Category: History

Photo courtesy of Simon Simcox, Bwlch Farm (Deganwy) Ltd.

The sturdy stone exterior of Bwlch farmhouse near Deganwy lends a solidity to the story of Margaret Jones’s madness. What went on in the house during 30 years of remissions and relapses can only be conjectured but the Denbigh case notes may offer some clues.

Margaret was 23 when she first became ill – soon after the birth of her first child Paul Fisher. She was at the time an unmarried domestic servant and it is likely she had been dismissed from her post and sent home to be confined at Bwlch. She recovered after three months and when a daughter was born four years later there were no signs of a recurrence of her insanity.

It was not until 1885 that Margaret’s family noticed that she was low spirited, refusing to eat and neglecting herself. Her married sister Elizabeth Owen, who was by this time living at Bwlch with her husband and children, suspected Margaret was pregnant again and one of the certifying doctors diagnosed puerperal melancholia.

But Margaret’s apparently stuporose condition – “Sits quietly in the same place and is quite passive and insensitive. Takes no notice of anything.”[1]– had nothing to do with pregnancy and she began menstruating again after a few weeks in hospital. These case notes together with the records of her ten subsequent admissions to Denbigh Asylum may offer an alternative explanation for her insanity and provide an insight into the kind of life an unmarried and disgraced young woman might have led in the late 19^th century.

Also living at the Bwlch farmhouse with Margaret were her father William Jones and three brothers, Moses, William and Edward. Just before Margaret was discharged from the asylum after her first admission, it is remarked in the case notes that: “This is a case which would certainly be benefited by a change of scene and life”. [2]

Such a cryptic observation might be explained by a closer reading of the earlier notes recording that Margaret was forced to wear tick gloves for several weeks to prevent her scratching her face and disfiguring herself. And by the note referring to a visit from her father in which they “conversed in an undertone”. In all subsequent medical certificates her language is variously described as indecent, obscene, offensive, filthy or foul. It’s not impossible that the suspected pregnancy which prompted her first admission disguised a much darker secret about Margaret’s life at Bwlch.

It remained her home however and, when she was well, Margaret helped her father on the farm and assisted with ‘the usual housework etc’. She also nursed a sick brother and this was suspected to be the cause of another relapse in 1899.

Relations with her sister Elizabeth were strained but it seems Elizabeth bore the brunt of Margaret’s maniacal outbursts when she threatened to hit her with chairs and large stones. Certainly, when ‘Peggy’ – as she had become affectionately known to the asylum staff – was ready to be discharged in August 1903 both Elizabeth and her brother William refused to take her home to Bwlch and she was sent instead to Conway Workhouse. Following another asylum admission the following year she was discharged on trial to her daughter in Rhyl. But the trial failed within a matter of weeks and Margaret spent the last three years of her life in Denbigh where she died in 1907 after a series of epileptiform convulsions.

It was not only Margaret’s regular relapses that the Jones family had to deal with. Her younger sister Jane Jones had become insane in 1897 while living at Bwlch with her husband and children. Jane was admitted to Denbigh with a diagnosis of mania thought to be caused by the loss of a child three weeks earlier and, like her sister, she was to suffer recurrent bouts of insanity and had seven further admissions to the asylum.

The issue of abuse is also obliquely raised in Jane’s case notes. Her claims of ill treatment at the hands of her husband Richard, a joiner by trade, and of his infidelity are lent some credibility by the observation made in 1900 that: “She has no delusions, excepting those concerning her husband, which may not be altogether untrue.”[3] By this time the couple were living in Trefriw and, whatever else might have been lacking in their relationship, it is recorded in 1915 that they had eleven children. Jane’s last admission to Denbigh was in 1925 – “in a nervous and apprehensive state … constant tremors of her face and lips and articulation impaired” [4] – when she was diagnosed with Senile Insanity and discharged home after three months to the care of her daughters.

Footnotes

[1] DRO/HD/1/337/Case no. 452

[2] Ibid.

[3] DRO/HD/1/341/Case no. 5458

[4] DRO/HD/1/356/Case no.10501

In the 19^th century “…the periodic discovery of a baby’s body in the street or river was shrugged off as a grim inevitability”.[1] And if infant life generally was held cheap this was especially true of illegitimate babies.

Infant deaths from homicide were difficult to detect at a time when so many children died from infection or neglect. Even so, from 1863 to 1887, the 0-1s formed 61 per cent of all known homicide victims in England and Wales while they constituted less than 3 per cent of the population.[2] And the greatest number of murdered babies were illegitimate.

The link between illegitimacy and infanticide may have been weaker in the rural districts of North West Wales than in the industrial cities of England. One cause of rural promiscuity was cottage overcrowding, where a lack of family privacy meant that girls were sexually experienced from an early age, and in many rural districts no shame was attached to a premarital pregnancy. In the notorious Blue Books of 1847, the commissioners refer to the difficulty of finding a cottage in North Wales “where some female of the family has not been enceinte before marriage”[3]. Allowing for the likelihood that some of these findings were merely verbatim reports of the prejudiced opinions of local landowners and Anglican clergy, North Wales was included in the Registrar General’s 1890 list of those districts where the percentage of illegitimate children was abnormally high. Numbers of illegitimate births in North Wales between 1891 and 1900 amounted to 59 births in 1000 compared with an average of 42 births per thousand for England and Wales. In Anglesey, between 1894 and 1903 the figure was 81 births per thousand.

By far the main area of employment for single women in 19^th century Wales was domestic service – the 1881 census showed that 61 per cent of the 24,010 women living in Carnarvon, Merioneth or Anglesey who declared an occupation were domestic servants [4] – so that this group of women would inevitably be responsible for a high proportion of illegitimate births. And an unwanted pregnancy would spell economic disaster for a servant girl with no other means of support. A pregnant servant would be instantly dismissed without references and might more readily resort to desperate measures to conceal her condition and dispose of her burden than a farm girl.

Domestic servants suspected or known to have killed their newborn babies either by intention or neglect appear in the records of inquests held in Gwynedd between 1885 and 1924. However, because the archive is incomplete, it can be assumed that the records of infanticide it contains represent only a proportion of the infant deaths suspicious enough to invite inquests, and an even smaller proportion of the babies who were murdered or abandoned soon after birth.

The court room at Pwllheli was crowded for the inquest and some of the women became so excited while the evidence was being given that the Coroner ordered the police to turn them out.

MO, a maid at the White Hall Hotel, was the first witness. She and another maid were clearing out the servants’ attic when, behind a curtained partition, they saw a basket of crockery, a cardboard box and a black tin box. As they removed the box to the middle of the room, they noticed an offensive smell and called for the daughter of the hotel licensee to come up to the attic. Miss MD used an iron bar to open the box and something like a piece of clothing came up with the bar. Dr. Shelton Jones arranged for the box to be removed to the stable.

Supt. G.J.Griffith, Pwllheli, was called to the yard of the hotel where Dr. Shelton Jones directed him to the black tin trunk and told him that he believed it contained human remains. Also in the box were fragments of female clothing and a portion of a newspaper dated 19th September 1915. A black leather satchel contained two penny pieces and a receipt dated 13^th October 1915 for £4 13s 6d for a coat, muff and necklace from Pwlldefaid Shop. No name was given on the receipt.

