Book: A Place in the Country: Three Counties Asylum 1860-1999

I few months ago I mentioned that this book had been published, and having now read and enjoyed it I have published a review on the main web site.

REVIEW

This is one of my Hertfordshire History Books for Christmas

More about Hertfordshire Asylums

Insanity in Hertfordshire - More information about the Asylums

Books

I have just received publication details of a book "A Place in the Country: Three Counties Asylum 1860-1999" by Judith Pettigrew, Rory W Reynolds & Sandra Rouse (Hertfordshire Publications, 2017). and because of what happened to my daughters Lucy and Belinda I am very interested the the mental health provision in Hertfordshire, and its history. I hope to get a copy of this book (perhaps as a Xmas present) and when I do I will be adding a review to the Genealogy in Hertfordshire web site - together with a brief history of this interesting asylum, later called Fairfield, which was constructed near the Herts and beds border.

Asylums

Subject
Index

The receipt of details of the book reminded me that the mental health information on my site needed a face-lift and some updating. There is now a new subject button ASYLUMS, and  an associated information page. I have also made some useful updates to the page on the Early Mad Houses in St Albans & Harpenden relating to the private asylum operated from Oster Hills and Harpenden Hall by James Rumball and his son..

from Herts Mercury, 1847

Photographs of Patients at Napsbury Military Hospital 1916-1918

Military

Post Cards

For a period of about two years Ricardo Studios of St Albans regularly visited the wartime Military Hospital at Napsbury Asylum at London Colney and took posed photographs of groups of patients in the wards, or in the grounds. These would have been purchased by patients to send off to family and friends. Virtually all the pictures were numbered and I have now collected together a large number of images, many of which can be enlarged to allow easy identification of the faces. Sufficient of the cards are dated and this allows approximate dates to be given to the other cards. If you can identify any of the many hundreds of faces - or have other examples of Ricardo cards (especially if they are dated) let me know and help make the dating more accurate.

Click Here to see the collection of photographs. 

The "Missing" Lunatics of Harpenden Hall

Harpenden

Two years ago I launched an Xmas "Competition" to identify the mentally ill patients who were resident in Harpenden Hall in the 1851-1901 censuses. The results were very satisfactory but there were five patients, listed only by initials, who could not identified.

At the HALH meeting last Saturday I discovered that Gary Moyle, of HALS, has contributed a chapter  Madhouses of Hertfordshire 1735-1903 in the newly published book A Caring County? Social Welfare in Hertfordshire from 1600 [review planned]. Gary's chapter includes a list of the known patients at Harpenden Hall and this has allowed me to put names to the initials of these five "missing" patients. They were: 

From the 1851 census

H P = Henry Pigott [1850-1853 - died of epilepsy] Unmarried, 35, Formerly Stock Brokers Clerk, St Albans, Herts

From the 1891 Census

S, E  =  Eliza Slack [1890-1891] Widow, 56, Widow Of Solicitor

C, E  =  Ellen Mary Crump [1888-1893] Widow, 31, Daughter Of Solicitor, London, Primrose Hill Rd

B, E E A  =  Ellen Annette Eliza Bertlin [1889-1891] Widow, 27, Daughter Of Merchants Widow, Hampstead, London

A, R C  =  Rosa Clemence Ashwell  [1890-1896] Widow, 50, Daughter Of Clergyman C Of E, Wales

The dates are the dates the patient was in the asylum, and it turns out that some of the initials were mis-transcribed. If you can expand on any of the above, linking them to their families, etc, I can include the additional information when I update the existing list of "census" patients next month.

Did Theresa remarry leaving her first husband in Leavesden Asylum?

Alison reported that Louis Flatau was married Theresa Newstadt in 1881 but in 1892 Theresa remarried Albert Waddell but the only death found for anyone called Louis Flatau was in 1906 at Leavesden Asylum. I checked the 1891 and 1901 censuses and there was no sign of any Lewes/Louis Flatau or any likely mispelling of Flatau in the Asylum. In any case the death indexes contain many errors and the failure to find a death circa 1890 does not mean the he did not die then, and other records support the idea that he was dead. My first reaction was to suggest that the Louis Flatau whose death was recorded in 1906 could not be him. However a later rethink, suggested there is something of interest. As a result I have appended an expanded and tidied up version of my original rough notes to the detailed analysis of the Louis Flatau case.

Leavesden Lunatic Asylum circa 1915

Basically there was a patient in Leavesden  in 1901 who fits the general description of Louis Flatau (age, occupation, place of birth) but his name is recorded as Louis Woolf.  So what - there were hundreds of people in Leavesdon which came from exactly the same part of London - so it could just be a coincidence. But wait a moment. Louis Flatau's mother's maiden name was Woolf, so perhaps Louis's full name was Louis Woolf Flatau and the Flatau was dropped when her was admitted to Leavesden. The complication is that the Flatau and Woolf families seem to have been immigrants from Eastern Europe, living in a close-knit community and there are a number of genuine Louis Woolfs who could also have been the patient in Leavesden Asylum.