Populating Caterham

Abstract

Focussing on the patients admitted to Caterham, this chapter explores the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the asylums resident population. It is a broadly quantitative chapter and explores patients’ gender, age on admission and classifications upon arrival. As Caterham was intended from the outset to be a long-stay asylum, consideration is also be paid to how patients were described by relatives, lay professionals and staff in the casebooks and admission documents, to further explore contemporary understandings of idiocy, imbecility and incurable insanity. Attention is also paid to the admission process, how patients were received, assessed and classified at the asylum and the issue of misdiagnosis by workhouse staff on the wider patient population. The chapter also shows how Caterham operated in the Victorian mixed economy of welfare, the various administrative and institutional pathways of patients and the role the asylum played in life cycle of adult pauper idiots and imbeciles.