Surveillance and control in the Stirling District Asylum Archive
University of Stirling Archives, 19 February to 9 May 2025
The Stirling District Asylum Archive includes an extensive set of fifty male and female case books which provide a record of the condition, behaviour and treatment of patients from 1869 to 1918. Alongside detailed case notes and photographs of patients many of the case books included enclosures – letters written by, to, or about patients. These additional documents were fixed to the pages containing the patient’s case notes by asylum staff.
A new exhibition, examining themes suggested by the visiting Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth, presents a selection of these enclosures, evidence of the control and supervision of the lives of the asylum patients. Letters written by patients to family and friends were intercepted and placed with their case notes – additional evidence of their condition and state-of-mind. Letters destined for patients from outside never reached their intended readers, more information to be added to the copious notes collected on the asylum’s inmates.
The title of this exhibition is taken from an enclosure added to a female case book for 1897. The letter writer writes to the asylum warning against the release of a patient with whom he is acquainted. In this instance his concerns were ignored by the asylum with the subject of his concern being discharged several months after this letter was received.
Dear Sir
I hope you will excuse my interference in a matter in which I am much interested, viz. the case of Mrs. Catherine Pate. I learned accidentally from Mr. Thomas Scott here, our Poor Inspector, that she is better again, and that you think of dismissing her from the asylum. I have had a very great deal to do with her during the past six year, and am alarmed at the prospect of her being cast upon the world again…
Extract from letter from Robert Lendrum to Stirling District Asylum, 20 May 1897.
Stirling District Asylum was established in 1865. The first patients were admitted in June 1869, many being transferred from asylums in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. Located in Larbert the institution was renamed Bellsdyke Hospital in 1960. The historical records of the asylum were transferred to the University of Stirling Archives in April 2012. The registers, patient case books and administrative papers of the institution provide a detailed record of the care and treatment of its patients.
The Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth is on display in the University of Stirling Library until 28 February 2025.
