Lunatic Asylum records - ancestry

[Phoenix]

Can I just say that while we are all haunted by the idea of the asylum as dreadful places, in which dreadful things happened, when they were set up they were better than many of the other options.

I have read some of the records for Brookwood in Surrey, and what comes across is a cutting edge system, trying to cure the inmates. Didn't succeed, but then we don't do too much better today.

On a slightly different topic, did you know that prisoners on average put on a stone in weight while in jail? However dull the diet might have been, it was considerably better than starving on the street.