People with intellectual disability at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum: humanizing photographs, stories and narratives from the casebooks, 1890–1920

Abstract

In the medical literature of South Africa in the early twentieth century, Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees published a dehumanized portrayal of people with intellectual disability (PWID) who were institutionalized at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum. To restore the humanity of the institutionalized patients, the asylum’s casebooks provide a valuable resource. To this end, the article investigates the casebook entries and photographs to explore the humanity of PWID. The investigation of the casebooks follows Ariella Azoulay’s call for us to engage with, and retrieve, the stories of the photographed PWID that tell of times before and after their admittal to the asylum, of multiple spaces in and beyond the asylum, and by including the various roles and positions that they performed in the asylum’s body politic. These stories are enriched by adopting a disability mode of analysis.

Keywords:

• Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum
• Thomas Duncan Greenlees
• casebooks
• people with intellectual disability
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Notes

1 Kittay, “Equality, Dignity and Disability,” 95.

2 Hans, “Introduction,” 3.

3 I use the term people with intellectual disability (PWID) to refer to the patients of the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum who were diagnosed with imbecility and idiocy. I preserve the nineteenth-century term ‘imbecile’ when quoting directly from the casebooks. When speaking about the patients, I identify them by their first names to foreground an emphasis on their individuality. This approach to the use of terminology and naming was adopted from Licia Carlson’s The Faces of Intellectual Disability.

4 In the late nineteenth century, Grahamstown was a commercial settlement with close proximity to the eastern border of the Cape Colony. It was populated by British colonial settlers, as well as by the amaXhosa who were forced off their land by the colonisers. Grahamstown is presently known as Makhanda.

5 Hodes, “Kink and the Colony.”

6 Greenlees, “The Etiology, Symptoms and Treatment,” 21.

7 Ibid., 20.

8 Greenlees, On the Threshold, 37.

9 Greenlees, “The Etiology, Symptoms and Treatment.”

10 Ibid., 21.

11 Greenlees, Insanity, 19.

12 Greenlees and Purvis, “Friedreich's Paralysis.”

13 Ibid., 135.

14 Elks, “Visual Rhetoric.”

15 Ibid., 16.

16 Jackson, “Changing Depictions of Disease,” 168.

17 Jackson, “Images of Deviance,” 327.

18 Ibid., 337.

19 Elks, “Visual Rhetoric.”

20 Ibid.

21 Watson, “Precarious Memory,” 70.

22 Jarrett, Those They Called Idiots, 8.

23 Du Plessis, Pathways of Patients.

24 Du Plessis, “The Janus-Faced”; Du Plessis, “The life Stories.”

25 Rembis, Kudlick, and Nielsen, “Introduction,” 12.

26 Du Plessis, “Beyond A Clinical.”

27 Elks, “Visual Rhetoric,” 182–83.

28 Brookes, “Pictures of People,” 55

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., 50.

31 Stevenson, “Looking Away,” 8.

32 Brookes, “Pictures of People,” 31.

33 The asylum’s casebooks were kept up to date from the commencement of Greenlees’s tenure in 1890. By 1920, the casebooks were replaced by case files for each patient.

34 Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead?”; and Nielsen, “The Perils and Promises.”

35 Nielsen, “The Perils and Promises,” 16.

36 Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead?,” 154.

37 Du Plessis, Pathways of Patients.

38 Glew, “Documenting Insanity,” 27.

39 Du Plessis, Pathways of Patients.

40 Du Plessis, Pathways of Patients.

41 Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum Casebooks, Western Cape Archives and Records Service (hereafter cited as HGM) Volume 24, 49. The article makes extensive use of quotes and information obtained from the casebooks. Thus, to avoid repetitive and identical citations in my discussion, I only cite the first instance in which a casebook reference is used.

42 Nielsen, “The Perils and Promises,” 6.

43 Ibid., 3.

44 Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead?,” 139.

45 Brilmyer, “Towards Sickness,” 38.

46 Jarrett, Those They Called Idiots, 15.

47 Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead?,” 155.

48 Brilmyer, “Towards Sickness.”

49 Brookes, “Pictures of People,” 36.

50 Ibid., 45.

51 Rawling, “Patient Photographs.”

52 Elks, “Visual Rhetoric,” 184.

53 Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead?,” 153.

54 Logan, “Imitations of Insanity.”

55 Azoulay, Potential History, 25.

56 Ibid., 19.

57 HGM Volume 3, 132.

58 Azoulay, Potential History, 25.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 28.

61 Edwards, Raw Histories, 13.

62 Stevenson, “Looking Away,” 7.

63 Jordanova, “Portraits, Patients and Practitioners”; Rawling, “‘The Annexed Photos’,” 259; and Rawling, “Patient Photographs,” 243.

