John Conolly

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the medical doctor; for the VC recipient, see John Augustus Conolly.

John Conolly (May 27, 1794 - March 5, 1866), English physician, was born at Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, of an Irish family.

He graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1821. After practising at Lewes, Chichester and Stratford-on-Avon successively, he was appointed professor of the practice of medicine at University College, London, in 1828. In 1830 he published a work on the Indications of Insanity, and soon afterwards settled at Warwick.

In 1832 in co-operation with Sir Charles Hastings and Sir John Forbes, he founded a small medical association with a view to raising the standard of provincial practice. In later years this grew in importance and membership, and finally became the British Medical Association.

In 1839 he was elected resident physician to the Middlesex County Asylum at Hanwell (now known as West London Mental Health NHS Trust's St Bernard's Hospital). In this capacity he made his name famous by carrying out in its entirety and on a large scale the principle of non-restraint in the treatment of the insane. This principle had been acted on in two small asylums--William Tuke's Retreat near York, and the Lincoln Asylum; but it was due to the energy of Conolly in sweeping away all mechanical restraint in the great metropolitan lunatic hospital, in the face of strong opposition, that the principle became diffused over the whole kingdom, and accepted as fundamental.

In 1844 he ceased to be resident physician at Hanwell, but remained visiting physician until 1852.

He married Elizabeth Collins by whom he had three children. Their only son Edward Tennyson was born whilst he was working at Chichester down in Sussex. Edward became a successful lawyer having been called to the Bar on 30 January 1852. However, in 1865 he emigrated with his family to Picton, New Zealand. There he continued to practice law and became very active in politics. Following his fathers concerns for humaine treatment of the incarcerated he introduced the teaching of trades to prisoners. He died in Auckland in 1908.^[1]

John Conolly's elder daughter Sophia Jane married Thomas Harrington Tuke in 1852. He ran a private Lunatic Asylum at Manor House, Chiswick, Middlesex. (This Tuke it must be noted is not related to the Tukes of the York Retreat.)^[2]

John's youngest Ann, eventually married Henry Maudsley when she was thirty six and only two months before her fathers death. He died on the 5th of March 1866 at Hanwell, where in the later part of his life he had a private asylum called Lawn house. Henry Maudsley, had by then taken over the running of Lawn house. Ann died on 9th February 1911 at the age of 81.^[3]

His works include:

• Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums (1847)
• The Indications of Insanity with an introduction by Richard Hunter and Ida MacAlpine. Psychiatric Monograph Series 4 (reprint: Dawsons, London, 1964)
• The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraints (1856)^[4]
• Essay on Hamlet (1863)

[edit] References

1. ^ Bassett, Judith. Conolly, Edward Tennyson 1822 - 1908. Biography, Dictionary of New Zealand updated 7 April 2006; last accessed: 28th June 2006
2. ^ Roberts, Andrew (1981) The 1832 Madhouse Act and the Metropolitan Commission in Lunacy from 1832 Middlesex University. Last accessed 28th June 2006
3. ^ (1988) "Chapter 6", in ed: Bynum, W F; Porter, Roy; Shepard, Michael: The anatomy of madness. Volume 3, The Asylum and its Psychiatry. (Hardback), London, England & New York, USA: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-00859-X. 
4. ^ Universität Hamburg: The treatment of the insane without mechanical restraints. (1856) Historische texte zur behindertenpädagogik 22 Mb Tiff image document; last accessed 2006-09-17

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.