Ep. 30: The History of Denbigh Asylum, Part 1

Episode 30 is the first part of the history of Denbigh Asylum (later known as the North Wales Hospital) in Denbighshire, Wales, UK, from approximately 1842-1905.

Most information for this episode was drawn from the book _The North Wales Hospital: Denbigh (1842-1995)_ by Clwyd Wynne. This and all other sources are listed in the transcript of this episode.

Transcript

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals! I’m your host, Dr. Sarah Gallup, and thank you so much for allowing me to take an unscheduled week off from recording. For those of you who are part of the Facebook group and Instagram page, you know that I was able to go see Taylor Swift in LA. It was a great performance, and I was actually able to promote this show while I was there. I recruited a sweet 10-year-old girl who was there for her birthday – it was her first concert ever – and she had brought about, I don’t know, five or six friendship bracelets to trade. If you’re unfamiliar with the buzz surrounding Taylor Swift’s concerts, the cool thing to do is to bring bracelets to exchange with other people there. She was kinda shy and nervous to ask people for bracelets, and I had some stickers with me, so I gave her my stickers to hand out, while I passed out business cards for the podcast, and she ended up with probably 20 or 30 bracelets by the end of it all. She looked over at me at one point with the widest eyes and mouth open like she could not have expected to get that many bracelets from other attendees. It was just a very sweet moment. So, all that to say that if you’re one of the people I gave a card to, thank you for joining and indulging me, and thank you for making that sweet girl so happy during her very first concert. It was a blast.

Switching gears…I have a new hospital to tell you about today! This time we’re traveling across the Atlantic. After all, this is about the world’s psychiatric hospitals. It’s easy for me to get a little U.S.-centric, since that’s what I’m familiar with and that’s the system I know, but I want to learn more about how these hospitals worked in other parts of the world and what treatments, both good and bad, were used in other countries. 

So today we are heading to Wales. And with that I will give a warning for my probably inevitable mispronunciation of Welsh words. I will do my best to look up how to say them correctly, but Welsh is hard, so my apologies. As someone from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, I’m used to having people mispronounce my state and region, so I get it.

As usual, all of my sources will be cited at the end of the episode transcript. I will be largely borrowing from the book The North Wales Hospital by Clwyd (clo-wid) Wynne (when).

So come on in and get comfortable as we go behind the walls of Denbigh Asylum…

Our story today begins long before the Denbigh Asylum in Wales was constructed. In 1247, the St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital opened in London. It’s now known as Bethlem Royal Hospital. In 1407, the hospital began admitting psychiatric patients. The term “mental illness” wasn’t around at that time, but somewhere along the way the patients became known as “mad.” The hospital was notorious for its chaotic treatment of patients, and you may be familiar with the name Bedlam that became associated not only with the psychiatric patients at this hospital, but with pandemonium and chaos in general.

Throughout the following centuries in Great Britain, the only real options for people who were mad were to be kept by their families or put in a madhouse, which basically just detained them. They weren’t offered any sort of treatment or medical assistance (“Madhouses Act 1774”). It just relieved the families of having to deal with them. The problem with this, of course, was that the system was easily abused. Any undesirable family members could be shipped off to a madhouse with little or no explanation.

So in 1774, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the Madhouses Act that provided some sort of regulation for these madhouses. First, all madhouses had to be licensed by a committee of the Royal College of Physicians that had to be renewed annually. It also meant that each madhouse would be inspected annually and a register created of all confined people. There would be fines for any home that did not comply with these regulations (“Madhouses Act 1774”). But again, the oversight was limited, and abuses of power were rampant.

By 1808, the Parliament of what was now the United Kingdom passed the County Asylums Act which permitted but did not require justices of the peace to provide asylums in their counties. The purpose of this was to relocate the mentally ill from madhouses and prisons to asylums (“County Asylums Act 1808”). I use the term “mentally ill” loosely here because the people who were moved to asylums at the beginning of the 19thcentury were not only mentally ill people who had committed crimes, but they were folks with mental, physical, and developmental disabilities who had not committed a crime and were not at risk of danger to themselves or others. It also included poor people and alcoholics. Basically the undesirables of society.

