Scandal in Jamaica — The Kingston Lunatic Asylum

Abstract

Between 1858 and 1861 Jamaica was shaken by a scandal surrounding the operation of the Public Hospital and Lunatic Asylum in Kingston.² A series of revelations about conditions and the treatment of patients received extensive coverage in England as well as Jamaica. Much attention focused on the lunatic asylum, from whence the more serious exposures of abuses emanated. The principal actors in the drama included doctors, administrators, present and former members of staff, and recent asylum patients. The organs of colonial government in Jamaica and imperial administration in London were drawn in to the ensuing crisis. In Jamaica, resolution of the problems involved dismissals of key medical and other staff, the closure of the disgraced asylum, and its replacement by a new institution. In the wider imperial context, the scandal became a defining event. The stark and graphic evidence from Kingston was viewed as an indicator of the likely state of other colonial hospitals and asylums. It had considerable ramifications for future health provision, particularly for the insane, throughout the British Empire.³

The next day I was told to go and wash and the nurses laid hold of me … they called the men from the other place, and one came out … They stopped my nose and shoved me under the water, and I said they send me here to kill me rather than get me better … I did not mind the ducking so much but the water was not clean, some of the people filth in the water … and then you have to drink all that water when you are being ducked … They were all treated as I was, and some worse, those that could not go to the tank and laid down were dragged along like dead dogs…¹