Tag Archives: Mary Watson

Dundee, Institutions, Lunatic Asylums, Scotland

Lunatic Asylums in Scotland

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In the 1871 census in the United Kingdom, categories of disability were added to the census questions. These categories included the deaf and dumb, blind, imbecile or idiot, and lunatic.1 Imbecile, idiot, and lunatic are pejorative terms today but in the 19th century, they were medical terms used to indicate mental health conditions. Idiots and imbeciles had learning disabilities. Lunacy was a term used broadly to denote anyone with a mental illness.2

James Kinnear Orrock, my 2X great-uncle, was committed to the Dundee Royal Lunatic Asylum on December 9, 1888. Superintendent James Rorie declared that he was a pauper and that he was delusional.  James’ mother, Mary Watson, my 2X great-grandmother, requested that he be committed.4 Not unlike today, the police were involved. A constable declared that he had been violent and incoherent. It is obvious from the notice of admissions that James was experiencing psychotic episodes.

Westgreen Asylum, Liff, Dundee, Scotland in 1897, Westgreen Asylum, Liff, Dundee, Scotland in 1897

James was just 30 when he was admitted to the asylum. Sadly, he remained there until his death in 1930 when he was 72.5 It is distressing that he lived in this institution more than half his life. While little was known about mental illness at the time, the asylum offered the patients safety and hope. Specialist registrar Amy Macaskill states “What is clear is that they wanted to offer a degree of care and protection and containment for people who were causing difficulty at home and were in some level of distress.”6 The asylums cared for people who were depressed, anxious, delusional, as well as those suffering from other conditions such as epilepsy, alcoholism, and syphilis.7

The Dundee Royal Lunatic Asylum had separate quarters for men and women. The pauper wards for men each had a day room, with a number of single rooms with windows overlooking the airing court. The windows provided the only ventilation. The rooms were not heated but there were open fire places in the corridors. There were weaver shops in a separate building where some patients made packing cloth. Male patients also did stone breaking and some worked on the grounds. They were paid with tobacco and beer. There was a billiard room and dancing parties for the patients, attended by both men and women. A chaplain provided services on Sundays.8

When James was admitted, he was certified a pauper lunatic. This certification gave him access to psychiatric care, but it does not necessarily mean that he was a pauper. His admission records indicate that he was a seaman and he could have been gainfully employed. The Board of Governors of the asylums assessed each patient’s finances. If any financial assistance was required, then the patient was declared a pauper. If the patient or their family was assessed as being able to entirely finance their own care, they were classified as private patients. Private patients benefitted from better food, were able to wear their own clothes, and could be discharged if the person paying for their care wanted their discharge. Unfortunately, while a technical and legal label, the term “pauper lunatic” carried a stigma and deterred people from seeking help.9

We have come a long way in our care for those suffering from mental illness since the 19th century. The Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1857 formed mental health law in Scotland from 1857 until 1913. Its purpose was to provide official oversight of mental health institutions and to ensure that they were adequately funded.10

  1. Scotland’s People, Census Records, 1871 Census, https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/census-records/1871-census#1871%20instructions, accessed 1 November 2023.
  2. Historic England, Disability History Glossary, https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/about-the-project/glossary/, accessed 1 November 2023
  3. Notice of Admissions, Royal Dundee Lunatic Asylum, Notice of Admissions, James Orrock, retrieved 22 March 2023
  4. James Rorie went on to write the History of the Dundee Royal Lunatic Asylum
  5. Scotland’s People, 1891, 1901, 1911, 1921 censuses, John Orrock, accessed 20 November 2023.
  6. BC News, Archives reveal life in Edinburgh and Inverness asylums, 7 January 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-20938462, accessed 21 November 2023.
  7. National Records of Scotland, From the NRS Archives, Servicemen in Scotland’s Asylums, 1918, 10 January 2019, https://blog.nrscotland.gov.uk/2019/01/10/from-the-nrs-archives-servicemen-in-scotlands-asylums-august-1918/, accessed 22 November 2023.
  8. Scottish Indexes, Institution Information – Dundee Royal Infirmary, https://www.scottishindexes.com/institutions/19.aspx, accessed 22 November 2023.
  9. Royal College of Psychiatrists, Pauper lunatics were not paupers, 23 February 2022, https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/blogs/detail/history-archives-and-library-blog/2022/02/23/pauper-lunatics, accessed 21 November 2023.
  10. Wikipedia, Lunacy (Scotland) Act 1857, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunacy_(Scotland)_Act_1857, accessed 22 November 2023.
Dundee, Genealogy, Institutions, Scotland

