Heredity and eugenics in relation to insanity / by F.W. Mott.

  • Mott, F. W. (Frederick Walker), 1853-1926.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Heredity and eugenics in relation to insanity / by F.W. Mott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    IO who were formerly treated in the infirmaries are now sent to the asylums where they can be better cared for. An inducement to send these cases by the Guardians is the fact that the Government pays the Guardians 4s. per week for each pauper lunatic. It is hardly fair, however, to cast the stigma of insanity on a stock in the case of simple senile decay. The Correlation of Pauperism, Insanity, and Feehle-Mindedness. The registered insane in London is 5 per 1,000, whereas in England and Wales it is only 3*5 per 1,000 (Fig. 2). On the face of it, this would appear to show that conditions existed in London which led to insanity that were not so intense, or did not exist in the rest of the country. But more probable is it, that London during the last 15 years by doubling its asylum accommodation has gone far ahead of the rest of the country in this practical method of applied eugenics. Nevertheless, when we compare the registered pauper lunatics in different boroughs as this table which I exhibit shows, we shall be struck not only with the variable percentage for the different boroughs of the County of London, but also by the fact that in boroughs with a poor population there is a much higher percentage. You will observe the relative low percentage of Hamp¬ stead 2‘6 per 1,000, Lewisham 2*8, Wandsworth 3*5; whereas it is 7*9 per 1,000 in St. Pancras, Westminster 8*1, St. Giles-in-the-Fields and Blooms¬ bury 9*2, Strand 12*7. The explanation of the high percentage of these latter, excepting the Strand, is that the pauper population is largely composed of the denizens of one-roomed tenements with a low wage earning capacity, and in districts where we should, owing to improvements and the pulling down of slum property, expect a diminution of pauperism and in¬ sanity, there is no decrease, and in many instances an increase. Owing to better and cheaper means of locomotion an increasing number of the better classes and more desirable members of the lower classes, e.g., artisans and those in continuous employment, have migrated to the suburbs, the result being that in many boroughs large houses, which were formerly occupied by one family of the better classes, are now converted into flats and tenements