Bejamin Hawkins - County Lunatic Asylum (General)

by janethowell, Wednesday, June 18, 2014, 00:18 (3806 days ago) @ Mike Pinchin

Just picking up your last comment that a persistent threat of suicide would be good enough grounds to commit someone. Is this generally true of the times or just the Gloucester area "policy"?

It has made me wonder whether conditions like post-natal depression were understood at the time. Could that condition be the excuse for a husband to commit his wife.

It is not an idle wonder - the birth certificate of a great aunt states she was born in the work house when her father, grandfather and other siblings were living in a good area and listed as employers in 1901 census. I assumed the birth was at the work house hospital for medical reasons ( the premises later became the major hospital in the area). But I can find no trace of my great-grandmother on the 1901 census and no trace of her at all after the birth of her last child, my great aunt. I did wonder if my great-grandmother was committed.

Is this a plausible idea?

Janet