Dorset’s Private Lunatic Asylums: Cranborne, Halstock, Stockland, and the foundation of the county asylum at Forston, 1774-1860

Detailed history of the three private asylums in Dorset, established in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which provided quite different services. Placed deep in rural Dorset, their existence in small villages impacted the lives of many families and the wider community. At Halstock the Mercer family trained as surgeons and provided a service for pauper and private patients over almost 100 years. The Stockland asylum was short-lived and took in large numbers of pauper patients. Cranborne was a much more homely environment for a small number of private patients. Each asylum faced its own challenges. When the county asylum opened at Forston, and later transferred to Herrison hospital, the Dorset private asylums could no longer compete. Many of their patients were transferred to Forston and it is often through the more detailed record keeping in the county asylum that their conditions and circumstances become clear. There are records of more than 400 patients passing through the three private asylums. Their stories throw some light on the treatment of vulnerable people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which was occasionally harsh and sometimes considerate.