asylum libraries catalogue

The Asylum Libraries Catalogue: process

In my last post, I wrote about the three library catalogues that have provided me detailed information about exactly what was on offer for patients at the Crichton Royal Institution, the Murray Royal Asylum, and the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. These sources have been invaluable - but they were also incredibly unwieldy! Getting them into a shape where I’d be able to analyse their contents was a very long process.

An example page of the Crichton Royal Institution’s library catalogue. Dumfries and Galloway Archives and Local Studies, DGH1/6/17/1 (digitised by the Wellcome Library).

An example page of the Crichton Royal Institution’s library catalogue. Dumfries and Galloway Archives and Local Studies, DGH1/6/17/1 (digitised by the Wellcome Library).

First, there was the task of simply transcribing the catalogues. How long could it possibly take to turn approximately a hundred pages of book titles into a workable format? It turns out, quite a long time. For a while, I felt that I’d lost all sense of the meaning of the letters of the alphabet. I’m only glad that I was working with printed sources, and ‘only’ just under four thousand items, rather than the incredible numbers some of my fellow book historians have worked on (for example, Henning Hansen’s 18,000 items from a bookshop in Gothenburg!)

It turned out that it was after the transcription that my work would really begin. Unfortunately for me, cataloguing practices in the asylums of the nineteenth century were sadly not particularly uniform!

M. W. J., cataloguer of the Murray Royal Asylum’s library, scores a solid 9/10 for consistency. They separated their library’s contents into various useful genre categories, nearly always provide an author, and frequently include a publication date. The catalogue is helpfully arranged with books of the same genre by the same author appearing together. The 1863 copy is nicely laid out, with columns for each piece of information about the nearly 750 titles in the library. The Crichton Royal Institution’s catalogue provides a slightly more haphazard insight into the asylum’s holdings. Like the Murray Royal, it splits the library by genre: however, it provides little detail about the books. It eschews publication date, shortens titles considerably, and avoids giving author names almost entirely. With over 1500 items, this made identifying Crichton’s books with such minimal information a considerable task. The Royal Edinburgh Asylum’s catalogue, compiled by Assistant Physicians John Sibbald and T. S. Clouston, took cataloguing chaos to new heights. In an alphabetical system, should an item be catalogued by the author’s name, the book’s full title, or the key word in the title? As it turns out, Clouston and Sibbald appear not to have made this decision - or at least not discussed it with each other. Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York appears under ‘K’, ‘I’ and ‘N’, to provide one example of many.

A spread from the Murray Royal Asylum’s library catalogue, compiled by M. W. J. and published in 1863. University of Dundee Archive Services, THB29/11/2/1 (digitised by Google Books)

A spread from the Murray Royal Asylum’s library catalogue, compiled by M. W. J. and published in 1863. University of Dundee Archive Services, THB29/11/2/1 (digitised by Google Books)

Clouston and Sibbald threw rather a wrench in my plan of looking at titles where multiple copies or editions of one text were kept - with it impossible to tell whether there genuinely were three copies of everything in the asylum’s library, or whether it was down to miscommunication on the part of the cataloguers, for now I’m focusing simply on the titles available. Removing ‘duplicate’ (or potentially duplicate) items from the catalogues reduced my standardisation workload a small amount, and also resulted in a revealing portrait of the asylum libraries. The Murray Royal lost only five titles to duplicate removal (good work, M. W. J.); Crichton’s library was reduced by 45 items (not bad - probably genuine examples of where the asylum held multiple copies); but the Royal Edinburgh’s library was reduced by a staggering 35%, from 1426 items to 925. This raises a question which is difficult to answer: was the catalogue accurate, or an inflation of the library’s true holdings? And was it accidental, or deliberate? I’m yet to find out.

After all of that, my next step was to get my combined catalogue in a state fit for analysing the contents of the three asylum libraries. I’ve probably provided a huge percentage of WorldCat’s site visits over the last few months, as I looked up every one of the remaining 3204 items in an attempt to identify missing authors and fill out vaguely-recorded book titles. Then came standardisation: turning every ‘W. Scott’, ‘Sir Walter Scott’, ‘Walter Scott’, and ‘Sir Scott’ into ‘Walter Scott’; wrangling wordy nineteenth-century titles and their alternatives into something manageable; making sure publishers were accurate, and assigning each text its new, standardised genre. I now have a spreadsheet (which yes, probably should be a database - but I haven’t had time yet, even in lockdown) so monstrous that my laptop audibly groans whenever I open it. After six months’ work, it’s ready for analysis!

The Asylum Libraries Catalogue: sources

It’s clear that asylums took differing approaches to distributing the material that their libraries held: some developed more formal reading rooms where patients could access their collection, or took to spreading books and periodicals around shared areas of the asylum; others required patients to make requests for reading material to the chaplain or other staff members; several institutions instituted their own versions of 'circulating’ libraries, whether freely accessible or in a designated bookcase under lock and key. But one of the most difficult aspects of the asylum library to research is exactly what material was available to patients via these various means. What could the patients actually read? Staff often liked to talk about how patients should read, but less often give examples of such ‘ideal’ reading. Piecing together examples of the asylums’ library holdings has required combing through hundreds of years’ worth of reports written by medical and pastoral asylum staff, patient magazines, and financial records such as invoices.

