Copies of documents in relation to the appointment of chaplains to the Belfast District Lunatic Asylum : respectfully submitted to the consideration of his excellency the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, by a deputation from the counties of Antrim and Down, and County of the town of Carrickfergus April, 1855.

  • Belfast District Hospital for the Insane.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Copies of documents in relation to the appointment of chaplains to the Belfast District Lunatic Asylum : respectfully submitted to the consideration of his excellency the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, by a deputation from the counties of Antrim and Down, and County of the town of Carrickfergus April, 1855. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    under the one roof, would, in a common sense view of the matter, be calculated to cause no small excitement, even among the sane; to say nothing of that community being composed of insane individuals, and the Sunday, instead of being a day of rest, would, under such circum¬ stances, become one of more than ordinary disquietude.’ “ And again, from the same Journal, on the same subject, in Novem¬ ber, 1852 :— ‘ Professional religious instruction in a Lunatic Asylum is a qucestio vexata not confined to Ireland alone, where there are so many angry ele¬ ments, owing to difference of creed, to cause strife and contention by the multiplication of Chaplains; but in England also, with but one form of religious faith, the propriety of Chaplaincying her Hospitals for the Insane is more than doubted. * The following is wrhat the eminent Physician of the Suffolk Asylum says on this point:—“ The subject of religious instruction is too delicate to be discussed in an ordinary report. It will be enough to convey the repeated conviction that, to be really effective, ‘ professional’ care can never supersede ‘ domestic’ instruction. The administration should be in that guarded manner which is ouly learned by the knowledge of the existing peculiarities of the parties addressed. Moral delinquencies may arise from mental idiosyncrasies, which need great forbearance, and a peculiarly delicate mode of conveying instruction in righteousness. A patient went home well, whose relapse, after a former discharge, came on, as he expressed it, { after hearing an alarming sermon ;’ his morbid conscientiousness was morbidly acted on, and he had left the Church to cut his throat. He is now well again. ’ * We have ourselves only further to remark on the foregoing, that we feel firmly impressed no such office as that of Chaplain should be at¬ tached to any Lunatic Asylum whatever, much less to those of them containing members of the different sections into which Christianity is split in this country. We would not debar patients from being visited by their respective Ministers of religion as frequently as might be deemed prudent, or in accordance with the desire of individual patients—quite the contrary; but to have religious offices for the patients en masse, in a Lunatic Asylum, as regular routine business, performed by a Chaplain or Chaplains, we hold to be altogether and entirely unsuited for those who are considered fit inmates for such establishments. Religious in¬ struction, we consider, is as much part and parcel of the medico-moral treatment of the patients as their diet, exercise, employment, medica¬ tion, See., which are placed in the hands of the medical officer charged with the conduct of the whole institution, and who should no more be interfered with in this particular of management than in any ether, for the performance of which he alone, and properly so, is the responsible party.’