Joseph Holland was born in New Brentford, Middlesex, 15th November 1812.1 His father John

was a civil engineer2, as was one of his brothers, William Henry. He enrolled as a medical

student at King's College Hospital in London on 6th October 1834 at the age of twenty one and

his College Entrance Paper states that he had previously been educated under the care of a Mr

Edward Jones3. Just when he began to be interested in the treatment of lunacy is unknown, but as

he was resident surgeon at Manchester Royal Infirmary & Lunatic Asylum from 1840-444 (in

succession to Samuel Gaskell who had been appointed to Lancaster Asylum) he would no doubt

have been closely concerned with the treatment of lunatics at this stage in his career. In 1844 he

resigned from Manchester Infirmary to go into partnership with someone at Chorlton5, and at

some stage he was also house surgeon for two years at Bolton Dispensary & infirmary6. By

1847 Dr Joseph had been appointed to the Surrey County Asylum at Wandsworth where he was

superintendant of the male wards till 1850 at which time he was appointed to Prestwich Asylum

in Lancashire.7

Along with other enlightened professionals, Dr Joseph managed to have many inmates returned

to the community and he noted in his asylum reports that the number of suicides was

significantly reduced. He was clearly a believer of non-restraint and a more humane approach to

the general welfare of the inmates. There were still incidents of mistreatment by staff and

strenuous efforts were made to reduce this. Some keepers would resort to alternative methods of

control and much attention was given to the phenomenon of broken ribs resulting from the

‘suppression’ of recalcitrant inmates. The warders would be unlikely to realise that poor diet etc

already made the lunatics bones fragile. Dr Joseph’s wife kept a scrap book8 of press cuttings at

the time and some of the events reported make fairly horrific reading. Violence was not

uncommon and keepers were frequently attacked or even murdered, so it is perhaps hardly

surprising that with their limited training they resorted to strong arm techniques on occasions.

Dr Joseph was at Prestwich for 22 years and seemingly very active throughout Lancashire and

Cheshire, particularly in the field of hospital design. He was called on to design a new cottage

hospital at Lytham, and his ideas were also used in the construction of Parkside hospital,

Macclesfield. However, his major achievement was the construction of a new county asylum at

Whittingham outside Preston. He was instrumental in finding suitable land at the right price and

for offering his advice to the architects for the detailed design. An important feature, which was

used at Macclesfield as well, was the honeycombe of interconnecting blocks. This not only made

each unit smaller and less institutional, but greatly reduced the risks in case of fire. Dr Joseph

moved to Whittingham as superintendant when it opened in 1872 and remained there till his

retirement to Cheadle six years later. Both at Prestwich and at Whittingham many revolutionary

ideas were put into practice, not least the introduction of a working farm where inmates could be

usefully employed providing some of the food necessary for many hundreds of people, which

also made economic sense at a time when the cost to the rate payers of keeping so many people

in institutions was a hot political topic.

As far as his family life is concerned we know