John Rendall was 104 when he was buried at Box, Wiltshire, on 21 January 1821. This great age is even more striking because he had been confined to an asylum for more than 60 years. Peter Carpenter asks if there were other exceptionally long lived residents of early asylums.

There are few surviving records of patients in Georgian asylums for mentally ill patients. There are registers for Bethlem and St Luke’s available online, but provincial “madhouses” of the time were relatively rare, and little documentation survives. The main early entries regarding patients are in other records, such as parish churchwardens’ accounts and relate to admitted paupers.

“Box Mad House” shown in Andrews & Drury’s map of 1773 (courtesy Wilts History Centre).

Kingsdown House Lunatic Asylum at Box, Wiltshire, six miles to the east of Bath, has claim to be the longest running private asylum in the country.[i] It was operating by 1687[ii] and was closed in 1946 by its proprietor Gerald McBryan, in between his own psychiatric admissions and attempts to rule Sarawak and Brunei.[iii]

As part of my study of Kingsdown House, I explored a surviving folder of correspondence between its proprietor and the churchwardens of Trowbridge[iv] a substantial market town about 9 miles from Box. This together with the Trowbridge accounts[v] and newspaper records throw light on the case of John Rundell/ Rundle/Randal.[vi]

In November 1758, the churchwardens’ accounts note payment for: “Horsehire & Turnpikes Dr Jefferys at Kingsdown relating to John Rundall junr of Studley 1/9d”.[vii]  James Jeffery, a surgeon, is the first well documented operator of the asylum.

And the next month:

“Expence of sending John Rundle weaver to ye Madhouse under the Care of Dr Jefferys at Kingsdown. Viz: 26^th Dec [1758]: Two guards all night and part of ye next day with expenses  6/10d

27^th: 2 guards and hire of two Horses to Kingsdown 8/6d [viii]

Jeffery then charges 7/- a week reducing to 5/- over 6 months. He does not charge for the period 18 -22 August 1760.  The reason is revealed in the account entry: “Expence on account of John Rundle discharged from ye madhouse upon trial, but attempting to drown himself sent again under a guard.”  9/1d

In 1763 Jefferys writes: “altho’ Rendall is not so bad as in time past yet he still persists in surprising odd Whyms & Fancys which undoubtedly might end in some bad consequence was he not under proper care.”

In 1775 the churchwardens negotiated a much reduced fee as John, who though still disordered in his senses, was able to work around the asylum.  His delusions probably lasted most of his life, as he would have otherwise returned to the cheaper Trowbridge poorhouse. Overseers of the poor were not famed for their financial benevolence.

Rendall’s death clearly made the newspapers take notice: [Died] 7 Feb at Dr Langworthy’s Asylum, Kingsdown house, Box, … John Randall, aged 104 years, upwards of 69 of which he had been a patient at that institution, enjoying good health, and working regularly in the garden until a few weeks prior to his death. He was an early riser, and was confined to his bed but a few days, in possession of his retentive powers to the last.[ix]

If the age is correct, then John Rundle was born about 1717 and admitted at the age of 40.

The only other long lived asylum inmate I know of is an 1806 reference to: “The poor inoffensive idiot whom the passenger may have seen for nearly half a century past sitting at the door of the Magdalen Hospital in Holloway [Bath], died last week, aged 92. He has been for some years the only patient supported in that institution”[x]

In fact, the hospital’s later evidence in a charity inquiry states he was aged 95 and had been 75 years in the house but gives no other information.[xi]  Are these the only long lived inmates known before the 1830s? I welcome evidence of others.

Two of John Rundell’s letters . A letter with a similar list of clothing refers to Mr James  Jefferies suggesting it is from the early period of his illness.

Peter Carpenter is a retired psychiatrist in intellectual disability who has researched the history of mental health institutions in Bristol. 

