Abstract
At some point before five P.M. on 25 June 1914, in the small coastal town of Lowestoft, Suffolk, 59-year old Louisa Ashby cuts her own throat with a razor and lies down on her bed. Her eight-year-old granddaughter, Dora, discovers her covered in blood, and runs back downstairs to inform her mother that ‘grandmother had cut her finger’.1 Ashby is rushed to the nearby Lowestoft and North Suffolk Hospital, where, according to the East Suffolk Police:
The [hospital] matron then requested that an officer should stay and take the sole charge and responsibility of the patient. I told her we could not do that, and that two of her sons were present [for this purpose], she said, ‘They are no good, you brought her here and must take the sole charge of her, or take her away’.2
Chapter PDF
Notes
S. Chaney, ‘“A Hideous Torture on Himself” Madness and Self-Mutilation in Victorian Literature’ Journal of Medical Humanities 32 (2011): 280–1
It is unclear when the practice of police watching emerges, but it is probable that it comes to renewed prominence in the mid-nineteenth century, when ‘attempted suicide’ becomes a common-law offence, what Olive Anderson calls the ‘new offence’. O. Anderson, Suicide in Victorian and Edwardian England Oxford, Clarendon (1987): 263–417
M. Gorsky and J. Mohan, ‘London’s Voluntary Hospitals in the Interwar Period: Growth, Transformation, or Crisis?’ Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 30(2) (2001): 248; G. Rivett, ‘The Voluntary Hospitals’ in Development of the London Hospital System 1823–1992 online at: http://www.nhshistory.net/voluntary_hospitals.htm accessed 30 January 2015
C.A.H. Watts, Depressive Disorders in the Community Bristol, John Wright & Sons (1966): 1
H.L. Freeman, ‘Psychiatry in the National Health Service 1948–1998’ British Journal of Psychiatry 175 (1999): 3
R. Mayou, ‘The History of General Hospital Psychiatry’ British Journal of Psychiatry 155 (1989): 768.
D.R. Benady and J. Denham, ‘Development of an Early Treatment Unit from an Observation Ward’ British Medical Journal 2, 5372 (1963): 1569
J. Pickstone, ‘Psychiatry in District General Hospitals’ in Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective J. Pickstone (ed.) (1992): 198
D. Armstrong, Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical Knowledge in Britain in the Twentieth Century Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (1983): 73
M.D. Eilenberg, M.J. Pritchard and P.B. Whatmore, ‘A 12-Month Survey of Observation Ward Practice’ British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine 16 (1962): 22
A.D., ‘Obituary Notices: Hon. W.S. Maclay’ British Medical Journal 1, 5392 (1964): 1258
W.S. Maclay, ‘After the Mental Health Act: An Appraisal of English Psychiatry’ Mental Hospitals 14 (1963): 100
W.S. Maclay, ‘Trends in the British Mental Health Service’ in Trends in the Mental Health Services: A Symposium of Original and Reprinted Papers H.L. Freeman and W.A.J. Farndale (eds) Oxford, Pergamon Press (1963)
B. Wootton, Social Science and Social Pathology London, George Allen & Unwin, (1959) 208
E.U.H. Pentreath and E.C. Dax, ‘Mental Observation Wards: A Discussion of Their Work and Its Objects’ Journal of Mental Science 83 (1937): 351–2
A. Lewis and F.H.M. Calder, ‘A General Report on the Observation Wards Administered by the London County Council’ 10 (1938) TNA: MH 95/32
F. Hopkins, ‘Admissions to Mental Observation Wards During War’ British Medical Journal 1, 4289 (1943): 358; see also
F. Hopkins ‘Attempted Suicide: An Investigation’ Journal of Mental Science 83 (1937): 71; and below
I. Skottowe, ‘Discussion: Observation Units’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 33 (1940): 732, emphasis in the original.
E.W. Dunkley and E. Lewis, ‘North Wing: A Psychiatric Unit in a General Hospital’ Lancet 281, 7273 (1963): 156
See for example, J. Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War London, Reaktion Books (1996);
B. Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press (2001)
T.H. Goodwin, ‘The Casualty Clearing Stations’ Journal of the American Medical Association 69(8) (1917): 636
The exact timing of these visits is unclear; that they were regular is not disputed. See Mayou, ‘General Hospital Psychiatry’: 768; G. Wilkinson, Talking About Psychiatry London, Gaskell, (1993): 138
Quoted in R.P. Snaith and S. Jacobson, ‘The Observation Ward and the Psychiatric Emergency’ British Journal of Psychiatry 111 (1965): 18
J. Marshall, ‘Mental Health Services’ British Medical Journal 2 (4902) (1954): 1484
M.B. Hall and F. Hopkins, ‘Parental Loss and Child Guidance’ Archives of Disease in Childhood 11(64) (1936): 187–94
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2015 Chris Millard
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Millard, C. (2015). Early Twentieth-Century Self-Harm: Cut Throats, General and Mental Medicine. In: A History of Self-Harm in Britain. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52962-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52962-6_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54773-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52962-6
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)