Dr. Shelton Jones testified that the bones in the tin box were those of human beings. He had made a post-mortem examination with Dr. Wynne Griffith, and they had concluded that the bones were those of two children, one having died 18 -24 months previously and the other three years previously. The contents had been disturbed a little but Dr. Shelton Jones could perceive that the bodies had been separately packed. He confirmed they were fully developed to be born alive.

Mrs. WD, licensee of the White Hall Hotel said she had taken possession of the hotel in March 1919. A servant called MG was working there at that time and MG remained in her service for about three weeks after she had taken possession. MG had asked her to do her a favour by allowing her to leave some things there, she had agreed and had given MG assurance that nobody would touch her things. MG had since been back to the hotel on several occasions since then, sometimes assisting for the day.

Both Mrs. WD and Dr. Shelton Jones had been suspicious about MG’s condition about two years earlier. Mrs. LP, the previous licensee of the hotel and more recently proprietor of another hotel in Abersoch, where MG was currently in service, had shared these suspicions. At that time, she had confronted MG who denied she was pregnant.

MG was called to testify and, asked how she had felt when learning that the bodies had been found, said she had not been afraid and that her mind was perfectly at rest when she heard about the babies. She agreed she had left property at the hotel but she denied the black tin box was hers and said she had never seen it before. She also denied buying a coat, muff and necklace in Pwlldefaid Shop in 1915 although she agreed she had been a customer there on several occasions. Shown the black handbag, she denied it was her property. She also denied being in a “certain condition” in 1916.

The Coroner in summing up, said that the jury should dismiss all statements made outside the court and consider the evidence given on oath – which was very conflicting. It was impossible to say by whose hand the children had died. A verdict was given that there was no evidence to prove how, when, or by whom the bodies were placed in the box and no evidence to prove a cause of death.[6]

Drawn to the sheepfold by his dog he found a body

A verdict of ‘death by natural causes’ was given in the case of a newborn baby boy found in a dilapidated sheep fold on Moeltryfan Mountain on 15^th September 1900. KJ was already pregnant at Whitsuntide when she went into service with an elderly couple who ran a smallholding near Llanwnda but they did not suspect her condition. A native of Anglesey, the young woman was a stranger to them when their daughter, who was living on the island, told them of her need for a place.

KJ was missed from the house on the afternoon of the 15^th September. Some neighbours went onto the mountain to search for her and, after 2 or 3 hours, she was found in an exhausted condition in an old sheep fold. Known to be ‘subject to fits’ she was taken home and put to bed. The following day WJW, a quarryman and farmer who lived close by, was attracted to the place by his dog and there he found the body of a fully-developed male child, partly concealed in a hole formed by the stones of the wall, a few tufts of withered grass laid on the lower portion of the body. WJW went to Bryn Hermon to tell his elderly neighbours that he had noticed their servant KJ ‘about the place’ the previous day. RPJ accompanied him to the sheepfold, along with WJW’s wife and mother in law. He wrapped the baby’s body in a cloth and carried it back to his house. WRW then informed the police of his discovery and Kate Jones was subsequently examined by Dr. Evans of Caernarfon. The child’s body, unmarked except for a few slight scratches and discolouration about the head, was conveyed to the police station at Bontnewydd.[7]

At the inquest, held the following day, WJW elaborated on the statement he had given to the police. He told the Coroner he had seen his neighbour’s son, RPJ junior, walking with KJ away from the sheepfold and that she appeared to be trying to get away from him.

KJ had been found in bed by her mistress during the afternoon of the 15^th September when she complained of her heart. Mrs JJ told the Coroner: “I suspected what was the matter with her but I did not tell her my suspicions. She told me she felt better and went out, did not say where she was going. Next thing I saw her she was coming on the arm of my son into the house”. KJ went into her room and RPJ junior told his mother that he understood she had fallen, he had found her with her face to the ground.

When he came home to find KJ missing, RPJ had gone out to look for her but then saw her coming towards the house on his son’s arm. She appeared to be weak and in want of support. He did not think she could have walked by herself. “She went into the chamber with my son. She went to bed. I don’t know who put her to bed unless my son lifted her up. No female went to see her unless my wife did”.

RPJ junior noticed KJ was not in the house when he returned from work in the quarry and thought she had gone out. Only after a few hours did he start looking for her in case she had had a fit. Walking towards the mountain he noticed a young foal looking over the wall of the sheepfold. He looked over the wall and saw Kate Jones lying on her side in a fit. “I went to her, took hold of her and on her recovering I spoke to her in about a quarter of an hour’s time. I asked if she had got better and she said yes a little better. I asked what was the matter and she said her heart was bad. I saw a little blood on her face. I did not see any blood on her hands. I did not notice any blood on the ground.” On the way back to the house, they passed a well and KJ stopped to wash her hands. “I took her into the chamber and she did not take off her clothes or boots. I stayed with her for about half an hour. My mother was with her when I left the chamber. My mother gave her some scottyn. I saw KJ more than once in the evening. She did not tell me how the birth took place nor who placed the body where it was found”. RPJ had no suspicion that KJ was in the family way when she came to work for his parents.

Dr. J. Evans, practising in Caernarfon, had made a post mortem examination of the newborn child. He found the navel cord was torn, 6 inches in length from the body, and no attempt had been made to tie it. The falling of the child might have caused the rupture of the cord or the child might have been born by the cord being pulled. The lungs were healthy giving no suggestion of suffocation and he concluded that the child had breathed but only for a short time. In his opinion death had resulted from loss of blood through the navel cord not having been tied which induced syncope and death. “I am confident that the child was born alive and had a separate existence from its mother, there are no marks of violence and I attribute death solely to the loss of blood”.

KJ had consented to a medical examination when it was found that she had recently been delivered of a child. She said that she had had a fit whilst in the sheep fold and could remember nothing of what happened. Dr. Evans found KJ in a “state of hysteria” when he saw her. He thought it most likely that she had a fit in the course of delivery and, assuming an epileptic fit, she might have moved to push away the body whilst in a semi-conscious state. A fit would also account for the cord not being tied.

The verdict of the inquest was that the child had been born alive but died soon after birth through the inability of the mother to render it assistance owing to her own condition of weakness. Excessive bleeding from the untied navel cord was the cause of death.[8]

MG may have been lucky to escape a murder charge for the babies in the attic. And while KJ’s plea that a fit had left her incapable of tying off her baby’s navel cord was accepted her case raises questions about her relationship with the son of the house.

Drowned, strangled or simply abandoned

The Coroner’s records show that other newborn infants were found left on the beach, in a field, at the roadside or wrapped in a parcel…and that a possible mother was never identified.

