Lunatic Asylum
 

I just discovered my first cousin 4times removed was in a lunatic asylum for 18 years. The only census I can find shows that he was a lunatic as opposed to an imbecile.

What is the difference between the two?

He was in the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Lunatic Asylum. Has anyone heard of it and how bad would the conditions have been?

Update - I found him on the 1881 census too.

They only recorded his initials and age but had no details as to his place of birth. They did know his occupation though. That seems strange to me.

Imbecile would be from birth, of low intelligence. A lunatic would be someone afflicted by "madness" in adulthood (normally) but of normal intelligence and quite often capable of work. Mental illness was very poorly understood.

OC

The lunatic Asylums of the late 1800s were cutting edge. They were not the Bedlams of an earlier period, nor the depressing, underfunded institutions of the c20th.

As OC says, mental illness was poorly understood, but they were attempting to find out what caused it, what the symptoms were, how it might be managed. The records, where they survive, are fascinating.

They were particularly successful with mothers, where a good diet and a separation from their husbands and children often gave them the strength to return to a debilitating life.

For some years in the 1960s I lived literally a stone's throw from Friern Barnet Hospital, the largest asylum in North London. I came to understand that, awful as it might seem if you were sane, the hospital provided a safe refuge and a home for those who simply could not cope on the outside.

OC

Thanks for the answers. As he lived there for 18 years I'm glad it wasn't as bad as I had pictured. He must have worked too as there was a will and he left 105 pounds. Interestingly his sister was in a different lunatic asylum, but I'm not sure for how long and she also left a will for 105 pounds.

Might they have both inherited a share of someone else's money and then not spent any of it because of their circumstances? Hence the matching amounts....

Can a lunatic make a will? Are they "of sound mind"?
They might well have assets at death, but can they choose where the money went?

Good points Merry and Phoenix. Not having investigated the sister properly I had thought she may be been in the asylum due to a short term illness, then she died.

Both wills were administered by the same brother, with the family middle name, and same occupation so it is definitely the right people.

The brother who did the admin also died in an asylum but again I think it was a short term illness, but the register does not give a proper entry date.

That sounds better than the brother cooking the books somehow. The mother's will was administered at the same time as the sister, her amount 1050 pounds. She had 11 children so it doesn't divide by 11 but one daughter, Fanny, did die before probate was complete so maybe Fanny's family did not get her share of the inheritance.