St. Luke’s Hospital was a mental illness hospital in London that was established in 1750 for the treatment of poor people diagnosed with lunacy. The hospital was closed and reopened multiple times under different names until finally becoming the psychological department of Middlesex Hospital. The artifact I found most interesting is a collection of pages containing the rules and orders to be observed by the resident officers and servants with amendments. The pages appear folded and wrinkled in some places suggesting they were carried around for reference by either a resident officer or a servant. The pages look printed but have areas that were crossed out and changes were written in by hand. The servant category in the title is broken down within the pages and the specific details of each position such as matron or apothecary was written down so they knew exactly what was expected of them.

Despite the fact that Mr. Rochester was a fairly wealthy man, I wonder, if the option of sending Bertha to a mental health facility were considered, if Mr. Rochester would have sent her somewhere like St. Luke’s to prevent other people from learning about her. It seems like the asylums for the poor were underfunded and the staff were under strict instructions which limited their time with the patients and doesn’t allow staff to really learn about the patients. Therefore, sending Bertha to an asylum for the poor would prevent too many people from learning about her, but may have also been below Mr. Rochester’s standard of care for Bertha. Mental hospitals for the poor such as St. Luke’s have a history of being closed for periods of time due to lack of funding which makes one wonder about the level of care given by the facilities. People also may have been less concerned about a good standard of care due to the fact that they were treating poor people who were not viewed kindly in the Victorian Era.

It would be interesting to read doctor’s notes or patient accounts of their time spent in mental health facilities for the poor such as St. Luke’s and compare them to similar records from facilities for wealthier people. One of the other documents was a set of admission and discharge papers for St. Luke’s which means they believed at least some of their patients to be cured of their supposed “lunacy” and allowed them back into society. It would be interesting to compare them over time and see if some of the patients get re-admitted after being discharged and if facilities for the poor had a greater tendency to discharge patients due to a lack of resources. These and other documents are important to establishing the standard of care for mental health patients throughout the years and also show the discrepancies among care for the poor, middle class, and wealthy citizens.