In message <20041105201902.41637.qmail@web51801.mail.yahoo.com>, Alexandra Coles <ahcoles@yahoo.co.nz> writes >I have the distinction of claiming the only declared >lunatic in the Amersham 1871 census as my own... > >Maria KEEN (originally DELL) died age 63 in 1876. >Cause of death listed as Mental Derangement (31 >years)/Atrophy. This dates her mental problems back >to the year her second child was born - her first >child had died four years earlier. > >All the documents I have (1851 census, 1851 birth cert >of third and final child Martha, 1871 census and 1876 >death cert) have her living at home with husband >William and daughter Martha, rather than in an asylum. > Would this be normal except in extreme cases or where >there was no family left to care for you? Possibly she was taken in to Stone for a while and discharged as cured, or alternatively, incurable (since they tried at first to take cases where treatment would work. Postnatal depression does figure - not under that name- as a cause for some admissions. Probably she was not dangerous, just 'nervous' or melacholic. The case books for Stone Asylum are held at the Centre for Bucks SAtudies and ones of that period would be open for search (closed for 100 years). They are likely to report the date and cause of entry, the various treatments tried, comments sometimes on the family situation (visits, willingness to care for etc), and then discharge, with any subsequent admissions. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society