Thirty-third annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-third annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from the Rubery Hill Asylum, in addition to which 4 males and 13 females were for a variety of other reasons deemed incurable. One criminal lunatic, included in the above total, was admitted, he having been declared insane whilst undergoing a sentence of three months’ hard labour for vagrancy. Twenty-four males and 45 females were on admission stated to be suicidally disposed, and 58 males and 71 males were believed to be dangerous to others. Discharges.—Of the discharges 10 males and 36 females were discharged recovered, 6 males and 1 female relieved, and 3 males and 4 females not improved. The percentage of recovery on the total number of patients admitted, excluding those transferred from other Asylums, was 19.60 for the males and 49.99 for the females, or an average for the two of 37.39, as compared with 34.62 for the males and 44.77 for the females ; total 39.77 in all the County and Borough Asylums in England and Wales for 1884. It is interesting to note the extraoi dinary disparity between the recovery rate in the male and that in the female cases, being in the proportion of one in two for the females, and only one in five for the males; this is to be accounted for by the fact that, of the male patients admitted during the last two years, the mental unsoundness was in an unusually large proportion of the cases due to structural disease of the brain. One Board of Guardians in your County continues willingly to receive into its Union Workhouse such patients as I am able to recommend as proper cases to be relegated thereto; and with success, for during the last two years in no instance has it been found necessary to return to the Asylum any of these harmless chronic cases. They have indeed not been numerous, but the result indicates what might be done in this direction. Deaths.—The percentage of deaths on the average number resident was 14.53 for the males and 9.33 for the females, total, 11.58; as compared with 12.10 males and 8.25 females, total 10.03, in all the County and Borough