Nineteenth Century Society: Women, Madness & Marriage 4

Marriage breakdown could cause massive disruption in the lives of married women in the Victorian era. Even in cases where the termination of the marriage had been desired, such as that of Kate Marian Merriman, admitted as a patient of Bethlem Hospital in July 1891, the change in position might be hard to deal with. Suddenly returned to the care of her family after separation from her husband six years ago, 36 year old Merriman “had considerable trouble with her relations over family matters,” most of which seem to relate to her desire for independence for, like Grace Sapsford a decade later, she felt that “I surely have a perfect right at my age to choose my future.”

Kate Merriman told the medical officers a lengthy story of her admission, refuting or explaining most of the issues stated as delusions in her medical certificates. “The night before admission she stayed at a hotel at Henley by herself with no luggage but a travelling bag. She was much upset by the way she was treated there, she says with great want of respect. The people there mistook a razor in her bag for a suicidal instrument, whereas she always carried it to cut her corns. She says nothing in her conduct accounted for the rude way in which she was treated. This bother caused her so much annoyance that she refused her food.”

It is unclear whether the medical officers took the word of Kate’s brother (who connected her illness with her separation from her husband six years before) or herself – for they certainly commented on the lack of clear symptoms of insanity. Moreover, the conversational tone of the letter written by Mrs Merriman to Dr Hyslop after her discharge indicates that she felt he understood her: “as you know, I have not had anything to do with my relatives for some time.” However, as Kate was legally regarded as a dependent of her parents, the medical officers were in a difficult position: they would have to send her back to her parents’ home. This, she wrote, caused her to feel “isolated” in the Hospital, and: “While forgiving as one hopes to be forgiven, one cannot forget the past six & a half years of their life. … I have lived the quietest of lives in rooms with my children before, if necessary I can do it again, & be far happier there, than I could ever be with my own family.”

Ultimately, Kate Merriman managed to achieve her aims. Discharged cured in November 1891, her certificate was signed by a doctor in Penzance – where she had long claimed she wished to move with her children, well away from the family she disliked, in part due to their overbearing views on her marriage. This doctor, Humphry Davy, in fact disagreed with the diagnoses which had led to her certification in the first place. He declared that he had seen Mrs Merriman many times in the last four years and had never witnessed any symptom of insanity: as he saw it, her ideas of persecution at the hands of her family were entirely rational.

Nineteenth Century Society: Women, Madness & Marriage 3

The medical records of an appreciable number of the young women admitted as patients of Bethlem in the late nineteenth century provide evidence of a close interplay of social intimacy, expectation and vulnerability. Nancy Jessie Joy was admitted twice in 1888. Aged 22, Nancy was a Still Room Maid, regarded as suffering from melancholia. She was quickly discharged cured following her first admission, but later claimed to have been simply pretending to be well. After this discharge, while still depressed, she “had the idea that if she became “ruined” a change would come over her mind.” She wandered from home and was “accosted by a gentleman.” Having “allowed him to have intercourse with her,” she “now feels she is going to hell and wants to hurry this on.” In Nancy’s case, conventional gender roles were used to attempt to avoid the stigma that might be associated with her behaviour: the “seduced woman,” Nancy’s actions are interpreted as entirely passive (she “wanders,” and does not instigate relations but simply “allows” it), while the “accosting” gentleman is the active party. Her “seduction” was seen as the reason for Nancy’s re-admission in October 1888 – popular literature in particular frequently associated female insanity and suicidal behaviour with seduction: again, however, she was quickly discharged as recovered, without further comment on her actions.

Yet the role of the Victorian psychiatrist in such cases was complicated – at once physician, moral guardian and spiritual counsellor, indicated by the letter Nancy wrote to Dr Smith three years after her discharge. Having apparently remained well, she begged Dr Smith for advice, for “I feel I cannot ask my mother.” Two things, Nancy felt, might prevent her marrying, as she described her situation to Dr Smith as follows:

“I am engaged to a young man who wishes to marry me & does not mind my having been insane. I could not frame my lips to utter, or I would rather have come & ask you. [sic] Sir, in my sane mind not an impure thought enters my mind. … Am I really ruined or not? If I am I will never marry, no man shall reproach and if you are able to say I am not ruined then one question more, was my insanity of a nature that it would not be right for me to marry?”

There is no indication of Dr Smith’s response to this letter – or whether he even replied at all. However, Nancy was still single when she was admitted to Bethlem in 1899, aged 32, her relapse caused by “mental worry,” presumably due to her “self accusation.” This time, she was discharged uncured.

Pennsylvania Express

Our Archivist has been awarded short-term travel grants from the Francis
Clark Wood Institute for the History of Medicine at The College of
Physicians of Philadelphia and the
Committee for Professional and International Affairs of the Archives and
Records Association (UK and
Ireland) to enable research into the photographic representation of
psychiatric patients using the archival resources of the College’s
Library.

There should be ample scope for this research in the city of Benjamin
Rush, Thomas Kirkbride and Silas Weir Mitchell; and if only the Dorothea
Dix Library and Museum (opened as a reading room for the female
patients of Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg State Hospital, which Dix and
Kirkbride co-founded in 1851) had not closed in 2006, it would have been
the next stop on our Archivist’s itinerary. As matters stand, hopefully
there will be enough time for a ‘Letter from America’ to be written for
publication on this blog in due course.

