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What was it like in the asylumWhat treatments?Were there any children there?Quiz

What Treatments Were Given?

Asylum nurse

Find out about the treatments used to try to cure patients by reading the fact file and looking at original casenotes about a girl called Elizabeth. You can also print the sources and try the worksheets.

Sadly we don't have a photograph of Elizabeth, perhaps you can imagine how she might have looked?

What do you think?

  • What do you notice about Elizabeth’s behaviour from looking at the casebook?
  • How do you think Elizabeth would have reacted to her treatment at first?
  • Do you think her stay at the asylum helped her in any way?

Printable worksheets and source material:

Why Were People Admitted?:
worksheet | source material

Punishment or Games and Activities?:
worksheet | source material

What Happened to Elizabeth?:
worksheet | source material

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  1. Some of the treatments given in the asylum seem strange today - bleeding and purging with leeches, mustard plasters, footbaths, chops and beer were all used.
  2. Some of the more horrible treatments included muzzles to stop patients biting the nurses and a revolving chair which the patient was strapped in and spun around at 100 revolutions a minute.
  3. The West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum was one of the first to adopt employment as a way of helping people get better. Patients worked on the wards and in the asylum bakery, laundry, brewery and farm.
  4. Elizabeth was 12 when she was admitted and was working as a rag picker.
  5. Elizabeth would have been expected to clean, sew, wash and iron for 6 or 7 hours a day. By 1868 when she would have been 16, she is described as working industriously in the wards. A success story for the asylum!
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