OUTSIDE THE ASYLUM

Can you help George Marshall Medical Museum with a spot of family history research to find out about some people who were admitted to the Worcester City and County Lunatic Asylum in the 19th century?

Our aim is to share more patients’ stories, and to find out about their lives before admission and (where possible) after discharge.

esther crouch

find out more about esther crouch

Esther Crouch was born in 1821 in Dinedor, Herefordshire. She was baptised on 6 April, when her name was listed as Hester. She made her first appearance in the census records in 1841, still living in Dinedor, with her parents Richard and Mary, and her younger siblings John, Thomas and Eliza. Unusually, although she was nineteen years old, no occupation is listed, and one can only assume that she stayed at home and helped her mother run the house and look after the younger children.

By the 1851 census, Esther was married to gamekeeper John Crouch, living in Wootton Warren and with two young children. In the 1861 census, the family, now with six children, was living in Alcester, and in 1871, in Oversley, with two more children born since the previous census. In 1881, with only three children left at home, the family was now at Upton Warren.

A few days after the 1881 census was taken, Esther, aged 60, was admitted to the Powick Lunatic Asylum. Her admission notes record that she had been ‘eccentric for years’, since being shot in the head fourteen years previously. The notes do not record what treatment she had received for this injury, nor the severity, beyond the fact that she received several shotgun pellets to her head.

One would expect that an injury of this sort would have been reported to the police, and possibly be noted in a local newspaper. However, Esther’s name does not appear to have been indexed in the British Newspaper Archive. Her husband’s does, and since he was a gamekeeper, the natural suspicion is that he was somehow involved in this incident. Unfortunately, checking the local newspapers in which his name appears reveals that all of these cases were concerned with him giving evidence at petty sessions against poachers.

It is something to be wondered at that the doctors at the asylum did not appear to be much interested in an accident that may have been the cause of Esther’s mental agitation. Apart from her head injury, she was said to be ‘in fair health and bodily condition’, although it was noted that she had varicose veins and a prolapsed uterus. Again, there is no record of any treatment for these conditions.

Esther’s mental condition was reported in much greater detail. ‘She is in a state of Melancholia: her countenance is anxious & depressed: & she appears to rouse herself with an effort to answer questions: she speaks in a low, nervous manner, & seems unable to settle down to any occupation, but is restless & perturbed; she has delusions about people in the roof who annoy her, & hallucinations of hearing: she frequently asserts that she is about to die, & is apprehensive of all kinds of imaginary ills.’

Several times the medical record notes that Esther maintains that her name is Stephens, not Crouch. This seems to be used as an indication of her mental incapacity, but it was in fact the truth. Stephens was her maiden name. Perhaps Esther should have been considered as a dementia patient, rather than a lunatic.

Esther died late in 1900, still in the asylum. Her husband had died in 1889 and her five sons married and reproduced. Not so her daughters. Her oldest daughter Mary Agnes became a nun and died in Paris in 1916. Her youngest daughter, Mary Ann, does not appear in the 1881, 1891 or 1901 censuses, but in the 1911 census she is listed as working as a cook for the priests of St George’s Catholic Church in Sansome Place in Worcester. Middle daughter Winifred disappears after the 1871 census. No trace of a marriage of a woman with her name and date and place of birth has been found, nor of a death in that name, and no further census appearances have been traced. Searches of immigration and court records have also proved negative.

A descendant of Esther’s son Richard has compiled a very full family tree, which contains much information about his siblings. It can be accessed by searching in Ancestry for Richard Stephen Crouch (born in Wootton Warren in 1853).

Research by Cathy Broad, 2024.

To view Esther’s patient records, click here.

Go back to find out about more people who were patients at the asylum.