John Conolly - Family

Family

Conolly married Elizabeth Collins, daughter of naval captain Sir John Collins, by whom he had four children. Their only son, Edward Tennyson, was born whilst Conolly was working at Chichester in Sussex. Edward became a lawyer, having been called to the Bar on 30 January 1852. In 1865 he emigrated with his family to Picton, New Zealand. There he continued to practise law and became very active in politics. In line with his father's concerns for humane treatment of the mentally ill, he introduced the concept of rehabilitation to the New Zealand penal system. He died in Auckland in 1908 and was interred in the City of Westminster Cemetery.

John Conolly's second daughter, Sophia Jane, married Thomas Harrington Tuke in 1852. Tuke ran a private Lunatic Asylum at Manor House in Chiswick, Middlesex. (This Tuke is not related to the Tukes of the York Retreat.)

Conolly's youngest child, Ann, married Henry Maudsley when she was thirty-six, just two months before her father's death. Conolly's obituary was written by Maudsley and shocked many by its unusually unsympathetic tone. Henry Maudsley had by then taken over the running of Lawn House. Ann died on 9 February 1911 at the age of 81.

His works include:

• Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums (1847)
• The Indications of Insanity with an introduction by Richard Hunter and Ida MacAlpine. Psychiatric Monograph Series 4 (reprint: Dawsons, London, 1964)
• Conolly, John (1830) An Inquiry concerning the Indications of Insanity, with Suggestions for the Better Protection and Care of the Insane. John Taylor, London. - Books Google; Accessed 2007-06-06
• The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraints (1856) German translation by Caspar Max Brosius as Die Behandlung der Irren ohne mechanischen Zwang (1860)
• Essay on Hamlet (1863)