References

[i] See http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/inside-box-mad-house.html for a short description. See also Leonard Smith: Private madhouses in England, 1640-1815. Palgrave MacMillan. 2020

[ii] Minute Book of the Men’s Meeting of the Society of Friends in Bristol 1667-1686. Bristol Record Society vol XXVI.

[iii] See for example accounts of him in Philip Eade: Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2007

[iv] Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre, Ref.No. 206/93

[v] Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre Ref No: 206/ 60-73

[vi] Rundle’s letters are briefly described in William Ll. Parry-Jones The Trade in Lunacy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1972 p168-9

[vii] Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre 206/64 Trowbridge churchwarden accounts 5 Nov – 3 Dec 1758.

[viii] Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre 206/64 accounts 3-31 Dec 1758

[ix] Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser 21 Feb 1821: deaths.

[x] Bath Journal Monday 28 July 1806 page 3e.

[xi] Sixth report of the Commissioners of Inquiry concerning certain Charities in England and Wales (British Parliamentary Paper 1822 (12) IX 1) page 737.

Philip Milnes-Smith is investigating the undeserved slide into obscurity of Mary Wardell, founder of a scarlet fever convalescent home.

During the pandemic, a freelance archive opportunity introduced me to the forgotten public health pioneer Mary Wardell, who founded an isolation convalescent home for Londoners with scarlet fever at Brockley Hill, Stanmore in North London. I am now looking for new leads.

Mary’s experience with Ellen Ranyard’s London Bible and Domestic Female Mission revealed to her the impossibility in the homes of the poor of separating the well from the sick (who might remain infectious for six weeks or more). Ordinary convalescent homes could not take people with infectious diseases.

The institution Mary founded was credited with helping to reduce the spread and consequently the mortality rate from scarlet fever, but it was still deemed unique decades after it opened.

We do not know why she selected Alexander Patrick Stewart (1813-1883) as the physician to whom she explained her vision. Perhaps she consulted the Medical Directory and noted his publications distinguishing typhus from typhoid fever, on cholera and on sanitary reform.

Other backers from the medical profession so far identified include Henry Wentworth Dyke Acland (1815-1900), Sir James Risdon Bennett (1809-1891), Sir George Buchanan (1831-1895), Sir George Burrows (1801-1887), Sir Joseph Fayrer (1824-1907), James Hill Gibson (1856-1912), Sir Edward Henry Sieveking (1816-1904) and Sir Thomas Watson (1792-1882).

Perhaps one of them was the gushing “patriarch” The Girl’s Own Paper’ quoted as having said: “I wish I were a young man, that I might plant my foot in the work, and help you with all my might.”

There are so far no known links between Mary Wardell and the first generations of qualified medical women. However, some connections to the broader Victorian movement for female education and emancipation seem likely for a middle-class woman who chose to work as a governess, and whose public health project had some backing from the Ladies’ Sanitary Association. It should also be noted that personal reticence did not prevent her standing up for her project in publications like The Hospital and The Lancet.

While stories of pioneering women doctors and nurses are kept in circulation by their respective professions, Mary had no such metaphorical descendants to keep her flame alive. Her undeserved slide into obscurity began with the conversion of her facility to an auxiliary hospital in the First World War and  further accelerated with her death in 1917. So far, no image of her has been identified. The quest for Mary Wardell continues.

References

“A Convalescent Home for Scarlet Fever Patients”. The Quiver. 24: 635. 1889.

Stewart, A. P. (1882). “Are Homes For Convalescents From Scarlatina Desirable? And, If So, At What Period Can The Patients Be Safely Removed To Them?”. The British Medical Journal. 1 (1107): 374–375. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.1107.374. ISSN 0007-447. JSTOR 25259190. PMC 2371537. PMID 20750140.

https://www.victorianvoices.net/ARTICLES/GOP/London/1889-ScarletFeverHome.pdf

Philip Milnes-Smith was freelance archival consultant for Pegleg Productions’ Searching for the Grey Lady project at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. The digital archivist at Shakespeare’s Globe, he also undertakes freelance archival and oral history work, and volunteers for the Archives and Records Association.