‘At variance with the most elementary principles’: the state of British colonial lunatic asylums in 1863

Abstract

In 1863 the Colonial Office reviewed colonial hospitals and lunatic asylums in those parts of the British Empire it administered – probably the first and widest international comparative study up to that date. This article outlines the background, process and scope of the review of asylums, and considers its significance. The resulting ‘digest’ is an important source to explain how, why, when and by whom metropolitan ideas acquired official endorsement and spread throughout the British world. Using the review’s general findings and suggestions, a tool is provided for comparing inter-colonial achievements. With New Zealand as a case study, the article concludes that, relative to other influences, the digest played a limited and largely indirect part in shaping New Zealand’s mental health policy before 1876.

Keywords

Colonial Office history international aspects mental health policy mental health services New Zealand psychiatry 19th century

Introduction

On 1 January 1863, the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, sent ‘interrogatories’ to 43 British colonies within the Colonial Office’s jurisdiction about their public hospitals and lunatic asylums. Summarized responses from nearly two-thirds of the colonies were printed in a ‘digest’ in January 1864 and distributed confidentially to the colonies.¹ This was probably the earliest international comparative analysis of hospitals and lunatic asylums outside Europe and North America until Tucker (1887) and Burdett (1891) published their global surveys. Official status adds to the digest’s significance and makes it a useful starting point for wider work to explain how, why, when and by whom metropolitan ideas on the management of insanity were officially endorsed and spread throughout the British world.

The digest has received some scholarly attention. Jones (2008) examined the Jamaican background of the survey and concludes that it triggered the metropolitan government to improve colonial hospitals throughout the Empire. Swartz (2010: 172) makes a similar point and suggests that the review needs to be taken forward in future study. In spite of the burgeoning interest in the history of psychiatry in Commonwealth countries, McCarthy (2012: 14–15, 32) observes that the extant historiography accords considerable attention to individual institutions, often in local or national settings; however, it lacks sustained comparative investigation of institutions, policy and service differences, and ways of merging comparative and transnational approaches. Vaughan (2008: 13) has raised the daunting challenge of a history of madness in just one empire.

The Colonial Office snapshot does not present the panoramic cultural, clinical or social perspectives needed for systemic comparisons or transnational studies advocated by Ernst and Mueller (2010: x–xi). For example, what were the patterns of insanity in each colony? How strong were indigenous understandings of insanity and traditional healing practices? How far had these been supplanted by western medical views? How well did the methods of care used by the conquered Spanish, French and Dutch settlements fare under British governance? Did a colony’s primary role (defence station, trading port, or settlement), stage of development (frontier or settled), or longevity as a British colony affect the nature and level of asylum provision? How well did asylums serve the colonists and colonized? What services were provided by the state, market place and charity in each colony and why? How many doctors involved in colonial asylums had experience in metropolitan asylums? How extensive and influential were professional and regional administrative networks in disseminating progressive ideas and policies?

Such questions can only be answered by thoroughly searching myriad colonial and imperial archives (Cell, 1970: 47; Whitehead, 2007: 165). As Sir James Stephen, Permanent Under-Secretary for the Colonies (1836–47), sagely advised, ‘To know the motives of past measures, and the motives why particular measures were not taken, the Student must look further than to our Despatch and Entry Books’ (quoted in Cell, 1970: 1). I peer through the glass darkly from down under and with access to very few of those archives, but I consider that this paper can contribute to an international perspective by offering a case study of imperial policy-making and implementation.

In this article, I will show how and why scandalous treatment at the Kingston Lunatic Asylum, Jamaica, precipitated the Colonial Office general review, and I will note the role of Henry Taylor. I will then offer an initial framework for comparative analysis based on the digest. Information about New Zealand will be threaded throughout. This case study within the case study can test the generalization that the audit was the catalyst to a policy of systematic empire-wide regulation of colonial lunatic asylums.

Background

Jones (2008: 290–309) and Jemmott (2013: 1–12) have outlined the events that triggered the review. Kingston Public Hospital in Jamaica was established in the late eighteenth century, and part of it was later used as a lunatic asylum. The asylum was dogged by periodic disquiet about overcrowding, sanitation, abuse and custodial treatment. The Jamaican House of Assembly suppressed supposedly slanderous evidence presented to its own committee of inquiry, so a local physician, Lewis Bowerbank, then agitated for reform. He was hardly assuaged by the action taken following an inspector’s investigation in 1859. The matron and two nurses were dismissed and indicted but then acquitted. Medical staff largely wriggled free of oversight responsibility during the horrific goings-on. Dissatisfied with the pathetic outcome, Bowerbank visited London. The Colonial Office kept Bowerbank at arm’s length, but one Member of Parliament and the Commissioners in Lunacy were sympathetic. Matters came to a head in 1860 when Ann Pratt, a former patient, published an account of the abuse she saw and experienced. Her litany of cruelties listed beatings, lax custody, sexual abuse, ‘tanking’ or forcibly dunking troublesome patients in a large bath, and an atmosphere of fear.

Bowerbank’s actions shifted the initiative from the legislature to the executive and from Kingston to London. London overrode Jamaican attempts to discredit Pratt and close the matter. The Duke of Newcastle raised questions with the Commissioners in Lunacy. In 1861 the Governor of Jamaica was instructed to set up a commission of inquiry into the hospital and asylum. The inquiry substantiated Pratt’s claims, hastened a clean-out of compromised staff, abolished inhumane practices, codified clear rules and promised a new start at the long-awaited new asylum.

Having received the commission’s report, the Colonial Office decided to initiate action across its far-flung territories. Why? Colonial hospitals and asylums were hardly central to British mercantile or strategic interests, but they symbolized the police and welfare functions of government which had sometimes prompted early colonial lunacy laws since the eighteenth century.

