North Staffordshire Historians' Guild

In the film 'The Name of the Rose' there is some good old-fashioned self-flagellation by a monk.  There is not enough self-flagellation these days, I think.  However, I can get on with some after writing these comments.  I was determined only to write positive reviews about books I enjoyed on this website, but the rule just has to be broken this time. 

Anyway, this is not a review of the book because I didn't understand it very well to tell you the truth.  It was laid out in a forbidding way with long paragraphs and an impenetrable font.  I persevered because I've often seen it favourably commented on.  But right at the death, two pages into the conclusion, I gave up.  This is wot done it:

'Above all, and if not by the means proposed, then by others (not least through the systematic identification of various cultural patterns in a spatial sense), it seems to the writer that historians should now be seeking ways in which to discover local 'societies' at the very start of their investigations and therefore before they relate such societies to the landscape, to 'community' or to 'class', or even to the broader historical trends or processes within which these societies had to function and adapt.' (p43)

Wilting badly now, I reached this on the next page: 'From these various considerations, it has been argued that the orders of social relations which are most relevant to English local historians are those that fit informally, in an upwardly logical sequence, into the interstices of our current and, largely formalized, objects of study.'

I know, I know - I'm being so unfair in drawing attention to Mr Phythian-Adams' style.   The book was published 21 years ago and the message about prose as dire as this has been clearly heard.  No-one writes like this nowadays do they?  Well yes, they do.  I wish they didn't.

Now.  I will not be unkind.  I will not be unkind.  I will not be unkind.

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.

This book is a significant contribution to the history of North Staffordshire. It is a weighty book of unusual length for a local history publication and the subject is dealt with thoroughly.

The history of an institution without the benefit of oral histories is likely to be on the boring side of dull as the writer is driven by sources such as minutes. This does not apply here because Alun’s great achievement is that this is an enjoyable read from start to finish. The text is fully illustrated throughout and those illustrations are interesting and enlightening.

One of the strengths of the book is that it links the hospital to the world outside: the social conditions; the national medical context – medical education, treatment of disease, the development of nursing; the unusual relationship between working class subscribers and the funds of the infirmary; relationships with workhouse hospitals; local politics. Alun shows a good knowledge of all these areas and links them all effectively with the Infirmary.

Another strength is the fact that as a doctor he knows what he is talking about. This is immensely helpful, again, in getting away from a dry recitation of meetings and minutes. Consequently, I learned many things that were useful and had answered questions I’ve been wondering about for ages. We are informed that there was an estimated 10% adult pop infected by syphilis during WW1; that the Infant Mortality Rate in 1911 was 203/1000 in the Borough of SOT; and that if a thermometer placed 4’ deep in the ground reached 56 degrees Fahrenheit, a severe epidemic of diarrhoea could be expected. Maw’s Patent Feeding Bottles for Infants (illustrated) didn’t help very much either, since they couldn’t easily be cleaned. Now just putting these few things together it becomes obvious that the subject is of massive importance if we want to understand the lives of people in North Staffordshire. They are serious matters which had life-changing importance. The history of medicine is a key subject for historians and this book hammers that point home. Then, of course, there are TB, scarlet fever, industrial diseases…

Alun Davies’ gentle humanitarianism is another attractive quality of the book. One of his strengths is the ability and desire to understand the participants’ points of view. Generally, people are doing their best in often trying circumstances. So you might have a passage something like this (I exaggerate a fraction for effect, you understand):

‘It is unfortunately true that for a period of 20 years, mortality from this operation was 100% and we must sympathise greatly with those who suffered in vain. However, the surgeons operated under difficult circumstances. They were only allowed half a candle a week for the operating theatre which was itself crumbling into dust as they operated. They were only allowed to send out scalpels to a blacksmith for sharpening rather than buying new. But the Governors of the hospital were themselves struggling as funding did not match expenditure and they often dipped into their pockets to keep it going. We should not blame the working classes of the Potteries, for they were suffering from depression of trade and were always noted for their generosity to those of their fellows in need.’

See what I mean? Uplifting. The vast majority of people are, most of the time, good.

There are a couple of criticisms to make, neither of which could Alun have controlled. I found the font hard to read and too small; and the lack of references is a fault which makes it impossible to follow up something of interest. On the other hand, to be fair (see - it’s catching!) Churnet Valley Books have been producing good local history for years: they are by far the most important publisher local history in the area has ever had. This is another good book. When added to Edward Myers’ History of Psychiatry in North Staffordshire, also published by Churnet Valley, we are now well served in the history of medicine.

I hesitate to call this a review as I’m suspicious of such things. The format seems to consist of a few words about the book; then an explanation of why the book would have been much better if a pet idea of the reviewer’s had been its main theme; and finally a catalogue of typographical mistakes in the footnotes to the appendices. Something like this…

‘Jim Sutton has written a worthy history of Alsager. However, it is fatally flawed by its appalling silence on the subject of the development of sex education in Alsager before the Second World War. And, really, it is a bit disheartening to see a misplaced apostrophe on p.523 and a colon which should have been a semi-colon on the very next page!’

On the other hand, I don’t want to sound as if I’m a recipient of Mervyn’s slush fund by being too gushing. I am a fan, though: a little bit of Mervyn Edwards sits in my bookcase. Mervyn has got the tone just right. He writes books which people will read and which will both entertain and inform them. Not for him heavy academic theory; but there’s enough information there to show that he knows his stuff.

The Burslem book is an oral (and visual) history. He simply lays one life story on top of another, edited only for nostalgia, as he says in a one-page introduction. ‘The aim has been to create a community product which will engender discussion and further contributions,’ he says on the same page (which I’ve almost reproduced in full now!).

I liked the book a lot, but I wonder what it all means. Does it tell us about the history of Burslem or only these individuals? Would Mervyn come and engender some discussion at the Guild? And he really should have found out something about sex education before the Second World War. It would have made the book SO much more informative.