The first asylum after the County Asylums Act of 1808 was built in Northampton in 1811. By 1827, so 19 years after the act was passed, only nine county asylums had opened, and many people with mental illnesses were still sitting in jails and prisons (“Lunacy Act 1845”). And still, despite previous efforts, many people were still being illegally detained in asylums and county jails – people who had been abandoned by their spouses or parents for one reason for another.

In an attempt to incentivize counties to build more asylums, the County Asylums Act of 1828 offered counties loans to build new asylums. They’d have 14 years to repay those loans. The Act also required magistrates from every county to send annual records of all admissions, discharges, and deaths. They could also send visiting justices to county asylums for inspection, although these justices couldn’t intervene, so I’m not really sure what the point was?? (“County Asylums Act 1828”) So many of the same issues continued and very little was being done to address it, other than adding more asylums around the country.

By 1840, new asylums were added around England, and many poor folks and people with mental illness were being moved from madhouses to asylums. The problem was that the United Kingdom was a linguistically diverse area. There were no asylums yet in Northern Wales, so Welsh patients were taken to England, where they often didn’t speak the language. Welsh and English aren’t related languages, so it’s not like Spanish and French, for instance, where you can kinda decipher the context based off cognates – words that look and sound similar from one language to the other. This also meant that staff typically weren’t able to communicate with their patients and determine what was bothering them or see what they needed. Obviously, that would be a major hindrance to treatment (Wynne 12). 

In 1842, an investigation began into the treatment of Welsh patients in English asylums. According to Clwyd Wynne in his book North Wales Hospital 1842-1995: 

Doctor Samuel Hitch, Medical Superintendent of Gloucester [glauster] Lunatic Asylums, wrote a letter to The Times newspaper in September 1842 about the plight of the Welsh pauper lunatic – “So few of the lower class of commerce, or to qualify themselves for the duties of menial servants, and not to an extent which would enable them to comprehend anything higher, - while both the officers and servants of our English Asylums, and the English public too, are equally ignorant in the Welsh language, - that when the poor Welshman is sent to an English Asylum he is submitted to the most refined of modern cruelties, by being doomed to an imprisonment amongst strange people, and an association with his fellow-men, whom he is prohibited from holding communion with. Nothing can exceed his misery; himself unable to communicate, or to receive communications, harassed by wants which he cannot make known and appealed to by sounds which he cannot comprehend, he becomes irritable and irritated; and it is proverbial in our English Asylums that he ‘Welshman is the most turbulent patient wherever he happens to become an inmate’.” (Wynne 12)

The following month, in October 1842, a meeting was held in Denbigh, Wales, to discuss the importance of adding an asylum somewhere in the north of Wales. They decided to appeal to Parliament to fund the addition of an asylum for Welsh-speaking people. Parliament denied the funds, so an anonymous donor (later revealed to be local man Joseph Ablett) gave 20 acres of land, worth 2,000 pounds, for the hospital project (Wynne 13).

Since they had not been able to secure funds from Parliament, the committee decided to enlist local assistance. I’m not entirely sure what this means, but Wynne says, “the committee decided at their next meeting to raise the money through public subscriptions” (13). I’m not sure if this means through taxes or some sort of fundraising event, but in any case, by March 1843, they had raised 4,600 pounds, including 50 pounds each from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and 100 guineas from the Prince of Wales (Wynne 13). I don’t want to pass too much judgment on royalty, but something tells me that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert probably could have pitched in more than the equivalent of $9,000 US dollars today. Also for reference, the Prince of Wales donated 100 guineas, which is just under $15,000 US dollars today.

Money matters aside, the real issue was that the law at the time didn’t allow counties to join together to build an asylum – the County Asylums Acts gave individual counties the opportunity to build an asylum. So neighboring counties in Wales weren’t too keen on supporting the project along with Denbighshire (Wynne 13).