At Dwygyfylchi on 17^th January 1898 a male child was found dead on the beach by a schoolboy Robert Jones. It had been washed by the tide and there were bruises on the body and fresh blood. The Coroner concluded the child had been born alive and that there was no evidence as to the cause of death.[9]

In a field adjoining the Conway Road in the parish of Eglwysrhos on 15^th October 1900 the body of a female child was turned over by a plough. There was nothing found to indicate that the child had been buried as there was no hole dug. And no paper or clothing in which it could have been wrapped. Owing to the advanced state of decomposition it was impossible for the examining doctor to state whether it was a full term child or to state whether the child had ever had a separate existence.[10]

The much decomposed body of a newly born female baby was found in a pond near Waen Morfa Nevin on 4^th June 1910. The remains were removed to St Mary’s Church Morfa Nevin where an inquest was held. The Coroner found the cause of death to be drowning but there was no evidence to prove how, when or by whom the child was placed in the water.[11]

A fully developed male child was found on the top of a wall surrounding one of the disused copper mine shafts on the Great Orme and an inquest held in Llandudno on 3^rd April 1916. Dr H. Bold Williams could see no external marks of violence aside from bruises on the nose and mouth but he could feel there was a fracture of the skull through the skin and a post mortem examination indicated that there was some bleeding beneath the skull. Dr Williams said it was difficult to say how the fracture of the skull came about. It was not caused by a sharp instrument. It could have been caused, and probably was caused, by the child falling on the floor at birth. He thought the child had been dead from 24 to 48 hours but no longer. An examination of the lungs showed that the child had breathed but had not been properly attended to at birth and may not have had had a separate existence.

Witness Mr TS said that he and the landlord of the house in which he was billeted went for a walk on the Great Orme on Sunday morning. When they got as far as the shaft of an old copper mine they climbed up the protecting wall out of curiosity and they saw the body of the baby lying on top of the wall. They did not touch it but went away to inform the police.

There was no blood on the top of wall and his opinion was that the intention was to throw the body of the baby over the wall (which was 8ft to 12ft high). It would then have fallen down the shaft which was open and appeared to be very deep. At a distance it would be difficult to distinguish the body from a stone. The body had been placed on the wall very recently.

The jury returned a verdict that the child died through lack of attention at birth.[12]

A clerk was checking lost parcels at Bangor Railway Parcels Office on 24^th August 1918 when he noticed a strong smell coming from an unaddressed parcel. In the parcel he found the body of a newly born baby boy wrapped in pieces of female underclothing.

Dr. E. O. Price found that child had breathed fully and completely after birth. Around the neck was a stocking firmly tied, the foot end of a stocking being forced into the mouth. The cause of death was strangulation and the Coroner returned a verdict of “wilful murder by some person or persons unknown”.[13]

The body of a newborn baby was found on the banks of a stream near Aber on 29^th June 1925 wrapped up in brown paper. The paper had an address written on it but enquiries failed to provide any useful information. It proved impossible to say whether the child had had a separate existence and so the Coroner registered a verdict that there was no evidence as to how the body came to be where it was found and no evidence to show who the mother was.[14]

Found floating in the inner harbour at Pwllheli on 29^th December 1915 was the body of a newborn female child. The body was spotted by two friends walking across the embankment bridge close to the sluice gates. They reported their discovery to the police and a local fisherman bought the baby, who appeared to have been in the water for some days, ashore in his landing net. A piece of lady’s black veil was tied tightly around the child’s throat.

Dr. Owen Wynne Griffith made a post mortem examination of the body and confirmed it had been in the water at least five days. The child was fully developed and the cause of death was strangulation.

Footnotes

[1] Lionel Rose, Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Great Britain 1800-1939, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston and Henley, 1986, p.35.

[2] Rose, 1986, p. 8

[3] Reports of the commissioners of enquiry into the state of education in Wales Part III, p.67

[4] 1881 census Carnarvon, Merioneth, Anglesey

[5] Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald June 18^th 1920

[6] Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald, June 25^th 1920

[7]Gwynedd Record Office XCR/1900/106

[8] Gwynedd Record Office XCR/1900/111

[9] Gwynedd Record Office XCR/1898/4/5

[10] Gwynedd Record Office XCR/1900/116/11

[11] Gwynedd Record Office XCR/1910/20

[12] Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald April 7^th 1916

[13] Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald 30^th August 1918

[14] Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald 29^th June 1925

‘An instructive and interesting lecture on Missionary Life and Experience in West Africa, accompanied by lime-light views*, was delivered by the Rev. Joseph Rhodes, and constituted an agreeable addition to our winter evening programme.’[1]

When the Rev. Joseph Rhodes, a Wesleyan minister living in Colwyn Bay, visited Denbigh Asylum during the winter of 1904 to deliver his lecture he would have found himself in familiar surroundings. He had been to the hospital two years earlier as a patient.

His admission to Denbigh as a patient in October 1902, aged 59, was not his first asylum admission. He had been treated at Stone Asylum in 1900 so that the cause of his current mania was supposed to be a previous attack. However, his case notes date the onset of his insanity to his return from the west coast of Africa where he had spent six years as a missionary and where he had contracted malaria.

Although admitted as a pauper, Rev. Rhodes was transferred to the private class the following day. He is described as ‘a very troublesome patient’:

‘He talks incessantly, rambling from one subject to another, first religion, then billiards, then hymns and so on. He is most restless and destructive and very inclined to quarrel with the other patients and use his fists. At night he generally sleeps badly and has to be put in a side room where he ties the blanket with hard knots and smashes the glass in the doors.’ [2]

His condition improved and deteriorated from week to week. Just a few days after the case notes record a little steady improvement, Rev. Rhodes struck three of his fellow patients:

‘Was playing chess today with…another patient who happened to disturb one of the pieces, when Rev. Rhodes slapped him in the face and, in return, got stuck on the head by the fist. There is a tiny wound on the right temple.’[3]

Rev. Rhodes was discharged on trial in April 1903, not recovered but ‘relieved’. The trial was successful and, when he returned to the asylum to give his lime-light lecture, he was quite well. He remained well for almost another year but in August 1905 began to suffer from insomnia, the precursor to another attack of mania, and was readmitted as a private patient the following month.

This time he was said to have removed articles from a pedlar’s basket, refusing either to replace them or pay for them. He had gone into a phrenologist’s room and pulled down pictures from the walls.[4] Perhaps surprisingly – he was after all a Methodist minister, this was 1905 and the religious revival was raging – his ‘preaching in the open air’ was also given as evidence of his insanity.

The case notes show that he was as troublesome during this admission as he had been in 1902 – restless, talkative and inclined to be violent and destructive – but very indignant about being detained. He was said to be smoking far too much and, in December 1905, it was noted that Rev. Rhodes was ‘much worse since his wife has been allowed to get him out daily’! He was discharged in February 1906, again ‘relieved’ rather than recovered.[5]

Rev. Rhodes had no further readmissions to Denbigh but his daughter FL was admitted to the asylum in 1931 as a certified patient. She had been deserted by her husband, Mr L, 15 years earlier and was living in poverty. These circumstances were given as the principle causes for her insanity but her father’s history of almost 30 years earlier was also noted in the case book and heredity given as an underlying cause.

FL’s condition is given as dementia and she spent ten years in the asylum, becoming increasingly uncommunicative and feeble, and died there from pneumonia in 1941.[6]

Footnotes

[1] 56^th Annual Report 1904

*Lime-light or ‘calcium light’ was a type of stage lighting in widespread use in theatres by the 1870s. Created by directing an oxyhydrogen flame at a cylinder of quicklime, it was used to highlight solo performers. Rev. Rhodes may have used the light to show photographs of West Africa to his audience.

