Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800-1914

340 Pages·19.9 MB·English

by  Joseph Melling & Bill Forsythe & Bill Forsyth

INSANITY, INSTITUTIONS AND
SOCIETY, 1800-1914
Insanip, Institutions and Socieg presents and analyses the issues of recent
and new social histories of insanity and the asylum.
The global retreat from institutional care for the mentally ill during
the 1970s and 1980s has influenced the prevailing views of the asylum.
These views are challenged by recent research which places less
emphasis on the professional psychiatrists and the process of incarcera-
tion and devotes more attention to the complex social origins of insanity
and the institutionalisation of those certified.
The English model is placed in a richer comparative context, in
which the significance of ethnicity, race and gender as well as the
impact of political and cultural factors are analysed. The book also
develops these themes in studies set in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, India
and South Africa, as well as the history of colonial medicine more
generally
Znsanik, Institutions and So&y is a valuable guide to current work in the
social and cultural history of insanity, and provides a comprehensive
summary of the debates on the growth of institutional care during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Joseph Melling is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Historical
Studies and Director of the Centre for Medical History, and Bill
Forsythe is Reader in the History of Crime and Punishment, both at
the University of Exeter.
STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL HISTORY
OF MEDICINE
SeriesE ditors:J onathanB arry and BernardH arris
LIFE, DEATH AND THE ELDERLY
Edited b Margaret Pelling and Richard M. Smith
MEDICINE AND CHARITY BEFORE THE WELFARE STATE
Edited by JonathaBnar ry and Colin Jones
IN THE NAME OF THE CHILD
Edited&Roger Cooter
REASSESSING FOUCAULT
Power, medicine and the body
Edited &y Colin j&es and Roy Porter
MIGRANTS, MINORITIES AND HEALTH
Historical and contemporary studies
Edited b Lam Marks and Michael Worbvs
FROM IDIOCY TO MENTAL DEFICIENCY
Ed&d lp D&d W@ht and Anne Di&y
NUTRITION IN BRITAIN
Edited b Dauid I? Smith
HEALTH CARE AND POOR RELIEF IN PROTESTANT
EUROPE 1500-l 700
Edited by Ole Peter Gel1 and Andrew Cunningham
MIDWIVES, SOCIETY AND CHILDBIRTH
Edited b Hi& Marland and Anne Marie Raff$y
THE LOCUS OF CARE
Edited b Pm,,& Hordm and Richard Smith
ILLNESS AND HEALING ALTERNATIVES IN WESTERN
EUROPE
Edited b Marijke G&wit-Hofstra, Hi&v Marland and Hans de Waardt
INSANITY,
INSTITUTIONS AND
SOCIETY, 1800-l 9 14
A social history of madness in
comparative perspective
Edited by
Joseph MeZZinqa nd Bill Forsythe
c
London and New York
First published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 1000 1
0 I999 editorial matter and selection, Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe;
individual contributions 01999 the individual contributors
‘Typeset in Baskerville by Routledge
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s
Lynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Libmv Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Librav OJ‘ Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Insanity, institutions, and society, 180&1914 /Joseph Melling and Bill
Forsythe.
p, cm. - (Studies in the social history of medicine)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Psychiatric hospital care-Great Britain-History- 19th century 2. Social
psychiatry-Great Britain--History- 19th century 3. Mental health laws-Great
Britain-History- 19th century. I. Melling,Joseph. II. Forsythe, Bill. III. Series.
RC450.G7157 1999
362.2’1’094109034-dc21 9841827 CIP
ISBN O-115-18441-x
CONTENTS
. .
Notes on contributors vu1
Preface xi
1 Accommodating madness: new research in the
social history of insanity and institutions
JOSEPH MELLING
PART I
The English experience of the county lunatic
asylum 31
2 The county asylum in the mixed economy of
care, 1808-1845 33
LEONARD D. SMITH
3 The asylum and the Poor Law: the productive alliance 48
PETER BARTLETT
4 Politics of lunacy: central state regulation and the
Devon Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1845-1914 68
BILL FORSYTHE, JOSEPH MELLING AND RICHARD ADAIR
V
CONTENTS
5 The discharge of pauper lunatics from county
asylums in mid-Victorian England: the case of
Buckinghamshire, 1853-1872 93
DAVID WRIGHT
PART II
Therapeutic regimes in the nineteenth century 113
6 Framing psychiatric subjectivity: doctor, patient and
record-keeping at Bethlem in the nineteenth century 115
AKIHITO SUZUKI
7 ‘Destined to a perfect recovery’: the confinement of
puerperal insanity in the nineteenth century 137
HILARY MARLAND
PART III
On the edge: the English model and national
peripheries 157
8 Establishing the ‘rule of kindness’: the foundation
of the North Wales Lunatic Asylum, Denbigh 159
PAMELA MICHAEL AND DAVID HIRST
9 ‘The property of the whole community’. Charity and
insanity in urban Scotland: the Dundee Royal
Lunatic Asylum, 1805-l 850 180
LORRAINE WALSH
10 Raising the tone of asylumdom: maintaining and
expelling pauper lunatics at the Glasgow Royal
Asylum in the nineteenth century 200
JONATHAN ANDREWS
vi
CONTENTS
11 ‘The designs of providence’: race, religion and
Irish insanity 223
OONAGH WALSH
PART IV
The colonial vision 243
12 Out of sight and out of mind: insanity in early-
