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The State and Mental Disability

DAVID WRIGHT

in Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum 1847-1901

In Victorian England, the Old Poor Law did not function as a unitary system: its implementation varied according to the problems, priorities, and wealth of each of more than 10,000 parishes. However, ... More

In Victorian England, the Old Poor Law did not function as a unitary system: its implementation varied according to the problems, priorities, and wealth of each of more than 10,000 parishes. However, by the end of the 18th century certain patterns of parochial care and accommodation were beginning to emerge as officials dealt more frequently with those suffering from mental disability: idiots or imbeciles. By retaining individuals in workhouses, the Poor Law Guardians were saving enormously on the costs of formal institutional confinement. A confluence of cultural, medical, and charitable forces by the early Victorian period left idiot children as a constituency without a home. County lunatic asylums were concentrating their limited resources on violent and incurable adult lunatics, and were being increasingly seen as an inappropriate locus of care for idiot children. Meanwhile, the cultural status of children's charities was on the rise. Orphan asylums had been established in the early decades of the 19th century, and childhood was becoming identified as central to new bourgeois configurations of family.Less

Dividing Practices in Bombay’s Hospitals and Lunatic Asylums

Preeti Chopra

in A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay

Focusing on hospitals and lunatic asylums, this chapter shows how both the British authorities and the Indian philanthropists created a divided public realm, a fractured landscape, through their ... More

Focusing on hospitals and lunatic asylums, this chapter shows how both the British authorities and the Indian philanthropists created a divided public realm, a fractured landscape, through their dividing practices. It examines two types of social dividing practices or modes: stylistic marking and spatial exclusion. Drawing on Michel Foucault's work, the anthropologist Paul Rabinow defines “dividing practices” as “modes of manipulation that combine the mediation of a science (or pseudoscience) and the practice of exclusion—usually in a spatial sense, but always in a social one.” The European sick, for example, were distinguished from the native sick in Bombay; they were housed in different hospitals, located in different spaces in the city. When similar architectural styles were used for European and native hospitals, then other elements, such as location or the name (such as “European” or “native” hospital), were necessary to distinguish between groups.Less

Lunacy and the Colonial State

Shilpi Rajpal

in Curing Madness?: A Social and Cultural History of Insanity in Colonial North India, 1800-1950s

This chapter examines the variegated processes of professionalization, modernization, and Indianization along with the obstacles that colonialism created in their paths. These processes which began ... More

This chapter examines the variegated processes of professionalization, modernization, and Indianization along with the obstacles that colonialism created in their paths. These processes which began at the turn of the twentieth century were far from complete even on the eve of Independence. It argues that psychiatry remained at the margins of medicine as the colonial state maintained an indifference towards the development of the mental sciences. Highlighting contributions of individual psychiatrists and juxtaposing them with those of the colonial state, the chapter locates psychiatrists as historical actors at the centre of the history of colonial psychiatry during the period.Less

Not a Human Being: Reconstruction and Racism

Wendy Gonaver

in The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880

The two decades after the Civil War saw the creation of a handful of insane asylums for African Americans in the South. The first of these institutions was the Central Lunatic Asylum of Virginia, to ... More

The two decades after the Civil War saw the creation of a handful of insane asylums for African Americans in the South. The first of these institutions was the Central Lunatic Asylum of Virginia, to which all African American patients at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum were transferred at the end of the war. The quality of care at asylums generally deteriorated in this period due to overcrowding and underfunding, but this chapter argues that asylums for African Americans were at the opprobrious vanguard. Focusing on conditions at Central Lunatic Asylum reveals that moral means were immediately abandoned in favor of mechanical restraint and hard labor because white superintendents asserted that newly freedmen and women lacked a moral conscience and refined sensibilities. Using dehumanizing language, they characterized patients as sexually profligate and viewed African American religious culture as inferior.Less

Mad doctors: lunacy and the asylum

Alannah Tomkins

in Medical Misadventure in an Age of Professionalisation, 1780-1890

The stresses of professional life could become so severe as to prompt an admission to an asylum. This chapter considers the propensity of practitioners to undergo admission to either a pauper lunatic ... More

The stresses of professional life could become so severe as to prompt an admission to an asylum. This chapter considers the propensity of practitioners to undergo admission to either a pauper lunatic asylum or a private, licensed house, and unpacks the experiences of those men whose suffering was acute, or which exemplified the issues which arose when men were treated by their former and (for some) future colleagues. It locates causes of professional stress and fears of competitive practice.Less

