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Public and civic organisations acquired great authority and wealth during and in the century following the Industrial Revolution in the UK and other rapidly developing nation states. The growing demands of industry for high volume labour supplies in the nineteenth century also created an ethos in which the needs and rights of the unproductive or vulnerable individual were deemed less important than the needs of society as a whole. Large numbers of beggars and high rates of crime and disease were a consequence of the massive social and economic changes experienced in the period following the victory at the battle of Waterloo. Social unrest from the Peterloo riots onwards resulted in a significant Chartist challenge to established authority on the streets of major cities like Sheffield, Manchester, and Glasgow in the 1840s.
During the period from 1850 - 1930 many types of institutions were created by public subscription, parliament and local authorities to provide housing, healthcare, education, and financial support for individuals in need. At the upper end of the scale, public boarding schools such as Eton and Harrow were founded or greatly extended to meet the growing demand for the education of the children of those in colonial service overseas. These were seen as models of social improvement, and many inferior imitations followed for the lower social orders. Virtually every borough in the UK was required by legislation to make provision for paupers, criminals, orphans, disabled war veterans, older people with no means of support, deaf and blind schools, and lifelong asylums for those with learning disabilities or mental health problems.
Distinguishing features of such institutions were:
Many of these organisations, whilst originally expressing idealistic aspirations and aims, became "total" institutions within a generation or two of their foundation, providing in some cases cradle to grave housing, occupation and social control. Inmates were often trapped in a system that provided no obvious route of escape or promotion. As late as the 1950s, in Britain, several hundred thousand people lived in VictorianJune 20, 1837) gave her name to the historic era. The Victorian Era of Great Britain is considered the height of the British industrial revolution and the apex of the British Empire. It is often defined as the years from 1837 to 1901, when Queen Victoria asylums and "colonies".
The dangers of institutions were chronicled and criticised by reformers almost since their foundation. Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens ( February 7, 1812 June 9, 1870), pen-name " Boz", was an English novelist of the Victorian era. The popularity of his books during his lifetime and to the present is demonstrated by the fact that none of his novels has ever go was an outspoken and high profile early critic, and several of his novels, in particular Oliver TwistOliver Twist is a novel by Charles Dickens, probably the best-known of all his works. It has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and the basis for a highly successful British musical, entitled simply Oliver . As with most of Dick and Hard TimesHard Times is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1854. It is the shortest of his full novels. The book is one of a number of state-of-the-nation novels published around the same time, another being North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, which aimed t demonstrate his insight into the damage that institutions can do to human beings.
Enoch PowellJohn Enoch Powell ( June 16, 1912 February 8, 1998) was a controversial British politician, the controversy mainly stemming (with some irony) from a speech he made on immigration in 1968. Even before his death, Powell had long been treated as an icon by t, when Minister for Health in the early 1960sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around, was a later opponent who was appalled by what he witnessed on his visits to the asylums, and his famous "water tower" speech in 19611961 (As MAD Magazine pointed out on its first cover for the year) was the first "upside-down" year i. one that looked the same upside down since 1881, and the last until 6009. Events January January 1 The farthing coin, used since the 13th century, cease called for the closure of all NHS asylums and their replacement by wards in general hospitals."There they stand, isolated, majestic, imperious, brooded over by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined, rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside - the asylums which our forefathers built with such immense solidity to express the notions of their day. Do not for a moment underestimate their powers of resistance to our assault. Let me describe some of the defences which we have to storm." [1]
Scandal after scandal followed, with many high profile public inquiries. These involved the exposure of abuses such as unscientific surgical techniques such as lobotomy, the experimental use of powerful drugs such as LSD, and the widespread neglect and abuse of vulnerable patients in the USA and Europe. The gowing anti-psychiatry movement in the 1960s and 1970s led in Italy to the first successful legislative challenge to the authority of the mental institutions, culminating in their closure.
During the 1980s and 1990s the hospital population started to fall rapidly, mainly because of the deaths of long-term inmates. Significant efforts were made to re-house large numbers of former residents in a variety of suitable or otherwise alternative accommodation. The first 1,000+ bed hospital to close was Darenth Park in Kent, swiftly followed by many more across the UK. The haste of these closures, driven by the Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher and John Major, led to considerable criticism in the press, as some individuals slipped through the net into homelessness or were discharged to poor quality private sector mini-institutions.
The resistance of many institutions to change predicted by Enoch Powell has continued into the 21st century, and there are still several thousand people permanently resident in the dwindling asylums and long stay hospital replacement campuses scattered across the UK.
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