Abstract
This paper examines the conditions under which persons designated as lunatics in nineteenth- century Jamaica were treated in the solitary facility then in existence. It chronicles the spate of infrastructural and treatment-related challenges which made admission to the Lunatic Asylum in Kingston tantamount to a virtual death sentence, irrespective of race or social class. Indeed,the litany of reported abuses prompted two separate official investigations into the functioning of the Lunatic Asylum as it was then called. The paper also assesses the reformation in the standards and policies of state care, changes which were prompted by the findings of the 1861 Commission of Inquiry and by the relocation of the Asylum to a more accommodating site at its present location, Bellevue on Windward Road in Kingston, Jamaica.
Keywords: Lunatics, treatment, nineteenth-century,Kingston, Asylum, Commission of Inquiry, reformation.