Decision-making at the Colonial Office was concentrated in the hands of the Secretary of State and an Under-Secretary – both politicians – and 10 top officials. The organization and office routines had been cast in the mid-1820s (Blakeley, 1972: 3–6; Cell, 1970: 22, 31–4). Four highly experienced and very long-serving senior clerks each had responsibility for the wide range of general administrative and policy matters handled by a geographically-organized department. They were expected to adopt an intellectual approach to their duties and to leave routine work to junior clerks (Young, 1961: 117, 120). Highly experienced and able staff were needed to handle the ‘variety, importance and difficulty’ of the Colonial Office’s functions (Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854, quoted in Young, 1961: 257). The West Indies Department, for instance, ran 18 small colonies of diverse origins and mixed constitutional status. Those with legislatures were notorious for submitting inaccurate and incomplete statistics. Plantocratic and oligarchic legislative assemblies could be intransigent (Young, 1961: 35, 204). Jamaican constitutional tensions were exacerbated by economic problems and frustrated attempts to introduce a form of responsible government in the 1850s (McIntyre, 1974: 152). This led to closer watch and direction from London, as the Kingston Asylum saga illustrates.

The digest was almost certainly instigated or authored by Henry Taylor, who served the Colonial Office from 1824 to 1872. His ability was recognized and he ran the West Indian Department from 1825 with direct access to ministers and the Permanent Under-Secretary. Taylor refused further promotion (partly to pursue literary interests) but was knighted in 1869. Taylor considered himself not ‘in the business of a clerk, but in that of a statesman’ whose readily accepted advice relieved the Secretary and Under-Secretary ‘from the trouble of taking decisions, of giving directions, of reading despatches, and of writing them’. The more important the question, he claimed, the more his judgement was relied upon (Taylor, 1885, I: 139–40, 143, 157).

Taylor liked ‘drafting good despatches, and setting things to rights where they are wrong, and putting down oppression so far as may be done’ (Taylor, 1885, I: 119).² His suspicions about Kingston Asylum were revealed in his initialled annotation on Pratt’s pamphlet (Pratt, 1860: 1). Taylor was the driving force behind the imperial instruction to set up the subsequent inquiry. He read all five volumes of evidence because no one else was likely to have the time to do so, including – by his own acknowledgement – the new Governor (Jones, 2008). Taylor intervened to ensure effective follow-up. He also became convinced that only ‘an enlightened and beneficent Despotism’ could bring order to Jamaica (quoted in Morrell, 1969: 417). The controversial suppression of the Morant Bay revolt (1865) was the final straw. Jamaica reverted to Crown colony government in 1867 and other West Indies possessions followed suit. This facilitated overdue social, fiscal, and law and order reforms. Prisons, hospitals, lunatic asylums and criminal statistics occupied a ‘large portion’ of Taylor’s last few working years (Taylor, 1885, II: 293).

Figure 1.

Henry Taylor (1865), a portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Museum Number 2920–1925).

On 26 July 1862, Taylor minuted the Perma-nent Under-Secretary that governors regarded asylums as an inappropriate government function, a hunch that must have fed his suspicion about ‘abuses and evils’ elsewhere (quoted in Jones, 2008). Unfazed by a ‘dangerous’ subject for the ‘interference of lay reformers’ (CO, 1864: 11), Taylor persuaded Newcastle to order a general review of colonial asylums and hospitals (Dowden, 1888: 234; Jones, 2008). The Colonial Office could obtain specialized advice through its extensive networks (Young, 1961: 173), including the English Commissioners in Lunacy and the College of Physicians (CO, 1864: 12–13, 18–19). Interestingly, the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane was not consulted.

Taylor liked interrogatories. They focused ‘some preponderating part’ of the public mind upon a great public question. They were also instructive: respondents usually had to obtain information from others and think about the subject (Taylor, 1885, I: 154–5). ‘Few questions,’ he wrote, ‘are well considered till they are largely written about’ (quoted in Young, 1961: 137). The interrogatories asked about sources of institutional funding and endowments, the location, accommodation, construction and sanitary arrangements, management, staffing, care, governance, laws and regulations, supervision and reporting arrangements, and recent trends (CO, 1864: 1).

Using the proper channel, the Secretary of State despatched the questionnaire to colonial governors under a covering circular despatch. Colonial Office administrators needed great tact and skill to influence the internal affairs of the colonies. Sir William Molesworth, Secretary of State (1855), considered that the immense powers and authority of Crown colony governors turned them into petty despots, with an inverse relationship between a colony’s size and the degree of despotism (McLintock, 1958: 117). Mediating between imperial instructions and local circumstances, a governor was like a railway points-man between stations (Benyon quoted in Burroughs, 1999: 176). The analogy of a postman may better suit the governor of a self-governing colony. He was expected to refer to his ministers matters affecting domestic policy.

New Zealand became a Crown colony in 1840 as a dependency of New South Wales and then as a separate colony (1841). Acceding to the political aspirations of scattered settlements, representative and responsible government were granted in 1852 and 1856 respectively. The quasi-federal constitution of 1852 provided for legislatures and governments at provincial and national levels. Provinces had no direct relationship with the Crown. The responsibilities and accountabilities of each level of government were keenly contested according to fiscal fortunes and the prevailing political philosophies of centralization or provincialism until the provincial system was scrapped in 1876.

The Colonial Office circular was despatched to New Zealand’s Governor on 19 February 1863 and received on 7 May. Sir George Grey was a widely experienced governor but could be indifferent or react sharply to the dictates of ‘those who, in the quiet of distant offices in London, know nothing of the anxieties or nature of the difficulties he had to encounter’ (quoted in Cell, 1970: 199). Given Grey’s preoccupation with native affairs, military operations and a wobbly government, the despatch hardly warranted priority, but he responded as protocol required. Noting that the matter might be of ‘general interest’, the circular was registered as affecting those colonies without responsible government.³ Grey referred the papers to the Colonial Secretary, whose department managed relationships between the central and provincial governments. Provinces had the mandate to provide, maintain and inspect asylums. The Colonial Secretary (1863) gave no advice to the provinces: the circular and questionnaire were published ‘for general information’ (Colonial Secretary, 1863). The notice was duly copied in some provincial government gazettes. Tellingly, provinces were not asked to complete the questionnaire nor did the Colonial Secretary instruct his department to compile a national return. New Zealand, therefore, did not reply to the circular despatch.