Great Uncle James Went to Reform School

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James Orrock, my two-times great-grandfather, was a farm labourer in Scotland in the mid 1800s. Agricultural labourers did not work all their lives on one farm. It was common for farm servants, both men and women, to attend farm hiring fairs. They would then hire themselves out to the highest bidder.1

Hiring Fair

According to the 1851 census, James worked on a farm in the village of Marykirk, Kincardineshire.2 His wife-to-be, also a farm servant, worked on a different farm located in the same village. They married two years later. By then they had moved to Kirken, in County Angus.3 Mary and James went on to have seven children and it is no surprise that their children were born in different villages, as James would have moved from job to job, always as a farm servant. The various censuses indicate that James worked as a ploughman, farm servant, or agricultural labourer. His family followed him as he moved for work. In 1863, their daughter, Martha Linn died of small pox at the age of three.4 Two years later tragedy struck again when James died at the age of 33 from tuberculosis.5

When Mary became a widow, her situation would have been precarious. James had been sick for a long time and had been unable to work. Mary had to find a way to provide for her children. Farm servants were usually lodged at the farm where they worked. Families often had small dwellings, with a small yard, where they could have a garden and a henhouse.  With the death of James, Mary would have also lost her home. It is no surprise that she moved to Arbroath, perhaps in the hope of working in the jute and sailcloth mills. At the time of James’ death, demand for jute was high due to the American Civil War6 and work was available in the mills. Mary would soon learn that, while Arbroath provided employment, it also provided additional worries about her son, James.

The 1871 census shows Mary living with four of her six remaining children in Arbroath.7 Her eldest son, Alexander, 17, worked as a farm servant in a village about 10 km away, in Kirkden.8 Ann and Jemima, 16 and 14, would have been working. David and Jane were in school. But where was James, only 12 at the time?

I found James in the 1871 census listed as an inmate at the Mars Training Ship for Homeless and Destitute Boys, about 35 km away from his family.9 This ship was moored on the river Tay at Woodhaven Harbour, Wormit, Fife from 1869 to 1929.10

The HMS Mars was built in 1848 and saw military service in the Crimean War. Deemed surplus in 1869, it became a training ship with space for 400 boys with the objective to take destitute and homeless boys off the streets of Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow and train them for service in the Royal Navy or the Merchant Marine at their discharge at age 16.11 

The Mars Training Ship was an initiative put forth by Lord Provost William Hay and members of the elite. Truancy and vagrancy were rife in the cities of Scotland, due to overcrowding, unemployment, and poverty. The inmates of the Mars were often picked up for truancy or for begging and were sent to the training ship for five years by magistrates. The boys were poor, orphans, beggars, or homeless or sometimes they had just fallen in with the wrong crowd.12

Mars Training Ship Institution 13

The move from farm life to a bigger urban centre would have been difficult for James. He was 12 when he shows up as an inmate in the Mars Training Ship and he was probably sent there at the age of 10 or 11. There is no way to know why he ended up there. We know that his family was poor. It is probable that he wandered the streets while his mother and two sisters worked long hours in the jute mills. He may have been a difficult child as he suffered from mental illness later on in life.14

The Mars Training School was an industrial school, as opposed to a reform school. The boys did not have a criminal record; however, in some ways they were prisoners. All of the boys were very poor and many of them were homeless. For those who did have homes, they were deliberately given very little opportunity to maintain connections with family and friends.15

