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Sir William Charles Ellis (10 March 1780 – 24 October 1839) was the superintendent of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, whose ideas on the treatment of mental illness became influential.

Biography

Ellis was born in Alford, Lincolnshire. His early career was as an apothecary in Hull, but he soon took an interest in the treatment of mental disorders.^[1] This he learnt at the Sculcoates Refuge in Hull; which was run on a similar model as the York Retreat. In 1817 a William Ellis was appointed as superintendent to the newly built West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Wakefield.

A Methodist, he too had strong religious convictions and so with his wife as matron he employed the same principles of humane treatment and moral therapy as practised at Sculcoates Refuge. After 13 years their reputation had become such, that they were then invited to run the newly built first pauper asylum in Middlesex called the Hanwell Asylum.^[1] Accepting the posts, the asylum opened in May 1831. Here the Ellis's introduced their own type of "humane treatment" and moral therapy combined with "therapeutic employment".

The approach Ellis used went down well with patients: it was always voluntary and made them feel valued and appreciated, so that they could recover their self-esteem. Also, by having something with real purpose to do that helped with the care of others or help with the running of the asylum, they could not only occupy their time, but took the minds off their troubles, so that suicides became rare. By preserving their everyday life skills in this way, he made it easier for patients to pick up their lives again when they were well enough to leave, which now came sooner, because these methods speeded recovery. Ellis became famous in his own lifetime for his pioneering work and his adherence to this "Great Principle of Therapeutic Employment". He was rewarded with a knighthood.

It may be helpful to point out here that those records that appear to show poorer recovery rates than achieved today, are total patient counts. As the new asylum system grew so the number of those admitted that were always deemed 'incurable' and were quite different from the 'lunatic insane' which is what these institutions for were originally built for. The greater part of these new classes of patients were the elderly, sent by the workhouses as being ill and very close to death. Also, before the introduction of antibiotics there were other incurables such as those with tertiary syphilis and gonorrhea that came in. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, greater numbers of people suffering from epilepsy were also getting admitted. All this had the effect of considerably slewing some of the modern accounts critical of the effectiveness of these early establishments, even though there survives a great mass of comprehensive and detailed records from this period.^[2]^[3]

Ellis resigned his post at Hanwell in 1838.^[4] This came about because the visiting Justices wished to expand the capacity of the asylum again. Since the institution was wholly funded by a levy on the local rates, it was becoming of importance, in the opinion of the visiting justices, that best use be made of the assets and money spent, and that there were records and statistics to demonstrate that this was indeed being achieved. However, it required an organisational change in the way and in the detail that the asylum was managed and run.

William and his wife Mildred enjoyed being involved with all aspects of patient care and oversight of staff in order to create a "domestic" or homely environment (or as is being reinvented today as "nidotherapy").^[5]

These intended changes made it impossible for the two of them to continue to do what their heartfelt conviction demanded. He and Lady Ellis set up their own private asylum for a few ladies and gentlemen of the upper social classes, quite nearby, in the grounds of Southall Park; this being the former residence of Lord Montford.

Ellis was a very large man and plagued throughout his life by ill health. This precipitated his untimely death from dropsy just as short while later, on 24 October 1839.

References

1. ^¹Smith, Leonard D. (2004) "Ellis, Sir William Charles (1780–1839)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press {{DOI|10.1093/ref:odnb/53734}}
2. ^{{cite book |last=Bynum |first=W.F. |last2=Porter |first2=Roy |last3=Shepherd |first3=Michael |title=The anatomy of madness: Essays in the history of psychiatry. Vol III; The asylum and its psychiatry |publisher=Routledge |year=1988 |location=London |isbn=0-415-00859-X}}
3. ^London Metropolitan Archives. Accessed 5 June 2007.
4. ^The Phrenological Journal, and Magazine of Moral Science (1837). [https://www.google.com/books?id=ldU11h2SpisC&pg=PR7 The resignation of Sir W. C. Ellis]. Edinburgh, Scotland: MacLachlan, Stewart, and Co. pp. 285–286. OCLC: 7800030.
5. ^{{Cite journal |doi=10.1192/apt.11.3.232 |title=Nidotherapy: Making the environment do the therapeutic work |journal=Advances in Psychiatric Treatment |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages= 32 |year=2005 |last1=Tyrer |first1=P.}}
6. ^Ellis, William (1838) A Treatise on the Nature, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment of Insanity. Holdsworth, London (reprinted 1976 by Ayer Publishing {{ISBN|0-405-07427-1}})

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