By the By: Normalisation and De-Institutionalisation in Nineteenth Century Scotland, I

Abstract

It was with some relief that, eight or nine years ago, I gave up trying to read the literature on normalisation, de-institutionalisation and related concepts. There was just too much of it. I seem to remember that reviewers usually began their articles with respectful nods towards Nirje (1969), Bank-Mikkelsen (1969) and Wolfensberger (1972). And some readers might come to believe that these gentlemen, along with others, somehow invented normalisation and de-institutionalisation, and helped to put the principles into practice. Maybe so. I’m not for one minute belittling their achievements. All I want to do in this piece is to draw attention to a slim book by a remarkable man called Arthur Mitchell which was published in Edinburgh in 1864. Here we have to pause for the usual apologies: many of the terms used in those days have long been dumped in the mental health cellar. Only when I use quotes will they re-appear. Mitchell was born in Elgin in 1826. He studied medicine in Aberdeen, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. At the time his book appeared – The Insane in Private Dwellings – he was one of two Deputy Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland. A polymath, his abiding interest was in mental illness and learning disability, particularly among the ‘pauper insane’. He died in 1909. Michell strongly believed and persuasively argued that many patients in institutions should be transferred to private dwellings for two main reasons: it was therapeutically preferable and it was cost effective.