Report of the Committee of Visitors, the Medical Superintendents, and other papers relating to the asylums : printed in pursuance of the standing orders of the County Council 1917-1918 / Essex and Colchester Lunatic Asylums.

  • Essex and Colchester Lunatic Asylums.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Committee of Visitors, the Medical Superintendents, and other papers relating to the asylums : printed in pursuance of the standing orders of the County Council 1917-1918 / Essex and Colchester Lunatic Asylums. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/136 (page 19)
    REPORT OF A Commissioner of the Board of Control On BRENTWOOD ASYLUM. “27th October, 1917, Having spent the past two days in the inspection of this Asylum I am enabled to report that it is being maintained in a highly satisfactory condition. The Wards were bright and comfortable, the dormitories in good order, and the bedding clean and sufficient. The supply of literature—chiefly consisting of well-bound illustrated periodicals—is abundant ; and the only appaient deficiency in regard to recreation was the comparative paucity of suitable toys for the idiot children in M 9 and D 10 Wards. The patients were for the most part neat in their attire and orderly in their behaviour, there being a notable absence of noisy excitement even in those wards which contain the more refractory class. No one complained of ill-treatment with the exception of the case mentioned below; and there were very few complaints as to the diet, in spite of the restrictions rendered necessary by the Food Controller s suggestions. Nor did many patients appeal for discharge. I made special inquiry into the complaint of ill-usage by attendants proffered by a male patient, concerning which there has been some correspondence with our Board; and I satisfied myself fully as to the lack of foundation for the charges which had been made in a letter addressed to us on his behalf by a fellow-patient, and I can therefore endorse the explanation given by Dr. Turner in his letter, written shortly after the allegations were made. The patient, I may add, is an ex-soldier, an epileptic of truculent and quarrelsome disposition, who, on the occasion of the alleged assault, required the combined efforts of four attendants to remove him to a single-room on account of his threatening behaviour towards other patients.