Shows
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum08 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1906 minMy Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum07 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1927 minMy Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum06 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1931 minMy Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum05 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1926 minMy Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum04 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1926 minMy Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum03 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1923 minMy Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum02 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1922 minMy Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum01 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles MerivaleIn My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-1919 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series18. Being an asylum patient 4: Christian Watt at Aberdeen Royal Mental Asylum, 1877As I showed last week, Herman Charles Merivale’s time at Ticehurst was a bit like being in a nice hotel, though he did not like the other ‘guests’. Someone who seems to have settled rather better into an institutional environment was a working class Aberdeenshire woman, who also wrote a retrospective account of her time in a public asylum. She wrote with frankness and sensitivity, about both herself and her fellow patients, making the best of her prolonged stay, which lasted 45 years. However, it is also clear that she re-wrote much of what happened, including the frightening circumstances of delusi...
2017-11-1009 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast SeriesExtract 17.1 - Herman Charles MerivaleThis extract accompanies Podcast 17 - Being an asylum patient 3b: Herman Charles Merivale at Ticehurst, 1875IMAGE: Wellcome Library, London. Ticehurst Case Records, 1875-9, pp. 15-16. Credit: Wellcome Library, London, Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial licenseVoice Credit: Jem Tatar
2017-11-0701 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series17. Being an asylum patient 3b: Herman Charles Merivale at Ticehurst, 1875Last week’s extract and podcast allowed us to see what others thought of the lawyer Herman Charles Merivale, when he was committed to a private asylum. The document from which it came exists in abundance for 19th century asylums. Insight into how patients saw the experience of incarceration are much rarer, though I shall give examples this week and next. Merivale is unusual because he wrote his own account of entering and living in an up-market private madhouse. Public asylums were crowded with paupers. Understaffed and with only basic facilities, they were probably difficult environments for most patients. Merivale’s ex...
2017-11-0709 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast SeriesExtract 16.1 - Herman MerivaleThis extract accompanies Podcast 16 - Being an asylum patient 3a: Herman Charles Merivale admitted to Ticehurst, 1875 IMAGE: Wellcome Library, London. Ticehurst Case Records, 1875-9, pp. 15-16. Credit: Wellcome Library, London, Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial licenseSPOKEN VERSION: Jem Tatar
2017-10-3002 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series16. Being an asylum patient 3a: Herman Charles Merivale admitted to Ticehurst, 1875The most abundant sources for understanding the history of psychiatry are medical case notes, kept by asylum staff. In addition, petitions for admission gave accounts of behaviour that precipitated the committal of a person to an institution. In this case he was a well-off London lawyer and the asylum was an up-market private one in the Home Counties of England. In drawing up the certification necessary for compulsory committal, the medical men relied much more on accounts given by servants and family, than they did on the rather uncommunicative object of their consultation.IMAGE: Wellcome Library, London. Ticehurst Case Records, 1875...
2017-10-3012 min