‘Gatekeepers to the Asylum’ A critical analysis of the role of doctors, magistrates, and family in the committal and lived experience of ‘dangerous lunatics’ under the Criminal Lunatic (Ireland) Act 1838
Le résumé fourni par la source
Sir, I take the liberty of addressing you on a subject which will surprise you greatly, as I came to the conclusion that I see their [sic] is no one else to complain to, unless yourself, as I want to see first what you can do for me before I go any further - the way I am tormented in Number 11 ward both by the Charge Nurse and the Second Nurse, Kinsella. I have put up with a good deal for the past three years, and a half, when they were the cause of me breaking glass and cutting my hand two years ago, over taking my dinner, what I consider was allowed to me by the house. This time twelve months I got a beaten [sic], and a kick in the back, which I will bring the effects of it to my grave. If two patients are speaking together, they say we are talking about them and backbiting them, and moreover they say we are going to take their lives, which I say it is quite the reverse, but you are not aware of what is going on in it. If you possibly can move me to some part of the Richmond away from those that has caused many a disturbance and more than that, which I leave to the Almighty right all wrongs, and if you don't take it in hands, I will get my sisters to write into the Lunacy Board or Inspectors. I remain, your obedient servant Kate K.1 Kate K. was fourteen years of age when first admitted to the Richmond Asylum on 5 October 1885. Her hand-written note to the asylum doctor remains today within the weathered pages of a patient case book of the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum in Dublin. Jonathan Andrews researching British asylums during the nineteenth century has claimed that only a minority of patient letters were ‘considered sufficiently interesting to be inserted in the case notes’ perhaps suggesting that the asylum doctor did take Kate K.’s concerns seriously.
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