Biography and Psychology III: Walter Abraham Haigh

Walter Abraham Haigh was first admitted to Bethlem in October 1882. He was a tutor, who held a B.A. from Oxford University, and was 27 years old. He was diagnosed with Delusional Insanity and described as excited, and subject to fixed delusions and hallucinations, particularly of persecution. Victorian society was heavily class-based, and it may thus have been Haigh’s educated background that made his own explanations of his illness seem particularly interesting to his doctors: his casenotes are peppered with quotations, apparently reported verbatim.

Moreover, the extensive nature of the notes concerning Haigh suggests that he often conversed with the doctors, in addition to his usual asylum pursuits of playing the violin and chess. Haigh and superintendent, George Savage, certainly worked closely together. In March 1885, it was recorded that he “has during the last year rendered considerable assistance to Dr Savage in the production of his Manual of Insanity.” Indeed, Haigh is one of just two people acknowledged in the preface to Savage’s textbook: “W. Haigh, Esq., who has not only corrected my proofs, but has by criticism aided me much in the legal chapters.”

Without prior knowledge, it would be impossible to tell from Savage’s book that Haigh was one of Savage’s patients. Indeed, Haigh and Savage’s relationship serves to blur the distinction between doctor and patient entirely: it is Haigh who suggests his own treatment (the insertion of a seton in his neck – see image below for explanation of this treatment by “counter-irritation”), and the doctors quickly acquiesce. Moreover, despite continuing to admit to hallucinations and delusions often considered “dangerous” by Victorian psychiatrists, Haigh is given a free pass key to the asylum, although he is unwilling to leave the grounds, feeling suspicious of strangers.

Walter remained in touch with doctors at Bethlem after his discharge, regarded as well, in July 1888. He visited the Hospital over the Christmas of the same year, mentioning that he had been living in Dieppe as a tutor. The next year, he decided to go into the Church, and in 1890 took priest’s orders. Judging from his many letters, Haigh continued to suffer from the “hallucinations and illusions of contempt and persecution” that he had long complained of, but was nonetheless able to work and live outside the asylum (without, of course, the aid of medication), and does not appear to have been certified again, although he did return to Bethlem three times for a short stay as a voluntary boarder in the 1890s. “As to what my perversions of sensations are no “sane” person would have any idea.” He wrote in 1890, “But I do despise those who know I have been certified and who judge ignorantly.”

 

Image from Armamentarium Chirurgicum by Johannes Scultetus, c. 1655

Wellcome Library, London

Biography and Psychology II: George Savage (1842 – 1921)

Our recent post on biography in the history of psychology has inspired a new series, exploring the lives of certain individuals at Bethlem, beginning with late-nineteenth-century psychiatrist, George Savage.

Savage is little remembered today: he is most famous in the field of literature, having for a while attended Virginia Woolf. His lack of contribution towards any major theoretical approaches to mental illness, or shifts in diagnostic classification, make him often appear a minor figure in the history of psychiatry. Yet, for his case-based approach, Savage serves as an interesting example of the late Victorian asylum psychiatry and, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he thus held a prominent position in the field. Indeed, Savage appears to have been the only psychiatrist who appeared in Vanity Fair’s prestigious “Men of the Day” series (on his knighthood in 1912) and, on his death in 1921, was declared by The Times an “authority on insanity.”

George Henry Savage was born in Brighton in 1842, into a middle class family. He went into medicine, qualifying in 1865, with his first post being as House-Surgeon at Guy’s Hospital. However, after taking on a six-month post as “resident student” at the Bethlem Royal Hospital the following year, Savage later claimed that he “saw the possibility which might open as a life’s work.” After a period as a country GP, Savage returned to Bethlem as Assistant Medical Officer in 1872, later becoming Physician-Superintendent, before leaving in 1888 to embark on a successful career as a consultant psychiatrist, while remaining in regular contact with Bethlem, and on the board of governors until his death.

Savage was an active member of the Medico-Psychological Association (meetings of which were often held at Bethlem), served a term as President, and was co-editor of the Journal of Mental Science, the main psychiatric journal, from 1878 until 1894. Yet, this professional engagement should not blind us to the importance of seeing Savage, also, as an individual. He was not only well-known in the field of psychiatry, but also appears to have been popular in a broader swathe of contemporary urban bourgeois society, described by a friend after his death as “the most clubbable man I ever knew.” Savage’s membership of a huge number of dining and literary clubs attests to this. His contemporaries described him as a “big-brained vigorous-bodied man,” who “revelled in climbing crags, sport on the moors … and ski-ing over snow and icy roads.” As a follow-up post will indicate, seeing Savage as a person as well as a doctor reminds us that his relationship with his patients was often personal, as well as professional.

Caricature of Savage in Vanity Fair, 1912

Book Review: ‘Human Traces’

Back in March and April we posted reviews of books with mental health themes. Now we are pleased to add another review, written this time by a work experience student who was recently with us:

‘In the days leading up to, and during, my work experience placement at Bethlem Archives and Museum, I read Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks. I found the book of particular interest at this time because of the ways in which what I was reading linked with all that I was learning and experiencing at the Archives. The book is set in the years around the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is about the attempts of two fictional doctors, Thomas Midwinter and Jacques Rebière, to make some kind of breakthrough in understanding and treating mental illnesses, back in a time when very little was known about these sorts of disorders.

‘On the first day of my work experience placement I sat in on an educational visit from a school to the Archives. This began with a talk about the history of the hospital and how, in the past, the Bethlem has tried to treat and cure patients. Once again, I found myself making connections between this and Human Traces, especially in terms of the descriptions of the wards and of the use of ‘occupation’ to try and keep the patients busy and distract them from their problems. For example, nineteenth-century Bethlem had a library, sewing, sport teams, a choir and other activities which were available to the patients. All this was also around the time in which Thomas Midwinter, in the book, was working in a large county asylum which also offered its inmates such employment as sewing, gardening, working in a laundry, kitchen or workshop and farming. Another example of entertainment which Bethlem would provide was a monthly ball, an occurrence which is also found within Human Traces, although only once at the county asylum – at Christmas time.

‘During my time here, I have been able to look a little bit at some of the case books for patients admitted in the early 1880s – the same time period within which Human Traces is set. It was possible for me to examine in contrast the real patients and those created by Faulks and see how each were treated in Bethlem in comparison with the attempts of the doctors and alienists at the same time in Human Traces. I found this the most interesting of connections as it seemed that some of the characters in the book could have been taken directly from the doctors’ notes in the casebooks. The case books also provide another connection with Human Traces as Thomas Midwinter, whilst working in the county asylum, was concerned at the lack of records of the patients and so painstakingly wrote up case books of his own, such as the ones kept at the archive.

‘The book Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks is one which I have really enjoyed reading and its vivid descriptions offer a fairly accurate view of the development of the understanding of mental health around the turn of the 20th Century. It is concerned with the development of psychiatry to such an extent that this rather dominates the book; however, there are many sub-plots which relate to less scientific and more conventional themes such as love, family and friendship.’