[2] DRO/HD1/372/151/adm no. 6079

[3] DRO/HD1/372/151/adm no. 6079

[4] Phrenology introduced the idea that character, thoughts and emotions were located in specific areas of the brain and that the capacity of these different areas could be inferred by an examination of the skull. Phrenological thinking was influential in 19^th century psychiatry and also represented an important advance towards neuropsychology (Simpson, D. 2005. Prenology and the neurosciences: contributions of F.J. Gall and J.G. Spurzheim ANZ Journal of Surgery, Oxford, Vol.75.6; p.475). During the 19^th century, some unscrupulous people abused the science for commercial purposes and ‘the Victorian period saw the emergence of phrenological parlours which were closer to astrology, chiromancy and the like than to real scientific characterology (Hoon, L. 1998 – www.phrenology.org).

[5] DRO/HD1/374/149/Adm no. 704

[6] DRO/HD1/359/Adm no. 11586

Extract outlining Menlove Edwards’ admission to Denbigh taken from from Jim Perrin’s biography ‘Menlove’ published in 1993 (pp 242-243).

‘The weather was dismal, rain drifting in grey columns up the Llanberis Pass…

He stayed at Cwm Glas Cottage, set in a hollow between ice-scratched bluffs on the marshy hillside opposite Clogwyn y Grochan, and very recently bought by the Climbers’ Club as their third property in North Wales. Even today, with electric lighting, the cottage is gloomy, its bare walls and tiled floor making it cold and damp. If houses can be said to have atmospheres, this one’s is not of the happiest.

‘A group of Sandhurst cadets, arriving a few days after Menlove, found him in the bedroom at the rear of the cottage. He was in a coma, suffering from a drug overdose. The cadets ran to Ynys Ettws, half a mile away, and Roy Beard and Peter Hodgkinson came back with them. Menlove was taken by ambulance to the Caernarfon and Anglesey Hospital in Bangor where his stomach was pumped and he was given oxygen. He revived and struggled so powerfully that two men were hardly strong enough to restrain him. Stephen (his brother) was sent for and came immediately from Staindrop. The police had to be notified too (until 1961 attempted suicide was a criminal offence) and questioned him. The young doctor who was looking after his case asked if he would go voluntarily to Gwynfryn, the nearest mental hospital at Denbigh, or whether he would have to be committed in which case it would be harder for him to get out. He argued and refused and was certified and taken away, to spend the next four months at Gwynfryn.’

“I was brought in here while still semi-unconscious from a supposed attempt at suicide, and they unfortunately had me certified on that score, so I’ve been pretty much under their thumb, and no say at all in the matter of the treatment they wish to apply, which has been a rather vicious and long course of deep insulin.” 17.1.1950

‘Apart from the insulin, he was given electro-convulsive therapy. He was very sceptical, but resigned to everything the staff at the hospital were trying to do for him. Knowing that he was a doctor, they explained its supposed effects, and he accepted without argument. He was allowed to walk in the wintry lanes outside the hospital grounds, and given as much as he wanted to eat. Roy Beard visited him there, taking his young son along, and Menlove produced a seemingly endless supply of chocolate bars from his pocket. The goitre was by now very pronounced, he put on weight, the edges of his mouth puckered with an incessant bitter smile. He took his being in the hospital as further proof of the conspiracy by his friends or society to do him down.

‘On his discharge in February, the physician in whose care he had been wrote to tell Nowell (his sister) that he had suffered irreparable brain damage, and that sooner or later his suicide was inevitable. She had to live with that knowledge for another eight years.’[1]

After being discharged from Denbigh Menlove went to stay with a friend who was farming at Nantmor and they went climbing together but after six weeks he returned to Kent.

He continued to visit North Wales periodically for climbing holidays and, in 1952, had ‘great fun’ climbing in the Llanberis Pass where he set up a new route on Clogwyn y Ddisgl which would not be climbed again for almost 20 years. This holiday may have represented a high point of the years after Menlove’s Denbigh admission because, during subsequent trips to North Wales it became clear to companions that his mental condition was deteriorating. An old climbing partner who met him by chance on the summit of Tryfan found his conversation ‘irrational, confused, full of vague, dark references’.

In 1957 another old friend was persuaded to follow Menlove straight up the waterfall in the Devil’s Kitchen at Cwm Idwal (pictured above).

“We roped up at the bottom. Menlove led off and I belayed beneath a projecting rock, to get away from the spray, but the water still dripped down my neck. He squirmed into the vertical crack down which the stream flows, and fought his way up it, puffing and gasping for breath. I shouted up to him to say I didn’t want to do it, but the only reply I got was a bald head and a red face, glowering down from the black, dripping rock, looking like the very devil. Needless to say he completed the pitch and I too was forced to take the plunge.”[2]

This was his last new climb. In February the following year he committed suicide by swallowing a capsule of potassium cyanide.

Menlove’s ashes were brought to North Wales to be scattered from the knoll above Hafod Owen, the isolated cottage where he had lived for more than a year during the war. Jim Perrin describes the house:

‘From the knoll above the house you look straight up the winding valley of Cwm y Llan to Snowdon, at its head. The cottage is whitewashed and small, out of sight from most angles until you are almost upon it….Huge boulders give foundations to the whitewashed walls, the roof slates are as irregular as if wind-rippled, and the tumbledown dry-stone walling round about is mottled with pale green and grey lichens. There are few more lovely places in the whole of Wales.’[3]

Footnotes

[1] Jim Perrin (1993), Menlove, pp 242-243.

[2] Arvon Jones cited by Jim Perrin p 254.

[3] Jim Perrin (1993), Menlove, p. 201

…[1]

The 19^th century in Wales was characterised by outbreaks of religious revival and references to local movements frequently appear in the Denbigh Asylum records. Even when an attack of insanity was not directly assigned to a revival meeting, delusions and hallucinations of a religious nature are commonly described in the reception orders.

Charismatic travelling preachers encouraged intense and sometimes uninhibited worship and by the latter half of the century the non-conformist chapel had become the centre of spiritual, educational and social life in the towns and villages of North West Wales. There were evening prayer meetings and ‘experience meetings’ where spiritual problems could be discussed with fellow believers. Sermons were analysed and discussed and missionary stories told. At Sunday School children were encouraged to learn passages from the Bible by heart.

Religious mania typified by visions of the devil and the belief that ‘the Devil personally appears to him’[2] or melancholia with ‘a determined opinion of the hopeless state of his soul’[3] might have been an outcome of this heightened spiritual experience. Other asylum admissions hint at the social force of the chapel. Owen Jones’s mental distress was ascribed to accusations that he was not fit to hold the position of deacon at his chapel because his wife had given birth to a child ‘shortly after wedlock’[4] and when Hugh Roberts, a labourer from Llanfaelog, was certified in 1889 one of the indications of his insanity was thought to be that ‘although in a strange Chapel, he took the lead in the singing’.[5] No cause for David Williams’s insanity could be assigned beyond the fact that he had quarrelled in his chapel at Blaenau Ffestiniog about the minister.[6] Ellen Williams’s attack of mania was linked to a disagreement with a neighbour although it ‘began in the form of a condition of Religious Excitement called by the Calvinists ‘Gorfoleddu’ or ‘Rejoicing’….she went about singing and speaking in a sing-song style very common at Revivals among the Welsh Calvinists’.[7]

However, as the 19^th century drew to a close it seemed that the radical evangelical message of Welsh nonconformity was becoming the new conformity. Attendances at sermons, prayer meetings and Sunday school were falling and young women – and some young men – preferred reading novels to their Bibles. At the same time intemperance was on the rise with ‘the curse of drink rearing its head in town and countryside’[8]. Many people began to hope for another spiritual awakening.

