The era of the asylum
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, there were minimal legislative provisions for individuals with mental illness. Those who were deemed mentally ill were either left to fend for themselves or were housed in local gaols or in the House of Industry (or workhouses), which was intended by the Act of 1771-1772 to serve as an asylum for the distressed, and as a house of correction (see Henry, 1989; Conlon, 1943; and Kelly, 2012). However, this position changed during the 19th century.
“The period between 1820 and 1898 was to be a time of intensive legislative activity in relation to public psychiatric institutions in Ireland” (Kelly, 2012: para. 3). The need for systematic reform was highlighted by “a Select Committee of the House of Commons, which recommended the establishment of provincial asylums so as to minimise the numbers of mentally ill residing in prisons and houses of industry” (ibid.). A bill to establish a nationwide network of asylums was presented in 1817. This was known as the Asylums for Lunatic Poor (Ireland) Act 1817, which was amended by the Lunatic Asylums (Ireland) Act 1820 and repealed by the Lunacy (Ireland) Act 1821 (there were two more amendments in 1825 and 1826) (Kelly, 2016). On the heels of the 1817 provision, the creation of Ireland’s district asylums commenced with “four district asylums were rapidly completed during the remainder of the 1820s (Armagh, Belfast, Derry and Limerick) and five more by 1835 (Ballinasloe, Carlow, Waterford, Maryborough (Portlaoise) and Clonmel)” (ibid.: p. 43).
Among the other pieces of mental health legislation passed during the 19th century, the Dangerous Lunatic Act of 11 June 1838, formally titled ‘An Act to make more Effectual Provision for the Prevention of Offences by Insane Persons in Ireland’, formed the basis of the committal procedure which became a key contributor to the overcrowding that blighted Irish asylums (Kelly, 2016: p. 48). The primary purpose of the Act was to ‘protect’ the public from the dangers allegedly posed by people deemed mentally ill. It empowered the court to commit a person to the gaol, who could then be removed to an asylum by warrant of the Lord Lieutenant (Prior, 2012). The act was amended in 1867 to allow for direct admission to the asylum and provided no safeguard, leaving the system wide open to abuse by institutions, particularly workhouses and gaols, as well as families who saw the admission pathway as “respite from the demands of care” (Walsh, 2005: p. 25) [1]. Despite the act being fundamentally flawed, it remained in place until the advent of the Mental Treatment Act 1945 (see Kelly, 2016).
The extensive developments concerning psychiatric institutions in Ireland represented significant changes for the poor, the ill and the excluded in 19th-century Ireland: “Social problems were pressing; institutions were the answer; and the mentally ill were among those most desperately in need of care” (Kelly, 2016: p. 43). It was the ultimate endpoint for people who were often already victims of poverty, illness, and abandonment, explains Professor Linda Connolly (Walking Borders, 2018).
Cork Lunatic Asylum
A limited network of private asylums also emerged parallel with the expansion of Ireland’s public asylum system. In Cork, a pioneering psychiatrist, Dr William Saunders Hallaran, established the Cork Lunatic Asylum during the late 1780s and early 1790s, and Citadella, a private asylum in Douglas, County Cork in 1799 (‘Bulls Asylum’) (Kelly, 2016; see also Kelly, 2012). Located at Old Blackrock Road, adjacent to the Victoria Hospital, the proceeds of a charity concert funded the Cork Lunatic Asylum’s construction. Edward’s Cork Remembrance records that in 1791, when the asylum began to be built, nearly £200 was collected by “a charity play, owing to the very active exertions of Richard Harris”, the then Mayor of Cork (Edwards, 1792: p. 275). This was followed by a steady expansion in private asylum capacity, with the opening of private facilities in “Bloomfield, Donnybrook (1810), Farnham House, Finglas (1814) and Hampstead House (1826)” (Kelly, 2012: para. 2).
Although Cork Lunatic Asylum remained outside the formal District Asylum System, it was still subject to inspection by an Inspectorate of Lunacy, which oversaw the standard of care throughout the system. By the 1840s, the Asylum had reached a dire state. At this time, reports on District, Local and Private Asylums in Ireland described the asylum as poorly ventilated and overcrowded; as one report noted, the wards were “disproportioned to the number of patients confined in them” (HC: PP, Lunatic asylums--Ireland. Report on the district, local, and private lunatic asylums in Ireland, 1846: with appendices, 1847: p. 34; see also the reference list for more HC: PP - House of Commons: U.K. Parliamentary Papers).