The digest

After introductory comments, the report (or digest) summarized the general condition of institutions in the four geographical departments. Part II listed systemic defects that led to ‘general suggestions’, and Part III a mix of broad strategies and operational management policies. Part IV provided a synopsis of each colony’s report. The appendix contained various measures to ‘promote the further alleviation of human suffering’ (AJHR, 1864: 21).

Little evidence surfaced of intentional cruelty, but asylums were ‘at variance with the most elementary principles’ and were cruel by their ‘almost total want of system and of recognized prin-ciples of construction and treatment’ (CO, 1864: 1–2). Insufficient information was provided, particularly about the worst institutions. There was widespread ignorance about the facts and processes needed to remedy abuses. Insanity generally did not appeal ‘so strongly to common sympathy’ as other diseases. Australian colonies lagged behind the metropolis, and asylums behind hospitals, in their recognized specialist requirements, sanitation and economic efficiency (pp. 4, 9). ‘Almost incredible ignorance’ and complacency made asylums easy and unconscious receptacles for a ‘troublesome class’ without care or curative treatment (p. 11). Tiny impoverished colonies like Bermuda, Gibraltar and Caribbean islands had the worst facilities. Their proneness to ‘mistaken economy’ and ‘minuteness of scale’ made for systematic problems and slovenly management (p. 4).

Analysis

Figure 2 shows how the findings and suggestions of the digest can be incorporated into six standards around ‘principles or rules which are perfectly well settled’ (CO, 1864: 13). These standards can form spokes linked into a hexagon to show performance and level attained under each standard and overall. A regular-sided outer hexagon would represent conformity with London’s policies. The model is demonstrated by New Zealand but is equally applicable elsewhere. The digest generally points to a greater alignment with expectations by colonies in the North American and Australian and Eastern Departments – with predominantly self-governing settler colonies – than in the Mediterranean and West Indies Departments. Asylums in settler colonies invariably suffered because of short-sighted capital planning, resource and attitudinal problems, but the ‘grosser defects’ of West Indies establishments ‘did not exist at all generally’ in British North America (p. 6). East Canada, with its distinctive system of hôpitaux généraux and contracts with religious orders and physicians, was not criticized for weakening the tenet of state responsibility, whereas St Helena was roundly scolded. The profit motive encouraged cheap custodial care rather than curative treatment, and risked unnecessary detention (pp. 7–8).

Figure 2.

Colonial Office expectations and New Zealand performance in 1864.

Special purpose institutions

The digest was predicated on the therapeutic effectiveness and management efficiency of specialized lunatic asylums with hardly a word about alternatives. Kinship responsibilities were taken as read. Indigenous healing practices were totally ignored. Boarding out, used by Africans, Dutch and Muslims in Cape Colony, was overlooked (Deacon, 2003: 20–1, 26).

Colonies with no reported institutional provision (Level 1) inevitably used gaols and lock-ups. The term lunatic asylum was not defined and could mean a few designated cells that were a ‘mere adjunct’ to a gaol, hospital or poorhouse (Level 2), as in Gibraltar (CO, 1864: 33). Level 2 could also include ‘make-shift’ or converted buildings, like the quite unsuitable ‘old barracks, prisons, or private houses’ of most West Indies colonies (p. 2). A few colonies made extra-territorial arrangements (Level 3), such as Kissy, Sierra Leone, which served West African colonies (Jegede, 1981: 46). Level 4 asylums were purpose-built and permanent, akin to English county asylums. The colonial version was typically a national establishment situated in or near the capital. The digest favoured a demonstrably institutional appearance over the cottage style of Victoria’s Yarra Bend Asylum (CO, 1864: 34). Canada was approaching an institutional network (Level 5) in response to settlement and transport patterns, and patient classification. New South Wales and Victoria were evolving similarly (CO, 1864: 34; Wright, Moran and Gouglas, 2003: 110). Local networks were inevitable in de facto federations like the Windwards or Leewards.

New Zealand had reached Level 2 by 1863–64. Initially, lunatics joined other social flotsam and jetsam in lock-ups, gaols or sometimes colonial hospitals. Separate lunatic wards were provided in either facility when warranted by numbers and behaviour. Colonial hospitals were built at the main settlements during Grey’s first governorship. He regarded them (and by implication asylums) of paramount importance. They diffused civilization, acculturated and, it was hoped, impressed Maori favourably with British rule. These hospitals treated Maori free of charge but they were also accessed by indigent Pakeha (Europeans). Hospitals were directly-run government institutions headed by the local colonial/provincial (after 1853) surgeon. Individual hospitals set their own policy regarding the admission of lunatics.⁴

Mixed-purpose institutions satisfied neither the hard-pressed gaolers nor doctors. Their repeated complaints echoed humanitarian public and political opinion that called for functionally and administratively separate but specialized lunatic asylums. Boarding out along Scottish lines aroused curiosity but was not considered to be economically, socially or administratively viable.

For some years after 1858, politicians debated the merits of a central asylum for the whole colony. Land was purchased near Nelson, a 100-bed asylum planned in the old English style, and rules drafted by the Medical Superintendent of Bethlem Hospital. The preparation was wasted. In 1861 a new colonial government held the provinces responsible for asylums, which unwittingly steered New Zealand towards a network (Levels 5 and 7). Wellington established the first provincial asylum at Karori in 1853, the year in which an asylum-annexe opened at Auckland Hospital. Otago and Canterbury opened temporary asylums in 1863. In 1864 Nelson adapted part of the buildings for refugees from the Taranaki War. These facilities were all built in timber which was cheap and readily available. Smaller provinces relied on makeshift measures or made arrangements with a neighbouring province.

Non-restraint system

The ‘curative treatment of insanity’ (CO, 1864: 3) meant the prevailing gospel of moral management or non-restraint. References abound to the key elements of guided self-care, a safe, healthy and ordered environment, and physical, intellectual and spiritual activation programmes (pp. 37, 41).

