 gramophone, 22, 270 Guild of St Cecilia, 22, 328 guitar, 304 Gurney, Edmund, 17, 19, 37, 329

H handbell ringers, 293 Handel, George Frederic, 139 Hanwell Asylum, 9, 33, 44–46, 57, 63, 70, 73, 83, 106, 132, 160, 163, 239, 244, 302 Harford, Rev. Frederick Kill, 21, 22, 38, 328 harmonium, 77, 81, 117, 119, 180, 187, 205, 290

364

INDEX

harp, 293, 306 Haslam, John, 46 Haweis, Rev. Hugh Reginald, 23, 39 Haydn, Franz Joseph, 19 Helps, William, 245, 246 Hervey, Augusta, 263 Hervey, Lady Mary, 263 Higgis, T.Phillips, 269 Hill, Robert Gardiner, 43 Hills, William Charles, 89, 110–112, 114, 118, 120 Hitch, Samuel, 159–163, 173, 174 Holloway, Jessie, 187, 191, 192 Holloway Sanatorium, 29, 56, 78–80, 90, 93, 94, 299 asylum management, 299, 301 band, 302, 303, 305, 307, 312 bandmaster, 305 boarders (voluntary patients), 310, 312, 313 case notes, 29, 94, 308, 313 chapel, 301, 304, 305 choir, 191, 301, 305, 306 companions, 301, 302, 304 concerts, 78, 302, 303, 305, 306 dance, 302, 304, 305, 307–309 expenditure on music, 302 instruments, 304, 305, 307 music as therapy, 301, 310 occupation (patient), 308 officers, 302 organ, 303, 305 organist, 301 piano, 303–307, 309, 310 recreation, 301, 302 recreation and wellbeing, 301 recreation room, 301, 304, 305 religious contexts, 304, 305 sacred music concerts, 78, 302, 306 smoking concerts, 302, 306, 311 sports, 302, 310, 306 St. Ann’s Magazine, 303, 306

theatre, 305–307 treatment of insanity, 301 visiting performers, 306 Holloway, Thomas, 299, 300 Hood, William Charles, 243–245, 250 Hooke, Robert, 13 Horton, Edward, 180 Howlett, W., 113, 117, 118 Hullah, John Pyke, 266 Huxley, J.E., 163 hymn books, 77, 118, 205 hymns, 77, 78, 81, 84, 118, 138, 170, 180, 205, 228, 243, 261, 276 Hyslop, Theophilus B., 252, 254–257, 259, 263–265

I ill effects of music, 14, 18, 20, 57, 136, 244, 266, 312 Illenau Asylum, 18 imagery, 8, 72, 80 instruments, 70, 75, 83, 95, 321, 323 interior decoration, 48, 49, 51, 244 Italian asylums, 17, 18, 57

J Jackson, James, 110 Jackson, John Hughlings, 17 Jenkins, George, 192 Jepson, George, 42, 273 Jewish patients, 78 Jubilee Singers, 294

K King Edward’s Schools, 239, 247, 257, 261 Kitching, John, 277–280 Kyrle Society, 263

INDEX

L Ladies’ Guitar and Mandoline Band, 263, 270 lady companion, 160, 161, 280, 301, 322 Lancashire County Asylum, 60, 73, 80, 87, 136 Lancia, Florence, 246, 247 language, music and, 17, 330 Lawless, H.H., 255, 269 Legge, Richard, 17 Lincoln Asylum, 8, 43, 44, 70, 88 Lipps, Theodore, 16 listening to music, 52, 90, 100, 169, 258, 325, 329 literary accounts, 7, 9, 15, 72 Little, Dr., 302 London, 7, 22, 44, 74, 237 Lunacy Act, 1845, 44, 92 Lupton, Donald, 13

M madrigals, 137, 145 Mainzer, Joseph, 80, 95, 175 Major, Herbert, 149 Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital, 62 Marshall, George E., 283 Marshall, Oldfield Sherwin, 283 Maudsley, Henry, 16, 54, 66 McRae, Douglas, 148 Mechanics Institutes, 24 Methodist, 131, 136 middle class patients, 299, 311 Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum, 8, 166, 244 Millingen, John Gideon, 15, 58, 67 Millward, Oliver, 190 minstrels, 25, 81, 224 Monro, Edward Thomas, 238, 241 Moore, William David, 211, 302–306