During October 1904 Evan Roberts, an apprentice blacksmith who had moved from his home in Loughor in South Wales to Newcastle Emlyn to prepare for full time training as a minister, became convinced that it was his personal duty to evangelise Wales and the visions he experienced at this time confirmed to him that a great revival was imminent.

And so it was. After the first meeting in Loughor, news of revival spread across Wales with newspapers publishing eye witness accounts of revival meetings and sometimes issuing special ‘revival editions’ like the one below published in January 1905 at Dolgellau.

The date of the leaflet suggests that religious fervour was sweeping across North Wales months before Evan Roberts brought his mission here for the first time in April 1905. The strength of the revival, which is evidenced in asylum admissions from late 1904, suggests that other charismatic preachers like the Revd. J.T. Job, pastor in Carneddi, Bethesda, had done much of the groundwork for him.

The Revd. Job described a meeting at Jerusalem Chapel in Bethesda held on 22^nd December 1904 ‘as a hurricane’.

John Thomas Job (1867-1938) moved to Carneddi from Aberdare in South Wales in 1898. He wrote several hymns for the Welsh Calvinist Methodist hymn book and won the chair for his poetry at the national Eisteddfod in 1897, 1903, 1918 and the crown in 1900. He also won the chair at the San Francisco Eisteddfod of 1915.[9]

By the time Evan Roberts arrived on Anglesey in June revival meetings were held wherever the crowds they attracted could be accommodated. A line drawing recalls Evan Roberts preaching to 3,000 people gathered in what appears to be a collection of farm buildings at Llanfachreth in June ‘from the pulpit of the great John Elias’[10] … (see ‘Y Pab Methodistaidd’).

….while a Western Mail postcard has him taking the revival message to crowds congregated in a field at Llanfairpwll on the final day of his Anglesey journey before moving on to Caernarfon and Bala.

It is difficult to look at the case notes of the people admitted to Denbigh Asylum in 1905 with a diagnosis of religious mania or melancholia without questioning how their visions and behaviour differed from the visions and behaviour of Evan Roberts; how one person’s experience could be considered evidence of their insanity and another person’s experience accepted as testimony to the work of God.

In 1902 the American philosopher William James published The Varieties of Religious Experience in which he examined how mystical experiences could be identified as either psychotic or spiritual while sharing much common ground and recent studies have supported his view of a close relationship between madness and inspiration.[11]

How is it possible draw a distinction between Evan Roberts’ vision of ‘a diabolic face that had mocked him in the garden at the back of his lodgings’ – a vision he insisted was not subjective[12] – and the devil seen by William Jones, a 19 year old grocer’s assistant, after he had attended a revival meeting in Portmadoc?[13] And how significantly did quarryman Robert Evans’ visions and conviction that he had been ‘especially ordained by the spirit to preach’[14] differ from Evan Roberts’ visions and voices:

‘You must go, you must go (to preach)…and I asked whether it was the devil or the spirit’?[15]

Amongst the revivalist’s recorded visions were ‘visions of Hell’s doors being closed for a year, pictures of Satan’s defeat at the hand of Christ, a cheque with the number 100,000 written on it, the light of a candle being overtaken by the light of the sun’[16] and these he was happy to share at his meetings. It is hard to find visions in the Denbigh case notes more elaborate than these.

In fact, anxieties about Evan Roberts’ mental state were being expressed from the beginning of his mission. He lodged with Evan Phillips, the 1859 revival leader, and his family in Newcastle Emlyn during the autumn of 1904. Ann Phillips had been told ‘to keep an eye on him’ and her sister Rachel records that ‘…what burdened us was care for his mental condition’. A reporter from the Llanelli Mercury reported in November 1904 that the revivalist was showing signs of severe mental strain:

The long vigils of the week had evidently told on him and the more so as he had been able to sleep but little. However there were no signs of fatigue in his conversation. He walked up and down the little room with a restlessness that told of a brain ever at work. At times he would break out into singing snatches of hymns.

The case notes for Rowland Griffith Davies, committed to Denbigh in January 1905 (6493) make for very similar reading. They describe the 16 year old butcher’s errand boy as suffering from ‘great mental unrest’ and ‘singing hymns and praying continually’.[17]

Professor John Young Evans, who met Evan Roberts in March 1905, describes his apparent need to consult with the Spirit before making every day to day decision such as when he was asked whether he would see someone who had come to speak to him or where he would next preach.

He hesitated before replying, while his lips were slightly but perceptibly convulsed…The increase of emphasis he now lays on the Spirit’s guidance even in temporal affairs easily lent itself to satire and caricature.[18]

In the case of others, perhaps to an asylum admission!

A Llanberis minister also expressed his concerns about the revivalist’s state of mind in the Western Mail:

In Liverpool Evan Roberts abruptly dismissed the members and congregation of one church, giving rise to more calls for him to take a rest, and the services he conducted in Newcastle Emlyn after his return were described as ‘very strange to say the least’.[19]

It was said that by the autumn of 1906 revival meetings had left Evan Roberts ‘unable to stand or walk for almost a twelvemonth’[20] and, although he eventually regained enough strength to publish a new magazine and attend the occasional conference, the great wave of religious fervour he had overseen in Wales did not last. The extraordinary revivalist lived out his life in Cardiff and died there in 1951 at the age of 72.

Footnotes

[1] Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (1998).

[2] DRO/HD/1/361/Case no. 2964

[3] DRO/HD/1/362/Case no. 3247

[4] DRO/HD/1/367/Case no. 4529

[5] DRO/HD/1/365/Case no. 4039

[6] DRO/HD/1/364/Case no. 3916

[7] DRO/HD/1/333/Case no. 3326

[8] A Diary of Revival: The outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening, Kevin Adams (2004), p 20

[9] National Library of Wales, Dictionary of Welsh Biography.

[10] Kevin Adams and Emyr Jones, A Pictorial History of Revival: The Outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening CWR (2004).

[11] Jackson, M, The Paradigm-Shifting Hypothesis: A common process in benign psychosis and psychotic disorder. In Isabel Clarke (ed.) Psychosis and Spirituality: Consolidating the new paradigm, John Wiley & Sons (2010).

[12] Kevin Adams, Diary of Revival: The Outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening CWR (2004).

[13] DRO/HD/1/374/Case no. 6591

[14] DRO/HD/1/374/Case no. 6509

[15] Kevin Adams, Diary of Revival: The Outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening CWR (2004) p.86

[16] Kevin Adams, Diary of Revival: The Outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening CWR (2004) p.140

[17] DRO/HD/1/374/Case no. 6493

[18] Kevin Adams, Diary of Revival: The Outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening CWR (2004) p.131. When he met Evan Roberts in 1905, John Young Evans was professor at Trefeca College, Brecon, a post he had been offered while still studying classics at Oxford in 1891. The following year he moved to the new United Theological College at Aberystwyth and was appointed Dean of the University of Wales faculty of theology in 1922.

[19] Kevin Adams, Diary of Revival: The Outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening CWR (2004) p. 134

[20] Kevin Adams, Diary of Revival: The Outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening CWR (2004) p.145

The tiny pot-bellied orphan John ’Warrington’ may have found his short stay in Denbigh a welcome respite from the Clio, where he had been sent by the Warrington Poor Law Guardians to prepare for a life at sea.

