Joseph Ablett was very concerned by the complete lack of provision for the mentally ill and mentally disabled; indeed, the general practice was to hide the afflicted from the rest of society and even the family as a whole.
Mary Jones
I was young
and lovely,
Oh, I must
not be vain.
A position in
service, life was mine to gain.
But no-one
told me how I must condescend,
To every
demand of my betters.
What were you
doing?
What is this
practice of the flesh,
So intrusive
and painful … so making me bereft.
My person has
gone, forever.
I can’t talk,
I can’t move, I've become helpless.
Because
no-one will listen to the likes of me.
I have
shunned my provider, a mortal sin for a peasant.
Family
forgiveness will never be.
(Polly Mullaney-Hinchliffe)
(Polly Mullaney-Hinchliffe)
The case of Mary Jones of Ruthin (PP (Lords), 1844
Supplemental Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy relative to the
general condition of the Insane in Wales, 25 august 1844, London, Bradbury
& Evans:
‘In a dark and offensive room, over a blacksmith’s
forge, upon opening a bolted door, we discovered the miserable object of our
search. The only window was closed up by boards, between which little air could
find admission, and only a feeble glimmering of light.
In the middle of the loathsome chamber was Mary
Jones, the Lunatic, on a foul pallet of chaff or straw; and here she had been
confined for a period of fifteen years and upwards. She was seated in a bent
and crouching posture, on her bed of nauseous and disgusting filth. Near to her
person, and just within her reach, was a cup into which she was accustomed to
pass her excretions, which she emptied from time to time, into a chamber
utensil. This last vessel contained a quantity of feculent matter, the
accumulation of several days. By her side were the remnants of some food, of
which she had partaken. Within a few feet of the pallet, which was on the
floor, stood a large earthen jar, nearly full of fetid urine, the produce of
the three other persons in the cottage. It had, as stated by the mother, been
placed there in order that it might, from the warmth of the room, undergo a
more speedy decomposition, for the purpose of being used in dyeing wool. The
stagnant and suffocating atmosphere, and the nauseous effluvia which infected
it, were almost intolerable.
Long and close confinement had produced in Mary
Jones’s person the most frightful distortions. The chest bone protruded
forwards five or six inches beyond its natural place; and there was an
excoriation of the parts below. The legs were bent backwards, and the
knee-joints were fixed and immovable. The ankles and feet were also greatly
twisted and deformed.
She was emaciated in the last degree, her pulse was
feeble and quick, and her countenance, still pleasing, was piercingly anxious,
and marked by an expression of despair. Her garments were loathsome; and from
her person was emitted a most offensive odour’.
According to Mary's mother, when interviewed by the
commissioners, Mary had first been 'attacked with insanity at twenty
one when a servant in the family of the late Clerk of the Peace.' She had
no signs of deformity, indeed, was still as 'straight as an arrow'.
At one time she had been treated at Denbigh
Dispensary, but for the last fifteen years she had been housed in the small chamber
above the forge. The rest of the family occupied the other half of the
building. For the first five years Mary was allowed downstairs during the day,
but for the following ten years she had been imprisoned in the chamber with the
window boarded up.
However, the incredible fact that the commissioners
found so puzzling was that 'her pitiable situation appears to have been
veiled in mysterious secrecy', despite the fact that 'her habitation was in close proximity to the church, and contiguous to
the public road'. It had been said that Mary's cries had been heard from
the road.
The forge, now a pottery,where Mary occupied one half of the loft. The building is virtually unchanged. Through the window on the left was Mary's loft; boarded up at the time.
Three Kids Gripped By Evil By Polly Mullaney
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