Treatment in Irelands lunatic asylums

As the general population decreased—falling from approximately eight million in 1841 to 6.5 million after the Famine and to 4.5 million in 1900—both the prison system and the asylum system expanded steadily.5 The expansion of the prison system raises interesting questions, as scholars debate whether or not serious crime actually increased in the second half of the nineteenth century.6 As part of the planned expansion of the asylum system, and to solve the problem of holding lunatics in an already overcrowded prison system, a special facility with accommodation for approximately one hundred people was built at Dundrum, County Dublin, for the confinement and treatment of criminal lunatics in 1850. The Dundrum facility predated the establishment of a similar institution at Broadmoor, England, opened in 1863, but it mirrored the ideological approach to crime and mental disorder evident throughout Britain and its colonies at this time.7 .

The case of Mary Rielly is also of interest in the context of two current debates—gender and crime and gender and mental health. The first debate is concerned with the gendered nature of crime and its punishment.7 It focuses on gender differences in criminal behavior and in legal outcomes. Throughout the world, men feature more visibly in crime statistics than do women, especially for crimes associated with violence. Certain crimes such as infanticide, however, have been linked historically to women. Theorists argue as to the reasons for specific gender patterns of criminal behavior and suggest that as women take a more equal role in economic and public life these patterns will change. In addition, there are gender differences in the ways in which men and women are treated within the criminal justice system. Women have sometimes received harsher treatment than men for the same crime and vice versa. Reasons given for this differential treatment include arguments about the perceived roles of women and men in society, roles that label men as naturally aggressive and women as naturally passive. Women, who act in a way that is “out of character,” for example by killing a man, may be treated harshly by the courts, while men who kill women may receive lighter sentences because of a general social acceptance of male violence.The second debate is concerned with gender differences in the experiences and manifestations of mental disorder and in society’s response to these experiences.8 In the past, women have featured more prominently than men in psychiatric statistics. This has led to the conclusion that women have higher rates of mental illness than men. However, in recent years, a number of psychiatric morbidity studies in the US and Europe have suggested that most of the early research was based on service use that was inherently biased toward this outcome. Specifically, mental disorders associated with men (such as personality disorder and substance abuse) were excluded from the research definition of mental illness, and those associated with women (depression, anxiety, hysteria) were highlighted. Current research, which includes mental health problems associated with personality disorder and substance abuse, points to a different conclusion—that men show higher levels of psychiatric morbidity than women. Their lower level of visibility in psychiatric statistics may stem from the ways in which mental health services are organized and the lower levels of use of these services by men.
These two debates—on gender and crime and gender and mental health—intersect when crime is linked with mental disorder, personified in the mentally disordered offender, or in the parlance of earlier times, the criminal lunatic. Historically, women predominated in asylums in most countries, while men predominated in prisons. Institutions for criminal lunatics tended to have similar gender patterns to prisons, with men predominating. As might be expected, Ireland was a little different—with men (especially young men) predominating in all of these institutions.9
Before 1850 Ireland did not have a specific facility for criminal lunatics. They were sent to prison, from which they were sometimes discharged to the district asylum nearest to their home. This was not a satisfactory situation as far as the prison authorities were concerned, and in 1850 a Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum for Ireland was opened at Dundrum village on the outskirts of Dublin. It predated the establishment of a similar institution at Broadmoor, England (which opened in 1863) and continues to function as the Central Mental Hospital for the care of mentally disordered offenders in the Republic of Ireland. The opening of Dundrum was part of the expansion of both asylum and prison provision in the nineteenth century.10 It is interesting that this expansion occurred at a time when the general population and the level of serious crime were both decreasing. As shown by Vaughan and Fitzpatrick, the Irish population decreased from approximately 8 million in 1841 to 6.5 million after the Great Famine and to 4.5 million in 1900.11 In parallel, serious crime decreased after 1850. Thus, Ireland was one of the safest countries in Europe in the late nineteenth century.12
The new asylum provided a real alternative to the traditional sentences (the death penalty and penal servitude for life) for those who had committed serious crimes and were deemed insane.13 A study of the people confined there (as criminal lunatics) reveals a highly gendered approach to murder and manslaughter.14 Though there were women “criminal lunatics” in Dundrum, they were in the minority; they were more likely than men to have committed petty crimes; and when they killed another person, it was highly likely to be a child.15 Women who killed men rarely found their way into Dundrum. The Inspectors of Lunacy for Ireland wrote in 1855, “We have no record of a female killing her husband, the most common mode of destruction among women being infanticide.”16
Because this pattern continued, women who killed men were absent from the medical records at Dundrum. An intensive search of other sources—such as convict records, crime statistics, and court records—revealed information on at least twenty women who were convicted of the murder or manslaughter of men during the second half of the century, but of only one who was acquitted on the grounds of insanity. This was Mary Rielly, who spent four years of her life as a criminal lunatic in Dundrum.17