                                                  Photo courtesy of Gwynedd Record Office Caernarfon

The Clio had been towed to the Straits in 1877 and, for the next 40 years, provided care and training for homeless, destitute and poor respectable boys aged 12 to 16. Discipline aboard ships like the Clio was strict and the birch used to enforce it. From his asylum case notes it appears that John was a boy who frequently required corporal punishment. Sleeping arrangements provided their own punishment. The boys slept in hammocks which must have been icy-cold in winter, despite the provision of flannel drawers, and the Clio’s 1879 Annual Report records several cases of frostbite during the previous winter and that “one poor little fellow lost some of his toes”.[1]

The ship had room for around 260 boys but by 1879 only 10 had been brought from North West Wales and at least 70 per cent of the boys came from Poor Law authorities in London, Liverpool and Manchester.

The Captain Superintendent’s Report of 1879 notes the need for an agent to be appointed in Liverpool “to dispose of the boys when Trained, as there are no means of disposing of them at Bangor”[2] It would be this officer’s job to obtain situations for boys going to sea and to take charge of them before they joined their ships and between voyages.

The Admiralty provided a grant for boys who left the Clio to join the Navy but the ship was largely financed through fees paid by Poor Law Unions and School Boards for the paupers they found difficult to contain in workhouses. Few of these boys had stable families and, like John “Warrington”, many were orphans or motherless or fatherless. In 1879 only 5 boys were presented for training by their parents.

A typical day aboard the Clio began at 5 am. After washing themselves, the boys had to scrub the decks before a breakfast of oatmeal and milk. After breakfast there would be “simple family worship and Bible reading” followed by lessons in “reading, spelling, ciphering, vocal music, history, geography, drawing and religious instruction”.[3] Dinner was served at noon – usually meat and potatoes – and then after a recreation period there were lessons in seamanship. One very important lesson in seamanship – learning to swim – was catered for on the Clio by the installation in 1879 of a “swimming bath”.

Boys of all religious denominations were accepted and any not already baptised were baptised and later confirmed at Bangor Cathedral, the Bishop of Bangor being an active member of the Society’s committee.

Expenditure on the training ship inevitably increased and there were regular appeals to the public for assistance. A special fund was set up to raise money for improvements to the sick bay, the tailor’s shop, the carpenter’s shop and the drying room. Another fund was set up to provide boys with outfits on leaving the ship and in 1879 the executors of Mr. Griffith of Caerhun, near Bangor, were warmly thanked by the Committee for a generous donation of £500. Useful savings were made by making, repairing and laundering the boys’ clothes and boots on board.

                             Clio’s Tailor Shop –Photo courtesy of Gwynedd Museum Bangor

“The Tailoring and Shoemaking accounts show

good results, and a great saving of expense has

been affected. 459 Serge Frocks, 458 pairs of Serge

Trousers, 262 Flannels, 534 pairs of Drawers, 73

Canvas Suits, 103 Check Shirts, 70 Bed Sackings,

152 pairs of Boots, and several miscellaneous

garments have been made at a cost of £300. These

things if made on shore would have cost at least

£500: and some hundreds of garments have been

repaired, as also have 392 pairs of Boots and 800

Bed Sackings at a cost of £59. These if repaired on

shore would have cost at least £150. 37,000 pieces

have been washed at a cost of £18.”[4]

The boys were simultaneously given the chance to learn skills apart from seamanship. John ‘Warrington’ told the Medical Superintendent at Denbigh that he could sew and he may well have worked in the tailor’s shop on the Clio. Although possibly not very hard. His Denbigh case notes record that:

“He soon became tired of sitting all day on the Tailor’s bench and have sent him out on the farm where is so far equally useless!” [5]

Records suggest that while some boys were unable to tolerate shipboard life because of ill health or a hardened resistance to any form of discipline there were other boys who relished it. Enoch Williams of Llandudno was sent to the Clio in 1887 at the age of 12 for stealing washing from a clothes line but, after leaving the ship, was valued by employers as a very reliable man who always wore a naval sweater and a peaked sailor’s cap even when he was working ashore.[6] And whatever concerns local residents may have had about the ‘naughty boys’, 298 Clio lads marched at the proclamation of the Bangor Eisteddfod in 1890.[7]

Any boy who could cope with the stern routine, regular beatings and endemic bullying might have found some things about the Clio to like. The ship was proud of its brass band and the 1879 report notes that: “The Band has made real progress since the appointment of Mr. Jackson as Musical Instructor and the Boys now sing remarkably well.” On special occasions the band put on public concerts like the one below and sometimes on a Sunday Bangor residents willing to donate a shilling were welcomed aboard the Clio for a religious service followed by afternoon tea and a concert performed by the boys.

When war broke out in September 1914 naval recruitment became a priority and the Clio boys were set to making kit bags and ammunition pouches. Forty four boys joined the Navy and another 163 joined the Army. After the war, the Clio lay neglected in the Straits until in March 1920 she was towed away and scrapped.

Another training ship with connections to North West Wales, the Indefatigable, had a longer history. Moored on the Mersey at Birkenhead, the ship was loaned by the Admiralty to provide naval training for the “sons and orphans of sailors who are without means, preference being given to those whose fathers had been connected with the Port of Liverpool”. The original ship became unfit for use in 1912 and was replaced by another vessel until 1941. But then the establishment was forced onto land by the war and after a few years in temporary accommodation, it became based at Plas Llanfair on Anglesey where it remained until quite recently.

Further Reading: Local historian Emrys Rhys Roberts has written a comprehensive history of the Clio.

Footnotes

[1] Third Annual Report of the Society of the Industrial Training Ship ‘Clio’, 1879.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] DRO/HD/1/366/Case no. 503

[6] C Draper (2005), Paupers, Bastards and Lunatics: The Story of Conwy Workhouse, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch

[7] North Wales Chronicle, January 25^th 1890.

Catherine Jones carried baby Sarah over to the fire to warm her for a few minutes but a short time later her husband William took the child from her and returned her to the cradle.

The baby was dead, tongue blackened and eyes dilated, and Catherine confessed to her servant that she had smothered her by putting her fingers over her mouth and squeezing her nose. She would give the whole world to have little Sarah back.

William Jones had left his wife alone in the kitchen of the family farmhouse at Llanllyfni, near Caernarfon, while he went into the garden but returned quickly to the house when his servant Ellen called him to say that Catherine was no longer there. It was ten minutes before they noticed her coming in by the back door and went down to meet her. The little girl, eighteen months old, was in her arms and Ellen could see she was dead. She ran to fetch a neighbour.

Catherine, 33, was tried for murder at Caernarfon in July 1878 where she was acquitted on the grounds of insanity after “abundant evidence had been called showing that the prisoner’s mind was different from the minds of other people”.[1] She was returned to Caernarfon Gaol and in September taken from there to Broadmoor Asylum.

A diagnosis of melancholia

William Jones had sought medical help for his wife at least six months before Sarah’s death when Dr Morris Davies diagnosed melancholia and prescribed some medicine as well as recommending a change of scene. The doctor had no doubt that her mind was affected at the time. But even before this Catherine had complained to a neighbour that there was “something rising severely up into her head” and that she was unable to sleep. She had attacked her husband when he suggested getting a woman to stay at the farm to look after her.

