courtesy of Ballinasloe.com
11 May 1898 the Castlerea Petty Session courts saw a case brought forward by Thady Kearns of Lissergool against his own son Thady jr. The charge levied focused on events at their home two days previously, in which the accused threatened to ‘do away with himself’ and at the same time threatened his father with assault. A returning verdict was reached by the attending magistrates that Thady jr was a dangerous lunatic and was to be committed to Ballinasloe Lunatic Asylum (BLA).
Considering the swiftness at which the case was heard after the row it is safe to assume that the threat was serious enough but just how afflicted was Thady jr and did it warrant institutionalisation. With little other information it is obviously difficult to decide either way but it is worth remembering that very little actual evidence was required in these cases. The Dangerous Lunatics Act of 1838, gave tremendous power to accusers and contrariwise little to the accused. Anybody could in effect make an accusation against another, for instance a troublesome son, who could be arrested and charged. It was then up to the medical attendant to decide if they were actually insane, where the all-encompassing term could conceivably include those suffering from common ailments such as epilepsy and the psychiatric symptoms associated with it.
The time period that Thady Kearns Jr. was being placed into care, corresponds with an era of great increases of mentally ill patients being admitted to the expanding number of mental care facilities being built around the country. In fact Ireland at this stage displayed ‘the most rapid proportionate growths in asylum admissions in the world.’
So what became of Thady Kearns jr? Once convicted it is likely that he would have been placed in a prison until such time as a place became available at Ballinasloe, with some writers estimating that this period could have lasted up to 12 months.
Though great strides had been made in medical health in the preceding century still the patients would have undoubtedly experienced archaic care in this overcrowded facility. This care inevitably still involved electro-therapy or even contemporary instances of the controversial psycho-surgery, where the connective tissue between the two frontal lobes was severed. Opiates were also in widespread use as ways of ‘relaxing’ particularly psychotic individuals who commonly found themselves restrained for considerable periods.
An inmate that found themselves released from any Lunatic Asylum would however have found themselves inexorably linked with the building. A.J. Saris article of 1996 states that you aught to ‘very careful of putting someone in a psychiatric hospital, because once it’s done, you’ve done something to him that can never be undone.’
Consequently if Thady ever found himself being released from BLA, he would have found ridding himself of the stain that he was an inmate hopeless and this same stain would furthermore have fallen on the Kearns family. The prospects of him marrying now would be gone and also the possibility of inheriting anything meaningful from his father.
A search for Thady in the Irish census returns in the years following his admittance into the institution of BLA proves sadly inconclusive. Like all healthcare facility, BLA list the patients simply by initials and so the closest to placing Thady here would be a T. K. (for Thady Kearns) or possibly T. C. (for Thady Cairns) of which there are many.
Update:
A civil death certificate listing Thady Carins death on 13 September 1898 while resident at the District Asylum at Ballinasloe certainly refers to Thady Jr and offers up some further information. Cause of death in this instance indicate that general wasting occurred as a result of ‘phthisis’- a disease characterised by wasting away of the body, possibly through Tuberculosis. Sadly this infectious disease was almost certainly picked up in his short four months stay at Ballinasloe where the close quarter of all patients meant any infectious disease was rife.
References:
Electricity: a history of its use in the treatment of mental illness in Britain during the second half of the 19th century
A W Beveridge and E B Renvoize, British Journal of Psychiatry (1988), 153, pg 157-162
Asylums, Mental Health Care and the Irish: Historical Studies, 1800-2010, Pauline Prior editor, Irish Academy Press, July 2012
Saris, A. J. (1996), Mad Kings, Proper Houses and an Asylum in Rural Ireland. American Anthropologist vol 98 issue 3
Oonagh Walsh, ‘tales from the big House’ the Connacht District Lunatic Asylum in the late nineteenth century, Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, 18th–19th – Century History, Features, Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2005), Volume 13.
Civil death record of Thady Kearns 1898
