The Mirror served as a vehicle for patients to criticise socially and politically accepted systems of exploitation. The most common mentioned were: slavery in the Americas; unfair distribution of wealth in Britain, and England’s control of Ireland. 

The abolitionist movement was a political movement in Britain in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Abolitionists in Britain first focused on abolishing the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in British colonies. After this was achieved in the first half of the nineteenth century, abolitionists campaigned for Britain’s trade with the Americas to cease as the raw materials were produced using slavery. As abolitionism was a well established political movement in Britain by the mid-nineteenth century, the fact that the educated individuals of the East House held an abolitionist stance is not shocking as they would have been aware of global political developments. Nonetheless, the fervour and knowledge that the articles mentioned below were written with is interesting as the financial success of the East House patients writing these articles would have benefitted from slavery at some point. Consequently, I find the connection between advocating the rights of slaves from within an asylum (where many of the patients rights are stripped from them) interesting.

One example of this article type is in Vol 2, No.4 in an article titled ‘On war and implements of war, ancient and modern’ by the ‘Fulminator’.^[1] The author discusses the murder and enslavement of people indigenous to, what we know today as, the United States by European colonisers; the author labels Native Americans as ‘Northern Indians’ in this article. They state that ‘this is but one example out of a thousand acts of aggression committed by the government and people of these states upon the Indians, some of them are of a character so truly infamous, that we will not shock the sacred feelings of humanity by their recital.’^[2] Although the author disagrees with the institution of slavery they remain racist in character as they hope that god will ‘decree that the African will one day take his place among the polished races of the earth, though his organisation will never allow him to attain the high standard of the Caucasian family.’^[3] Overall, the article displays anti-slavery discussions occurring within the asylum but pertains the common circumstance of this time – that a person can be an abolitionist and racist.

Furthermore, many articles I studied criticised the unfair distribution of wealth in Britain. For example, an article entitled ‘Notices on Agriculture, Deficiency of crops’ argued that ‘[h]uman inexperience has built up a system of society where “wealth accumulates and men decay.”’^[4]  The author – publishing under the name ‘B’ – asserted that to solve poverty people should be employed in fields, rather than to work machinery. Similar ideas are echoed in an article entitled ‘England in the Olden time’ which argued that by machinery replacing the artisan poverty is being unnecessarily created. The author maintains that ‘protection of labour is now unknown’ and questions whether this has improved the ‘condition of the masses’.^[5] Furthermore, the author claims that the effect of this policy is ‘to be seen in the madhouse, the poorhouse and the prison’ as ‘starvation induces insanity, and descends from father to son, polluting the blood of generations.’^[6] By connecting wealth inequality and insanity the author advocates for their fellow patients whose social cause of insanity may be ‘poverty’ or ‘disappointment in business’ and, potentially, for themselves.

Finally, some articles criticised England’s colonial control of Ireland during the nineteenth century. As I consulted the Mirror from 1845-1852, the majority of rhetoric on Ireland discussed the atrocities of the Great Famine which started in 1845.^[7] In 1849, a poem was published entitled ‘Ireland’s Prayer, The Crucifixion’ which enforces how British colonialism has caused the starvation of the Irish people. The poem reads:

"Our King and Princess are now gone, 
We starve in the land our sons did own, 
And the harp hangs on the wall, 
Or at most, is strung at the stranger's call; 
The stranger came with an iron hand, 
And our riches enrich the stranger's land. 
Here from us thy dwelling place, 
Ancient of eternal race."[8]

The anti-Union rhetoric presented in this poem, alongside other articles, further displays the lack of close attention paid to the content of the Mirror by the medical staff. Anti-Union rhetoric was used to speak on a number of issues; in 1847 an anonymous author write ‘we are all well aware that we will be censured for writing in the tone we have done respecting the great Union’.^[9] This statement is significant as multiple authors did vehemently argue against the Union’s: control of Ireland; role in the Atlantic Slave Trade, and worsening of poverty within the Union.

---

[1] Fulminator, ‘On war and implements of war, ancient and modern’, Morningside Mirror, 2.4 (January 1847), pp. 25-27 

[2] Ibid, p.26 

[3] Ibid, p.28 

[4] B., ‘Notices on Agriculture, Deficiency of crops’, Morningside Mirror, 2.8 (May 1847), pp. 57-63 (p.60) 

[5] R.W., ‘England in the Olden time’, Morningside Mirror, 2.12 (September 1847), pp.93-96 (p.96). 

[6] Ibid, p.96. 

[7] David Ross, Ireland: History of a Nation (New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset, 2002).

[8] ‘Ireland’s Prayer, The Crucifixion’, Morningside Mirror, 4.6 (March 1849), p.47-48.

[9] ‘France and England’, Morningside Mirror, 2.11 (August 1847), p.81-90