By 1844, the investigation into the conditions for Welsh patients in English asylums had concluded and determined that those conditions were poor (Wynne 13). That prompted the committee in Denbigh to take a giant leap of faith and just start building the asylum – with or without the funding from neighboring counties. And so construction of the Denbigh Asylum began in September 1844. It wouldn’t be for another three years, following intense lobbying by the committee, that the law was changed. And five of the six neighboring counties contributed financially to the building project (Wynne 13).

Plans for the new asylum were drawn up by Mr. Fulljames of Gloucester (Glauster) with the advice and guidance of Dr. Samuel Hitch, who was the Medical Superintendent of the Gloucester Lunatic Asylum. The builders used limestone from a nearby quarry in Denbigh and completed the project in four years, in 1848. The stonework was considered the finest of its type, and the hospital was built to accommodate 200 patients (Wynne 13-14).

During the construction of the Denbigh Asylum, the Lunacy Act of 1845 and the County Asylums Act of 1845 were passed simultaneously by Parliament. The Lunacy Act also helped create the Lunacy Commission, which was championed with the effort of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. Full disclosure (and apologies to my listeners in the UK because there are a few of you): I don’t understand how any of the earls and dukes and whatnot work, so I’m not sure what makes someone a 7th Earl or if that means he would be important or not. But in any case, Anthony Ashley-Cooper served as the head of the Lunacy Commission from 1845 until his death in 1885. The commission was made up of 11 members: 3 members of the legal system, 3 members of the medical community, and 5 honorary members who would attend meetings. The purpose of the commission was to oversee that the provisions of the Lunacy Act were followed (“Lunacy Act 1845”). The Lunacy Act of 1845 stipulated that every asylum had to be registered with the commission, had to have a written set of regulations, and needed a resident physician to oversee the facility (“Lunacy Act 1845”).

Denbigh Asylum opened in October 1848, with Dr. George Turner Jones as the Medical Superintendent. Also hired were a clerk, steward, gatekeeper, matron, engineer, housemaid, five male attendants, four female attendants, a cook, a kitchen maid, two laundry maids, and a porter. A pretty barebones crew. So, for instance, one person did the job of the clerk and steward, and he was responsible for the accounts, supplies, buildings, furnishings, and general maintenance (Wynne 14). I think of my hospital today: we have entire departments for each of those!

The asylum was started with the philosophy of moral therapy and humane treatment. The preference was to use kindness rather than restraint (Wynne 14). And for a while, they were able to follow that philosophy – until there got to be too many patients and too few staff. By March 1849, five months after opening, there were 70 patients at Denbigh (Wynne 14).

A typical day at an asylum started around 7am, when patients were woken up for a simple breakfast of tea, coffee, or cocoa, porridge, and bread. Their main meal of the day was around 12:30 pm, and then they would have bread or cake in the early evening before bed (“Victorian Era Lunatic Asylums”). At Denbigh, male patients who were able were employed in the gardens, the farm, tailoring, joinery, and shoemaking shops. Women were employed in the laundry, sewing rooms, and wash house (Wynne 15). And I like this next bit: male patients who were at risk for escape were used to hand pump the water supply into the asylum, so that they could be constantly monitored. This continued until 1857, when a steam engine was finally installed (Wynne 15).

For recreation, patients would take walks and play games, like bowls, skittles, and quoits (Wynne 15), which are basically bowling games and horseshoe throwing. The first annual ball was held around Christmas in 1852. It would be a yearly tradition that continued until the early 1970s (Wynne 15).

Perhaps most disturbingly, for the first 12 years of the asylum’s operation, there were no staff on grounds from 10 pm to 6 am (Wynne 15). Patients were left entirely on their own for those eight hours. And since the hospital was lit only by candlelight and gas lamps, it must have been a cold, dark, and dangerous place. Just thinking of it is upsetting to me – the thought of so many vulnerable patients alone and at risk of harming themselves or harming others or being at risk for medical emergencies. Think of how awful it would be to have the door locked behind you night after night, just hoping that you’d make it through. And certainly, there were plenty of times when staff would return in the morning to find patients had died overnight. I just cannot imagine. Today, psychiatric patients are considered dependent adults, regardless of their mental capacity, and neglect is subject to jail or prison time. But not back then.

