C. Lockhart Robertson

Charles Alexander Lockhart Robertson (4 April 1825 – 18 May 1897), best known as C. Lockhart Robertson, was a Scottish asylum doctor and spiritualist.

Charles Alexander Lockhart Robertson
Born	4 April 1825
Died	18 May 1897
Occupation(s)	Physician, spiritualist

He was born in Edinburgh, the son of John Argyll Robertson, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. His younger brother, Douglas Argyll Robertson, became a distinguished ophthalmic surgeon. He studied Medicine at Caius College, Cambridge where he earned his M.D. in 1856. Lockhart Robertson worked as the superintendent of Sussex County Asylum at Haywards Heath from 1859 to 1870, and in 1860 he also served as Linacre demonstrator of Anatomy at Oxford University. In 1870, he was appointed Lord Chancellor's medical visitor and he held this position till 1896. He was the honorary secretary of the Medico-Psychological Association and edited the Journal of Mental Science.^[1][2][3][4] Lockhart Robertson's translation of Griesinger's Mental Pathology (undertaken in conjunction with James Rutherford) was a valuable addition to the professional literature. Robertson did not publish widely but his achievements with enlightened asylum administration attracted professional admiration across Europe.

Lockhart Robertson, originally a skeptic in the 1850s, became a convinced spiritualist in 1860 after attending a séance with the medium Daniel Dunglas Home.^[5] He was a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research.^[6] He died at Exmouth.

In 1884, aged 59, he married a minor, 19 year-old Mabel Wilton Rochfort, of Exmouth, daughter of Colonel Gustavus Cowper Rochfort, (dec'd 1884) late of the 41st Madras Native Infantry. They had two sons born in 1885 and 1890. ^[7]

Publications

• A Descriptive Notice of the Sussex Lunatic Asylum, Haywards Heath (1859)
• A Case of Homicidal Mania, Without Disorder of the Intellect (1860)
• The Care and Treatment of the Insane Poor (1867)

References

1. Hawkins, Henry. (1897). The Late Dr. C. Lockhart Robertson: A Reminiscence. The British Journal of Psychiatry 43: 677-678
2. Torrey, Edwin Fuller; Miller, Judy. (2001). The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present. Rutgers University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0813542072
3. Young, Mary De. (2015). Encyclopedia of Asylum Therapeutics, 1750-1950s. McFarland. p. 203. ISBN 978-0786468973
4. "Charles Alexander Lockhart Robertson". Royal College of Physicians.
5. Lamont, Peter. (2004). Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence. Historical Journal: 47: 897-920.
6. Oppenheim, Janet. (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246. ISBN 978-0521347679
7. Marriages 1884 March qtr Westminster Vol 1a, Page 715 Charles Alexander Lockhart Robertson, Mabel Wilton Rochfort