Photo courtesy of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Getting into Georgian Bethlem 3

In previous posts we described the restrictions placed on admissions to Bethlem Hospital, and to its ‘incurable’ ward, in the eighteenth century, and told the first of two stories of attempts made to gain admission for a patient. The second concerns Sarah Lufkin of Little Bentley near Manningtree, Essex, who came into the Hospital on 16 February 1782, and was discharged uncured on 15 February of the following year, in strict accordance with the previously-described rules governing admission and discharge. Mrs Lufkin was considered a ‘fit Object’ for transfer to Bethlem’s ‘incurable’ ward, but had to go on the waiting list for a vacancy. It took seven years for her to be offered a place, and a letter written to the Hospital by Sarah’s son John Lufkin is preserved in the archives.

‘My Brothers, Sisters and myself have Deliberated on the matter,’ John wrote, ‘and although her who has been one of the tenderest Mothers still continue in a state of Insanity, I leve [sic] you to judge from your own feelings if it would not be a heard, very heard work for us to part from her and perhaps never to see her more.’ This was no exaggeration on John’s part. Little Bentley was at least two days’ coach journey away from London in the eighteenth century, and the fare was not cheap.

By 1790 Sarah Lufkin’s children had been seven years without Bethlem’s assistance in caring for her. ‘Ever since she left London she has been in a very Creditable Famaly [sic] where she is treated with the greatest kindness and has every Indulgence a person in her Situation can have, and where we can see her as often as we please as the Distance is only half a mile from our own Famaly.’ What would they do, then, with Bethlem’s renewed offer of help?

‘Although it is a very heavy Expence’, John Lufkin continued, ‘we hope with the Blessing of God to be able to support her till it shall please the Lord to release her from her heavy affliction, for can we do two [sic] much for a good Parent’? That John Lufkin’s filial devotion was shot through with practicality is evidenced by the next (and effectively last) line of his letter: ‘Sir, if we omit this opportunity and if at a futer [sic] time any thing unforeseen should happen so that we find the Expence more than we are able to support, could she then at a Vacancy be admitted’? No record survives of the answer given by the Hospital, but we may surmise that, if that it stuck by its rules, the answer would probably have been ‘No’.

Nineteenth Century Society: Women, Madness and Marriage 2

Unconventional behaviour was sometimes (but not always) regarded as evidence of insanity. Victorian Bethlem’s medical officers certainly did not appear to think badly of those female patients who chose education over marriage (perhaps unsurprising: obituaries of George Savage hailed him as a champion of medical education for women) – nor, indeed, was this necessarily the case with the patient’s families. Isabella Clemes, admitted in 1892, was a Teacher of Mathematics and graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge; her brother felt that she had shown “no special nervousness” prior to the commencement of her illness – indeed, eccentricity seemed to be predominantly on the male side of the family and, although the maternal grandmother “was carried away a little by “spiritualism” in her old age … up to that time she had been a remarkably able & executive woman.”

“Disappointment in love”, often regarded as a cause of illness in single patients, was thus not particularly associated with women, as indicated in the case of Alfred Freeman and Alice Meeks. Twenty-one year old Freeman’s sentimentality was regarded as part of his apparently troublesome nature; he is “generally annoying everyone” wrote Bethlem’s medical officers in 1894, inserting examples of his love poetry into the casebooks as evidence. Also inserted was the letter he wrote to a female patient, Alice Meeks, after meeting her at one of the regular Hospital dances.

“Dear Dr Hyslop,” Miss Meeks wrote after receiving Freeman’s proposal of marriage. “You will be greatly amused at my letter, also the one which I have enclosed. I must say you won’t be more surprised than I was this afternoon at receiving such a stupid lot of nonsense. I can assure you my ideas of love are very far from that quarter. I don’t suppose in my 22 years of happiness I could ever have thought less about that sort of thing. You remember about my speaking to you about a secret, that even my own Mother & Father know nothing at all about, at the early age of 19 years I had an offer of marriage from a Medical Student, he was very young only 23, but to all outward appearances seemed rather to like my company. He said that in 5 years time he hoped to have a good home for me, but I only laughed at it as I could not & do not understand that meaning love. I fear I am rather a loveless creature. Hoping you will not laugh at me. Yours sincerely, A.G.M. Meeks.”

Seemingly well aware that her behaviour as a “loveless creature” rather defied the expectations of society, the firm and decisive manner of Miss Meeks’ letter is rather at odds with her apparent condition in the Hospital, in which she was generally seen as silent, depressed, and later “stuporous.” Her independent tone, however, was echoed by many other young women in the 1880s and ‘90s: most of whom were working, and often did not live with their families. Those who did might express the opinions of Fanny Hider, a 30 year old governess admitted in 1888, “that if she is allowed to go home she will have her own way, & will do as she likes, she means to be independent.” Shortly thereafter, Fanny was discharged well.

A Hospital Dance in 1859