In 1853, Parliament passed another revision to the mental health law called the Lunatic Asylum Act. This law provided additional guidelines for admission processes to asylums. We have to remember that poor people were immediately criminalized and pathologized just for being poor. They made up the pauper patients. Under the new guidelines, the pauper poor required a medical certificate from a doctor or apothecary who had examined the patient within the past seven days plus an order from a justice of the peace, clergyman, overseer (whatever that is), or a relieving officer in order to be admitted to the asylum. It was a step up but was still able to be abused. Worst of all, the guidelines did not allow patients to appeal their detention. So they were essentially stuck, unless a relative or friend applied to have them discharged. If the relative or friend could reasonably argue that they could care for the person and that the patient would not be a danger to themselves or others, they could be discharged to their home (“Victorian Era Lunatic Asylums”).

The other group of patients who were admitted were private patients – typically from middle or upper class families – who were admitted by their relatives. To be admitted, they would need evaluations by two doctors, surgeons, or apothecaries. They would also get to stay on a ward separate from the pauper poor, where there were fewer beds and more privacy. The pauper poor, however, had as many beds as could fit in a given space. One source said that once the asylum began to overcrowd, beds were pushed so closely together that patients could only enter their beds from the foot of their bed (“Victorian Era Lunatic Asylums”).

Regardless of their social class, the following information was needed from every new admission: name of the patient, age, sex, marital status, condition of life, occupation (or former occupation), religion, whether this was their first attack, the age of the first known attack, duration of current attack, supposed cause of attack, whether or not the patient was subject to epilepsy, and whether or not they were at risk of harm to themselves or others (“Victorian Era Lunatic Asylums”).

By 1860, the hospital finally had staff present overnight – one, sometimes two, attendants to keep an eye on all 200+ patients. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And it was something that the Lunacy Commission would continually criticize until it was changed (Wynne 15-16).

By 1862, the 14-year-old hospital had already exceeded its original capacity of 200 patients. A new chapel was built that could seat 200 patients, leaving the original chapel room to be overflow housing. In 1865, extensions were built on either side of the back of the building that housed up to 150 patients each (Wynne 16).

Now this next part I find very interesting, and it’s something I haven’t read about in any other hospital I’ve covered to date. The asylum appeared to be very recreation-focused. According to Clwyd Wynne:

By 1864 there were weekly dances for patients and outside organisations such as the Orpheonist Club gave concerts for the patients. Members of the staff were expected to provide entertainment for the patients, and in 1867 they formed a volunteer band which became a full Brass Band in 1870 when the Committee bought new instruments for them. In the same year the first staff choir was formed to participate in chapel services. For many years staff were selected according to their size, musical ability, singing or instrumental, sporting prowess, and ability to speak Welsh. (Wynne 16).

Okay, having the ability to speak Welsh makes complete sense, since it is a hospital for Welsh-speaking people but I’m not so sure that most people today would want to take on a role that also required them to sing and dance. But maybe I’m wrong! I sing karaoke with my patients whenever we get out the old microphone.

Treatment during this time was minimal, as the belief was that work and recreation offered the best cure. I don’t entirely disagree with that, but it’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all treatment. Restraints, especially straitjackets, were used for patients who were at risk of suicide or aggression toward others. That’s what most people think of when they think of the old asylums – straitjackets and padded cells – but in the early days, these were used infrequently, fortunately.

Although psychotropic medications wouldn’t be introduced until the 1950s, there were some concoctions that could be used to calm and relax patients in the 19th century. At Denbigh, the primary medical treatment used was Chloral Hydrate, a sedative that could be used for insomnia, anxiety, and pain management. Unsurprisingly, Chloral Hydrate is now considered super problematic and is no longer used in the U.S. There are no FDA-approved medications that include Chloral Hydrate (“Chloral Hydrate”).

Other medications that were used but probably should not have been include laudanum and strychnine.