Summarized information in the digest hampers preliminary attempts to categorize colonies beyond Level 1 or insufficient information. Level 2, when patients were chained, manacled or secluded excessively, can be divided from Level 3, when excessive restraint and seclusion were repudiated and ‘curative treatment’ was in its ‘infancy’ (p. 3). Castries Asylum, St Lucia, had ‘no parallel’ for using chains (p. 26). The Bermudas Asylum was ‘perhaps the worst of all the cruelly ill-managed prisons for lunatics in the colonies’ (p. 7). Most asylums belonged to Level 4, where daily exercise and forms of activation were attempted within common limitations of space, design, staff and direction. Overstretched, crowded and structurally deficient asylums in Canada and Nova Scotia cried out perpetually for more land for outdoor work (p. 12). African colonies, Antigua and Mauritius showed the ‘usual’ want of employment except for ‘menial services’ (pp. 8, 21, 24–7, 32).

New Zealand asylums operated at Level 4. Wellington’s tiny asylum had little land, its attendants were untrained, and it lacked classification and amusements. Straitjackets and seclusion were used. Disturbed patients had little chance of exercise (AJHR, 1871: 2–3). The visiting doctor had to be reminded by the Visiting Justices that the first and foremost care of everyone in charge of an asylum was cure and not custody (WPC, 1868: 1). His counterpart at Nelson contended that professional experts knew that medicine could do little to cure lunatics.⁵ Progress there towards non-restraint faltered under changing lay management. Auckland apparently abolished mechanical restraint and began activation programmes before 1859, but in 1862 the inmates were described as ‘merely prisoners, vacant, idle, “raging waves of the sea, foaming out of their own shame”’ (APCJ, 1863: 6). Larger southern asylums soon moved ahead under sound and long-term lay management. Edward Seager at Sunnyside, Christchurch, ran activation programmes with a particular flair for entertainment. His rules for staff (of 1864) reflected best moral management practice (Seager, 1987: 74–128). A relative who worked for the English Lunacy Commissioners was a valuable contact (CPC, 1867: 9). By mid-1864, James Hume had turned around the Dunedin Asylum with a Conolly-like philosophy.

Medical influence

Asylums were run as part of the colonial public administration. Some were administered directly as government departments or sub-departments. The rest were run through management boards. Twenty of the 30 ‘bad’ (but only nine ‘good’) colonial institutions had management boards (CO, 1864: 14–15). Boards generally suffered from inconsistent functions, powers and membership that left them divided, ignorant, superficial and confused. In the West Indies, boards were over-zealous and interfering or they left deficiencies unchallenged. Conflicts of interest arose when board members were also members of the legislature or executive, as shown in the example from Jamaica (see above). Boards in North American colonies avoided such criticisms because they were governing bodies (pp. 4, 6, 12, 15). Twenty-five asylums, including nine in North America, were run by a ‘resident medical chief’ alone, the Colonial Office’s preferred option. He was expected to be a full-time salaried official, ‘properly [medically] qualified and devoted to the work’ and armed with ‘paramount powers’ to give professional direction and take personal pride in his institution (p. 15).

Resident medical superintendents, preferably with experience in British asylums, represented Level 4. Medical superintendents differed from visiting (Level 2) or resident (Level 3) medical officers, who worked with lay managers or undertook other medical administration. Blurred responsibilities and accountabilities could generate professional jealousy and management friction, and could weaken curative potential. The lack of a resident medical officer may have occasioned ‘great evils’ in many West Indies establishments. Gibraltar’s ‘ordinary gaoler’ needed clear instructions or medical oversight to handle ‘the difficult and delicate care of insanity’ (pp. 3, 33).

New Zealand asylums were at Level 2. Management authority was shared between a visiting medical officer and a lay keeper (the title varied a little). These keepers were a mixed bag. The Master and Matron at Wellington were said to be uneducated and incapable of administering curative treatment. They left under suspicion or proof of ill-treating patients, like the first keepers at Nelson and Dunedin. On the other hand, former gaolers Thomas Lowry (Auckland) and Seager adapted well to the job. Like Dunedin’s Hume, the only lay superintendent with British asylum experience, they were dedicated, dependable and long-serving. Keepers reported to the provincial surgeon who was invariably British-born and trained. Otago’s Edward Hulme, who had studied at la Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, was seemingly the only provincial surgeon or medical officer with specialist experience.

Staffing levels

The ‘comfort, tranquillity, and chances of recovery’ of lunatics depended greatly on the character of the attendants. The digest advocated a staff of good and literate attendants retained by liberal pay and promotion prospects, but in Africa ‘native or other coloured attendants’ were cheaply and easily obtained (CO, 1864: 8). West Indies returns often included ‘outdoor servants, scrubbers, cooks, &c.’ as attendants (p. 5). The digest set a standard of one attendant per 15 patients – similar to the English ratio of 1:12–15 for dirty, violent, refractory or dangerous patients and 1:20–25 for tranquil or convalescent patients (BPP, 1847–48: 709–14). Without further information from primary sources, the standard can only be applied crudely to estimate the inadequacy (Level 2) or adequacy (Level 3) of staff levels.

New Zealand asylums probably met Level 3. From the limited information available, overall staff-patient ratios (except Christchurch) were of the order of 1:3.2 males and 1:6 females. Auckland had the lowest ratio of 1:13.25 (males) and 1:10 (females). Staff usually lived on the premises. Dunedin and Nelson stood to benefit from the willingness of Lauder Lindsay, Physician Superintendent at James Murray’s Royal Asylum, Perth, Scotland, to alert his own staff to positions. Four were selected for Dunedin.⁶

Inspection and monitoring

The digest decried the ‘universal want’ of an effective system of independent inspection and proper reporting on ‘the actual working of every part of an institution’ (CO, 1864: 4). Particular areas for inspection and reporting were highlighted. Suggestions adapted from the English Lunacy Commissioners reflected the ubiquity of the state inspectorate in public administration (Mellett, 1981: 222–5). Colonies were expected to appoint honorary or salaried inspector(s), depending on the size of the task (CO, 1864: 18, 36). The best institutions (Level 3) had effective systems for independent monitoring and reporting, and for proper and regular record-keeping. Canada West’s Board of Inspectors of Prisons and Asylums (formed in 1857) was hailed (p. 36). Its systematic ‘perfection’ was a far cry from the usual, ineffective and haphazard arrangements (Level 2). The governors of Jamaica, British Guiana, Antigua, St Helena and New Brunswick rarely visited, but governors of some African colonies visited zealously. Record-keeping in three of the four geographical departments was criticized (pp. 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 23–4, 32–3). Colonies that kept no records or whose state of record-keeping and inspection is not known are classed as Level 1.