Servants and neighbours, giving evidence at the trial, all said they had noticed a serious change in Catherine just before Christmas 1877. Ann Williams, who lived near to the farm, had known her for ten years and told the court that Catherine had always been very kind to her children. Yet she once told Ann that she taken a razor to Sarah’s neck and only stopped cutting when the sight of blood frightened her. Noticing with alarm a slight cut on the child’s neck Ann cared for the child herself for nine weeks. Catherine had also spoken of putting her older daughter, then 3 years old, “over head into the water butt” but this story was shown to be untrue, the child had been ill in bed for three days at the time.

“Will my dress last forever…”?

It seems Catherine became pre-occupied with being poor and unable to buy food or clothing although it was generally understood the family were comfortably off and had everything they could possibly need in the house. She asked a neighbour whether her dress would last forever because she could never afford to buy another one and told a childhood friend, who was making plans to come over from Festiniog to celebrate Christmas with the Jones family, that there was nothing to eat in the house. “It’s very sober here and there is no place for you to lay your head”.

The servant Ellen had only been in service at the farm for three months before Sarah’s death. William Jones had warned her that his wife was “different from other women” and she soon saw for herself. Catherine would not prepare food for anyone in the house, complained always of poverty and never went outside the house.

A succession of witnesses spoke of Catherine variously as “low-spirited”, “wild” and “quite deranged”. Her lawyer thought it quite unnecessary to address the jury and, after a brief consultation, they acquitted her of murder.

Catherine seems to have displayed classic symptoms of puerperal psychosis, a severe mental illness which accounted for the admissions of one in ten of the women of child-bearing years admitted to the old asylums between 1875 and 1924 (see Tschinkel et al, 2007). The most dramatic form happened in women who had never had a hint of mental illness before who, like Catherine, were stably married and well-placed.[2]

She remained at Broadmoor for less than a year before her husband’s efforts to have her transferred to Denbigh Asylum were rewarded and, after just ten months there, Catherine was discharged fully recovered and returned to her family at Llanllyfni.

“Rwyf yn euog”

But matters could have gone very differently. Catherine was unable to speak English and, through an interpreter, pleaded guilty to willful murder when she first appeared in court at Caernarfon. She was promptly advised by the Lord Justice not to plead guilty unless she had known what she was doing when she killed her child. On learning that Catherine was not defended, the judge called William Jones into court to ask why he had not provided a defence for his wife. William replied that he did not have the means to pay for counsel, he was only a small farmer paying rent and he had been advised that it would be better not to engage a lawyer. This appears to have angered the judge who responded: “Well, then, now I tell him otherwise, remind him of what he swore when he married her”. [3] William went off to obtain legal advice and the case was adjourned to give counsel time to get up a case.

Catherine’s inability to speak or understand English presented problems for her at Broadmoor.[4] Having no other language than Welsh she was unable to communicate with any of the staff and concerns were raised with the Home Secretary who wrote to Dr William Orange, Superintendent at Broadmoor, for clarification. Dr Orange was able to reply that Catherine had been placed in a ward with a convalescent patient from Glamorganshire who was able to speak both English and Welsh and could act as an interpreter.[5] See also ‘Bad Language – Mary Davies Broadmoor’.

Catherine became seriously ill with symptoms of pleurisy soon after her removal to Broadmoor and her husband was advised to visit her. He had no English either and had to ask Dr Evan Roberts, who lived near to him in Penygroes, to provide him with a note asking to be directed to ‘respectable lodgings’ for the time he needed to spend in Crowthorne.

Sir

The bearer William Jones husband of the poor woman Cath^ne Jones who came there from Carnarvon is quite illiterate and does not know a word of English and would feel extremely obliged if you could recommend a respectable Lodgings during the times he shall stay at Broadmoor.[6]

William stayed from the 25^th to the 29^th October and saw his wife several times every other day. After his return to North Wales, he received a note to say that Catherine, although still seriously ill, was a little better than when he had left.

Moves for a transfer to Denbigh

Catherine’s inability to communicate directly with the Broadmoor doctors was a source of concern and Dr Orange was keen to have her moved back to Denbigh Asylum as soon as her health allowed. He was asked for his opinion as to whether her weakened condition might make the long journey unsafe and also for a report on her mental state.

It appears she had no delusions when she arrived at Broadmoor and apart from “a decided air of melancholy” there seemed to be little amiss. She told Dr David Nicolson, the Deputy Superintendent who admitted her, that she had been upset by the death of husband’s parents which had occurred at the time Sarah was born and from which she had never fully recovered. She was subject to frequent headaches and depression and she was not always able to recall the circumstances of Sarah’s death.

In fact Catherine’s mental condition seems to have presented few problems and these would, in any case, have been dwarfed by her language difficulties, her poor physical health and…another pregnancy. She had discovered she was pregnant while in prison at Caernarfon and the Broadmoor authorities were made aware that she would be confined around Christmas. William Jones was unconvinced, explaining that his wife had been ‘much enlarged’ the previous year but some medicine had removed the fullness.

Reporting to the Home Office on Catherine’s condition, Dr Orange expressed his concerns about removing her to Denbigh:

She is not in a fit state to be removed to the Denbigh Asylum at present, in consequence of the pleurisy from which she is suffering; and it appears to be very doubtful whether she will recover sufficiently to enable her to bear with safety a railway journey before the time at which she expects to give birth to her child.

When however her state of health may allow it, her removal to an asylum where she could have the advantage of being under the care of medical officers and attendants who could communicate with her in her own language would appear to be very desirable.[7]

However, Catherine made a favourable recovery and, stressing once again the advantage to his patient of being treated by Welsh speaking medical staff, Dr Orange thought she might with safety be removed to ‘her county asylum’ around mid-December just a few weeks before her expected confinement.

It seems the Home Office was unwilling to agree to Catherine’s removal so soon after her trial, and instead asked Dr Orange to find ‘some respectable woman, who can speak the Welsh language’ to act as a dedicated attendant to Catherine during her confinement. [8] This was clearly judged impractical and she continued to be supported by her fellow patient from Glamorganshire.

Arrival of another William Jones

Catherine was delivered of a baby boy, William, at 8 o’clock on the morning of January 14^th 1879 after a long labour. The Broadmoor staff were not prepared to risk leaving Catherine to nurse her child and he was removed from her immediately after birth. One of the female attendants, Harriet Hunt, took charge of him instead. But Catherine was allowed to see her baby in the infirmary and to bond with him while the usual arrangements were made for his removal. William Jones was keen to take his son home and he visited Broadmoor regularly until 16th April 1879 when, with Harriet accompanying him, he made the journey back to North Wales.[9]

The Home Office had issued a warrant for Catherine’s transfer to Denbigh Asylum a few weeks earlier but this had to be postponed when she became ill and bedridden again. Dr Orange thought she was consumptive but in July he was content for her to travel and wrote to Dr William Williams at Denbigh to make arrangements. Mr John Robinson, Clerk and Steward at Denbigh, had expressed an interest in seeing Broadmoor and it was agreed that he would travel to Crowthorne a few days before Catherine’s transfer. Dr Orange declared himself “happy to afford to Mr Robinson all facilities for seeing the asylum” and he arranged accommodation for the female attendant who would escort Catherine back to Denbigh on 29th July 1879.[10]

Not in the least sorry or troubled

On arrival, Catherine was quiet and well behaved. Pale and delicate looking with dark hair and eyes, she appeared to be quite rational but, although she remembered she had been at Broadmoor and for how long, she did not seem “to be in the least sorry or troubled about the destruction of her child”.[11] Eating and sleeping well, she continued to improve. She wrote affectionate letters home to her husband and remained rational and industrious, always knitting.