Some asylums, though, were more dedicated to library practice than might be assumed. The Cornwall County Asylum’s Chaplain, William Iago, officially took on the title of Librarian, and the Chaplain at the Bristol Asylum was required to act as such as part of his general duties.1 At the Dundee Royal Asylum, an ‘intelligent epileptic patient’ took the role of Librarian, and is noted to have ‘marked and catalogued the books’ as well as recording the books issued to other patients.2 The Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell had its own printing press, which by 1846 was used by patients to produce “almost every printed form required in the Asylum.” 3 As at Dundee, patients produced a catalogue for the library; they also printed it themselves to be “kept in every Ward, so that Patients can make their selection at leisure.” 4 Unfortunately, these productions do not appear to have survived. However, the seeming tendency of Scottish asylums to keep everything has proven a huge benefit to my project. (Whilst Dundee’s catalogue did not survive, a section of graffitied wooden window frame remains in the archive.)

A spread from Easterbrook’s scrapbook. Dumfries and Galloway Archives and Local Studies, DGH1/6/17/1 (digitised by the Wellcome Library)

During his time as the Superintendent of the Crichton Royal Asylum, Dr. Charles Cromhall Easterbrook took the time to collect a huge number of historical items relating to the asylum and its history. A scrapbook he compiled contains over six hundred pieces: it features newspaper cuttings relating to the asylum, its staff and patients; photographs and illustrations of the building and grounds; hospital records and forms; and various ephemeral pieces produced at the asylum’s press, such as playbills. Among these items is also the small pamphlet forming the library catalogue of the institution, dated to Spring 1853 by Easterbrook. As at Hanwell, the pamphlet was printed by a patient, W. Shields.5

The catalogue for the Murray Royal Asylum seems to have been interesting enough to make its way out of the asylum and into various libraries around the world: copies of it are held at the National Library of Scotland, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the Widener Library at Harvard, and McGill University in Montreal, as well as at University of Dundee Archive Services with the rest of the Murray Royal’s archive. It was not printed at the asylum, but by Robert Whittet, a successful Perth printer, in 1863. The catalogue was compiled by ‘M. W. J.’; the use of semi-anonymising initials suggests that they may have been a patient.6

Sir Thomas Smith Clouston, photogravure after G. Fiddes Watt, 1909 (Wellcome Library); Sir John Sibbald, photogravure by Swan Electric Engraving Co. after Sir G. Reid (Wellcome Library)

Sir Thomas Smith Clouston, photogravure after G. Fiddes Watt, 1909 (Wellcome Library); Sir John Sibbald, photogravure by Swan Electric Engraving Co. after Sir G. Reid (Wellcome Library)

The Royal Edinburgh Asylum provides the final located library catalogue. A small booklet, it is kept as part of a collection relating to the Superintendents of the asylum rather than the main archive. This is possibly due to the fact that it was compiled by John Sibbald and Thomas Clouston - two very significant names in nineteenth-century psychiatric history - in 1861, whilst they were mere Assistant Physicians at the asylum. Sibbald left the asylum shortly after the catalogue’s publication to take up a post as Superintendent of the Argyll District Asylum; he later became a Commissioner of Lunacy for Scotland. Clouston departed for a post at the Carlisle Asylum, but returned to the Royal Edinburgh in 1873 to serve as Superintendent for the next thirty-five years.7 A catalogue is first being mentioned as being produced at the Royal Edinburgh as early as 1849, “prepared and printed by the inmates,” before being reissued in 1855 (8) - but Sibbald and Clouston’s work seems to have supplanted the earlier efforts by patients.9

In the next post: some haphazard cataloguing, suspicious duplicates, and a monster spreadsheet.

1 William Iago, Chaplain’s Report, Annual report of the Cornwall County Asylum for the year 1865, p. 9; Henry Oxley Stephens, Superintendent’s Report, Annual report of he Bristol Asylum for the year 1869, p. 11.

2 Annual report of the Dundee Royal Asylum for the year 1854-55, pp. 9-10.

3 John Conolly, Physician’s Report, Annual Report of the Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell for the year 1846, p. 27.

4 Catherine M. E. Macfie, Matron’s Report, Annual Report of the Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell for the year 1860, pp, 58-59.

5 [Catalogue of the Library of the Crichton Royal Institution] (Dumfries: Crichton Press, [1853]), Dumfries and Galloway Archives and Local Studies, DGH1/6/17/1; digitised by the Wellcome Library.

6 Catalogue of the Library of Murray’s Royal Institution, Perth, compiled by M. W. J. (Perth: Robert Whittet, 1863), University of Dundee Archive Services, THB29/11/2/1; digitised by Google from the Harvard original.

7 Details about Clouston and Sibbald’s careers are found in David Skae’s Physician’s Reports, in annual reports for the Royal Edinburgh from the years 1857, 1861 and 1863.

8 Earlier mentions of the first library catalogue can be found in David Skae, Physician’s Report, Annual Report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the Year 1848, p. 30, and Statement of works, Annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the year 1855, p. 40.

9 Catalogue of the Library of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (Morningside, Edinburgh: Royal Asylum Press, 1861), Lothian Health Services Archive, GD16/52.