It was recommended that Cork Asylum be absorbed into the District Asylum System after it was deemed insufficient in meeting the district's requirements. Rather than spending money on alterations and repairs, the existing Cork Asylum would be entirely abandoned, and a new asylum would be built upon a more eligible site (HC: PP, Lunatic asylums--Ireland. Report on the district, local, and private lunatic asylums in Ireland, 1846: with appendices, 1847).
One of Ireland’s largest psychiatric institutions
Hanora Henry (1989), a former nurse tutor at Our Lady’s Hospital, wrote that in 1846, following an inspection of sites within 2 miles of Cork City (Shanakiel, Belvedere, Dodges Glen and Springville), it was determined that the lands of Shankiel would become the site used for the erection of the new asylum. Daniel Leahy offered the land on behalf of Lord Cork. William Atkins was appointed architect, and Alex Deane was the builder. Work commenced in mid-1848 (ibid.).
Image of Cork District Asylum complex (photo credit: Maggie O’Neill, Walking Borders, 2018)
Situated on a prominent south-facing hill overlooking the River Lee, the new asylum opened in 1852. “It was one of the largest lunatic asylums in Europe”, explains Professor Linda Connolly (Walking Borders, 2018: Asylums). It was built to house five hundred patients, but, at various stages, there were one thousand here: “It is a very, very long extensive building with another section/building called St Kevin’s way up the back towards Shanakiel” (ibid.; see also Henry, 1989). It was divided into four distinct blocks. Three were situated at the front and designed to contain the apartments for patients and residences for “the Physician, Matron and other Officials of the Asylum” (Henry, 1989: p. 63). The fourth block, situated at the rear of the central blocks, consisted of “the kitchen, laundry, workshops, bakehouse, boiler house and other such offices which comprise ‘the total institution” (ibid.).
The facility was named Eglinton Asylum after the then-new Lord Lieutenant. Still, it appears the name was later replaced in the late 1860s by the original title Cork District Lunatic Asylum (see Henry, 1989: p.86).
Life inside the asylum
Apart from those transferred from the old asylum, 52 male and female patients were admitted to Eglinton in 1852 (see Henry, 1989: p. 70). For the first years following its opening, there was an average of 10 to 20 vacancies per year in the asylum (ibid.). However, this position changed in 1864 when it was reported that “285 males and 239 females” were housed in Eglinton (ibid.: p. 91)—a number exceeding the asylum’s accommodation capabilities. Conditions within the Cork District Asylum deteriorated by the 1870s. Overcrowding and lack of suitable accommodation were significant problems, as the daily occupancy of the asylum reached 661 patents in December 1872 (Henry, 1989).
With issues of overcrowding, the asylums in Ireland struggled to cope with the level of demand placed upon them. They became “grossly unhygienic, profoundly anti-therapeutic and deeply stigmatising for patients, families and staff” (Kelly, 2016: p. 209). From the outset, Cork District Asylum was troubled by various environmental problems. Damp and dry rot appeared after months of occupation (HC: PP, Lunatic Asylums-Ireland. Seventh Report on the district, criminal, and private lunatic asylums in Ireland: with appendices, 1854-55). Among other issues, filthy linen and cold wards, the main building had no washing or bathing facilities, and many patients were alive with vermin (Henry, 1989).
Evidence from archival research in Our Lady’s Hospital Casebooks suggests that the sheer number of people confined created a breeding ground for the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid. There are countless cases of patients dying from disease in the Our Lady’s Hospital Casebooks, such as one married mother of two who was transferred to the asylum from Cork Union and died from pulmonary tuberculosis almost a year after her arrival in May 1922 (OLH/66/27, Our Lady’s Hospital Female Casebook, case number 12).
Its remaining years: Our Lady’s Hospital
The title Cork District Lunatic Asylum was eventually replaced with the name Cork Mental Hospital in 1926. Then, in 1952, the Committee of Management changed the hospital's name to a more socially acceptable title (given the development of reforms in psychiatric care): Our Lady's Psychiatric Hospital (Henry, 1989). Life in Our Lady’s Hospital remained unchanged in the 1950s. As Henry (1989) described, the hospital continued to be detached from the world: the patients wore hospital clothing and adhered to a strict routine. The day commenced at 7 a.m, three meals were served daily, and patients retired at 6:30 p.m. with their clothes neatly placed in wicker baskets (see Henry, 1989: pp. 360-361).
