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HoPSIG NEWS and NOTES The newsletter of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group Issue 2, Spring 2016 Editorial William Stark and the Glasgow Asylum of 1810 Welcome to the second issue of our newsletter. We Richard Mindham have information on mental hospitals of the past in Glasgow, Kent and Epsom, another holiday visit, William Stark was a Scottish architect who worked and learn about ‘mattoids’. Please continue to send at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In his your contributions to: [email protected]. design for the Glasgow Asylum he demonstrated a capacity to bring together the clinical requirements Coming Joint Event: RSM Psychiatry of the hospital with the latest thinking in Section and HoPSIG architecture to produce a building which was influential in the design and in the planning of later Mind CollegeMadne Assr candhives M Uepdlaatench olia: hospitals. Ideas and Institutions in the History of Psychiatry from Classical Antiquity to the Stark's Earlier Works Present William Stark was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1770, the son of a manufacturer. The details of Tuesday 10 May 2016, Royal Society of his training in architecture are unknown but his Medicine, 1 Wimpole St, London, W1G 0AE elder sister married a Glasgow architect, John Please see RSM website for programme and Craig, designer of Faculty Hall for the Royal booking Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, a classical building of 1791 in St Enoch's Square, and it is likely that he received his professional Archivist Update training in his brother-in-law's office. He is known The College Archivist is involved in retrospective to have visited St Petersburg in 1798 in connection cataloguing of the archives collection. The target is with an architectural commission, and would have to have an online catalogue by the end of the year. seen there the many classical buildings erected by 1 This will increase access to the collection which Peter the Great. contains information on the history of the College. His first major assignment was to design the The Archivist will have the old paper newsletters building to house the collection donated to the of Faculties, Sections, Divisions and Special University of Glasgow by William Hunter. The Interest Groups digitised. These newsletters, rich building of 1804 was in the classical style and in clinical and research information, will be added formed the eastern part of the group of buildings to the online catalogue. around the Old College of 1606.2 (These buildings 1 including the Museum were demolished for 1782-9, which replaced the hospital designed by railway developments in the 1880s.) In 1807-8 he his father. In its layout this hospital was very like designed Saint George's Tron Church, Buchanan Hooke’s Bethlem. Street, Glasgow, in the Baroque style, creating a building which forms a focal point in the centre of The York County Lunatic Asylum, later Bootham the city to this day, although the interior has lost Park Hospital, had been established through public some of its character. subscription in 1774-7 and was designed by the local architect John Carr in the style of a grand country house. The conduct of the hospital was in some respects unsatisfactory and this led The Society of Friends of York to establish their own hospital, The Retreat. This was designed by John Bevans and built between 1794 and 1796; it was small, accommodating just over fifty patients, with a central administrative block and wings for male and female patients on either side. Samuel Tuke, the grandson of the founding chairman, William Tuke, prepared a report on the work of The Retreat in its first decade; he recorded Stark's visit and his 5 comments in the report published in 1813. While the architecture of the hospital was unremarkable St George’s Tron Church the approach to patient care used there came to be known around the world. In 1810-11 he designed the new Court House overlooking the River Clyde and Glasgow Green; Stark clearly recognised the merits of these one of the first buildings in Britain to be built in principles when he presented his recommendations the Greek Revival style.3 In these works he for the building of an asylum to a meeting of the demonstrated a familiarity and command of a wide public in Glasgow in 1807: architectural vocabulary which contributed to his appointment as architect to the new asylum. Sir It is a government of humanity and of consummate Walter Scott testified to his abilities: '… a young skill, and requires no aid from the arm of violence, man of exquisite taste who must rise very high in or exertions of brutal force. 4 his profession'. His aim in planning the hospital in Glasgow was to Taking the Brief avoid the seclusion of patients and to provide a On his appointment Stark approached his task in a setting for: systematic way by consulting a wide range of individuals who had experience of dealing with the A system of arrangement of a very minute and mentally ill. He also visited some of the few apparently complicated kind, united to great ease and simplicity of management: a superintendence mental hospitals then in existence in Britain which unusually active and efficient, which follows and included those at Montrose, Liverpool, Manchester watches every motion of the patient, while it ensures 5 and York. Most of these were in the style of to him a more than ordinary degree of individual country houses and did not offer complete liberty, of exemption from restraint and bondage, of architectural solutions to the needs of the mentally personal security, of ease, and enjoyment. ill. He refers to 'asylums of the metropolis' in his report of 1807 but gives no more details. The He felt that this approach would provide a setting authorities of Bethlem Royal Hospital were in the which would reduce the level of disturbance both process of designing a new hospital for a site at St in the ward and in the individual patient: George's Fields, Lambeth to replace the hospital at Moorfields. This, the third building occupied by the patient will soon perceive that he is secure Bethlem Hospital, was built between 1812 and during good behaviour; and an incentive to order 1815 and unlike the Moorfields hospital its design and good conduct will be created which will have a can have had little influence on Stark's work in powerful and better effect upon his mind than examples of severity, or the terrors excited by a Glasgow. He may also have seen the second Saint 6 harsh and degrading system of punishment. Luke’s Hospital, rebuilt by George Dance junior 2 The Process of Design provision not made by Hooke at Bethlem, as well In designing the Glasgow Asylum Stark fell under as rooms for staff. At the very centre was a raised several important architectural influences of which area on each floor which allowed observation of one of the most important was the concept of the the main gallery of each ward. The centre of the ‘panopticon’ described by the philosopher Jeremy cross was roofed by an elegant dome which Bentham. Bentham proposed that hospitals for the accommodated the chapel. There was a secure insane and other institutions where the inmates airing court for each ward. Building began in 1810 were to be kept under observation be designed in and was completed in 1811. such a way that the inmates and their attendants could be observed by senior staff without 7 themselves being seen. Bentham believed that the good conduct of institutions would lead to them working more efficiently; in this case to the greater well-being of patients and in prisons to the reform of prisoners. The panopticon principle had been used on a small scale by James Bevans for the Lunatic House at Guy's Hospital of 1797, but no large hospitals had been built in the UK on this 8 plan. Stark's hospital was in the form of a cross and of three stories; the wards radiated from the centre of the building. In the design of the individual wards St ark’s Glasgow Asylum Plan Stark employed the model, first used by Robert Hooke in the second Bethlem Hospital at A contemporary account praises the architect's Moorfields, London of the ‘gallery ward’. In this work: layout Hooke combined the monastic layout of individual cells with a broad gallery. The gallery By correctly proportioning the wards of the central buildings, by surmounting these with an attic, and by ward provided individual rooms for patients, and crowning the centre with a magnificent dome, he has combined them with a wide corridor which served imparted to this edifice a character which blends both as a space for recreation and a corridor for elegance with dignity, and will secure to it a place 9 moving around the hospital. This arrangement was among the most eminent works of art. clearly illustrated by Hogarth in his painting of Bethlem, 'The Madhouse', in his series 'A Rake's Progress', of 1733-4. However in Stark's hospital there was both heating and glazing of the windows. Glasgow Asylum, 1810 Stark's Legacy In his design for the Glasgow Asylum Stark went far beyond Bevan’s plans for the small Lunatic House at Guy's. He applied the principle of the panopticon to a much larger building, accommodating 126 patients as compared with 24 at Guy's and providing accommodation on three main floors with segregation of patients according to sex, social class and degree of insanity.