Sir James Crichton-Browne

I am most grateful to Dr Thomas Walmsley for keeping alive the memory of Sir James Crichton-Browne (Psychiatric Bulletin, January 2003, 27, 20-22), one of the very few really outstanding Victorian asylum alienists.

Crichton-Browne was the Medical Superintendent of the West Riding Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire, for the decade 1866-76. He was the first of a succession of talented administrators cum research workers, mainly concerned with brain pathology and histology, who collectively constituted the Golden Age of British psychiatry during the second half of the 19th Century. He himself, as Dr Walmsley reports, founded and edited the West Riding Medical Reports, six volumes of which he published between 1871-76, and which were far more prestigious than the dull Journal of Mental Science, the official journal of the Medico-Psychological Association.

But his crowning achievement was to decriminalise the evil reputation surrounding the asylum — any asylum. This he did, metaphorically, by tearing down its prison-like walls and opening up its abundant clinical and laboratory facilities. For example, he instigated regular ‘Medical Conversaziones’ at the asylum, all of them well attended, and addressed by leading contemporary neurologists and alienists alike. Another innovation, which puts him decades ahead of his time, was to invite senior medical students from Leeds Medical School for demonstration and tutorials which, more often than not, he conducted himself.

It is no exaggeration to claim that due to his dynamic energy and foresight, the centre of gravity of British psychiatry during his time was shifted from London to Yorkshire, with emphasis on the triad of Leeds, Wakefield and York.

Sir James Crichton-Browne may well have been somewhat immodest, but, taking into account his mountainous contribution, he had a helluva lot to be immodest about.