nineteenth-century British India 245
WALTRAUD ERNST
13 ‘Every facility that modern science and enlightened
humanity have devised’: race and prokress in a
colonial hospital, Valkenberg Mental Asylum,
Cape Colony, 1894-1910 268
SHULA MARKS
PART V
Reflections 293
14 Rethinking the history of asylumdom 295
ANDREW SCULL
Selectb ibliography of the history of insanig 316
Index 319
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
Richard Ad&r is a Researcher at the Cambridge Group for the Study
of Population and was Research Assistant on the Wellcome project
on Institutions and Insanity at the University of Exeter, 1993-6. He
wrote Courtship, Illep’timacy, and Marnhge in Ear4 Modern England
(Manchester University Press, 1996).
Jonathan Andrews is a Wellcome Award Holder and Senior Lecturer
in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University He edited
(with Iain Smith) A History of G&navel Royal Hospital (1993) and has
written (with Asa Briggs and others) The Hzjtory oj Bethlem (Routledge,
1997), and The Scot&h Lqacy Commissioners( Wellcome, 1998).
Peter Bartlett is Lecturer in Law at the University of Nottingham.
His book The Poor Law of Lunacy will be published by Cassell in 1999.
He has co-edited (with David Wright) Outside the Walls of the Asylum:
The History of Care in the Communi& 1750-2000 (Athlone, 1999).
Waltraud Ernst is a Wellcome Award Holder and Lecturer in History
at the University of Southampton. Her current research involves a
comparative history of psychiatry in British India and New Zealand.
She wrote Mad T&es)om, the Raj (Routledge, 1991) and is co-editor
(with Bernard Harris) of Race, Sciencea nd Medicine (Routledge, 1999).
Bill Forsythe is Reader in the History of Crime and Punishment at
the University of Exeter and Dean of Academic Partnerships. He
was co-director of the Wellcome Project on Institutions and Insanity.
He has published widely in the field of history of penal institutions.
His works include The Reform of &i.soners 1830-1900 (Croom Helm,
1987).
. . .
Vlll
CONTRIBUTORS
David Hirst is Lecturer in Social Policy in the School of Sociology
and Social Policy, University of Wales, Bangor. His research interests
are in the history of health and social welfare.
Shula Marks is Professor of Southern African History at the School
of Oriental and African Studies, London and has written and taught
widely on South African history Her most recent book is Divided
Stiterhood. Race, Class and Genderi n the South A&can NursingP rofessionS. he
is currently working on Mothers, Miners and Maniacs. A Social H&tory of
Medicine in South Afica.
Hilary Marland is a Wellcome Award Holder Senior Lecturer in
History at Warwick University and an editor of Social History of
Medicine. She has published widely on the history of midwifery and is
currently researching insanity of childbirth in the nineteenth century
Joseph Melling is Senior Lecturer in Historical Studies and Director
of the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter. He
co-directed (with Bill Forsythe) a Wellcome project into Institutions
and Insanity and his publications include studies on industrial health
and welfare.
Pamela Michael was employed for three years on a Wellcome-funded
project on the history of the North Wales Hospital, Denbigh, and is
writing a book on the history of insanity in north Wales. She is a
Welsh-medium lecturer in sociology and social policy at the Univer-
sity of Wales, Bangor.
Andrew Scull is Professor of Sociology at the University of
California, San Diego. His recent books include The Most Solitary of
‘4jlictions: Madness and Sociep in Britain, 170&l 900 (Yale University
Press), and (with Nicholas Hervey and Charlotte Mackenzie) Masters
of Bedlam (Princeton University Press).
Leonard D. Smith is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute for
Advanced Research at the University of Birmingham and is cur-
rently Principal Social Worker in a Community Mental Health Team
in the West Midlands. He is author of Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody:
Public Lunatic Asylums in Earb-Nineteenth-Century England (forthcoming,
1999).
Akihita Suzuki is an Associate Professor in History at Keio University,
Tokyo. He has written on the history of psychiatry in England and is
completing a book on psychiatry and the family in nineteenth-century
ix
CONTRIBUTORS
London as well as researching the history of medicine in modern
Japan.
Lorraine Walsh is a Teaching Fellow in American History at the
University of Dundee. Her research interests include nineteenth-
century urban and medical history with particular emphasis on
medical charity Her current research includes an analysis of class
influences on admission to the Dundee Infirmary and the Lunatic
Asylum.
Oonagh Walsh is Lecturer in History at the University of Aberdeen.
She has published on the history of women in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Ireland and is currently researching the expansion
of the asylum system in the west of Ireland.
David Wright is Wellcome Trust Lecturer in the History of Medicine
at the University of Nottingham. His research interests include the
history of psychiatric disorders, the social history of learning disabil-
ity, and the history of the family He has co-edited (with Anne Digby)
From Idiocy to Mental Dejicieng (Routledge, 1996) and (with Peter
Bartlett) Outside the Walls of the Asylum (Athlone, 1999).
X