Managing the Mad: Lunacy Provision and Social Control in Kent, 1774–1874 Anne Elizabeth Goad Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Queen Mary University of London in September 2020 1 Statement of Originality I, Anne Elizabeth Goad, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also indicated below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of this thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Anne Goad 20 September 2020 2 Abstract This thesis examines lunacy provision in Kent between 1774 and 1874 from the perspective of the anti-psychiatrists of the 1960s and 70s. It is a regional study that seeks to demonstrate the coercive bedrock of the discipline of psychiatry as evident from the treatment and care of the insane in previous centuries. Similarities and differences between local and national circumstances are investigated as are the manifold forms of the mixed economy of care on offer: private, public, military, voluntary and community-based. Four of the seven chapters are devoted to the origins and workings of the county lunatic asylum at Maidstone which opened in 1833 and was until 1875 the main receptacle for pauper lunatics in the area. Throughout I juxtapose the lunacy reformers’ avowed motive of humanitarian concern with the brutal everyday reality of social control. Citing extensively the works of writers such as Foucault, Laing, Goffman and Szasz, I contend that the Kentish authorities responsible for lunacy provision were more preoccupied with modifying deviant behaviour than alleviating suffering: correction, and with it often custody, were more important than cure and care. In line with the stance of the original anti-psychiatrists I hold both modern psychiatry and its eighteenth and nineteenth century antecedents to be essentially morally compromised, purporting to represent the individual patient’s best interests whilst serving the state’s agenda of order and social conformity. 3 Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..p.7 Chapter 1 - Kent’s Trade in Lunacy………………………..……………………….p.37 Chapter 2 - Insanity in the Army: Kent’s Military Asylums……...………p.65 Chapter 3 – Building the Asylum…………………………………..………………..p.104 Chapter 4 – The Asylum Regime: Admission…………………………..………p.126 Chapter 5 – The Asylum Regime: Residence……………..……………………p.149 Chapter 6 – The Asylum Regime: Departure…………………………..………p.194 Chapter 7 – Lunacy Outside the Asylum………………………….……………..p.218 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..p.258 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..p.267 4 This thesis is dedicated to all the patients incarcerated in the Kent County Lunatic Asylum at Barming Heath from its opening in 1833 to 1874, especially those whose names feature in the text. Their admission profiles and case notes, whilst giving patchy personal details, can only hint at the suffering experienced. These men and women left no first person account of the cause and course of their illness. In an effort to give them a voice I sincerely hope I have not inadvertently done them any disservice or violated their integrity. 5 Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough. R.D. Laing Is the aim of psychiatry the study of human behaviour or the control of human (mis)behaviour? Does psychiatry aspire to be the servant of the individual or of the state? T. Szasz We must see the mental hospital in the recent historical context in which it developed, as one among a network of institutions designed to provide a residence for various categories of socially troublesome people. E. Goffman 6 Introduction On Oak Apple Day 1838 (May 29) an ex-inmate of Kent County Lunatic Asylum at Barming Heath, Maidstone, led the last rising of the agricultural labourers at the Battle of Bossenden Wood, a fatal confrontation between disaffected and deluded farm workers and the forces of authority. Sir William Courtenay, alias John Nicholls Tom, was originally a maltster from Cornwall who, after a short disappearance, surfaced in Kent in the early 1830s under his assumed name. He was flamboyantly oriental in dress and had long flowing hair. Moreover, he was wholly immersed in millenarianism, believing himself on a divine mission to better the lives of the poor and attracting much attention with his passionate rhetoric both before and after his confinement. At Bossenden Wood he had raised a band of devoted but ultimately misled followers from the Blean area of Kent and had marched with them through the locality in pseudo-military fashion under a flag, carrying the traditional icon of popular protest, a loaf of bread on a pole.1 However, the labourers were being closely shadowed as they traversed 40 miles in two days, moving from village to village, hamlet to hamlet, with numbers swelling at one point to nearly one hundred strong.2 En route Courtenay addressed his followers in rousing speeches, denouncing the rigours of the poor laws and the wrongs inflicted by the rich upon the poor, often taking inspiration from biblical texts. These tirades fell on receptive ears as the area near and between Faversham and Sittingbourne, where Courtenay operated in May 1838, had been the site of vigorous protest three years previously against the New Poor Law. All this alarmed the closely watching authorities who executed a warrant upon Courtenay, to be delivered by John Mears, the constable of Boughton village. At Boughton Farm, however, Courtenay shot and stabbed Mears leading to the deployment of the military. There ensued in Bossenden Wood a short but violent battle in which Courtenay, a lieutenant and nine rioters were killed. Unsurprisingly, the episode caused outrage both locally and nationally and much attention was focussed on the enigmatic figure of Courtenay who had spent four years incarcerated as a lunatic at Barming Heath Asylum. Courtenay embodies the subject matter of this thesis, namely the mingling of insanity with social protest and the resulting need for those in power to exert social control in order to police non-conformist behaviour. I argue that not only was the Kent lunatic asylum built partly to further this objective but also the 1 Barry Reay, The Last Rising of the Agricultural Labourers (London: Breviary Stuff, 2010), p.73 2 Ibid., p.74 7 private and military asylums in the county had a similar agenda: maintaining the status quo and monitoring the often troublesome behaviour of the population. Social deviants comprised not only those who instigated rebellion, drank, swore and were violent but also those who were idle or eccentric in their ways, not performing their duties properly either in the workplace or the family unit and not pulling their weight. Pauper lunatics especially were often wretched individuals who had been pushed over the edge by the stresses of poverty. Their illness can be interpreted as a displaced form of protest which the authorities were keen to prevent morphing into organised unrest. Courtenay was actually a criminal lunatic who had been acquitted of perjury on the grounds of insanity and sent to Barming Heath suffering from ‘delusions regarding his person and property’.3 He was also, however, a charismatic demagogue whose considerable followers, both working and middle class, were taken in by his assumed identity, his messiah-like looks and prophecies and even his claim to be unharmed by sabres and bullets. Deviant and deluded behaviour thus called forth repression by those in power and was often deemed lunatic. It is this interplay of lunacy with social control in the county of Kent that I am interested in in this thesis. Geographical and chronological parameters This thesis examines lunacy provision in Kent over a century, from 1774 to 1874, with special reference to the issue of social control. It investigates not only the construction and functioning of the county lunatic asylum at Maidstone but also the private and military asylums located within the county and the provision of extramural care. It is thus first and foremost a regional study of all the care options available to the insane in a particular area, the county of Kent.4 There have been many localised studies of lunacy provision but they have all tended to focus on asylum care. Thus in the new millennium Pamela Michael entitled her 2003 study of Denbigh Asylum Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill in North Wales, 1800-2000, whilst Anna Shepherd, writing in 2014, compared two institutions for the insane in Surrey under the title Institutionalising the Insane.5 Joseph Melling and Bill 3 Kent History and Library Centre (KHLC)-MH/Md2/Ap1/1 Oakwood Hospital Admission Register 1833-42 4 It should be noted that up to 1888, when the London County Council was created, Kent also included such heavily populated parishes as Greenwich,