ABSTRACT
Any reconstruction of nineteenth-century pauperism must consider the insane, who made up a rapidly increasing number of paupers and an increasing percentage of the ‘pauper host’ in the second half of the nineteenth century. Official statistics also give the numbers of insane maintained in workhouses and in other kinds of institution. From these columns of the table it is possible to trace the rise to predominance of the rate-aided county lunatic asylum. The 1842 figures, for example, cover 589 unions, while the 1865 figures cover 666 unions. More important, the total of all paupers and the sub-total of insane paupers were calculated on a different basis in 1842 and for that year the percentage must understate the proportion of total paupers who were categorised as insane. The only additional point that should be made concerns changes in the classification of mentally defective persons receiving relief under the provisions of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913.