Disease and poverty were inextricably linked at this time with clear distinctions being
made between those paupers who were ‘deserving’ of charity such as widows, orphans
and the sick and those who were ‘undeserving’ such as beggars and vagrants. Ireland of
the early 18th century had plenty of the latter and the state dealt with them in a number of
ways, mostly harsh: incarceration and forced labour in Houses of Correction (the
forerunners of modern prisons), transportation to the colonies as indentured servants, and
confinement and compulsory work in Houses of Industry. The declared purpose of the
latter was to provide “an asylum for the aged and infirm, and a bridewell for the
profligate, idle and refractory”
Limerick House of Industry (1774-1841)
Houses of Industry were founded in Dublin in 1703 and in Cork in 1735. Following the
enactment of legislation by the Irish Parliament in 1772 and 1774, several Houses of
Industry were founded in other cities in Ireland. The Limerick House of Industry was
built on the north bank of the river Shannon opposite the Custom House, which had been
completed in 1769. Bishop Gore provided the site for the House of Industry at an annual
rent of one peppercorn forever and the Grand Juries of Limerick County and City (the
local government of the day) donated £500 towards the cost of building. Rev. Deane
Hoare designed the rectangular building which has a fine cut stone façade and Launcelot
Hill supervised the construction. Joseph Johns, the Mayor of Limerick, laid the
foundations on the 10th of March 1774. The building was designed to house 200 people
and Dr Edward Smith of Dublin gave £200 for the provision of cells for lunatics in the
infirmary, which was behind the main building in the garden.
In 1823 a wing was added for the accommodation of seventy infirm women and two
workrooms for spinners and weavers. The House of Industry at this time also had two
schools catering for 180 pupils. Thirty to fifty percent of inmates were deemed sick and
another 15% were classed as lunatics. A visitor to the House of Industry at Limerick,
found: ‘madmen stark naked girded only by their irons, standing in the rain, in an open
court’. Foundlings (abandoned children) were also admitted but in 1783 it was noted that
of 106 foundlings admitted during the previous year 86 had died. The diet was
monotonous consisting of oatmeal stirabout and potatoes. The able bodied were made to
work and discipline was harsh with chaining of inmates a common practice. In 1824
Pigot’s Directory gave the following view of the purpose of the House of Industry: The
House of Industry, which is a fine spacious building, on the North Strand, is an
establishment of the first consideration, as it relieves the mind and sight from the
wretched subjects that would otherwise infest the streets. By 1827 the House of Industry
held 450 inmates (twice the number it was designed to hold). In 1841 it was replaced by
the new Limerick Workhouse, which had been built on Shelbourne Road. The Limerick
House of Industry buildings became a British military barracks, the Strand Barracks, until
the 1920s when it was taken over and used as a store by Limerick Corporation. In the
1990s the buildings were converted into apartments.

Limerick District Lunatic Asylum (1827-1925)
The mentally ill were generally not well cared for before the 18th century. Early attempts
at institutional ‘care’ consisted of providing cells in the Houses of Industry and an asylum
for lunatics was provided at the Limerick House of Industry. In its first 20 years the
asylum accommodated 215 people with mental illness. Conditions were terrible, the cells
were small (6ftx10ft) and disease was rife. Restraint was by clamping on irons around the
wrist and ankles and physical and sexual abuse was common.
The early 19th century witnessed a change in societal attitudes to the mentally ill, who
were seen as being a group distinct from beggars and vagrants. The York Retreat,
founded in Yorkshire in 1796, pioneered a more humane treatment approach to mental
illness. There was a concern that the insane were being maltreated in the overcrowded
workhouses and prisons. Segregated institutional management was seen as the solution,
which led to the erection of the Richmond Asylum in Dublin in 1815. Ireland was to be
the first country in the western world with a system of public asylums for the insane.
Twenty-two asylums were built during the 19th century following passage of the Irish
Lunatic Asylums for the Poor Act in 1821.
The Limerick District Lunatic Asylum, which initially served the counties of Limerick,
Clare, and Kerry, was completed in 1826 at a cost of £35,490. Separate asylums were
later built in Killarney (1852) and Ennis (1868). The Limerick Asylum provided
accommodation for 150 patients and opened on 8th January 1827 on Mulgrave Street.
Space for another 150 patients was added later. Patients were considered to be curable or
incurable, the latter were probably handicapped and these were left in the House of
Industry until it closed in 1840. Initially a Board of Governors managed the asylum, but
the 1898 Local Government reforms brought it under the control of the local authorities.
In Limerick a new authority called the Limerick District Mental Hospital Committee was
established and to this both Limerick Corporation and Council contributed members and
finance. In 1925 the hospital was formally renamed the Limerick District Mental Hospital
and in 1959 St Joseph’s Hospital. The hospital continues to treat patients with mental
illness but most are now treated in the community or at the psychiatric unit at the
Midwestern Regional Hospital.