The laboratory and the asylum: Francis Walker Mott and the pathological laboratory at London County Council Lunatic Asylum, Claybury, Essex (1895–1916)

Abstract

London County Council's pathological laboratory in the LCC asylum at Claybury, Essex, was established in 1895 to study the pathology of mental illness. Historians of psychiatry have understood the Claybury laboratory as a predecessor of the Maudsley Hospital in London: not only was this laboratory closed when the Maudsley was opened in 1916, but its director, Frederick Walker Mott, a champion of the 'German' model in psychiatry, was instrumental in the establishment of this institution. Yet, as I argue in this essay, for all the continuities with the Maudsley, the Claybury laboratory should not be seen solely as its predecessor - or as a British answer to continental laboratories such as Theodor Meynert's in Vienna. Rather, as I show using the examples of general paralysis of the insane and 'asylum colitis', the Claybury laboratory is best understood as an attempt to prevent mental illness using a microbiological model.

Psychiatry’s ‘Others’? Rethinking the Professional Self-Fashioning of British Mental Nursesc. 1900–20

“…Superintendent Jones and his Assistant Medical Officer, Charles Ewart, published numerous articles on the associations between civilisation, degeneracy and insanity, 29 while degeneration theory also shaped the findings of the London County Council's pathological laboratory, operating at Claybury during the period of Allway's employment. 30 An important influence was Herbert Spencer, whose ideas about competition and social evolution (i.e. 'survival of the fittest') shaped Allway's corpus.…”

Ambition, ‘failure’ and the laboratory: Birmingham as a centre of twentieth-century British scientific psychiatry

“…In 1895, under Mott, the LCC established a central laboratory for London at Claybury Asylum (later moving to Maudsley Hospital). 20 In Scotland, in 1897, a national scheme for pathological research forged a laboratory hub at Edinburgh Royal Asylum; an adjunct group clustered around its Glasgow counterpart from 1909. 21 In 1908, a clinic and laboratory opened in association with the university at the mental hospital in Cardiff, the Welsh capital.…”