New Zealand would have scored Level 2. There was no clear system. In 1858, provincial superintendents were empowered to visit and inspect hospitals and asylums themselves, but their infrequent visits were usually social, not inspectorial. Under the law, the Governor could appoint visitors and give directions about reporting, but little was done. Provincial systems were also patchy. Wellington appointed visiting justices (1854) but Auckland, Otago and Canterbury had none. Provincial select committees called for a proper system in Wellington (1857) and Otago (1863–64). Provincial action was not monitored centrally.

Regulatory framework

The absence of local lunacy law represents Level 1; basic and evolving local lunacy law, Level 2. A belief that the ‘rights of the insane should be infringed upon in as small degree as may be consistent with efficient management’ also had statutory implications (CO, 1864: 13).

London encouraged colonies to adapt English statutes to meet local circumstances and to borrow statutes from each other. After a pragmatic pioneering approach, colonists gauged their maturity by the rapidity with which they reproduced the more desirable features of English laws (Finn, 1995: 19; 2001a: 65). Given the homespun nature of many colonial lunacy statutes, the digest surprisingly did not specify requirements for committal or discharge procedures beyond the form of New Brunswick’s medical certificates (CO, 1864: 36). Possibly drawing on the law of Canada West or Jamaica, the digest called for ‘a proper code … drawn up once for all by competent professional authorities’ to regulate the situation, construction, alteration and sanitation of facilities, minimum staff levels, and ‘other permanent economical regulations’ (p. 16). This could be considered Level 3. Omnibus lunacy legislation like that of England or Scotland was not proposed.

New Zealand scores Level 2. Grey borrowed freely from the South Australian statute book during his first governorship of New Zealand. This explains the remarkable resemblance of New Zealand’s Lunatics Ordinance 1846 with its New South Wales (1843) and South Australian (1844) antecedents. The New South Wales Act followed as much as possible ‘the principles of the law of England, as that Law existed’ but was quickly framed to meet an urgent local need (Bostock, 1968: 79). New Zealand’s Lunatics Ordinance was amended in 1858 but was still in force in 1863. This legislation provided authority to apprehend dangerous lunatics and criminal lunatics and to keep them in a prison or hospital until they could be removed to a ‘public colonial lunatic asylum’. Relatives were expected to meet the cost of maintenance in an asylum. Procedures for handling private applications for the care of lunatics who were not dangerous and to discharge patients were also set out. The Governor was authorized to appoint visitors and to regulate official visits and reports.

Circulation and reaction

The Colonial Office duly despatched the digest to the colonies.⁷ There were plenty of issues to follow up. By Colonial Office reckoning, six colonies had no asylum, four no hospital and five had neither. Thirteen colonies were named and shamed in the digest for failing to reply; seven of those were settler colonies: four in Australasia and three of them self-governing (New South Wales,⁸ South Australia and New Zealand). The digest gave no information about services in the miscreant colonies.

The digest roundly criticized colonies with poor facilities. Taylor well knew to seek the truth behind the ‘general and unverified expressions of satisfaction’ of crafty and far-off officials in, say, Antigua. Officials who furnished misleading information were warned of their ‘moral responsibility’ (CO, 1864: 2). Legislatures were reminded that ‘the enforcement or neglect of reforms’ rested in their power because they determined fiscal priorities (p. 11).

New Zealand illustrates the weak imperial resolve to deal with self-governing colonies. On 6 April 1864, Newcastle’s successor as Secretary of State for the Colonies, Edward Cardwell (1864–66),⁹ urged Grey to attend speedily to the questionnaire. Governors of colonies with responsible government had not been required to provide a detailed response, but had been given discretion, relying upon the ‘interest which they would feel in the subjects of so much importance to the public welfare’. Victoria had replied with ‘habitual alacrity and zeal in the promotion of public objects and of the interests of humanity’. Canada, Tasmania and other ‘important’ colonies had also replied, whereas Grey did not even acknowledge the original circular. Nevertheless, he was sent copies of the digest and the covering letter to Crown colonies so he could see what steps Cardwell thought desirable (AJHR, 1864: 21).¹⁰

Cardwell’s admonitory despatch was duly printed among the Parliamentary Papers. William Fox, the devolutionist Colonial Secretary, distributed the digest to provincial superintendents to pass on to hospital and asylum officials. It contained ‘some very valuable information’ from ‘several of the British possessions’.¹¹ Fox gave no explanation for New Zealand’s non-participation, nor did he seek information belatedly. Several provinces acknowledged receipt of the digest but little direct action followed.¹² The matter might have ended differently had London offered incentives, but that was unlikely when the British government was pressing colonies to pay for imperial garrisons stationed there for their internal defence. Colonies were advised to consider raising loans for capital works (CO, 1864: 14).

The case of New Zealand reflects Cell’s (1970: 66) opinion that a high degree of communication and harmonious interaction between local and imperial authorities was non-existent. There was an underlying tension between the intellectually superior and condescending attitudes of London officials and colonial administrators who saw their superiors in London as uninformed and close-controlling meddlers (Blakeley, 1972: xii).