64 Bogdan and Taylor, “Relationships with Severely Disabled People,” 142.

65 Nelson, “What Child Is This?,” 30.

66 Ibid. It is certain that future investigators of the casebooks will tell different stories based on elements that are of interest to them. Thus the analysis and the findings of the study will always be open to alternative and competing interpretations that arise from further scholarship and future investigations of the asylum’s casebooks.

67 Nicholas, “A Debt to the Dead?,” 154.

68 Nelson, “What Child Is This?,” 32.

69 Kittay, “When Caring Is Just,” 560.

70 Ibid., 568.

71 Moss and Dyck, Women, Body, Illness, 8.

72 Nielsen, “The Perils and Promises,” 9.

73 Ibid., 8.

74 Ibid., 15.

75 For an in-depth discussion of how a patient’s institutionalization was influenced by their demographic profile, see Du Plessis, Pathways of Patients.

76 Brilmyer, “Towards Sickness.”

77 HGM Volume 4, 31.

78 Bogdan, Picturing Disability, 144.

79 Rawling, “‘The Annexed Photos’,” 268.

80 Ibid.

81 Eastoe, Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity; and Rawling, “‘The Annexed Photos’.”

82 Greenlees, On the Threshold, 36.

83 Monk, “Exploiting Patient Labour.”

84 HGM Volume 3, 105.

85 Monk, “Exploiting Patient Labour,” 91.

86 Ibid.

87 HGM Volume 11, 161.

88 HGM Volume 3, 105.

89 Du Plessis, Pathways of Patients.

90 Monk, “Exploiting Patient Labour,” 91.

91 HGM Volume 10, 98.

92 HGM Volume 10, 56.

93 HGM Volume 10, 76.

94 HGM Volume 8, 219.

95 HGM Volume 11, 35.

96 HGM Volume 15, 46.

97 HGM Volume 5, 130.

98 Du Plessis, Pathways of Patients.

99 Colonial Office Correspondence, Western Cape Archives and Records Service. CO 7794, 08 August 1904.

100 Ibid.

101 As under-resourced facilities, the PAA and the FBA did not have the means to supply more than the minimum standards of care. Both facilities recorded high numbers of patient injuries, accidents and deaths. See Du Plessis Pathways of Patients, 161.

102 HGM Volume 2, 239.

103 HGM Volume 4, 17.

104 HGM Volume 2, 1.

105 HGM Volume 4, 15.

106 HGM Volume 4, 17.

107 HGM Volume 5, 130.

108 Kittay, “Equality, Dignity and Disability,” 117.

109 Kittay, “Caring for the Long Haul,” 82.

110 Kittay, “At the Margins,” 129.

111 Campt, Listening to Images, 72.

112 Ibid., 9.

113 HGM Volume 18, 117.

114 Rawling, “Patient Photographs.”

115 Rawling, “‘She sits all day’.”

116 HGM Volume 20, 36.

117 HGM Volume 20, 34.

118 HGM Volume 20, 15.

119 HGM Volume 20, 7.

120 HGM Volume 17, 84.

121 Although the doctors did not report on the women’s mental health, they perpetuated a pathologizing gaze by commonly characterising the women to have “limited intelligence,” see HGM Volume 20, 31.

122 Brilmyer, “Towards Sickness,” 28.

123 Ibid., 36.

124 Jarrett, Those They Called Idiots, 306-307.

125 Brilmyer, “Towards Sickness,” 38.

126 HGM Volume 17, 102.

127 Greenlees, “The Etiology, Symptoms and Treatment,” 18.

128 HGM Volume 21, 101.

129 HGM Volume 17, 79.

130 HGM Volume 16, 7.

131 HGM Volume 21, 33.

132 HGM Volume 22, 135.

133 Ibid.

134 Clarke, “Opening Closed Doors,” 475.

135 HGM Volume 22, 93.

136 HGM Volume 16, 51.

137 HGM Volume 24, 49.

138 HGM Volume 21, 55.

139 HGM Volume 22, 64.

140 Bogdan and Taylor, “Relationships with Severely Disabled People,” 144.

141 HGM Volume 16, 101.

142 HGM Volume 23, 173.

143 HGM Volume 21, 87.

144 Kittay, “When Caring Is Just,” 568.

145 Sidlauskas, “Inventing the Medical Portrait.”

146 Du Plessis, “Beyond A Clinical.”

147 Brilmyer, “Towards Sickness,” 27.

148 Edwards, “Thinking Photography,” 41.

149 Ibid., 38.

150 Kudlick, “Why We Need,” 764.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rory du Plessis

Rory du Plessis is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Studies at the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria. He is the co-editor of the academic journal, Image & Text, and author of Pathways of patients at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, 1890 to 1907 (Pretoria University Law Press 2020).