Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Music, Health and Asylum Practice

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Introduction

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 3-40

   3. Asylums, Moral Management and Music

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 41-68

   4. Music in the Asylum: An Overview

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 69-102

3. Case Studies: Pauper Asylums

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

      PDF

   2. Norfolk County Asylum: Moral Management and the Asylum Band

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 105-127

   3. West Riding Asylum: Music and Theatre in the Large-Scale Pauper Asylum

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 129-156

   4. Gloucester Asylum: Private, Charitable and Pauper Patients

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 157-176

   5. Worcestershire County Asylum: Patients, Staff, and Professional Musicians

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 177-197

   6. Brookwood Asylum: Music at the Centre of Moral Therapy

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 199-233

4. Case Studies: Private and Charitable Asylums

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 235-235

      PDF

   2. Bethlem Hospital: Talented Staff in an Urban Setting

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 237-271

   3. The York Retreat: Moral Management and Music in a Quaker Context

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 273-287

   4. Barnwood House: Music in the Small Asylum

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 289-298

   5. Holloway Sanatorium: The Middle-Class Experience

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 299-315

5. Conclusion

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 317-317

      PDF

   2. Conclusion

      • Rosemary Golding

      Pages 319-337

6. Back Matter

   Pages 339-369

   PDF

This book traces the role played by music within asylums, the participation of staff and patients in musical activity, and the links drawn between music, health, and wellbeing. In the first part of the book, the author draws on a wide range of sources to investigate the debates around moral management, entertainment, and music for patients, as well as the wider context of music and mental health. In the second part, a series of case studies bring to life the characters and contexts involved in asylum music, selected from a range of public and private institutions. From asylum bands to chapel choirs, smoking concerts to orchestras, the rich variety of musical activity presents new perspectives on music in everyday life. Aspects such as employment practices, musicians’ networks and the purchase and maintenance of musical instruments illuminate the ‘business’ of music as part of moral management. As a source of entertainment and occupation, a means of solace and self-control, and as a device for social gatherings and contact with the outside world, the place of music in the asylum offers valuable insight into its uses and meanings in nineteenth-century England.

• Moral management
• Victorian
• Music therapy
• Madness
• Mental illness
• Patient perspectives
• Cultural musicology
• History of emotions
• Amusement
• Pauper asylum
• Class

“This thorough and detailed book really gets into the nitty-gritty of the uses of music in English asylums in the period. A very valuable addition to the literature on music and medicine.”
James Kennaway, Senior Research Fellow, University of Roehampton, UK

• Music Department, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

  Rosemary Golding

Rosemary Golding is Senior Lecturer in Music at The Open University UK, where she has taught since 2009. Her research interests are centred on the social history of music in nineteenth-century Britain, specifically the status and identity of music and musicians, music as an academic subject, the music profession, and the connections between music, health, morality, and wellbeing. Among her publications are the monograph Music and Academia in Victorian Britain (2013) and the edited collection of essays The Music Profession in Britain, 1780-1920: New Perspectives on Status and Identity (2018).

Policies and ethics