THERE IS already an extensive literature on the Victorian treatment of mental health, writes Ian Dewhirst.

But former Keighley man David Scrimgeour’s study of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Wakefield adopts a less typical viewpoint of the patients themselves.

The book, which costs £14.99, is entitled Proper People: Early Asylum Life In The Words Of Those Who Were There

Thanks to surviving case notes, annual reports, letters and newspaper accounts, backed up by the records of 14 archives and museums, David Scrimageour has resurrected the stories of 158 of the forgotten thousands who passed through the asylum during the first 50 years of its existence, from 1818 to 1869.

He calls his unfortunates “proper people” as a play on their committal warrants declaring each a “proper person” to be admitted.

And what a varied, sad and sometimes intriguing collection of people they were!

A wood carver, discharged as recovered after eight months, put his stay to good use, carving an eagle lectern for the Asylum chapel.

A Gomersal cloth weaver turned suicidal because of “the reading of Writing rendered him dissatisfied with his condition”.

A 20-year-old iron moulder from Halifax, who thought it his duty to “to pray on the Hills and Highways”, escaped only to be found drowned in the River Calder.

A tailor from Bradford, “disappointed in love”, was confined to 49 years at a total cost of £2,000.

An alcoholic “stage player” was cured of mania within two months and treated 400 of his fellow patients to a dramatic entertainment which included performing dogs.

A laundress, discharged to the care of her daughter after 32 years, paid fanatical attention to her physicians’ linen, while after a brief incarceration a Sheffield housekeeper thanked the Asylum management by way of a published poem point.

There was even a young man from East Ardsley, who had served as an officer throughout the American Civil War, and who may have been suffering from the then undiagnosed post traumatic stress.

Cases of the criminal insane offer the sequel to some sensational local events.

When John Holdsworth, keeper of the Hawkcliffe toll bar between Keighley and Steeton, shot his wife dead in 1861, he made headlines throughout the West Riding, but once found not guilty on the grounds of insanity and confined during Her Majesty’s pleasure, he disappeared from the newspapers.

Here, however, we follow his subsequent progress, from the Wakefield Asylum to the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Bethlem Hospital in Southwark, London, thence to the new Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in 1864.

From there he wrote a number of poignant but fruitless letters requesting release, almost up to the time of his death in 1886.

This half-century of “proper people” charts, incidentally, a growing humanity and understanding of mental illness.

Early forms of treatment could be harsh: the circular swing, “a curious mechanical device which patients either sat in or lay on to be spun at speed until nausea and vomiting were induced”; and the pouring of cold water over patient’s head.

Then there was the bath: one woman “wept very much and promised the nurse to talk and be more cheerful if it might be omitted”.

Bleeding, blistering and purging was still being practised in the 1850s, but by then the Asylum chaplain was running classes “to afford instruction, interest and amusement to many of the patients”.

A select 30 of them were invited out to a picnic at naturalist Charles Waterton’s Walton Hall, where “a band of music added much to their recreation”.

All in all, Proper People presents, beyond its basic subject, a fascinating broader slice of Victorian social history.

For good measure, it includes a useful glossary of medical terms and treatments for the reader unaccustomed to the likes of albuminuria, cephalalgia, ipecacuanha and leucophlegmasia.

*The book is published by Scrimageour Yorkshire at 13 Coney Warren Lane, Stanley, Wakefield, WF3 4EY, or online from Amazon.