In a conversation with a friend who works in a large mental hospital in Cambridge I was told that patients suffering from epilepsy were not admitted to mental institutions. Rather, they are treated in mental hospitals that specialise in their treatment. I found this interesting, because I have lists of several thousands of patients at the Worcester City and County Pauper Lunatic Asylum (later Powick Mental Hospital) and from 1852 until 1920, the institution operated using what was termed ‘Moral Treatment’.
In 1908 Dr. Henry Felix Fenton was appointed as a Medical Officer at this hospital. In the next 12 years he applied the Moral Treatment approach, and in this time he was promoted. In late 1916, he became a Senior Medical Officer in the institution, and in 1919 he was appointed as Medical Superintendent.
In the 1870s, whilst working at Powick Asylum, Dr. Fenton came in contact with Dr. Robert Chivers Graves, who had fleetingly been Director of the new Herefordshire Asylum when it first opened at Burghill, 1872. After this Dr. Graves became an important influence over Dr. Fenton. Indeed, this influence led him to completely disregard the twelve years experience he had treating patients at Powick using ‘Moral Treatment’, and instead, he used Graves new approach called ‘Focal Sepsis’. Graves became medical superintendent of the Rubery Hill and Hollymoor Hospitals, Birmingham, and he used this new approach to treat patients there. The approach was based on the idea that mental illness was a reaction to localised infections or illness elsewhere in the body, and Dr. Fenton became convinced that this, rather than ‘Moral Treatment’ should be the basis of the treatment he used at the institution at Powick.
Thus when he became Director of the Powick Mental Hospital in 1920, Dr. Fenton applied ‘Focal Sepsis’ to the treatment of patients. 30 years later, Dr Ronald Sandison, Deputy Chief Medical Officer under Dr. Arthur Spencer, was extremely critical of what he referred to as ‘The Dead Hand of Fentonism’, his description of the treatment of ‘Focal Sepsis’ which he believed left the hospital and patients in a pitiable state. And, according to Andrew Scull who interviewed Graves, Dr. Henry Fenton was an ‘insignificant individual, who did everything he was told to do’. Essentially it appears Powick Mental Hospital had been amalgamated with the Birmingham Institutions administered by Dr. Graves.
The ‘Focal Sepsis’ approach to treatment used by Dr. Graves was used in the treatment of mental illness between 1920 and the mid-1940s when Dr. Graves retired. At this time the treatment was regarded as suspect and ceased to be used. However, Dr., Fenton continued to use the approach, until he retired in 1948. It was this that Dr. Sandison particularly objected to and it appears that this is the reason there are no patients’ notes available for Powick Mental Hospital between 1920 and 1948. One presumes that these notes existed, but were disposed of because of their reliance on a suspect ideology.
Frank Crompton. April 2025