The Royal India Asylum was a

lunatic asylum The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved from and eventually replace ...

operated by the

Secretary of State for India His (or Her) Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for India, known for short as the India secretary or the Indian secretary, was the British Cabinet minister and the political head of the India Office responsible for the governance of ...

Ealing Ealing () is a district in west London (sub-region), west London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. It is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Pl ...

between 1870 and 1892. The asylum occupied Elm Grove in Ealing. The Entrance Lodge was on the south-west corner of

Ealing Common Ealing Common is a large open space (approx ) in Ealing, West London. Boundaries The Ealing Common Area is bounded by Ealing, Ealing Town Centre to the west, North Ealing and Hanger Hill to the north, Acton, London, Acton to the east and So ...

Overview

In March 1870, the Secretary of State for India bought the Elm Grove estatehttps://littleealinghistory.org.uk/node/87 from the Perceval family for £24,500.

Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (28 July 1820 – 21 May 1877) was a British architect and art historian who became Secretary of the Great Exhibition, Surveyor of the East India Company and the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Camb ...

then oversaw the conversion of the property into a lunatic asylum for patients sent home from

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

. The new Royal Indian Asylum opened in August 1870,Margaret Makepeace, Lead Curator, East India Company Records
“The Royal Indian Asylum and the building of the railway at Ealing”
9 January 2013. Text was copied from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 7: Acton, Chiswick, Ealing and Brentford, West Twyford, Willesden (1982)
Ealing and Brentford: Public services
Pages 147–149, accessed 11 September 2008 taking in patients previously looked after in the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

’s Asylum at Pembroke House, London. One such was Captain John Dibbs (1790–1872). In 1874 the

India Office The India Office was a British government department in London established in 1858 to oversee the administration of the Provinces of India, through the British viceroy and other officials. The administered territories comprised most of the mo ...

was given notice that the proposed Hounslow and Metropolitan Railway was to run through the grounds of the Asylum. An Act to give effect to this was enacted in 1878, with provisions to protect the interests of the Royal Indian Asylum: a

compulsory purchase Compulsion, Compulsive, Compelling, or Compulsory may refer to: Psychology * Compulsive behavior, a psychological condition in which a person does a behavior compulsively, having an overwhelming feeling that they must do so. * Obsessive–compu ...

was limited to no more than two acres, unless the Secretary of State consented; the railway would go through the grounds in cutting; a bridge and road over the cutting were to be built and maintained; and the railway was to be fenced off. Negotiations between the India Office and the railway centred on the price to be paid for the land, the position of the bridge, and the fencing. Dr Thomas Christie, the Superintendent of the Asylum, was consulted about the protection to be given to patients. It was agreed that an iron railing would serve the purpose and look better than the high brick wall planned by the railway company. Christie believed that patients were less likely to climb an open railing than a wall they could not see over. Bars should be vertical, except at the top and bottom, to discourage climbing. The land was conveyed in 1881. The asylum closed in 1892. After

Leopold de Rothschild Leopold de Rothschild (22 November 1845 – 29 May 1917) was a British banker, thoroughbred race horse breeder, and a member of the prominent Rothschild family. Biography Early life Leopold de Rothschild was the third son and youngest of t ...

had bought the estate for building, Elm Grove was demolished in 1894.

Overview

References

See also