North Staffordshire Historians' Guild

Edward Myers: Psychiatry in North Staffordshire, 1808-1986 (Churnet Valley Books, 1997)

Needing some information on the Poor Law and the mentally ill, I re-read Dr Myers’ book on the history of psychiatry in the area, having first read it soon after publication ten years ago.

What a very good companion it makes to Alun Davies’s recently-published ‘North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary’.  They are of similar size, both well illustrated in the same format and published by Churnet Valley Books.  Together they give great prominence to the history of medicine in the local history of the area; both authors share long experience as experts in their field in North Staffordshire.  That knowledge of their subject matter is of enormous importance.

The history of psychiatry starts with  a brief description of hospital development in North Staffordshire; the care of the insane in England; relevant Acts of Parliament, including the poor law, the setting-up of county asylums and then the National Health Service. 

Then it is down to business, with detailed consideration of the private asylum run by the Bakewells, first at Spring Vale.  We are given a good insight into treatment and conditions for the insane here through several decades of the nineteenth century (1808-1853).

My main reason for re-reading the book was that I needed information on the way the insane were treated under the New Poor Law, following the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.   Dr Myers’ book was a great help.  He describes the facilities developed in local poor law unions: Wolstanton & Burslem, Newcastle, Stoke-on-Trent, Leek, Cheadle and Stone.   Much greater space is devoted to the Stoke-on-Trent Union than any other, and several interesting pages of verbatim reports on facilities are given.

The next major development is the new asylum, for North Staffordshire, opened at Cheddleton in 1899.   It needs emphasising that although this is a history of institutions, it is not dry at all.  I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Dr Menzies, the first Medical Superintendent at Cheddleton.  One of his qualities was his ability to see that in employing nurses, ladies were much preferable to women:

‘I must have a lady as Matron’, because ‘the Matron has a social function entertaining the parents of nurses and candidates and showing them round which I should not like to contract to a common woman however good in other respects’.  (p.125)

Finally, there is an account of ’38 years of the National Health Service’ with regard to mental illness.  This was welcome to me because it made sense of complicated developments.

Well… it wasn’t quite finally.  In just the last 2 pages of text (p203-5), Dr Myers – who has scrutinized the development of local psychiatry like a hawk sitting at the top of a tree – suddenly takes off and soars.  The nature of psychiatry and the history thereof are raised as problems for consideration.  Why did the institutions develop?   Was psychiatry different in the provinces from that in London?  What were the local differences?  How is ‘effectiveness’ to be measured?  Can the same treatment be effective in one age and not in another?  Really intriguing questions.  And I thought this was worth quoting, from the Journal of Mental Science in 1901:

‘One of the uses of history [is that] it shows that every age has its own peculiar errors and that it is difficult to avoid being carried away by the current.’ (p204)

I’m weak swimmer in contemporary currents.  How difficult it is to avoid this problem.