Private Madhouses in England, 1640–1815
Commercialised Care for the Insane
Authors: Smith, Leonard
Free Preview- Offers new archival findings on private institutional care, particularly addressing the scarcity of work on the pre-modern period
- Shows the key role played by the private sector in the development of institutions for the mentally ill over two hundred years
- Written by a leading scholar in the history of mental health, who draws on thirty years of archival research and work in this area
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- About this book
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This book examines the origins and early development of private mental health-care in England, showing that the current spectacle of commercially-based participation in key elements of service provision is no new phenomenon. In 1815, about seventy per cent of people institutionalised because of insanity were being kept in private ‘madhouses’. The opening four chapters detail the emergence of these madhouses and demonstrate their increasing presence in London and across the country during the long eighteenth century. Subsequent chapters deal with specific aspects in greater depth - the insane patients themselves, their characteristics, and the circumstances surrounding admissions; the madhouse proprietors, their business activities, personal attributes and professional qualifications or lack of them; changing treatment practices and the principles that informed them. Finally, the book explores conditions within the madhouses, which ranged from the relatively enlightened to the seriously defective, and reveals the experiences, concerns and protests of their many critics.
- About the authors
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Leonard Smith is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham, UK. His publications include ‘Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody’: Public Lunatic Asylums in Early Nineteenth-Century England (1999), Lunatic Hospitals in Georgian England, 1750-1830 (2007), and Insanity, Race and Colonialism: Managing Mental Disorder in the Post-Emancipation British Caribbean, 1838-1914 (2014).
- