| Description Of Item | Three leaflets relating to a patient known as Miss Moffat. Two leaflets relating to a patient known as Neilson. One leaflet relating to a patient known as William Powers – on the back of this leaflet ‘juvenile insanity’ is written and underlined. From the collection of Thomas Laycock.
Notes mention her ‘family and relatives appear to have been rather weak minded’ and that Miss Moffat started manifesting ‘abnormal mental symptoms when about 14 or 15 years of age’ and is now aged about 28 years old. Laycock notes that she eloped in Aberdeen when 15 or 16 years of age and that her ‘relatives had to watch her closely to prevent her doing outrageous things.’ Laycock notes that Miss Moffat is overly affectionate with strangers, uses improper language when talking to men, and thinks highly of her own appearance and station in life. She is ‘rather incoherent’ and ‘rarely finishes a sentence’. Laycock concludes ‘She insists that she is not the Miss Moffat who has done the acts for which she has been confined. A sinking sensation in the Praecordia is complained of; but no [illegible] no headache and no dropsy. The emotional excitement is increased at menstruation.’
In notes for a patient referred to only as ‘Neilson’, aged 13 years of age, Laycock notes that ‘a machine went over her head when she was about 3 years of age. After this accident she became irritable and incoherent. She threatens and attacks her [illegible] & without the least provocation or warning destroys her clothes […] and rolls about from one side to the other.’
In notes for the patient William Powers, Laycock writes that William is 19 years of age and has been ‘under treatment’ for 5 years. Laycock notes that both parents were drunkards, and that William had been sent to ‘learn a business’ when he was a young boy – ‘but was arrested for acts of kleptomania.’ A sheriff recommended that William be committed to an asylum, where he steals the property of ‘fellow patients, picks pockets, lies, and fights (unless controlled) fights upon the slightest provocation.’
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