New Zealand politicians could have used the digest as a resounding moral imperative for reform, but the chance of immediate impact was lost because Parliament only sat between October and December in 1863 and 1864. Anyway, politicians were preoccupied with native affairs and military matters. The digest failed to generate national momentum although it aroused some provincial interest. Julius Vogel used it in calling for a proper provincial asylum for Otago (OPC, 1863: 51; see also: Anon., 1863c; Anon., 1863d).¹³ William Rolleston virtually plagiarized excerpts to urge reforms at Christchurch Hospital, but said nothing about the asylum (Anon., 1864a; Anon., 1864b). A few newspapers reported the Gazette notice but none queried New Zealand’s non-participation (Anon., 1863a; Anon., 1863b). A Southland newspaper used the digest editorially to fault existing arrangements (Anon., 1864c); the article was also copied elsewhere (Anon., 1864d; Anon., 1864e).

Rolleston remembered this ‘excellent paper’ (digest) two years later and was allowed to borrow the file copy.¹⁴ Southland’s Dr James Menzies cited the digest in arguing for medical superintendence (NZPD, 1867: 501). The digest then disappeared from official consciousness.

Policy impact

The digest conveys a strong sense of the Colonial Office’s tradition of devolved authority and differentiation between dependent and self-governing colonies. For example, the digest outlined important elements of a draft ordinance. This law was directed towards Crown colonies. An on-line search of the Colonial Office entry books and correspondence registers from 1864 to 1900 using the term “lunatic asylum” resulted in 288 pieces of correspondence with only 13 colonies – none of them self-governing; 81 per cent of this correspondence concerned the West Indies colonies. On the other hand, the draft ordinance and other ideas were tactfully ‘suggested’ to self-governing colonies (CO, 1864: 18). Newcastle knew that ‘we have no power to enforce’ (quoted in Cell, 1970: 127) beyond advice, warning, cajolery or disallowing legislation (Burroughs, 1999: 189).

Responsible government was credited for stimulating the adoption of better standards. Insanity ‘almost engrosses public attention and care’ in North American colonies, unlike the African Crown colonies, the digest claimed (CO, 1864: 7). New Zealand certainly demonstrated this. Grand and coronial juries, correspondents and editors of politically-charged newspapers and the occasional public meeting extolled the virtues of a lunatic asylum and provided the grist of policy reform. Standard parliamentary devices were used in national and provincial legislatures. Ad hoc select committees were probably the most important; parliamentary committees investigated service options in 1858 and 1871. Provincial governments set up 16 select committees: seven investigated options; four considered asylum location or design; and six inquired into aspects of care or management. Provincial executives also instituted two commissions to inquire into allegations of neglect, cruelty or mismanagement. Select committees and commissions of inquiry enabled public officials to testify or comment, and increased the influence of medical practitioners as members, officials and witnesses.

Mental health policy reform was never a popular political cause. Dr Andrew Buchanan, MLC, wistfully confided to Lauder Lindsay that not half-a-dozen members in either House of the New Zealand Parliament were lunacy reformers, ‘hence the apathy of the Government’. Public works attracted votes, but the care of the insane did not ‘pay’ politically (Lindsay, 1873: 500). Fickle public and political opinion made reform reliant upon the persistence of particular champions. Buchanan was the New Zealand equivalent of Tasmania’s Bishop Willson (Piddock, 2007: 155), New Brunswick’s Dr George Peters (Francis, 1981: 97) or Newfoundland’s Dr Henry Stabb (Baker, 1981: 28–9).

Lunacy reform gained momentum in New Zealand from 1867 to 1876. Second-generation asylums were built during this period, comprehensive lunacy law debated and enacted (1867–68), inspection reports published (after 1869), national asylum statistics collected (from 1873), and a provincial (1868) and specialized national inspectorate (1876) established.

Asylum development

British immigrants to New Zealand brought from the motherland the concept of the specialized lunatic asylum and its associated legal and administrative framework. These ideas shaped the mental health infrastructure from Crown colony times, as they did in the Canadian Maritime colonies a decade earlier. The first officially recorded Pakeha case of insanity (1842) was deemed to need care and management in a proper asylum.¹⁵ John Conolly’s texts were available and referred to authoritatively in New Zealand. The notion of a ‘public lunatic asylum’ found statutory expression in 1846. Consultation with English and Scottish experts reassured decision-makers that provincial and national plans were humane and up-to-date. Settler governments looked to recruit staff with experience in British asylums.

Purpose-built second-generation institutions embodied features of the ideal asylum. These were all built in the corridor style, using permanent materials. Auckland was already planning such a facility at the Whau, on the outskirts of the city, in 1863. The Whau took years to complete (1867–81), as did similar asylums: Sunnyside, Christchurch (1872–91) and Seacliff, Otago (1879–84). Smaller wooden asylums in the corridor style were erected easily at Wellington and Hokitika (1872) and Nelson (1876).

Legislation

The New Zealand Lunatics Act 1868 was sourced to ‘all the recent alterations and improvements’ introduced in ‘the neighbouring Colonies [notably Victoria] and in England [1845]’ (NZPD, 1867: 499). The results bore little resemblance to the model suggested in the digest. Having recently consolidated its statutes, Victoria revised its lunacy law in 1867 to address local issues such as the regulation of private asylums, transit hospital care, and voluntary admission for habitual drunkards. New Zealand copied these provisions when Victoria’s new Act was hot off the press, with a tweak or two to fit administrative and legal systems. To show their sophistication, both colonies fully referenced their Acts to English statutes. That approach kept a colony in step with English law and court judgments, saved on scarce legal resources, and could be usefully cited in correspondence with London (Finn, 2001b: 106–7, 109).

Information

Swartz (2010) regards the Colonial Office audit as the catalyst to a policy of systematic regulation of colonial lunatic asylums throughout the empire, including ‘those in self-governing regimes that had hitherto been allowed to evolve’. Information-gathering would create a ‘regulatory spider-web of reports and surveillance’ and make colonial asylums governable from the centre by a self-correcting mechanism of rivalry and the threat of public shame (Swartz, 2010: 169–70).