Many of the hospital’s rigid rules were replaced in the early 1960s when Dr Honan organised a group of patients to discuss improvements in their care. Eight long-stay ladies volunteered and recommended that 1) a wheelchair should be provided for young nurses to transport patients, 2) young nurses should not be left on their own in the care of new patients, and 3) that a cup of tea after dinner would be welcomed by all (Henry, 1989: p. 361). The recommendations were introduced as standard practice in the years ahead.
Our Lady's Hospital closed its doors to its last patient in 2002 (Prior, 2012). The building has now been converted into residential apartments.
As Linda Connolly and Maggie O’Neill remarked in 2018: Yet, being on the site today, seeing it, feeling it, seeing the hugeness of this total institution, makes you wonder what life was like here, the silence and the secrets (Walking Borders, 2018: Asylum: St Anne's and St Kevins).
Image of apartment window looking out over Cork (photo credit: Maggie O’Neill, Walking Borders, 2018)
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Professor Linda Connolly for contributing to and reviewing the text.
Footnote
[1] The asylums were a means to deal with troublesome family members, discipline their children or deal with land disputes (Harrington 2012). Harrington (2012) noted that many families often went to great lengths to care for troubled family members at home before turning to the asylum for help (see also Walsh, 2005). Women were most likely committed when they had become too much of a burden for the family and often withdrawn from the asylum to reattempt to care for them at home, usually leading to some female patients being frequently readmitted when the family required a break. It was also not uncommon for multiple family members to be committed to a stay in the asylum at the same time (see Harrington, 2012 for an analysis of Cork District Asylum through the prism of gender and gender roles in nineteenth-century Irish society).
References
CCCA OLH - Cork City and County Archives, Our Lady’s Hospital Records:
OLH/66/27, Our Lady’s Hospital Female Casebook, case number 12.
Conlon, M. V. (1943) ‘Some Old Cork Charities’. In: Cork City: its history and antiquities, edited by P. J. Hartnett. Published for the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society by Guy and Co. Cork: Ireland, pp. 86-94.
Edwards, A. (1792) Edwards's Cork Remembrancer, or tablet of memory: enumerating every remarkable circumstance that has happened in the city and county of Cork, and in the kingdom at large, including all the memorable events in Great Britain, with an account of all the battles by sea and land in the present century: Also, the remarkable earthquakes famines, inundations, storms, frosts, fires, and all other accidents of moment, in every quarter of the globe, from the earliest period to the year 1792. Printer, Bookseller and Stationer, Castle-Street, Cork.
Harrington, L. A. (2012) Gender and insanity in the Irish district asylum system: a case study of the Cork district asylum, 1870 - 1905. Thesis. University College Cork.
HC: PP - House of Commons: U.K. Parliamentary Papers:
HC: PP, Lunatic asylums, Ireland. Report of the inspectors-general on the district, local, and private lunatic asylums in Ireland, 1843: with appendices (1844).
HC: PP, Lunatic asylums, Ireland. Report of the inspectors-general on the district, local, and private lunatic asylums in Ireland, 1844: with appendices (1845).
HC: PP, Lunatic Asylums-Ireland. Seventh Report on the district, criminal, and private lunatic asylums in Ireland: with appendices (1854-55).
HC: PP, Lunatic asylums--Ireland. Report on the district, local, and private lunatic asylums in Ireland, 1846: with appendices (1847).
Henry, H. M. (1989) Our Lady’s Hospital, Cork: history of the mental hospital in Cork spanning 200 years. Cork: Haven Books.
Kelly, B. (2012) Human Rights and the Mental Health Act 2001: Part 1 [online]. Available from: https://www.irishhealthpro.com/content/articles/show/name/human-rights-and-the-mental--health-act-2001-part-1 [Accessed 8 July 2024].
Kelly, B. (2016) Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland (1st edition). Kildare: Irish Academic Press.
Prior, P. (2012) Asylums, Mental Health Care and the Irish, 1800-2010. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
Walking Borders. (2018) Walk 10. Walking with sociologist Linda Connolly in Cork. Available from:
https://www.walkingborders.com/post/walk-10-walking-with-sociologist-linda-connolly-in-cork
[Accessed 23 February 2024].
Walsh, O. (2005) ‘‘Tales from the Big House’: The Connacht District Asylum in the Late Nineteenth Century’, History Ireland, 13 (6), pp. 21-25.