Nancy Farrar, a patient at West Riding Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire. Photograph attributed to James Crichton-Browne, 1873.

  • Crichton-Browne, James, 1840-1938.
Date:
[1873]
Reference:
35158i
Part of:
West Riding Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire: photographs of patients.
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About this work

Description

An elderly woman wearing a bonnet, identified as Nancy Farrar, from Horbury, West Yorkshire. She was admitted to the West Riding Asylum in June 1852 as a forty-five year old single mill hand. She was said to have been suffering from melancholia for about 12 months. This photograph of Nancy was taken in 1873 when she would have been 66 years old. In August that year her physician wrote: "Patient is getting much thinner though her mental condition is unchanged. She is under the impression that everyone about wishes to injure her and that she is consumed by the fire inside her." Nancy’s health deteriorated with age and she passed away in the Asylum in June 1886. -- records in the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield, Yorkshire, identified by David Scrimgeour, op. cit.

Publication/Creation

Wakefield : West Riding Asylum, Photographic Studio, [1873]

Physical description

1 photograph : photoprint, albumen ; sheet 9 x 5.5 cm

Lettering

Senile dementia Lettering hand-written in black ink on mount

Creator/production credits

The photograph may have been taken by James Crichton-Browne (1840-1938), the medical superintendent at West Riding Asylum 1866-1876. Crichton-Browne sent a similar set of photographs to Charles Darwin in or around 1869

References note

David Scrimgeour, 'Wellcome Library's "Anonymous patients" become proper people', David Scrimgeour blog http://www.davidscrimgeour.co.uk , 22 September 2016

Reference

Wellcome Collection 35158i

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