The admirable Mrs Crichton

''We are seeing her dream come true. God works in mysterious ways. Thanks to her and her husband, the Crichton has been and still is graced by a famous mental hospital that is credited with so much excellent work, and now the original concept comes to fruition with university and college education on this site.''

The psychiatric hospital might have been a second choice, but the story of the Crichtons and the institution is a colourful one, with some intrigue, a lot of determination and an insistence on excellence which brought it the reputation she demanded - ''the best in Europe''. From the inception, enlightened thinking delivered treatment methodology which could well be considered the forerunners for modern day approaches in a number of important areas. Echoes of the history of the area and beyond are woven through the development of the Crichton.

Only a woman with Mrs Crichton's considerable strength of character could have achieved what she did.

The story began with James Crichton, son of the then provost of Sanquhar, who took up service with the East India Company in the late eighteenth century, after training in medicine. His book of oriental maps and engravings is a prized possession of the Crichton Museum, run by Mrs Williams.

He is said to have made his fortune both as a physician to the Governor General of India and as a trader in China and India. The intrigue is inspired by speculation down through the years about the opium trade at that time. His wife was moved to insist he came by his riches upon his ''honest industry'', although it is not clear if this was a reaction to slanderous rumour.

Returning to his homeland, Dr Crichton purchased in 1809 the estate of Friars Carse, on the banks of the River Nith neighbouring the property of Ellisland, recently tenanted by the poet, Robert Burns. He married Elizabeth Grierson, a descendant of Sir Robert Grierson of Lag and Rockhall, a notorious persecutor of the Covenanters.

Sadly, Crichton died after only 13 years of marriage, and his will set aside #100,000, a considerable fortune in those days, for charitable purposes.

Mrs Crichton successfully fought her brother-in-law as he contested the will through the courts, but a change of government in the meantime had ushered in an administration less sympathetic to her idea for a new college at Dumfries for ''poor scholars''. The scheme could not go ahead without Government financial support ultimately kicking in, despite the #85,000 of Crichton money set aside for it.

The man she had recruited to consider the financial implications of the plan was none other than the Rev Dr Henry Duncan, who in 1810 opened the world's first commercial savings bank, paying interest on modest savings. His rich and varied lifetime achievements also included the restoration of the Ruthwell Cross in 1818, arguably the most discussed medieval monument in the world.

Turning eventually to new plans for a ''lunatic asylum'', a perfectly acceptable term in those days, Mrs Crichton may not have appreciated the depth of opposition she would face. An article in the Dumfries Times dated November 19, 1834, bitterly attacked the idea.

At one point she must have been feeling very low, for in a prayer of blessing for what was to become the first part of the present day Crichton Hall, she says poignantly: ''I am alone, weak, feeble and friendless''.

Yet she soon showed her grit again, to drive the project through.

Mrs Williams affirms: ''She did suffer amazingly. Alone and friendless might have been justified because that's how the local people's antagonism over the mental hospital made her feel. Not In My Back Yard is not a new concept.

''But Gordon Mann, managing director of the Crichton Development Company, and I frequently laugh at her thinking she was weak and feeble. She clung to her course of action, despite the opposition and the newspaper article, which really crucified her.''

That same single minded determination enabled her to persuade Dr William Browne to become the first Superintendent of the Crichton.

Dr Browne, regarded as the father of occupational therapy and other then enlightened approaches to the mentally ill, had in 1837 written what was later described as an ''epoch making'' book called What Asylums Were, Are and Ought To Be.

He talked of the ''moral treatment'' of a patient, dealing with him or her as an individual and of a system that could be summed up in two words, ''kindness and occupation''. His aim was recovery, not confinement of the insane. His ideal asylum was a spacious building ''resembling the palace of a peer, airy, elevated and elegant'', surrounded by extensive grounds and gardens, fields with groups of labourers and inside galleries, workshops, and music rooms, with inmates busy and enjoying themselves. Crichton became that vision.

In March, 1838, without warning, Mrs Crichton drove her yellow and black C-spring coach to Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum, where the unsuspecting Dr Browne was then superintendent. It would have been an arduous journey in those days. Dr Browne must have been impressed, he switched allegiance to the new institution, and laid the foundations for what became Crichton's considerable international reputation.

The ''eternal triangle'' in human relationships was responsible for the first patient, admitted on June 4, 1839 - a 30-year-old childless blacksmith's wife suffering from ''delusions''. Mrs Williams' book reports: ''Her illness was purported to have been brought on by a fit of jealousy at seeing her husband hand his snuff box to a good looking young woman in the next pew during a church service.'' It took five years to cure her, when it was said that ''the light of reason rendered her almost good-looking''.

If treatment was civilised for all, Crichton's structure still had to reflect the class ridden society of the time. The money from the well-to-do allowed better conditions for all and helped fund expansion.

There were seven categories of patients, ranging from paupers at #10 to #15 a year, paid for by the parish or burgh from which they came, to #350 for a gentleman of some wealth and class.

Remarkably, even the paupers had individual sleeping rooms and got meat thrice weekly, likely vastly superior to nourishment available at home.

Treats were ''tea for females, tobacco and beer to the industrious male''.

The wealthiest got their own suite of elegantly furnished rooms, ensuite facilities, wine, silver plate and for a time table d'hote service. A luxury was the use of a carriage or horse every day. While the well-to-do wrote poetry and articles for Scotland's first in-house psychiatric magazine New Moon, poorer patients worked in the laundry, the grounds and later in the fields when farms were acquired. Honest work and therapy for all.

There were also games and sports for patients, which developed and grew as the years passed to encompass almost every outdoor sport imaginable, and cultural activities included art - the hospital's early collection is the largest of its kind in the world - music and theatre.

From the 1880s onwards, holiday homes were rented and wealthy patients could enjoy fishing, and even shooting in the countryside. Guns were restricted after one gentleman was shot dead in 1885.

A feature of the hospital from the beginning was its ''therapeutic community'' and as early as the 1850s Dr Brown had launched an experiment placing convalescent patients on trial with educated families to test their fitness for discharge. It was groundbreaking work. Perhaps even an early form of today's ''care in the community''.

The internationally respected physician superintendents who followed Dr Browne continued to expand both the reputation and the size of the hospital.

Jewish specialists fleeing Nazi tyranny were welcomed in the late 1930s and early 1940s, adding their own distinguished celebrity to that of the hospital.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, famous people suffering from alcoholism and other addictions signed themselves in to the Crichton, the quality of its care was so renowned and the anonymity of its enormous grounds so coveted.

Nurses travelled from various parts of the world for training at Dumfries, the place where nursing lectures had taken place six years before Florence Nightingale's own training school was instituted in London.

There is gratification that over the years close links had been forged with the community and support had replaced the hostility of a previous age.

Elizabeth Crichton has been vindicated. She is the real heroine of this tale.