Laudanum, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a blend of morphine, codeine, and alcohol. It’s about 10% opium and up to 50% alcohol. The taste was quite bitter, so it would be mixed with spices; honey; ether or chloroform; wine, whisky, or brandy; sometimes mercury or hashish. It sounds like liquid death to me. Obviously, with that cocktail of substances, it was highly addictive. And yet, it didn’t require a prescription; anyone could pick it up at the local general store. A typical dose for an adult was anywhere between 10-30 drops at a time. It was marketed as a sort of cure-all and used to manage pain, anxiety, chronic lung disease, diarrhea, cough, insomnia, and depression. Aside from the addiction potential, other side effects included increased sensitivity to pain, apathy, and an overall sorta disconnectedness from life (“Victorian Era Medicine: Laudanum”). Laudanum as a treatment makes sense to me. There were many similar types of elixirs and cure-alls around this period, so I’m not terribly surprised.

What I am surprised about is the use of strychnine as a treatment, since it is extremely deadly. Even a half a grain of strychnine can be fatal to an adult. Strychnine is a neurostimulant and neurotoxin that causes involuntary muscle contractions, can increase muscle stimulation, and can cause death by paralysis and suffocation (“Victorian Era Medicine: Strychnine”). So what in the world was it being used for in asylums? 

For patients with paralysis, a very small amount of strychnine was made into a tincture or balm that would be rubbed on the paralyzed area to see if it improved muscle sensitivity. Perhaps after it was applied the person would be able to feel in that area for a moment (“Victorian Era Medicine: Strychnine”). I’m not sure that it’s worth the risk – it sounds fairly experimental – but that’s one way they used strychnine.

The next two uses are pretty gross, so skip forward about 30 seconds if you’re squeamish about graphic medical procedures. In patients with vision loss, strychnine would be dropped into the eye with the hope that it would increase muscle contraction and therefore improve vision. I’m curious to know what sort of positive effects, if any, there were for this use. And finally, strychnine would also be used in cases of rectal prolapse. It would be injected into the prolapsed rectum to hold it in place once it, ummm, returned to its original location? (“Victorian Era Medicine: Strychnine”) 

As the years progressed, therapeutic baths were introduced. In 1871, Turkish baths were brought to Denbigh Asylum. Baths could be hot or cold, depending on what symptoms the person was experiencing. Hot baths were used for soothing melancholia, rheumatism, and symptoms of tuberculosis. Patients would be enclosed in a bath, with a covering over the tub and just their head sticking out. They would be left in there for hours, sometimes a full day, for treatment. Now, I like a good warm bath, but I can’t imagine being stuck in a bath for hours at a time. That doesn’t sound like fun. You may be wondering how the water didn’t turn cold after a while – the tubs themselves were heated, sorta like a hot tub, so the water would stay warm. But soon Dr. Turner Jones, the superintendent, started to notice that the patients who took regular hot baths were starting to, ummm, smell bad. He attributed this to the stench of insanity. Obviously, this was not the reason. More likely it was because – and I’m sorry, this is really gross – about five or six patients reused the same bathwater (Wynne 16). I simply cannot imagine being the sixth person to get into a dirty tub, knowing that other people have lain there for up to a full day, and now it’s my turn to get zipped up into it. I just cannot.

The other type of bath treatment was cold baths, which were used to calm aggressive or manic patients. They’d sit in ice for 15-20 minutes at a time until they had settled down (“Victorian Era Lunatic Asylums”). I can’t help but wonder if they had burns on their skin afterward. At other hospitals, staff would dump ice cold water over the patient’s head. These methods seem particularly torturous. We still use ice treatment today, though, so I don’t want to sound like I’m entirely against it. In DBT, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, “ice diving” is a commonly used and effective technique to quickly bring down the body’s temperature and reduce anger and aggression. The difference is that today the person dunks their face into a bowl of ice water for 30 seconds to a minute. And, of course, no one is forcing them to do this. They get the same physiological effects without the potential freezer burn on their skin and waterboarding effect.

In 1874, Dr. Turner Jones retired as medical superintendent and was replaced by – and yes, this is his real name – Dr. William Williams. Dr. Williams inherited further overcrowding issues, as the asylum continued to admit more patients. There were beds in the hallways and patients sleeping on the floor. Plans were made to build a new male wing for an additional 160 patients and a dining hall that would seat 400. These were opened in 1881, along with an addition to the Chapel, which could now hold 440 people (Wynne 17).

