Duties of the Attendants of North Wales Asylum

The attendants are to commence their duties at six o’clock in the morning, and are to retire to bed at ten o’clock at night. The male and female attendants are not allowed to associate. They are further expected to be neat and clean in their dress, and respectful in manners, They are never to absent themselves from the Asylum without the consent of the Superintendent or Matron.

Their whole time is to be occupied with the patients, and are not allowed to sit in their own rooms except at meal times, or when off duty, and are at all time to be actively attending on their patients, or cleaning the rooms and galleries.

Any attendant found striking a patient, or being intoxicated, shall be instantly dismissed. They are forbidden to use any angry or vindictive expressions towards the patients, or repeat out of the institution anything connected with it, or the names, history, or conduct of the patients under their charge.

If any patient shall escape through the negligence of an attendant, the expense of retaking such shall be deducted from his or her salary.

A night watcher shall be selected out of the attendants, whose duty shall commence at ten o’clock, and cease at six in the morning.

No smoking allowed within the Asylum.

                                                            Four attendants in uniform

During the first twelve years there were no members of staff on duty between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning, so for those patients subjected to a stay in the asylum for reasons such as simply having a child out of wedlock, or conveniently admitted at the request of a relative, it must have been a frightening experience to be left with seriously disturbed or suicidal patients. Many patients suffered from epilepsy, considered to be a mental illness at the time, and were in danger of suffocation when there was no-one to assist. Staff coming on duty in the morning were liable to find a patient had died.

Despite numerous complaints by the Commissioners in Lunacy, it wasn’t until 1860 when there were over 200 residents, that one attendant only was placed at each end of the hospital. This situation continued for many years to come.

The only form of lighting was by candles and oil lamps and heating was from coal fires, until the erection of a Gas-works in 1853. With stone floors, bare stone walls and sparse furniture, winter times must have been intolerable for the patients during those first five years, with staff being ‘under the necessity of sending most of them to bed soon after dark’.  Patients found this to be ‘a source of great dissatisfaction and annoyance, and causes many of them to be restless and noisy, to the injury and disturbance of the others’.

                              

                      The First Annual Report of The North Wales Lunatic Asylum by the Committee of                                                                                       Visitors     1849

The Medical Officer's Report - 1850

Under the blessing of an Almighty Providence, the North Wales Asylum has been favoured with another year of unalloyed prosperity.
Since the date of our last Report, 76 patients have been admitted; 28 patients have been discharged cured; 7 improved; and 10 have died.

When it is taken into consideration that the North Wales Asylum has been the receptacle of all the chronic, epileptic, and hopelessly demented patients of the five Counties of the Union, we trust we may, without presumption, congratulate the Committee of Visitors upon the amount of cures, and the paucity of deaths; and that the flattering report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, which is annexed, is fully borne out by the tables appended.

We have still to lament the apathy, the reluctance, not to say the culpable neglect, on the part of Parish Authorities in delaying to send their insane poor into the Asylum, during the early and most easily remedial stages of the complaint. Would that we could impress upon the public the evils of ‘the too frequently irreparable mischief ‘of this most short-sighted policy, in lessening the amount of cures.
The experience of all well conducted Asylums has long established the fact, that about 80 per cent of the patients who are placed under treatment within a few weeks after the first attack of insanity, are speedily discharged cured.

In private life, we have reason to know that relatives, from mistaken notions of kindness and of delicacy, retain in secrecy or rather in fancied secrecy, - their insane friends, till too late, when a few weeks of rational treatment, in an Asylum, would have restored them. They are not aware that the inexperience, the injudicious kindness of some, the cruelty and harshness of others, the personal restraint frequently adopted, and the innumerable difficulties inseparable from home treatment, aggravate and perpetuate a disease, which, under the kind and consoling care of judicious officers and attendants, and total freedom from restraint, in an Asylum, would be quickly removed.
How frequently do we see patients, the most violent when admitted, speedily become tranquil, cheerful, and confiding, though brought into the Asylum cruelly manacled!

We have satisfaction to say, that this year, like the last, has been marked by the same rigid observance of the none-restraint system; - the law of kindness has borne the same sway, the same cheerfulness and sympathy with misfortune has been invariably practised by the attendants; not a cross look, nor an angry word on their part, has fallen under our cognizance.

We have pleasure to inform the Visitors that a Bowling Green, and Quoiting and Skittle Grounds, are in progress, and will ere long be completed by the labour of our own attendants and able-bodied patients.
We are at all times most reluctant to propose measures which will entail additional expense upon the Rate-payers of the Counties in Union. We must, however, impress upon the Visitors the absolute necessity of supplying the House with Gas; both as a matter of economy as well as of policy. With the present most inadequate method of lighting the Asylum , the patients are deprived of the means of occupation and amusement during the long winter evenings; and we are under the necessity of sending most of them to bed soon after dark. This is a source of great dissatisfaction and annoyance, and causes many of them to be restless and noisy, to the injury and disturbance of others.

The increasing number of patients will entail upon us the necessity of erecting Workshops for carpenters, shoemakers, and tailors, as those now in use will speedily be required for wards and other offices. We have already shown the loss the Establishment has sustained from the want of cow-houses and pigsties. Milk and butter form a most formidable item of expenditure, nearly one half of which might be saved by adopting the recommendation which formed part of our special report presented by us to the Committee some months ago, and which was adopted by the last Quarterly Meeting.

The want of a proper room for mangling the clothes is severely felt by the patients and servants; as the sudden transition from the high temperature of the laundry to the extreme cold of the mangling- room frequently produces catarrh and diarrhoea amongst them. Another inconvenience is much felt in the want of a separate airing-ground for the noisy and refractory, and patients of offensive habits.

                     

                                                                      Padded Cell

Three Kids Gripped By Evil By Polly Mullaney    
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