immediate reduction in our cost of maintenance’. Finally, ‘inasmuch as the condition of things in the North Dublin Union Workhouse requires prompt remedy’, they suggested ‘that the Portrane Committee be instructed to make immediate provision in the temporary buildings at their disposal for the patients whose removal is applied for by Dr Fottrell’. The Joint Committee adapted all four recommendations on 19 December 1907.
Notwithstanding these measures, the problem of the mentally ill in Irish workhouses remained a concern well into the 1900s. In 1913, for example, despite the transfer of 58 patients from the South Dublin Union to the Richmond Asylum, the number in the Union continued to increase, to 202.68 There were similar problems at the North Dublin Union. Clearly the workhouses presented a persistent problem, regardless of how large the asylums themselves became.
Ultimately, the number of ‘mentally ill’ persons in workhouses finally began to decrease from the highs of the 1890s down to 1,821 in 1919, and generally declined further (in analogous establishments) throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.69 Notwithstanding this reduction, however, a range of challenges remained, not least of which was the plight of the intellectually disabled in the asylums and various other establishments in the early 1900s. These are considered next.
The Intellectually Disabled in the Nineteenth Century: ‘Verily We Are Guilty in This Matter’
The fate of the intellectually disabled in early-nineteenth-century Ireland was similar in many respects to that of the mentally ill. There was minimal dedicated provision, with the result that intellectually disabled persons were cared for at home, admitted to workhouses or, increasingly, committed to the growing number of asylums for the mentally ill.70
The 1843 rules for the operation of asylums provided specifically for the admission of the intellectually disabled and it was estimated that there was a total of 6,127 intellectually disabled persons in Ireland at that time.71 Precise numbers varied, but the Inspectors of Lunatics calculated that, in 1851, there were 3,562 ‘idiots’ ‘at large’; 202 in asylums; 13 in prisons; and 1,129 in workhouses, yielding a total of 4,906.72 By 1861, the number in asylums had doubled (to 403) and the total number risen to 7,033.
During the 1860s, Cheyne Brady, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, governor of the Meath Hospital,73 and prolific author on social matters, was notably exercised by this issue and wrote a pamphlet on The Training of Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Children, grimly outlining the position of the intellectually disabled in nineteenth-century Ireland and elsewhere (using contemporaneous terminology that some readers might find disturbing):
It is not very long since we used to see boys and girls, and sometimes stunted men and women, running wild in our streets and villages in a state of idiocy […]. They were carefully avoided, as the continual worrying of the village urchins had soured their tempers and rendered them in some cases dangerous.
Then, again, on visiting the poor, we have from time to time seen a bundle of rags in a corner, and, on inquiry, have ascertained that it contained an idiot child, living in dirt and degradation, worse than one would permit his dog or pig to live in.
Prejudice and popular ignorance respecting them have led to strange treatment of this afflicted class. By the Hindoo [sic] they are superstitiously venerated, while by many Europeans these helpless creatures have been regarded as human beings without souls. Some poor parents fancy that, as their children cannot remember what they hear, their brain must be soft, and apply poultices of oak-bark in order to tan or harden the fibres; others, finding it impossible to make any impression on the mind, conclude that the brain is too hard, and they torture their unhappy offspring with hot poultices of bread and milk, or plaster the skull with tar, keeping it on for a long time. Others, again, give mercury to act as a solder to close up the supposed crevices in the brain […]. The utmost stretch of humanity has hitherto thrust them out of sight in our workhouses, where they are suffered to exist uncared for and untaught.74
Brady presented a call to action, suggesting the opening of asylums for the intellectually disabled, as had already occurred in Bath (1846), Highgate (1848) and elsewhere:75
And if it cannot be gainsayed that the condition of the idiot and imbecile can be thus improved, is not our duty plain?
But what shall we answer for our past neglect? Verily we are guilty in this matter.
The future, however, is before us. Shall we not redeem the time, and gird up our loins to make up for past deficiency by a strenuous effort on behalf of this neglected class?
There are three courses open for adoption:-
I.The foundation of a general institution for the reception of all degrees of idiocy, from the hopeless to the most improvable.
II.The opening of an asylum for the pure idiots, who are not susceptible of much improvement, but who can be housed, cared for, and cured of bad habits.
III.The establishment of a training school for the improvable cases, where, as in the asylums of which I have attempted a description, they may be trained to habits of usefulness, rendered able to earn a livelihood, and be taught the way of salvation.76
Brady’s words inspired immediate activism on the part of George Hugh Kidd, an obstetric surgeon in Dublin,77 who penned An Appeal on Behalf of the Idiotic and Imbecile Children of Ireland, seeking the building of an asylum for intellectually disabled children, in line with Brady’s suggestion.78
One of the key supporters of Kidd’s proposal was a certain Henry Hutchinson Stewart (1798–1879), second son of Reverend Abraham Augustus Stewart, Rector of Donabate, County Dublin.79 Stewart, a key figure in the history of the intellectually disabled in Ireland, was born on 23 June 1798 and, shortly after the Duke of Richmond came to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant in 1807, was appointed as a page to the Duchess. Stewart later studied medicine, taking his MD in Edinburgh in 1829 and obtaining the Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
Stewart worked in Killucan Dispensary District in County Westmeath before taking Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1840 and being appointed Governor of the Hospital of the Houses of Industry in North Brunswick Street in Dublin. He was medical attendant to the School for the Sons of the Irish Clergy at the original Spa Hotel in Lucan, County Dublin.
In the mid-1850s, when the Commission of Inquiry in the State of Lunatic Asylums in Ireland80 found that the ‘wretched inmates’ in the ‘Hardwicke Cells’, connected with the Dublin House of Industry, were ‘in a most unsatisfactory state’, it was Stewart’s suggestion in 1857 that they be moved to a ‘new establishment at Lucan’, where he established an asylum at Lucan Spa House.81
Against this backdrop, Stewart was a predictable supporter of Kidd’s calls for an asylum for children with intellectual disability and of the work of the related committee set up by Lord Charlemont. Stewart went on to propose giving his asylum at Lucan for this purpose, together with a donation of £4,000, provided the asylum’s work was continued and its profits used for the maintenance of an institution for the intellectually disabled.82 Premises were duly acquired in Lucan, on the same plot of ground as Stewart’s Asylum at the Crescent, and made ready to receive 12 pupils in 1869.
Two separate institutions were established: the Stewart Institution for Idiots, based on Protestant principles, and the Stewart Asylum for Lunatic Patients of the Middle Classes, with no religious distinctions.83 Dr Frederick Pim became medical director and, despite complexities involving the Catholic primate, Cardinal Cullen, by 1870 the premises were quickly oversubscribed and overcrowded. Later in the 1870s, the establishment, now termed the Stewart Institution for Idiotic and Imbecile Children and Middle Class Lunatic Asylum, moved to the mansion and 40 acre demesne of the late Lord Donoughmore in nearby Palmerstown.84
In
