Portal:Featured Article Of The Week
Featured Article Of The Week
Royal Albert Asylum
At a time when the dominant legislation (i.e. the 1845 Lunacy Act) muddied distinctions between learning disability and mental illness, the Royal Albert Asylum (as it was then known), Lancaster, was only one of 4 regional institutions in England set up specifically for the care and education of children with learning disabilities. Admitting its first patients in December 1870, the Royal Albert's establishment owed much to the vision and energy of one Lancaster based man (twice the city's mayor), Dr. Edward Dennis de Vitre, who ensured that its primary focus was on those young people with learning disabilities aged between 6 and 15 years who, ideally after 7 years in the institution, would be able to leave and lead useful lives in the outside world.
Taking patients from the 7 English Northern Counties the institution was seen as a source of local and regional civic pride, its existence as a voluntary hospital dependent upon public subscriptions gleaned from the pockets of aristocrats, members of the business community as well as ordinary working men and women - particularly from the Lancaster area but across most of the major Northern towns and cities. Arguably one less palatable aspect of the institution's training ethos at this time was that it prioritised the selection of those individuals who were perceived as 'more able'. Numbers grew and its large site, overshadowed by the imposing main building, had by 1909 become home to 662 patients. Click here for more...
