Hospital was the country’s first pauper asylum
‘large quantity oF lunatics’ were in county
IN a city as old as London, it can often feel as if every building has a history of its own.
This is certainly the case for Ealing Hospital.
Now part of the London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, it is built on land that was once St Bernard’s Hospital – the country’s first pauper lunatic asylum.
Built in 1829 following the County Asylums Act of 1828 – an act passed by Parliament in an attempt to incentivise counties to build asylums for the poorer classes – the three-storey building first opened in May 1831.
Initially designed to accommodate 500 patients, the first decade after its opening saw several rounds of building extensions and repairs made to meet demand.
By 1841, there were only 90 members of staff looking after more than 1,300 patients, and by 1888 patients at St Bernard’s Hospital totalled 1,891, making the asylum the largest of its kind in Europe.
The number of patients at St Bernard’s was unsurprising as when appealing to the Government for permission to build the hospital, local politicians argued that Middlesex county, which included London, had a ‘disproportionate quantity of lunatics’ in comparison to the rest of the country.
Multiple problems arose in the early years of the asylum.
For example, poor ventilation and overcrowding may have spread an outbreak of tuberculosis around the patients and staff.
Yet St Bernard’s was also a remarkable institution.
In what became a precursor to the occupational therapy of today, Dr William Ellis, the asylum’s first Medical Superintendent, encouraged some patients to continue the work they did before admission to the asylum.
The third Medical Superintendent, Dr John Connolly, was
responsible for St. Bernard’s being one of the first asylums in the country to abolish mechanical restraints upon patients in 1839.
Instead, Connolly introduced solitary confinement, sedatives and padded cells.
During the Second World War – at which point the asylum was now St Bernard’s Hospital Southall – one ward was used as the Emergency Medical Services centre for treatment of war casualties.
By the mid-1970s, the Health Department discussed renaming the entire hospital in an attempt to distance it from its past. In 1979, it was granted a new name and became Ealing Hospital.