365

morality, 47, 48, 76, 80 Moral management, 3, 4, 6, 11, 13, 18, 21, 32, 42, 43, 45–51, 53–56, 58, 60, 73, 83, 86, 88, 89, 91, 92, 105, 107, 121, 122, 129–131, 142, 152, 159, 170, 171, 173, 178, 184, 200, 202, 209, 229, 240, 244, 280, 295, 319–321, 324–326, 328, 329 Morison, Alexander, 238, 241, 266 Morningside Asylum, Edinburgh, 8, 71, 87, 95 Mozart, W.A., 255, 256 Musical Association, 19 musical listening, 21 music education, 162 music hall, 25, 264 Music therapy, 4, 5, 12, 18, 27, 38, 325, 327, 330–333 N Needham, Frederick Peacock, 293–297 nerves, music and, 14, 15, 21, 25, 331 Newington, Herbert Hayes, 17 New York Lunatic Asylum, 80 Nightingale, Florence, 10 noise, 83–86, 295 non-restraint, 8, 9, 43–45, 48, 57, 63, 67, 136, 160, 162, 179, 293 Norfolk County Asylum, 29, 71, 77, 87, 92, 97, 105 asylum management, 106 attendants, 112, 114 band, 29, 107–112, 115, 116, 120, 122 bandmaster, 115 band repertoire, 116, 145, 147 cathedral choristers, 113 chapel, 108, 109, 117–120 choir, 77, 108, 117, 118, 120

366

INDEX

concerts, 112, 114 dance, 112 employment (patient), 107, 108, 111, 119–122 employment (staff), 115, 119 entertainment, 108, 115 female attendants, 114 instruments, 111, 112 location, 105 minstrels, 113 music as therapy, 120, 122, 123 non-restraint, 106 Norwich Cathedral, 119 organ, 117, 118 organist, 117, 118, 122 recreation hall, 114 singing, 109 theatre, 114, 116 visiting performers, 113, 117 Nuthall, R.L.S., 302 O Ober-Döbling asylum, 18 Oberhoffer, Robert Werner, 281 oboe, 258 O’Donoghue, Geoffrey, 260, 262 officers, 75, 79 opera, 19, 74, 82, 116, 145, 207, 212, 282 oratorio, 59 organ, 77, 81, 116, 117, 138, 139, 150, 165, 304 organist, 77 Owen, Ebenezer, 68, 105, 106, 123, 126 P Paul, George Onesiphorous, 158 pauper asylum, 25 Peckham House Asylum, 68 Perth Asylum, 181

philanthropy, 23, 24, 26, 45, 59, 83, 162, 210, 291, 300, 330 Philipps, Sutherland Rees, 300, 305 philosophy of music, 10, 13, 330 piano, 46, 77, 79, 80, 83, 85, 88, 97, 116, 120, 138, 150, 163, 169, 183, 193, 217, 228, 240, 241, 243, 246, 254, 256, 276, 279, 283, 290, 292, 293, 304, 306, 307, 309, 310, 313 Pierce, Bedford, 281, 282, 284 Pinel, Philippe, 18 Plato, 13 Platt, James, 63 Poynder, G., 158 private and pauper asylums, comparison, 56, 59, 74, 76, 79, 81–83, 94, 158, 273, 278, 291, 300, 322, 323 private asylums/madhouses, 10, 24, 25, 41, 43, 44, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59–61, 68, 75, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 93, 105, 115, 157, 158, 166, 178, 238, 243, 273, 285, 289, 292, 295, 299, 300, 308, 322, 328 psalmody, 95 psychiatry, 43, 53, 55, 321, 328 purpose of music, 5, 8, 52, 60, 84, 86, 89, 121, 140, 170, 184, 210, 239, 279, 292, 311, 319, 322, 323, 329 Pythagoras, 13

Q Quaker, 42, 78, 82, 93, 129, 135, 273–275, 277, 278, 280, 282, 284 Quarterman, Arthur, 191 Quarterman, P., 191

INDEX

R rational recreation, 10, 23, 24, 47, 76, 80, 209, 244, 319, 327 reading, 47, 49, 69, 109, 134, 241, 246, 280, 290, 323 recreation, 43, 45, 55, 82, 93. See also entertainments recreation hall, 69, 75, 320 religious contexts, 7, 9, 25, 45, 49, 51, 74, 76, 78, 81, 84, 91, 273, 276, 323 Ricketts, William, 46 Roman Catholic patients, 78, 228 Romanticism, 15, 19, 20 Rossini, Gioachino, 256 Royal Edinburgh Asylum, 80, 99, 178, 181 S sacred music concerts, 78, 302 Sainte-Marie, Etienne, 15 Salpetriere Asylum, 58, 73 Salvation Army, 330 Santley, M.A., 255, 269 Sargeant, Susanna Wilhemina, 119 Savage, George Henry, 248, 250–252 saxhorn, 304 Schubert, Franz, 254 Schumann, Robert, 20 Scotland, 94 Sculcoates Refuge, Hull, 131 Select Committee on Madhouses, 1815–16, 44, 46, 47 self control, 6, 7, 19, 21, 26, 42, 45, 47, 48, 60, 76, 87, 91, 131, 170, 172, 181, 183, 193, 203, 205, 309, 310, 322, 324 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 299 Sheppard, Charles E., 254, 255, 269 Sherlock, James, 74, 181–187, 189, 193, 195 Shute, Hardwicke, 158, 159

