The Non-Pauper Insane: Private, Voluntary and State Concerns

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the developments leading up to the admission of paying patients to private, voluntary and district asylums. Focusing primarily on the reports of Ireland’s lunacy inspectors, the national press and the emerging psychiatric community, it is concerned with the debates aired at national level on how best to accommodate different social groups. It examines proposals for the establishment of separate accommodation for paying patients, negative press coverage of private asylums and the abuses identified by the lunacy inspectors, the growing social importance of Ireland’s four voluntary asylums and the implications of the eventual reception of paying patients in the district asylum system. Ultimately, this chapter argues that in the absence of a single effective solution, the result was a patchwork of public, voluntary and private accommodation, each the outcome of a set of shared convictions as to how, why and by whom the non-pauper insane should be treated.