Chit Chat
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My brother-in-law is disappointed, but says he cannot really be sure why.He's been looking into his family history, and found a relative in the 1920s was an inmate, as they called them, in an asylum, Winterton, Co Durham.He checked the annual census, which lists hundreds of patients and their ages with occupations, harshly recorded as below;
C James 25 lunatic
A C James. 70. lunatic
T Jameson 45. lunatic
Miss C Johnson. Deceased
Which I suppose is fair enough , she must have just died , but they have to be thorough.
And so on, for 17 pages. All occupation - lunatic . Apart from one. Wm Johnson, the relative
Wm Johnson 33. Idiot
Which made us ask , what on gods earth must a man do , in an asylum of hundreds of patients, to deserve the only description of idiot in his world of lunatics? Will that make him more or less of a lunatic?
C James 25 lunatic
A C James. 70. lunatic
T Jameson 45. lunatic
Miss C Johnson. Deceased
Which I suppose is fair enough , she must have just died , but they have to be thorough.
And so on, for 17 pages. All occupation - lunatic . Apart from one. Wm Johnson, the relative
Wm Johnson 33. Idiot
Which made us ask , what on gods earth must a man do , in an asylum of hundreds of patients, to deserve the only description of idiot in his world of lunatics? Will that make him more or less of a lunatic?
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"Which made us ask , what on gods earth must a man do , in an asylum of hundreds of patients, to deserve the only description of idiot in his world of lunatics? Will that make him more or less of a lunatic?"
Answer: Just say you post on BF Chitty Chatty.  That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.   |
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In 19th- and early 20th-century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very profound intellectual disability. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for intellectual disability based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.[14] The term "idiot" was used to refer to people having an IQ below 30[citation needed][15][16] IQ, or intelligence quotient, was originally determined by dividing a person's mental age, as determined by standardized tests, by their actual age. The concept of mental age has fallen into disfavor, though, and IQ is now determined on the basis of statistical distributions.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot In the obsolete medical classification (ICD-9, 1977), these people were said to have "profound mental retardation" or "profound mental subnormality" with IQ under 20.[18] This term is not in use in the United Kingdom. |
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 weren't lunatics said to be affected by movements of the moon ( hence use of luna ) . re jacks post, think id rather be called an idiot rather than an imbecile or moron. |
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This patient must have just been unlucky, in that no imbeciles or morons were recorded, but they were all still " lunatics." You know it's even uncomfortable typing those words. But to a bored census official, everyone was the same, lunatic after lunatic despite an unimaginable range of behaviour .
Apart from one. Could there even be one act that any person could do that would single them out as separate from a whole asylum of " lunatics" ? You see my brother in law wasn't disappointed in finding the asylum story, he knew that, or the harsh terms used, but the idea this poor man was judged as somehow different. |
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Lunatics would have been considered mad or mentally ill. The word "idiot" was used to describe someone with the mental age of a toddler.
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Bloke I used to work with was mates with my hometown coroner. One day the coroner was showing him some records from the 1880s or so. Among the causes of death was one poor woman who was 'worn out'.
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plenty of 'worn out' women today, if they could just STFU for 5 minutes.
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THE LUNATIC SONG ( A VIC SPECIAL)
Outside the lunatic asylum one day, I was breaking up stones, Along came a lunatic and said, Good morning Mister Jones, How much a week do you get for doing that, Thirty bob I cried. He looked at me and shook his head, And this is what he cried, " Come inside you silly bugger, come inside, I thought you had a bit more sense, Working for a living, take my tip , Act a little strange and become a loon-a-tic, You get your meals quite regular, And two new suits besides, Thirty bob a week, No wife and kids to keep, Come inside you silly bugger, Come inside." |
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One of my better efforts ;
THE LUNATIC SONG ( Updated version ) Outside the lunatic asylum one day, I was breaking up stones, Along came a lunatic and said " Come inside you mr johnson , come inside, I thought you had a bit more sense, Working for a living, take my tip , Act a little strange and become a loon-a-tic, You get your meals quite regular, And two new suits as well , Make no mistakes, live the life of a swell , But for gods sake take my tip Do nowt that ever deserves being called an idiot !!! |
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peckerdunne,
I scroll from bottom to top, and when I read mikael mention women worn out I thought I bet I can guess what's said next ! |
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echo 123, you must have that gift of female intuition
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when my son was about 8/12 i used to joke with the wife that in 20 yrs she'd probably fcuk off and leave...........
And when i was almost 50 and past my very best she went and **** off |
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Female intuition ? Have you not noticed me mention Mrs echo before ?
The woman who says, for example, posters on here are just out to " chew each other's balls " but " not in a good way ". Female intuition comes to me when one is looking over my shoulder as I type. |