| Description Of Item | Printed at the top of the single-page, folded leaflet, the heading states ‘Private Lunatic Asylum Millhome House, Musselburgh district asylum for Roxburgh, Berwick and Selkirk.’ A list of employees is printed below this heading: proprietors Dr & Mrs Stockwell, consulting physician Professor [Thomas] Laycock, visiting physician Dr Scott, Resident Physician Dr Stockwell, Matron Miss Martin. Below this a printed instruction reads ‘bank drafts to be payable in Musselburgh to William Stockwell.’
In the gap between the title and name of each employee, other names have been written in ink. Notes have been written in the margins above the header and written sideways on the left and right side of the header. Every page of this leaflet is covered in writing that gets progressively larger. The references to being ‘locked up in bedlam’ suggest this might have been written by a patient at the asylum, or the words of a patient written down by someone else.
An excerpt of the writing from the cover page of the leaflet, written below the header: ‘I address myself to Mr Tomsom, P [illegible] Inspector for [illegible]; and the [illegible] h; (mister) Minister of Kelso; [youth ] Parish the; Reverend; Mr; Mc; [illegible]; I resided in; his parish; 60; years; and a good: a of [eternity] is my witness up to that time of/I never sought, I [sighle ] [t/a] single penny of the parish nor [never] [cucgst] it I worked hard.’ Continued on the next page: ‘for my own bread for 60 long [illegible] cruel cruel I think it [illegible] [illegible] : and curled most cruel; [illegible] unkind-ly unkind to keep me four long year; cruel equally 8: months locked in up in Bedlam yes four years locked up in a madhouse. And among raving luna think it hard very hard inclined I think I think I have been most […]’. |