Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody

Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2016-08-29
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9004333592

This innovative collection of essays employs historical and sociological approaches to provide important case studies of asylums, psychiatry and mental illness in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890-1914

Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890-1914
Author: L. Hide
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137321431

An unprecedented number of people were sent to 'lunatic asylums' in the nineteenth century. But what was life like inside? How was order maintained? And why were so many doctors on the verge of a breakdown themselves? This book provides a glimpse into the lives of patients and staff inside two London asylums at the turn of the twentieth century.

Madness in the Family

Madness in the Family
Author: C. Coleborne
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2009-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230248640

Madness in the Family explores how colonial families coped with insanity through a trans-colonial study of the relationships between families and public colonial hospitals for the insane in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand between 1860 and 1914.

Male Suicide and Masculinity in 19th-century Britain

Male Suicide and Masculinity in 19th-century Britain
Author: Lyndsay Galpin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2022-04-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350264911

This book shows how interpretations of suicidal motives were guided by gendered expectations of behaviour, and that these expectations were constructed to create meaning and understanding for family, friends and witnesses. Providing an insight into how people of this era understood suicidal behaviour and motives, it challenges the assertion that suicide was seen as a distinctly feminine act, and that men who took their own lives were feminized as a result. Instead, it shows that masculinity was understood in a more nuanced way than gender binaries allow, and that a man's masculinity was measured against other men. Focusing on four common narrative types; the love-suicide, the unemployed suicide, the suicide of the fraudster or speculator, and the suicide of the dishonoured solider, it provides historical context to modern discussions about the crisis of masculinity and rising male suicide rates. It reveals that narratives around male suicides are not so different today as they were then, and that our modern model of masculinity can be traced back to the 19th century.

Mapping the Margins

Mapping the Margins
Author: Nancy Christie
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2004-03-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780773571853

Contributors include Denyse Baillargeon (Université de Montréal), Bettina Bradbury (York University), Josette Brun (Université Laval), Nancy Christie (Hamilton), Gwendolyn Davies (University of New Brunswick), Michael Gauvreau (McMaster University), Peter Gossage (Université de Sherbrooke), Ollivier Hubert (Université de Montréal), Jack Little (Simon Fraser University), James Moran (University of Prince Edward Island), Suzanne Morton (McGill University), Matt Savelli (McMaster University), Michele Stairs (York University), James Struthers (Trent University), and David Wright (McMaster University).

Destigmatising mental illness?

Destigmatising mental illness?
Author: Vicky Long
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2015-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526103265

This historical study of mental healthcare workers’ efforts to educate the public challenges the supposition that public prejudice generates the stigma of mental illness. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book argues that psychiatrists, nurses and social workers generated representations of mental illness which reflected their professional aspirations, economic motivations and perceptions of the public. Sharing in the stigma of their patients, healthcare workers sought to enhance the prestige of their professions by focussing upon the ability of psychiatry to effectively treat acute cases of mental disturbance. As a consequence, healthcare workers inadvertently reinforced the stigma attached to serious and enduring mental distress. This book makes a major contribution to the history of mental healthcare, and critiques current campaigns which seek to end mental health discrimination for failing to address the political, economic and social factors which fuel discrimination. It will appeal to academics, students, healthcare practitioners and service users.

Insanity, identity and empire

Insanity, identity and empire
Author: Catharine Coleborne
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2015-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1784996092

This book examines the formation of colonial social identities inside the institutions for the insane in Australia and New Zealand. Taking a large sample of patient records, it pays particular attention to gender, ethnicity and class as categories of analysis, reminding us of the varied journeys of immigrants to the colonies and of how and where they stopped, for different reasons, inside the social institutions of the period. It is about their stories of mobility, how these were told and produced inside institutions for the insane, and how, in the telling, colonial identities were asserted and formed. Having engaged with the structural imperatives of empire and with the varied imperial meanings of gender, sexuality and medicine, historians have considered the movements of travellers, migrants, military bodies and medical personnel, and ‘transnational lives’. This book examines an empire-wide discourse of ‘madness’ as part of this inquiry.

Sources in the History of Psychiatry, from 1800 to the Present

Sources in the History of Psychiatry, from 1800 to the Present
Author: Chris Millard
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000557170

This book offers a general introduction to historical sources in the history of psychiatry, delving into the range of sources that can be used to investigate this dynamic and exciting field. The chapters in this volume deal with physical sources that might be encountered in the archive, such as asylum casebooks, artwork, material artefacts, post-mortem records, more general types of source including medical journals, literature, public enquiries, and key themes within the field such as feminist sources, activist and survivor sources. Offering practical advice and examples for the novice, as well as insightful suggestions for the experienced scholar, the authors provide worked-through examples of how various source types can be used and exploited and reflect productively on the limits and constraints of different kinds of source material. In so doing it presents readers with a comprehensive guide on how to ‘read’ such sources to research and write the history of psychiatry. Methodically rigorous, clear and accessible, this is a vital reference for students just starting out within the field through to more experienced scholars experimenting with new and unfamiliar sources in the history of medicine and history of psychiatry more specifically. Chapters 4, 8, 9, 10, and 13 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England

Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England
Author: Alison C. Pedley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2023-07-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350275344

Tracing the experiences of women who were designated insane by judicial processes from 1850 to 1900, this book considers the ideas and purposes of incarceration in three dedicated facilities: Bethlem, Fisherton House and Broadmoor. The majority of these patients had murdered, or attempted to murder, their own children but were not necessarily condemned as incurably evil by medical and legal authorities, nor by general society. Alison C. Pedley explores how insanity gave the Victorians an acceptable explanation for these dreadful crimes, and as a result, how admission to a dedicated asylum was viewed as the safest and most human solution for the 'madwomen' as well as for society as a whole. Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England considers the experiences, treatments and regimes women underwent in an attempt to redeem and rehabilitate them, and return them to into a patriarchal society. It shows how society's views of the institutions and insanity were not necessarily negative or coloured by fear and revulsion, and highlights the changes in attitudes to female criminal lunacy in the second half of the 19th century. Through extensive and detailed research into the three asylums' archives and in legal, governmental, press and genealogical records, this book sheds new light on the views of the patients themselves, and contributes to the historiography of Victorian criminal lunatic asylums, conceptualising them as places of recovery, rehabilitation and restitution.

Mental Illness and Learning Disability since 1850

Mental Illness and Learning Disability since 1850
Author: Pamela Dale
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2006-04-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 113421815X

Taking forward the debate on the role and power of institutions for treating and incarcerating the insane, this volume challenges recent scholarship and focuses on a wide range of factors impacting on the care and confinement of the insane since 1850, including such things as the community, Poor Law authorities, local government and the voluntary sector. Questioning the notion that institutions were generally ‘benign’ and responsive to the needs of households, this work also emphasizes the important role of the diversity of interests in shaping institutional facilities. A fresh, stimulating step forward in the history of institutional care, Mental Illness and Learning Disability since 1850 is undoubtedly an important resource for student and scholar alike.