Brothers and Sisters of Asylumia: Literary Life in the New York State Lunatic Asylum

in Theaters of Madness: Insane Asylums and Nineteenth-Century American Culture

This chapter focuses on the Opal, a journal of patients' creative writing published at the New York State Lunatic Asylum. It reconstructs the psychiatric theory and practice behind the journal's ... More

This chapter focuses on the Opal, a journal of patients' creative writing published at the New York State Lunatic Asylum. It reconstructs the psychiatric theory and practice behind the journal's production and examines the ways in which patients used the space provided to them to make sense of their social situation and their afflictions. It argues that patients responded to the enforced anonymity and “civil death” of asylum life by mimicking an elite, literary anonymity practiced by genteel writers of the period. Rather than using the journal to voice coded protests against authority, many of the authors cast their confinement as a retreat from the overwhelming forces of nineteenth-century modernity with which they had been unable to cope on the outside; and they cast their authorship in a mode that similarly retreated from market forces that their doctors claimed had poisoned the culture.Less

Work and occupation in Romanian psychiatry, c. 1838–1945

Valentin-Veron Toma

in Work, Psychiatry and Society, C. 1750-2015

This chapter focuses on the development of psychiatry in the Romanian Principalities and, afterwards, in the Romanian Kingdom, until the end of WWII. It explores the evolution of ideas on work ... More

This chapter focuses on the development of psychiatry in the Romanian Principalities and, afterwards, in the Romanian Kingdom, until the end of WWII. It explores the evolution of ideas on work therapy and other occupations in four main cities of the country (Bucharest, Iași, Craiova and Sibiu) where the most important public asylums were located. The published works of leading Romanian psychiatrists are explored, in order to understand the origins, interpretations and applications, of their ideas and practices. Some of the authors argued for, and some against, the use of colonies of the Belgian type, but they all shared the view that work had both economic and medical benefits for inpatients. Influenced by key figures of European psychiatry during their studies abroad, or by the results of their own field trips to major European asylums, Romanian specialists also influenced each other. They discussed, in their publications, state of the art strategies relating to work therapy. In summary, it is suggested that, from a transnational standpoint, this cross-fertilisation of ideas and practices and transfers of knowledge were characteristic of psychiatry in European countries. In Romaniaʼs case such transfers were not mechanical, but part of a process of critical reflection and adaptation to conditions existing in different regions of the country at the time.Less

Saneface Minstrelsy: Blacking Up in the Asylum

in Theaters of Madness: Insane Asylums and Nineteenth-Century American Culture

This chapter explores the life of a curious blackface minstrel troupe composed of patients at the New York State Lunatic Asylum. Performing several times a year for patients, doctors, and visitors, ... More

This chapter explores the life of a curious blackface minstrel troupe composed of patients at the New York State Lunatic Asylum. Performing several times a year for patients, doctors, and visitors, they turned a famously carnivalesque popular form into a therapeutic diversion for other patients in a display meant to convince the outside world—and perhaps themselves—that they, unlike the black characters they mocked, were capable of rationally managing their affairs in the modern world. The chapter also examines patients' writings about these performances, in which they reflect on how the social categories of blackness and mental alienation resemble one another. This discussion encompasses an analysis of the interplay between strategies of confinement and uplift common to plantation slavery, the colonial enterprise, and institutional psychiatry. The chapter uses the episode to argue that the “civilizing process,” which proved such a potent argument behind Euro-American colonization and enslavement of blacks, also structured the relations between doctors and patients.Less

Health Matters: Exploring the World of the Tribals and Outcastes/Dalits

Biswamoy Pati

in Tribals and Dalits in Orissa: Towards a Social History of Exclusion, c. 1800-1950

This chapter delineates indigenous systems of medicine. Using a range of folk beliefs, proverbs, and tales, it shows that tribal medical beliefs were often based on a very complex and close ... More

This chapter delineates indigenous systems of medicine. Using a range of folk beliefs, proverbs, and tales, it shows that tribal medical beliefs were often based on a very complex and close understanding of recurring epidemics and other diseases. It highlights the fact that many ideas/beliefs that are often seen as ‘irrational’ reveal, on closer examination, hidden fears and anxieties on the part of the tribal population. Simultaneously, the chapter also highlights the way in which certain herbs or medical practices were used by the princely/priestly classes to establish their legitimacy. It closes with a discussion of the colonial medical gaze that was trained often in a dehumanized manner upon the colonized population, seen especially in medical policies dealing with issues such as leprosy or lunacy.Less

The First World War and nurses’ choice of occupational representation

Debbie Palmer

in Who cared for the carers?: A history of the occupational health of nurses, 1880-1948

Chapter two explains why Cornwall Lunatic Asylum (CLA) nurses chose to join a trade union and take strike action in 1918, at the end of the First World War, by relating it to the terrible ... More