Although Catherine had been transferred as a ‘pleasure’ patient, William was keen to have her home and wrote to Dr Orange in January 1880 for advice on how to go about securing her discharge.

On visiting my wife – Catherine Jones – at the Denbigh Asylum I find her perfectly well in her mind, but worse in other respects as her diet is so inferior to what she used to have while under your care at Broadmoor. She is most anxious to come home, and I fully believe she would regain her strength and enjoy far better health at home than at Denbigh…. I therefore respectfully beg to ask your opinion as to the course I had better adopt in the matter.

Dr Orange’s reply was friendly….

It must be a cause of satisfaction to you to have her so much nearer to you…and also it is no doubt to her advantage there. She is now amongst those who speak her own language.[12]

…..but he recommended that William approach the Superintendent of Denbigh Asylum rather than himself about the prospects of discharge.

In May 1880 Dr Williams sent a Certificate of Recovery to the Home Secretary and Catherine was able to leave the asylum. We know nothing more about Catherine but must assume she settled back into her old life at the farm with her husband and remaining children.

A post script:

The story of Sarah’s death and Catherine’s insanity would have been passed down through the family and, in August 1924, there came a harsh reminder when Catherine’s 18 year old grand-daughter was admitted to Denbigh Asylum in a state of great mental excitement, hearing voices and birdsong and “craving for a baby to nurse”.[13] PR’s illness had begun a year earlier with a suicide attempt whilst in domestic service and she now required constant attention and supervision.

Unlike her grandmother, PR spent many years in the asylum and never truly recovered. Although she was discharged from her first admission after seven months, and moved to Birkenhead to take up another post in domestic service, she was returned to Denbigh shortly afterwards complaining that her mistress had tried to poison her. Over the years her condition showed no significant improvement and in March 1931 it was noted that “some of her symptoms are suggestive of Dementia Praecox”.[14] Nevertheless, PRs story does not end in the asylum. By 1937 she was well conducted and regularly employed and she was discharged at her own request in October the following year.

Footnotes

[1] Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald July 1878

[2] Tschinkel, S et al (2007), Postpartum Psychosis: two cohorts compared, 1875-1924 and 1994-2005.

[3] Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald July 1878

[4] Stevens, Mark (2011), Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum

[5] Berkshire Record Office, D/H14/D2/2/2/280/4-5

[6] Berkshire Record Office, D/H14/D2/2/2/280/3

[7] Berkshire Record Office D/H14/D2/2/2/280/8

[8] Berkshire Record Office D/H14/D2/2/2/280/13

[9] Stevens, Mark (2011), Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum

[10] Berkshire Record Office D/H14/D2/2/2/280/22

[11] Denbighshire Record Office, HD/1/332/Case no. 2893

[12] Berkshire Record Office, D/H14/D2/2/2/280/24

[13] Denbighshire Record Office, HD/1/356/Case no. 10347

[14] Denbighshire Record Office/HD/1/357/Case No. 11203

A perfectly white, flawless complexion was once the desire of every woman no doubt in part because it suggested a leisurely wealthy lifestyle and many middle class women soaked flypapers to make an arsenic solution which they would use as a face wash.

By 1920 they no longer had to prepare their own poisonous beauty products – they could buy them over the counter! Ointments like these which made claims to remove freckles contained shockingly high amounts of mercury.

In 1984 J K Randolph Ellis interviewed Cassie at Garregglwyd Home for the Elderly in Holyhead when she was 84 and has written a summary of the recordings he made.

Summary of Recording:

Tape 1

Cassie Owen is now in her 80s and has spent all her life since the age of 17 in workhouses and institutions in Anglesey, being classed as ‘feeble minded’. She was an illegitimate child whose mother died when she was four. She was looked after by her grandmother and brought up in Amlwch on a farm. She talks about her life on the farm, how she helped with the cows and butter making. At 16 she was sent into service at Llanfairfechan but her employers weren’t satisfied and she returned home. She was then sent to Stockport but the job only lasted four months. Again her work was unsatisfactory and she couldn’t understand her English employers. On her return to Amlwch her grandmother sent her to Llanerchymedd workhouse. She was happy there, the nurses (as she calls them) were kind and she used to dance with them. She describes the other inmates, how the men and women had separate quarters and how she used to clean, wash up, make the beds and so on. The master and matron, Mr and Mrs Waterson, and their children were very kind. They were given a gramophone. The men used to tend the garden. They had to move to Valley workhouse after the matron died. There were only a few inmates left then and the workhouse was closed. Two cars took them. When they arrived they were given a bath and institution clothes. There was apparently no uniform in Llanerchymedd. Again she spent her time helping with household chores and the washing. Lice were a problem and had to be killed with paraffin. As in Llanerchymedd the men and women had separate quarters and they sat on different sides of the dining room, entering through separate doors.

Tape 2

She talks about her fellow inmates at Llanerchymedd and again explains the household tasks they had to do. There were few men there and they had their own quarters. Men and women mixed if there was a concert for them or on their birthday when they were given a special tea. She was the youngest person there but was friendly with the older women and used to share her memories of her life on her granny’s farm e.g. when she used to go clapping for eggs or gathering blackberries. Then she explains that if anyone disobeyed the rules of the house they would be punished by being put in a cell on a diet of bread and water. She again stresses that the master and matron were kind – Mr Waterson made a swing in the garden for them, so they wouldn’t have to sit sadly in their room all the time. But they apparently didn’t leave the workhouse much – a trip to the annual market was a treat. She explains that the doctor used to come regularly to the house and the sick were looked after in the workhouse hospital which was at the side of the main building. The House itself was quite cheerful with vases of flowers and lace curtains and tablecloths – nicer than Valley.

Tape 3

She describes how two cars took the people from Llanerchymedd to Valley and how when they arrived their own clothes were taken from them. She regretted leaving Llanerchymedd because she was happy there and it was near her home. Valley was a much bigger place. Children were in a separate house nearby called Bron Heulog.

Once she learnt what she was to do people were nice at Valley, but if she was naughty she was put in a cell in the yard. Her days were spent doing housework, making beds, scrubbing floors, washing. On Sundays she went to Chapel and Sunday School, and they had a wireless. She describes the dormitory she slept in -seven to eight beds, lockers, chamber pots, mats on the floor. She says the men and women were not allowed to mix. They kept chickens at Llanerchymedd and a garden for fruit and vegetables that was tended by the men. They were allowed to go and pick blackberries too. She explains that there were a few married couples there and they were allowed to live together. She can remember babies in the workhouse too with their mothers. She again describes the household work she did there and how she used to help clean in the infirmary where minor operations were carried out. The interviewer took some photographs of the workhouses at Llanerchymedd and Valley to show Miss Owen and asked her if she could remember the layout of the rooms. She also mentions a lady who used to come in to sew the clothes at Llanerchymedd. At Valley she remembers a big wall round the garden and an inspector who reprimanded the master for locking so many doors.