Madness and its Confinement
Lecturer: Mathew Thomson
From the 18th through to the 20th century one change dominated the care and treatment of the insane: increased confinement in asylums. As part of the wider expansion of medical consumption in the 18th century, small-scale private institutions proliferated, establishing the principle of institutional care, albeit often on a small scale. In the 19th county asylums were built on an ever larger scale, eventually becoming massive 鈥榳arehouses鈥� for the insane. Public asylums were driven by the urge to reform conditions and approaches to treating mental disorder, to cure their patients, but also can be interpreted as a response to new social and economic conditions and a reflection of hardening attitudes to 鈥榙eviant鈥� forms of behaviour. This week鈥檚 seminar will examine the rise of asylums and the changing understandings of insanity that accompanied and drove their expansion.
Discussion/Essay Questions:
- Were private asylums merely money-making enterprises?
- How can we account for the movement to establish county asylums in the 19th century?
- 鈥楢 convenient place to get rid of inconvenient people鈥�. Does this reflect patient admissions to 19th-century asylums?
Required Reading:
J. Andrews, 鈥楾he Rise of the Asylum in Britain鈥�, in D. Brunton (ed.), Medicine Transformed: Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1800-1930 (2004), 298-329. Course Extract
R. Porter, Mind-Forg'd Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency (1987), ch. 3. e-book
Further Reading:
R. Adair, B. Forsythe and J. Melling, 鈥楢 Danger to the Public? Disposing of Pauper Lunatics in Late-Victorian and Edwardian England: Plympton St Mary Union and the Devon County Asylum, 1867-1914鈥�, Medical History, 42 (1998), 1-25. e-journal
P. Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy: The Administration of Pauper Lunatics in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (1999).
C. Cox, H. Marland and S. York, 鈥楨maciated, Exhausted and Excited: The Bodies and Minds of the Irish in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire Asylums鈥�, Journal of Social History, 46 (2012), 500-24. e-journal
A. McCarthy, 鈥楨thnicity, Migration and the Lunatic Asylum in Early Twentieth-Century Auckland, New Zealand', Social History of Medicine, 21 (2008), 47-65. e-journal
A. McCarthy and C. Coleborne (eds), Migration, Ethnicity, and Mental Health: International Perspectives, 1840-2010 (New York: Routledge, 2012). e-book
J. Melling and B. Forsythe (eds), Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800-1914 (1999). e-book
J. Melling, B. Forsythe and R. Adair, 鈥楩amilies, Communities and the Legal Regulation of Lunacy in Victorian England: Assessments of Crime, Violence and Welfare in Admissions to the Devon Asylum, 1845-1914鈥�, in P. Bartlett and D. Wright (eds), Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750-2000 (1999), 153-80.
E. Murphy, 鈥楾he Lunacy Commissioners and the East London Guardians, 1845-1867鈥�, Medical History, 46 (2002), 495-524. e-journal
W. Ll. Parry-Jones, The Trade in Lunacy: A Study of Private Madhouses in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1972), esp. ch. 2. e-book
R. Porter, 鈥楳adness and its Institutions鈥�, in A. Wear (ed.), Medicine in Society: Historical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 277-301. e-book
A. Scull, Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in 19th Century England (1979).
A. Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700-1900 (1993).
A. Scull, The Insanity of Place, the Place of Insanity: Essays on the History of Psychiatry (2006). e-book
A. Scull, 鈥楳useums of Madness Revisited鈥�, Social History of Medicine, 6 (1993), 3-23. e-journal
L.D. Smith, 'Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody': Public Lunatic Asylums in Early Nineteenth-Century England (1999).
L. Smith, 'Caribbean Bedlam: The Development of the Lunatic Asylum System in Britain's West Indian Colonies, 1838-1914', The Journal of Caribbean History, 44 (2010), 1-47.
L. Smith, 鈥樷�漈o Cure those Afflicted with the Disease of Insanity鈥�: Thomas Bakewell and Spring Vale Asylum鈥�, History of Psychiatry, 4 (1993), 107-27. e-journal
J. Walton, 鈥楾he Treatment of Pauper Lunatics in Victorian England: The Case of Lancaster Asylum, 1816-70鈥�, in A. Scull (ed.), Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era (1981), 166-97.
D. Wright, 鈥楾he Certification of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales鈥�, History of Psychiatry, 9 (1998), 267-90. e-journal
You might also want to view a short play, 'Trade in Lunacy', produced by Hilary Marland in conjunction with Talking Birds Theatre Company, together with a collection of brief articles on the private asylum system: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/outreach/trade_in_lunacy/