The digest proposed that the Colonial Office would be the clearing-house and publisher of a general volume on colonial asylums (CO, 1864: 18), but it was five years before London even provided a template for annual Blue Book returns about asylums. These requirements applied to colonies with ‘Non-Responsible Government’ only;¹⁶ they did not apply to self-governing colonies or British possessions administered by the India Office, the Admiralty or chartered companies.

The long delay and limited imperial application of a standard form of information-gathering can be explained. First, Henry Taylor had a geographical responsibility but did not seem to have been tasked with coordinating an empire-wide follow-up. He believed that the sentimental attachment to England by self-governing colonies would change to animosity under the ‘slightest conflict of interests or interference with independent action’ (Taylor, 1885, II: 235, 237–8). Anyway, empire-wide follow-up of the digest would probably have languished at the bottom of one of Taylor’s ‘green boxes’. In spite of his abilities and faithfulness, he declared himself ‘destitute of the organising faculties and energies which are indispensable to the work’ and of getting worthy things considered ‘to some practical purpose’ (Taylor, 1885, II: 126). Taylor was also occupied with prisons and a generic penal code.

Secondly, the general impact of the digest inevitably diminished over time. Cardwell’s hope for a follow-up special report ‘in due course’ disappeared when the government changed in 1866. The Colonial Office then determined its needs after fresh consultations with the Lunacy Commissioners and the Medical Officer to the Privy Council. Instructions for hospital inspectors and rules for inquiries into asylum deaths (1870) were not linked to the digest.¹⁷

These examples highlight the impact of politico-bureaucratic changes. The seals of office changed hands three times under four Prime Ministers and two changes of government from 1863 to 1876. The Colonial Office underwent major reorganization (1868–72), partly to improve internal coordination. The Office had become hidebound by near total reliance on the small group of aging senior staff in their departmental fiefdoms. Taylor felt he had outlived his usefulness, showed little interest in reorganization and retired in 1872. His work was picked up by Edward Fairfield, who had worked with Taylor since 1866 (Taylor, 1885, II: 293).

New Zealand, like other Australasian colonies, stopped sending Blue Books to London soon after it was granted representative or responsible government. The New Zealand Registrar-General then compiled for colonial consumption a comprehensive annual statistical report. National asylum statistics for New Zealand were first included in 1873 but fell far short of the digest’s proposals. These were preceded in 1870 by the first annual report by provincial asylum inspectors required under the Lunatics Act 1868 (AJHR, 1870: 7). They were published without ministerial comment.

Inspection

The New Zealand model of a specialized asylums inspectorate differed from the digest’s proposed board of ‘general inspectors’ of ‘Asylums, Prisons, &c.’ (CO, 1864: 17, 21, 29, 36). The New Zealand approach owes much to Lauder Lindsay who corresponded with influential New Zealand professionals, politicians and officials (Lindsay, 1873: 498–9). Lindsay believed that the Scottish Commissioners in Lunacy could be morphed into a full-time ‘Colonial Commissioner in Lunacy’ with a well-resourced office and expert backing. The appointee should be an eminent British alienist with significant institutional experience (Lindsay, 1869: 486; 1872: 811–12, 909, 916–17). The idea was upheld by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (1871–72) and by Dr Edward Paley, Victoria’s Inspector of Asylums, who was asked for a second opinion.

An Inspector-General was appointed to supervise and control all the asylums when provincial governments were abolished. Frederick Skae, Medical Superintendent of Larbert District Asylum, Stirlingshire in Scotland, was chosen. The Inspector-General undertook departmental and systemic roles only and did not hold a joint appointment as medical superintendent like his counterparts in Victoria and New South Wales (Crowther, 2003: 85, 89–93; McDonald, 1974). That was a smart way to gain specialist medical direction for the whole system. Institutions were not placed under intermediary boards.

The Asylums Department gained a life of its own. Like its British counterparts, it exercised statutory functions and powers, published reports, and developed technocratic expertise and institutional memory. The perfection of administrative machinery then owed more to technical-bureaucratic pressures than it did to ministerial innovation (Chester, 1981: ii, 298). For instance, in 1880–81, Skae instituted a policy of medical superintendence at the larger asylums with appointees expected to have had experience at a first-rate British county or district asylum. Long-serving lay administrators were swept aside in the process (Brunton, 2001: 308–11). In the 1878 and subsequent annual reports of the Department (AJHR, 1878: 1), Skae also used the standard tables that had been introduced for English asylums in 1865.

Discussion

By 1863–64, most self-governing colonies were well on the way to achieving their own versions of the institutional, management and monitoring policies suggested in the digest. London saw Canada as the leader. New Zealand’s institutional policy was on course but, like the Australian colonies, effective management and inspection regimes took time to develop. New Zealand’s national system functioned from the mid-1870s. These developments occurred with very few direct references to the digest, and this makes it hard to isolate the digest’s direct impact. Only wider study of general circular despatches and all colonial replies and asylum reports will show whether or not the digest was the action plan for systematic and empire-wide implementation of each suggestion. Local variations from the imperial model in New Zealand, however, point to the greater impact of mediating factors such as the Pakeha cultural baggage, nascent national consciousness and can-do, and trans-Tasman links.

Left to their own devices, New Zealand and other colonies muddled through, learning from experience and by comparing notes with their neighbours. They used such knowledge, reference works and contacts in the United Kingdom that they could access (Hurd, 1916: 63–4, 81–2; Piddock, 2007: 196–8, 208–9). The designers of the Whau Asylum, like asylums in Nova Scotia (1847) and Jamaica (1863), obtained the approbation of English alienists (Conolly, 1847: 181–3) or were inspired by English designs, like Adelaide’s Parkside or Malta’s Attard Asylum (Cassar, 1964: 371; Piddock, 2007: 116–17, 136). North American colonies also accessed information from the United States (Hurd, 1916: 63, 80–2). Medical officials from Malta (1838), Newfoundland (1847), Tasmania (1867) and New South Wales (1867–68) and possibly elsewhere went on overseas study tours (Baker, 1981: 29; Brown, 1972:109; Cassar, 1964: 368–9; Hurd, 1916: 56). Membership of British professional associations kept isolated colonial alienists informed. By 1863 James De Wolf, in Nova Scotia, and Paley, in Victoria, were pioneer colonial members of the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums (AMOAHI, 1863). Some Canadian asylum doctors joined and attended meetings of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (Francis, 1975:10).

