Ticehurst House Hospital

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0120 MSS.6245-6790
Held at	: Wellcome Library   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://wellcomelibrary.org/ ›
Full title	: Ticehurst House Hospital
Date(s)	: 1787-1975
Level of description	: Collection (fonds)
Extent	: 262 volumes; 112 boxes; 101 files; 12 loose-leaf binders; 36 bundles; 84 tables, maps, deeds and similar items; and 8 bo
Name of creator(s)	: Ticehurst House Hospital
Detailed catalogue	: Click here to view repository detailed catalogue

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Ticehurst House Hospital was opened as a private lunatic asylum at Ticehurst, East Sussex, in 1792. The founder was Samuel Newington (1739-1811), who was already in practice at Ticehurst as a surgeon and apothecary. The asylum remained in the ownership of his descendants until recent times, and they continued to serve as its medical superintendents until the death of Herbert Francis Hayes Newington (1847-1917).

At first the hospital admitted a number of pauper patients as well as its more numerous private clients. However no pauper patients were admitted after 1838, and the clientèle became increasingly upper class as the century progressed. Already in the 1820s a prospectus was issued with impressive illustrations of the asylum and its grounds, which included a pagoda, a gothic summer house and an aviary for gold and silver pheasants. Later, in 1882, a newspaper report described the Ticehurst establishment as ducal, with horses and carriages, valets and liveried servants, hothouses, greenhouses, and its own pack of harriers. In keeping with this rise in social status, patients were increasingly drawn not only from Sussex, Kent, and the Home Counties, but from the whole of Great Britain and even from overseas.

In addition to Ticehurst House itself (known in the early years of the Hospital as The Establishment), the Newington family acquired a number of other properties in the vicinity for the accommodation of patients and staff. By 1827 the Hospital consisted of Ticehurst House itself, and two nearby houses, The Vineyard and The Highlands, set in pleasure grounds amounting to over forty acres. The acquisition of Brick Kiln Farm and other properties brought the total land holding to over three hundred acres by 1900.

Following the death of Herbert Francis Hayes Newington, the ownership and management structure of the Hospital was formalised by the registration of 'The Doctors Newington' in 1918 as a private unlimited company. The share capital of the company was divided equally between four trusts representing the various branches of the family: the Hayes Newington Family Trust Ltd; the Alexander Newington Trust Ltd; the Samuel Newington Family Trust Ltd; and the Herbert Newington Trust Ltd. The Hospital was run by a Board of Directors on which each of the Trusts was represented. Day to day management was the responsibility of two employees, the Secretary and, with respect to patient care, the Medical Superintendent. The dominant figure, however, until at least the 1950s, was the Chairman of the Board, Herbert Archer Hayes Newington.

In 1918 when 'The Doctors Newington' was registered as a company, its purposes were stated to be not only the management of the asylum, but also farming. The estate continued to be extensive until 1951, when it consisted of 311 acres. However a series of sales in the decade which followed, which included the disposal of Brick Kiln Farm, The Gables, Quarry Villa, and a substantial part of the land of Broomden Farm, brought a large reduction in the land holding, and the return of the Hospital to its original single function of psychiatric patient care.

The company was re-incorporated in 1967 as 'Ticehurst House Private Clinic Ltd.'. It became part of Nestor Nursing Homes Ltd. in 1974. Following this it was acquired by Westminster Healthcare and became part of the Priory Healthcare group in 2000. Information about the Priory group and its history can be found on the internet at http://www.prioryhealthcare.co.uk/.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Records of Ticehurst House Hospital, 1787-1975. Records of private asylums have had an extremely poor survival rate compared with those in the public sector, which have had the benefits of statutory protection and a greater measure of continuity. The Ticehurst House records, however, are unusually well preserved, and some of the more important series in its archive are remarkably complete. No central management or Board minutes for the asylum have been traced, and may not have been kept prior to 1918 given the informal management of the institution at that time by the Newington family. However the various categories of records kept in accordance with the lunacy legislation, including a remarkable series of casebooks, are well preserved, especially for the period 1845-1948. The Hospital and its General Manager are therefore greatly to be thanked for making these records available for research.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

Arranged in sections as follows:
MSS.6245-6283: Records relating to the Licensing, Visitation and External Supervision of the Hospital.
MSS.6284-6316: Admission records and registers of patients.
MSS.6317-6325: Records of discharges, removals, deaths and post-mortems.
MSS.6326-6360: Papers relating to individual patients: reception orders, medical certificates and medical journals for single patients.
MSS.6361-6499: Case records.
MSS.6500-6522: The Doctors Newington 1918-67, and Ticehurst House Private Clinic Ltd. 1967-74.
MSS.6523-6540: Staff Records.
MSS.6541-6553: Other administrative records.
MSS.6554-6734: Financial records.
MSS.6735-6776: Estate records.
MSS.6777-6782: Papers of the Newington family and of Colin McDowall, Medical Superintendent.
MSS.6783-6790: Prospectuses, engravings, photographs, newscuttings and miscellanea. This section includes MS.6784A.

Conditions governing access:

Material over 100 years old is available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking. Non-clinical and non-personal material under 100 years old can only be consulted with the permission of Ticehurst House Hospital. Readers should apply in writing for permission to:
The Administrator
The Priory Ticehurst House
Ticehurst
Wadhurst
EAST SUSSEX
TN6 7HU
Readers granted permission to see this type of material by the Hospital will also be asked to complete the Archives and Manuscripts department's Restricted Materials access form. Clinical or other personal material under 100 years old is closed under the provisions of the Data Protection Act. All records of any type under 30 years old are closed. The specific access conditions that apply to a particular item or group of items are set out on the database record for that item or items.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Photocopies/photographs/microfilm are supplied for private research only at the Archivist's discretion. Please note that material may be unsuitable for copying on conservation grounds, and that photographs cannot be photocopied in any circumstances. Readers are restricted to 100 photocopies in twelve months. Researchers who wish to publish material must seek copyright permission from the copyright owner.

Finding aids:

A hard copy finding aid can be consulted in the Wellcome Library. Two provisional indexes of Ticehurst Hospital patients are available. Both list residents of the asylum 1792-1917: one is arranged chronologically, by date of admission; the second provides an alphabetical guide to patient names.

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

The records here were deposited in the Wellcome Institute, now the Wellcome Library, by the General Manager of Ticehurst House Hospital in 1980 and 1990 (acc. 348316). MS.6784A and one photograph added to MS.6787 were added to the collection, transferred from the Hospital, in May 2004 (acc.1257).

Allied Materials

Related material:

Publication note:

The records of Ticehurst House have been explored in the following works:
Charlotte MacKenzie, "A family asylum: a history of the private madhouse at Ticehurst in Sussex, 1792-1917", University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1987.
Charlotte MacKenzie, "Psychiatry for the rich: a history of the private madhouse at Ticehurst in Sussex, 1792-1917", Psychological Medicine 1988, 18: 545-549.
W.L. Parry-Jones, The trade in lunacy. A study of private madhouses in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (London, 1972).
Trevor Howard Turner, "A diagnostic analysis of the casebooks of Ticehurst House Asylum, 1845-1890", University of London M.D. thesis, 1990.

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Copied from the Wellcome Library catalogue by Sarah Drewery.

Rules or conventions:
In compliance with ISAD (G): General International Standard Archival Description - 2nd Edition (1999); UNESCO Thesaurus, December 2001; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
Jan 2009