An increased patient population also meant staffing shortages. It got to the point that patients were employed to assist staff at night. The Lunacy Commission regularly criticized the facility for this. When Dr. Llewelyn Cox replaced Dr. William Williams in 1882, the commissioners had observed that “Overcrowding and staff shortages probably account for the many black eyes seen in the wards” (qtd. in Wynne 17). This is a terrifying thought. I’m sure both patients and staff had black eyes.

A debate began around this time in the 1880s about whether or not a new hospital should be opened or if the Denbigh Asylum should be expanded yet again. The problem was that they debated for so long that it only exacerbated the overcrowding problem. Patients were sent temporarily other asylums while the decision was being made, and in 1894, the hospital rented Glanywern Hall near Llandyrnog to house 80 women. It seemed like a decision would never be made! Finally, in 1895, the Secretary of State decided to expand the hospital (Wynne 17-18).

Additional land was added to the hospital farm around this time, giving more opportunity for the hospital to be self-sufficient and more employment opportunities for patients. The hospital was now able to provide crops, milk, and meat (Wynne 18).

In 1890, there was another major revision to the mental health law. The Lunatic Act of 1845 had led to the construction of over 60 asylums around the UK (“Victorian Era Lunatic Asylums”). You might remember, too, that this act provided guidelines for required admissions documents for the pauper poor and for middle to upper class private patients. The updated Lunacy Act of 1890 made a few key changes that mostly impacted psychiatrists but had a few positive changes for patients.

One of the major changes the legislation made was it granted controlling authorities, like the Lunacy Commission, more power in asylum inspection, the collection of patient reports, and over patient discharges. In short, there was more oversight, which is a good thing when you’re talking about psychiatric facilities. The hope was that more oversight meant less wrongful confinement and better conditions for patients.

Now that the Act established legal control over the psychiatric admissions of private patients, it was now up to the local judges and not the doctors whether or not a patient should be admitted. This had several intentions: first, the government wanted to start phasing out private hospitals entirely, so the Act made it more difficult for private patients to be admitted in the first place. Psychiatrists didn’t like this because it not only deprived them of much of their authority in making admissions decisions, but working for private hospitals was highly lucrative. For many of them, the wages they earned at private hospitals were a substantial part of their earnings. As those hospitals began to close, they would lose a big chunk of their salary (Takabayashi).

The Lunacy Act of 1890 also had a major positive change for patients. They were finally able to appeal their confinement to local authorities (Takabayashi). It is absolutely essential for patients to be able to do this, even if it doesn’t go anywhere for them, because they need to know that their voices are heard. We have this happen a lot today. And again, I can only speak to my experience here in the U.S. In California, we have a commitment type where parolees who have completed their prison sentences are sent to a hospital if they meet certain criteria. Once they’re seen by the Board of Parole and told they need to remain at the hospital, they can appeal that decision, and the burden of proof gets higher. So, and this gets complicated, so bear with me: when patients in California under this commitment are initially committed to the hospital, the burden of proof is quite low. There needs to be what’s called a preponderance of evidence, which is like saying there’s a 50/50 chance that this person meets criteria. There’s enough evidence to say, yes, this person probably needs to stay at the hospital. But once they appeal, the burden of proof increases, essentially, to beyond a reasonable doubt, which means they have to be basically 100% sure that the patient needs to stay at the hospital. So now it’s up to the judge or jury to decide if the evidence shows they need to stay. Anyway, all that to say that I’m glad we have appeal processes for patients today, and I’m glad that the Lunacy Act of 1890 added this to the law. Moving on…

In 1892, the first training program for attendants was introduced at Denbigh. Forty-two staff members who had been trained by Dr. Herbert, the Assistant Medical Officer, also passed the St. John’s Ambulance Association exams (Wynne 18). What’s shocking to me about this is that the hospital had already been operating for 44 years without any sort of regulated training. So up to that point, they had basically been “winging it” and learning by experience. That is so disturbing to me. Sometimes when I’m at work I get frustrated with how often we have to read and sign a document to say that we understand that the red disposal bag means this and the yellow disposal bag means that or whatever, but then I think about how so many basic aspects of our job were left unregulated for so long, and I think, “Yeah, I get it. I can live with that.”