London liked colonies to exchange ideas (Cell, 1970: 48–9, 289–300). Australasian colonies swapped their laws and sessional papers directly without going through London. Agents or agents-general in London (the forebears of high commissioners) increasingly served as a link between self-governing colonies and the Colonial Office (Blakeley, 1972: 123–4). New colonies or provinces saved themselves ground-breaking policy work when they inherited statutes, systems and institutional models from the parent colony. The cessation of transfer arrangements to the parent colony may also have contributed to the easy proliferation of the asylum model, as Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and Westland demonstrated. The careers of a class of professional governors like Sir George Grey also helped, as the origin of the Lunatics Ordinance 1846 exemplifies.

The politically driven process of policy-making in New Zealand mimicked that of social reform in early Victorian Britain. A series of parliamentary select committees or public inquiries investigated shortcomings and proposed solutions. Legislation was passed authorizing a central inspectorate to impose some uniformity on local agents and to enforce the law. A central body oversaw the inspectors and could issue regulations. Lobbyists used established official processes along with pamphlets, periodicals and newspapers to achieve reform. The step-by-step process was not always straightforward, but once the central inspectorates had been established, they became its dynamic (Henriques, 1974: 169, 178).

Conclusion

The 1864 report on the state of British colonial hospitals and asylums is significant. It was probably the earliest and broadest international snapshot of mental health policy and services. The events that surrounded the distribution of the digest provide a good case study of the nature and effectiveness of imperial policy-making in a lesser domain than the imperial priorities of defence, foreign relations or trade. The process epitomizes Kingdon’s (1984: 90–1) garbage-can theory of policy-making, with its mix of a current problem (care and management at the Kingston Public Hospital and Lunatic Asylum), the policy idea (an audit of similar facilities in other British colonies), political and bureaucratic participants (particularly Taylor), and the political opportunity for the Colonial Office to demonstrate imperial leadership. Humanitarian concern, fiscal caution and the instinctive politico-bureaucratic need to be seen to do something about an issue ensured that the political opportunity was seized.

Using New Zealand as a case study within the case study, this article has outlined a possible model to gauge progress towards standards of asylum provision, non-restraint, medical influence, staffing, monitoring and inspection, and a regulatory framework. It is hoped that this case study will encourage further research across all colonies, or a broadly representative sample, to isolate from other mediating factors the true catalytic effect of the digest on national policy and service development. Only then will it be possible to establish the direct, indirect, short and long-term reach of the ‘suggestions’ and to assess the digest as an instrument of top-down and empire-wide policy. It is important to know what features were copied where and when. The New Zealand example shows the need for care in making generalizations about the empire. The Colonial Office managed its dependent and self-governing colonies differently and held no sway in British possessions administered through other agencies.

The digest may have added to the climate of opinion in New Zealand, but it had little direct effect on national mental health policy from about 1867 to 1876, the heyday of reform. A mix of socio-cultural, professional, constitutional and political factors had earlier helped to transplant the early Victorian English framework of lunacy administration to settler and self-governing colonies. Once the apparatus of government had been set up and lands acquired for Pakeha settlement (by whatever means), it was only a matter of time before demands grew for specialized asylums like those at ‘home’. New Zealand was keeping up with the neighbours (especially Victoria and New South Wales). Social attitudes and values in New Zealand also made their mark, for example, by committing many persons with delirium tremens, or those who would have been admitted to an infirmary or workhouse in the UK and Ireland. Colonial opinion found the formal adoption of the poor law repugnant, and social intolerance precluded boarding out in New Zealand, New South Wales (Manning, 1889: 156) and other colonies.¹⁸

If information-gathering was the key to effective regulation of hospitals and asylums by London, where was the imperial action plan? It took five years before the Colonial Office specified information requirements about asylums. Unless research of Colonial Office archives yields evidence to the contrary, the delay implies that the digest lost its topicality and instrumentality under ministerial and management changes at the Colonial Office. Bureaucratic enthusiasms wax and wane for many reasons, including readings of the political thermometer and fiscal barometer, the comings and goings of key officials, technical developments, the aspirations and ambitions of ministers and top officials, the balance between immediate or short-term pressures and long-term plans, and the number and calibre of staff available.

My own experience as a policy analyst in this field has taught me that an investigative report has its own life-cycle. The report is frequently referred to during the ‘shelf-life’, when politicians and officials decide how to react to the report and its recommendations. Shelf-life gives way to an indeterminate ‘half-life’ when officials may cite the report as relevant background and occasionally refer to it. The half-life ends in an ‘after-life’ when scholars discover and use the document. The digest’s shelf-life was probably determined by the reorganization of the Colonial Office filing system in 1873. Papers were stored in book-boxes for 10 or 12 years, then transferred to cheaper boxes and the book-boxes recycled. Older records were transferred to the Public Record Office (Thurston, 1995: 39–40). Clerks were more likely to reach for familiar files available at their fingertips than to ferret out information from umpteen Blue Books and bulky volumes of Sessional Papers or government gazettes.

Yet the digest still speaks 150 years after it was distributed. The ‘insufficiency and want of certainty which impair[ed] the answers generally’ (CO, 1864: 2) still reminds us that the information needed for public policy-making is often incomplete and imperfect. Policy is flexible with many a slip between aspiration and implementation. How easy it is to unwittingly overlook the timeless dimension of mental anguish and suffering, as the distressing images of patients at Sierra Leone’s psychiatric hospital at Kissy depict (Bonnet, 2007). An earlier Kissy Hospital was part of the 1863 survey. Those pitiful images would surely have stirred Henry Taylor as did the reports from Kingston.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I appreciate the comments of Angela McCarthy, University of Otago, on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

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