Record

Code	DS/UK/144
Dates	1849-1884
Person Name	Southern Counties Asylum; 1849-1884; psychiatric hospital
Epithet	psychiatric hospital
Activity	Established in the grounds of the Crichton Royal Institution, the Southern Counties Asylum (SCA) was opened in August 1849 to fulfil the need to provide accommodation for pauper patients from the local area. Until this time the Crichton Royal Institution (CRI) was the only mental hospital serving the three southern counties of Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbright and Wigtownshire. CRI did not have sufficient accommodation to meet the needs of poorer residents whose care and treatment was paid for by their local parish. Dr W. A. F. Browne and the Board of Trustees and Directors proposed a second building to accommodate 150 patients. The building was designed by a local Dumfries architect, Mr W. McCowan and was paid for by the Board. SCA was managed by the Board of Trustees and Directors of CRI and presided over by the same physician superintendent, but in all other respects was run as a separate establishment administratively and financially, with a separate staff, separate accounts and registers. When it was opened, existing pauper patients were transferred from CRI into SCA and admissions from the three southern counties were accepted, referred to as interns. By 1850 admissions from out with local area, referred to as externs, were accepted and charged at a slightly higher rate of board. By 1855 SCA was overcrowded and extensions to the building were made in 1858 and 1863. The General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland made repeated recommendations over several years to Crichton Royal Institution Board of Trustees and Directors to amalgamate the two establishments and maintain one set of patient registers. From 1 November 1884 this single system of record keeping was adopted, and the decision was taken to fully assimilate the two establishments. From this point the Southern Counties Asylum was renamed the Second House of the Crichton Royal Institution and accommodated both pauper and intermediate and lower private fee paying patients. In 1910 the Second House was renamed Grierson Hall and its wards were used to accommodate patients from the First, Second and Third Departments of CRI. The building gradually fell out of use as new buildings were erected, and its gradual demolition was completed in 1925. The Hospice (later Glencairn, Ettrick and Nithsdale wards) was built on the site of SCA in 1925 and was the last building on the Crichton site to be vacated of patients in 2011.
Corporate Name	Southern Counties Asylum

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