page_title: Richard Poole (physician)
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Poole (physician) / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Lunatic Asylum, Montrose, Scotland in 1840.
context_page_description: Richard Poole was a Scottish physician, psychiatrist, and phrenologist.
context_section_description: Poole was born in Edinburgh, on 27 November 1781, from an English background. His father Matthew Poole (or Pool) owned a coffee house and hotel at 1 Princes Street and lived above.
  By 1800 his father is retired and living at Reid's Close on the Canongate in Edinburgh's Old Town.
  Poole studied Medicine and graduated M.D. at the University of St Andrews in 1805. He was editor of the New Edinburgh Review, and published articles promoting phrenology in the early 1820s; it existed 1821 to 1823. Poole was also first editor of the Phrenological Journal. Poole joined the editorial staff of the Encyclopædia Edinensis under James Millar.
  In 1820 he was living at 23 Broughton Street, a flat in Edinburgh's east end.
  From 1820 Poole campaigned for a new infirmary in Edinburgh. In 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In the late 1830s he was a pioneer advocate of mental health reform, and in 1838 he became superintendent of the Montrose Asylum, succeeding W. A. F. Browne. He remained at Montrose until 1845. He then kept a private asylum at Middlefield, Aberdeenshire.
  Poole died in Coupar Angus on 18 February 1870 aged 88 at the house of his daughter, Mrs Kirkwood. He is buried with his wife in the churchyard of St. Machar's Cathedral in Aberdeen.
caption: Royal Lunatic Asylum, Montrose, in 1840.
exif: {}