While the new hospital extension was being constructed, builders ran into a number of issues. It turned out to be a much more complex project than they had anticipated. According to Clwyd Wynne, it added:

A new heating system, electric lighting, a new sewage system to be connected to the town system and a new water supply, all of which were also to be installed in the old buildings. The building work itself was also extensive, to include new wards for 243 female patients, male and female attendants blocks for 30 of each, Dining Hall, Kitchen, Laundry, Central Bathroom, Boiler and Engine Houses and an Isolation Hospital. The estimated cost for the whole project including fees was 80,000 pounds, but because of disputes with the architects and builders over the terms of the contract, resulting in their dismissal when the building was half finished, and their subsequent bankruptcy, the eventual cost was much higher. (Wynne 18)

When construction of the new extension began in 1897, they anticipated it would be finished by December 1899, but they would soon find it would take much longer. In the meanwhile, they built a temporary iron and wood structure known as the Annexe, which was close to the women’s wards. This housed 100 women patients and allowed another building to house men (Wynne 18).

So as I mentioned, the building took longer than anticipated, mostly due to problems with the builders and town council, but the laundry, boiler house, and engine room were finally ready to open by 1902. After that, the isolation hospital was completed. By 1903, the chronic and epileptic wards for women were finished. The male attendants block, kitchen, and dining hall opened in 1904. Finally, the women’s staff housing and administration block were completed in 1905 (Wynne 18-19).

Even with all the construction and changes taking place at Denbigh, entertainment continued to be a major focus of patient treatment. They had regular outings in the community, too. They went to the circus, went to see a performance of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and had picnics at Johnson’s Monument. Entertainment also came to them at the asylum. Children from the Love Lane Board School, Caledfryn (kah-LED-frin) Juvenile Choir, and the National School came to perform for the patients.

In 1902, Dr. Frank Jones joined Dr. Herbert as the Assistant Medical Officer. Dr. Jones was a talented musician and sportsman, so he organized a variety of musical events and sporting activities, such as general athletics, football (soccer for us Americans), and tennis. Dr. Herbert provided magic lantern shows – I’m not sure what those are, but they sound cool! – and organized dramas and musicals. I think it’s so cool that the medical doctors were also involved in recreation. Patients really seem to like it when their providers are seen as more than just a white coat, so to speak. So I’m not surprised that they responded well to these alternate forms of treatment. Sure sounds better than spending the day in dirty bathwater!

And on that note, that’s where I’ll pause the history of the Denbigh Asylum. I’ll pick back up next week as we round the corner into the 20th century. If you’ve been listening to other episodes of this show, you’ll start to recognize patterns of when this started or when that changed. But there are some unique differences that took place in the UK, so stay tuned to learn more.

I’m really enjoying learning about Denbigh Asylum, and I hope you are, too! Already I’m way more into it than I had expected to be, I guess! So be sure to check out the Facebook group (Behind the Walls Podcast) and Instagram page (@behindthewallspod) for pictures of this hospital and more information. And I’ll see you back next week!

As always, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” Until next time…

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“County Asylums Act 1808.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Asylums_Act_1808

“County Asylums Act 1828.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Asylums_Act_1828

“Lunacy Act 1845.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunacy_Act_1845

“Madhouses Act 1774.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhouses_Act_1774

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“Victorian Era Lunatic Asylums.” VL McBeath. https://www.valmcbeath.com/victorian-era-england-1837-1901/victorian-era-lunatic-asylums/

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“Victorian Era Medicine: Strychnine.” VL McBeath. https://www.valmcbeath.com/victorian-era-england-1837-1901/victorian-era-medicine-strychnine/

Wynne, Clwyd. The North Wales Hospital: Denbigh (1842-1995). Gwasg Helygain, Ltd: Denbighshire, 2006.