367

singing, 8, 16, 17, 19, 24, 25, 46, 57, 58, 60, 69, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 89–91, 119, 137, 169, 182, 189, 193, 266, 313, 321, 329 Skae, David, 95 Smith, Robert Percy, 98, 252, 254, 259 smoking concerts, 75, 81, 252, 302, 324 Somerset County Asylum, 32, 72, 74, 90, 97, 98 soundscape, 83, 85 space, 43, 76, 81, 84, 264, 320 Spencer, Herbert, 17, 19 sports, 290, 294. See also exercise (physical) Spray, Frederick, 190 Stainer, Sir John, 19, 37 St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, 260 St. Luke’s Hospital, 9, 166, 169, 239 St Pancras Hospital, 22 St. Thomas’s Hospital, 252, 256 Stumpf, Carl, 16 Sullivan, Arthur, 116, 207, 211, 282, 303 Surrey County Asylum, Wandsworth, 200, 201 T Taylor, Joseph, 15, 35 Temperance Hospital, 22 terminology, 13, 27, 91, 96, 333 theatre, 8, 61, 75, 92, 116, 140, 143, 144, 152, 202, 239, 301, 321, 322 Thomson, David, 89, 121 Three Counties Asylum, 300 Thurnam, John, 274, 275, 279, 280, 285 Ticehurst House Hospital, 154 Toller, Ebenezer, 157, 166–168, 173 Tonic Sol-fa, 24, 25, 330

368

INDEX

treatment of insanity, 48, 54, 106, 107, 120, 121, 136, 143, 159, 181, 275 trombone, 222 Tuddenham, E., 110 Tuke, Daniel Hack, 54, 58, 66, 67 Tuke, Samuel, 42, 62, 85, 90, 130, 131, 275, 320 Tuke, William, 42, 130, 273

U Uwins, David, 14, 34

V viola, 256 violin, 80, 88, 97, 99, 109, 114, 116, 180, 212, 228, 254, 256, 257

W Webster, John, 58, 59, 67 West Riding Asylum, 29, 46, 53, 75, 77, 78, 81, 82, 89, 91, 92, 97, 98, 111, 129 asylum management, 130 attendants, 148, 151 band, 111, 138, 139, 143–145, 148, 152 band, instrumentation, 148 band, photo, 148 chapel, 130, 131, 135, 138–140, 147, 153 choir, 77, 138, 139, 145, 146, 151, 334 class, 133, 134 concerts, 138, 140, 147–149 dance, 134, 137, 141 employment (patient), 46, 129, 131, 135, 153 employment (staff), 138 expansion, 135

instruments, 138, 150 location, 129 medical conversazione, 53 Methodist influence, 131, 136 minstrels, 147, 152 music as therapy, 138, 141, 152 officers, 148 organ, 138, 140, 150 recreation, 129, 133, 146 recreation as therapy, 134 recreation hall, 135, 150 religious contexts, 131, 132, 138 schedule, 132 singing, 81, 133, 135, 137, 138 sport, 146 theatre, 140, 143, 144, 152 visiting performers, 139, 144, 147. See also recreation Williams, William Rhys, 245–248 Williams, W.W., 163 Windeatt, Corelli, 259, 270 Winslow, Lyttleton S., 16 Wonford House Hospital, 300 Wood, Alfred Joshua, 290 Wood, William, 243 Worcester County Asylum, 48, 74, 80, 92, 98, 169, 177, 302 asylum management, 177, 178 attendants, 188, 189, 191 band, 177, 182, 183, 185, 190–193, 195 Band Instructor, 183, 189–191 bandmaster, 190 chapel, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186–188, 192, 193 chaplain, 180 choir, 186–188, 190, 191, 193 choir master, 186, 190, 191 concerts, 169, 179 dance, 169, 179, 181, 182 education, 181

INDEX

employment (patient), 178, 179, 183 employment (staff), 191, 189, 193 entertainment, 179 expenditure on music, 190 harmonium, 180, 187, 189 instruments, 80, 180, 185, 189, 191 location, 177 music as therapy, 180, 181, 183, 184, 192 music class, 185, 192 officers, 188, 190 orchestrone, 193 organ, 187, 193 organist, 183, 187, 188, 191 piano, 183, 189, 193 professional musicians, 190 rapid growth, 182 recreation hall, 178, 183, 185, 193 religious contexts, 188 singing, 182, 186 singing class, 182, 188 workhouse, 24, 42, 51 World War I, 4 World War II, 27 Y York Pauper Asylum, 42, 69, 157

369

York Retreat, 42, 44, 51, 54, 55, 62, 78, 82, 93, 129–131, 135, 273, 300 asylum management, 274 ‘At Homes’, 282 attendants, 280 choral society, 282, 283 class of patients, 277, 286 concerts, 279–283 dance, 279 dramatic society, 282 ‘Drawing Rooms’, 281 employment (patient), 274, 275, 277, 279 Harrogate Celia Concert Party, 283 instruments, 278, 279, 282 lady companion, 280 lectures, 278 middle-class patients, 284 minstrels, 282 Musical Improvement Society, 278 music as therapy, 279, 284 recreation, 275, 277–279 religious contexts, 276, 282 saloon, 278 travelling musicians, 276 treatment for insanity, 274 Turkish bath, 280 visiting performers, 282