Chapter two explains why Cornwall Lunatic Asylum (CLA) nurses chose to join a trade union and take strike action in 1918, at the end of the First World War, by relating it to the terrible deterioration in their health and working conditions. Indeed, seven CLA nurses died from infectious diseases between 1917-18, all under the age of thirty. The chapter compares the impact of the war on nurses’ health at the South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital (SDEC) and examines whether these voluntary hospital nurses’ lack of interest in any form of occupational representation can be explained by the fact that they experienced little day-to-day change between 1914-18. Brian Abel-Smith and Christopher Hart cite the reason for voluntary hospital nurses’ choice of the College of Nursing and asylum nurses’ decision to join trade unions within a framework of gender and class. This chapter will assess how influential these factors were at the SDEC and CLA and suggest that further analysis must include nurses’ occupational health issues.Less

A Deep Acquaintance with Grief

Lindsey Apple

in The Family Legacy of Henry Clay: In the Shadow of a Kentucky Patriarch

While attempting to preserve a nation, Henry Clay endured both the intense criticism of political enemies and family tragedies that would have felled most men. All six Clay daughters died ... More

While attempting to preserve a nation, Henry Clay endured both the intense criticism of political enemies and family tragedies that would have felled most men. All six Clay daughters died prematurely, a son died in war, and two sons suffered mood disorders so severe that they were placed in the Lexington Lunatic Asylum. The oldest son spent his life there; the youngest was released but remained subject to manic episodes and a source of concern throughout Clay's life. Henry Clay struggled, not always successfully, to balance public and private responsibilities, and tragedy humbled a proud man. As his “afflictions” began to take a toll on the third generation, Clay looked to a higher power and submitted to baptism late in life. Even in tragedy he found it difficult to console Lucretia or receive consolation from her, yet his children took lessons from his suffering.Less

‘To Help a Million Sick, You Must Kill a Few Nurses’:1 the impact of the campaign for professional status on nurses’ health, 1890–19142

Debbie Palmer

in Who cared for the carers?: A history of the occupational health of nurses, 1880-1948

Chapter one examines the impact of the late nineteenth-century debate about nurse registration on ideas about the health of nurses. Between 1888-90, the mortality and morbidity rate among The London ... More

Chapter one examines the impact of the late nineteenth-century debate about nurse registration on ideas about the health of nurses. Between 1888-90, the mortality and morbidity rate among The London Hospital nurses dramatically increased and critics alleged that its cause was linked to matron Eva Luckes’ increasing power and political opposition to nurse registration. Using evidence from the inquiry called to investigate the problem, this chapter contrasts Luckes’ ideology about the organisation of nursing and the care of sick nurses with that of Harriet Hopkins, matron of the South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital and a staunch supporter of nurse registration. The disparity between these women’s ideas is then contrasted with those of the Cornwall Lunatic Asylum matrons who expressed no interest in the politics of nursing and enjoyed little power.Less

Chapter 2

Mark Glancy

in Cary Grant, the Making of a Hollywood Legend

Beginning with Elsie Leach’s commitment to the Bristol Lunatic Asylum, this chapter explores his mother’s medical records and the nature of her illness. It considers the idea that his father may have ... More

Beginning with Elsie Leach’s commitment to the Bristol Lunatic Asylum, this chapter explores his mother’s medical records and the nature of her illness. It considers the idea that his father may have had his mother committed as a means of freeing himself from marriage. It also considers the impact that her disappearance had on Archie, who was told that she was dead but suspected that she had deserted him. Drawing on his own diary, from 1918, the chapter recounts his daily life at age 14, revealing that he was a frequent truant and that, while working as a backstage “runner” at Bristol’s Empire and Hippodrome theaters, he became fascinated with show business and especially music hall.Less

Chapter 1

Mark Glancy

in Cary Grant, the Making of a Hollywood Legend

Chapter 1 covers the years 1904 to 1915, from Archie Leach’s birth through his childhood to age 11. It offers information on the city of his birth, Bristol, and it considers his extended family’s ... More

Chapter 1 covers the years 1904 to 1915, from Archie Leach’s birth through his childhood to age 11. It offers information on the city of his birth, Bristol, and it considers his extended family’s background. It is revealed that his mother’s side of the family, the Kingdons, were particularly troubled and impoverished: his maternal grandfather died in the workhouse, his aunt was committed to a workhouse and subsequently the Bristol Lunatic Asylum, and one of his uncles spent his adolescence in a borstal-like facility. It also considers his mother’s aspirational nature and his parents’ unhappy marriage, which culminated in his mother’s disappearance just after his 11th birthday.Less