An Overview of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen

The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era

Sep 20, 2009

This collection of essays will appeal to Social Historians, Victorian Studies scholars and those with a general interest in the history of psychiatry.

Editor Andrew Scull presents fourteen essays by leading academics on the social history of psychiatry in the Victorian era. Divided into four parts, these essays are accessible when taken in isolation or read chronologically.

Mad-Doctors and Their Therapies

Rationales for Therapy in British Psychiatry, Phrenology and British Alienists and Moral Treatment Reconsidered: Some Sociological Comments on an Episode in the History of British Psychiatry. Of particular interest to Victorian Studies scholars may be the essay regarding phrenology. The ‘pseudo-science’ of phrenology (the study of the shape and structure of the skull to reveal personality traits) has long been dismissed with other forms of Victorian quackery but this essay credits phrenology with aiding the ‘progressive development’ of psychiatry.

Institutions and the Inmate Experience

A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride’s Philosophy of Asylum Construction and Management, Lunacy Reform in the New American Republic and The Treatment of Pauper Lunatics in Victorian England: The Case of the Lancaster Asylum. The latter essay looks at how one Victorian asylum was turned from a filthy, disease-ridden institution which favoured mechanical restraint to a model of progressive care for the mentally ill.

Changes in the Profession and Its Orientation

The Model of the Geel Lunatic Colony and Its Influence on the Nineteenth-Century Asylum System in Britain, The Paradox of Prudence: Mental Health in the Gilded Age, American Neurologists and Psychiatrists in Conflict and Victorian Women and Insanity. Written by Elaine Showalter, acclaimed feminist literary historian, the last essay in this section refers to the portrayal of female lunatics and asylums by writers such as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Reade. She writes, ‘We learn from the study of Victorian women and insanity that definitions of both insanity and femininity are culturally constructed, and that the relationship between them must be considered within the cultural frame.’ This is an engrossing essay which will provide readers of Victorian women’s literature with a new frame of reference.

Psychiatry and the Law in Victorian Times

Liberty and Lunacy: The Victorians and Wrongful Confinement and The Boundary Between Insanity and Criminal Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century England. The fear of wrongful confinement in a lunatic asylum was such a legitimate fear in Victorian England that it appeared as a theme in much contemporary literature. Perhaps the most powerful portrayal of this fear was written by Charles Reade in his 1863 novel, Hard Cash. As the first essay in this section states, ‘The person who seriously overstepped the bounds of acceptable conduct – through drunkenness, license, gluttony, or extravagance – courted an accusation of madness.’ There is even reference to a Mr Campbell who was labeled insane, in part because he preferred corduroy trousers to those made of wool.

This is a valuable resource for scholars of the period – ‘wide ranging, probing and subtle.’

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