The Lunatics Collar
RECORDS OF WOODHALL SPA and NEIGHBOURHOOD;
HISTORICAL, ANECDOTAL, PHYSIOGRAPHICAL,
AND ARCHÆOLOGICAL,with OTHER MATTERS by J. CONWAY WALTER,
Extract...
"Here is another odd circumstance. We now have our splendid county asylums for our lunatics, but the writer can remember the case of an unfortunate lunatic who was kept chained to the kitchen fire-place in a house in Horncastle, was never unchained, and slept on the brick floor. At Horsington the parish officers made special provision for the insane. In the parish chest there was, until quite recently, [159] a brass collar, to which was attached a chain for securing the unfortunate individual by the neck. The writer was lately informed by an old Horsington man, over 80 years of age, that the last occasion on which this collar was used was early in the 19th century. A villager then residing near the present blacksmith’s shop, and named Joe Kent, had two insane daughters, who had a very strong antipathy to each other, so that they had always to be kept apart, or they would have killed each other. My informant took me to what formerly was the garden of Kent’s house, and pointed out two spots where these two unfortunate creatures were, in fine weather, chained to the wall, one by the neck and the other by the waist, about 15 yards apart. When within doors they were similarly secured in separate rooms, treatment, surely, which was calculated to aggravate rather than alleviate their afflictions, but those were days in which rough remedies were too often resorted to".
Footnote:
This collar disappeared about the year 1887, but was recovered in 1902.