Upon arrival on the ship, a medical officer examined the boys once they were stripped. The children then washed, put on their uniforms, and were assigned a number. From then on, they were only referred to by their number. Even the boys called each other by their numbers.16

The day on the Mars ship would begin early, at 5:30 a.m. The boys scrubbed the deck, had breakfast, and then said their prayers. In the morning they learned English, arithmetic, geography, and music. The afternoons were dedicated to practical skills such as shoe repairing, clothing and sail-making, woodworking, metalworking, tailoring and seamanship. The boys were attended by doctors and dentists and were well fed. There was less disease onboard than in the crowded and unsanitary cities of Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. To further reduce the chance of disease, the boys would make an annual trip to Elie, a coastal town, allowing a skeleton crew to fumigate and clean the ship. 17

James would have been discharged from the ship when he was 16. Records of his later life did, indeed, indicate that he worked as a seaman.18

  1. https://www.historyscotland.com/history/farm-servants-and-the-hiring-fairs/, accessed 15 March 2023. Picture of the engraving of a hiring fair courtesy of History Scotland website.
  2. National Records of Scotland, 1851 census, Parish of Marykirk, County of Kincardineshire, James Orrock, Scotland’s People, downloaded 27 March 2023.
  3. National Records of Scotland, Old Parish Registers, Church of Scotland marriages, Kirken, James Orrock and Mary Watson, Scotland’s People, downloaded 27 March 2018.
  4. National Records of Scotland, 1863 Deaths, Parish of Dunnichen, County of Forfar, Martha Linn Orrock, Scotland’s People, downloaded 8 March 2023.
  5. National Records of Scotland, 1865 Deaths, Parish of Dunnichen, County of Forfar, James Orrock, Scotland’s People, downloaded 9 April 2018.
  6. The Textile Industry of Arbroath since the Early 18th Century, Turner, W.H.K., The Abertay Historical Society, 1941, p.15
  7. National Records of Scotland, 1871 census, St. Vigeans, Arbroath, Mary Orrock (Watson), Scotland’s People, downloaded 16 March 2023.
  8. National Records of Scotland, 1871 census, Kirkden, Angus, Alexander Orrock, Scotland’s People, downloaded 23 March 2023.
  9. National Records of Scotland, 1871 census, Woodhaven, Forgan, Fife, 1871 census, James Orrock, Scotland’s People, downloaded 15 March 2023.
  10. Wikipedia, HMS Mars, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mars_(1848)#:~:text=HMS%20Mars%20was%20a%20two,July%201848%20at%20Chatham%20Dockyard.&text=She%20served%20as%20a%20supply,the%20River%20Tay%2C%20off%20Woodhaven, accessed 19 April 2023.
  11. The Mars Training Ship and Elie, Gordon Douglas, 13 January 2017, https://www.eliehistory.com/uncategorised/mars-training-ship-elie-gordon-douglas/, accessed 23 March 2023.
  12. Maritime Trail Dundee, Mars Training Ship, https://www.dundeemaritime.co.uk/Mars, accessed 23 March 2023.
  13. The Herald Scotland, From Mars to Dundee: The prison ship that shaped generations, Ron McKay, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17996129.mars-dundee-prison-ship-shaped-generations/, accessed 24 March 2023.
  14. General Registers of Admissions in Lunatic Asylums, 1888, James Orrock, downloaded 22 March 2023.
  15. Whyte, Christine, HMS Mars: An industrial school in the late 19th century, Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care, Volume 20.2, https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/84204/1/Whyte_SJRCC_2021_HMS_Mars_an_industrial_school.pdf, accessed 11 April 2023.
  16. Ibid
  17. The Mars Training Ship and Elie, Gordon Douglas, 13 January 2017, https://www.eliehistory.com/uncategorised/mars-training-ship-elie-gordon-douglas/, accessed 24 March 2023
  18. National Records of Scotland, 1930 Deaths, Parish of Liff and Benvie, County of Angus, James Orrock, Scotland’s People, downloaded 8 March 2023.