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Early History of Psychiatry in Newcastle upon Tyne
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
Extract
The development of psychiatry in England in the eighteenth century is particularly interesting because it shows the growth of public concern for the insane which led to the establishment of Public Subscription Hospitals and, later, the County Asylums. The general history of the period has been covered in works by Kathleen Jones, Denis Leigh, and Hunter and Macalpine, and books have also been devoted to the history of individual hospitals founded during those years, such as Bethel Hospital, Norwich (1725), St. Luke's Hospital, London (1751), the Manchester Lunatic Hospital (1766), and the Retreat, York (1792). For affluent patients there were, of course, a number of private madhouses, later officially ‘Licensed Houses', scattered about the country; in 1880 there were 40 of these outside the metropolitan area, and in London and Middlesex 14 are recorded in 1807 and 20 in 1815. The Private Madhouse Act (1774) provided for the provincial houses to be inspected by the local justices. In practice this Act was not very effective (11).
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- Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1972
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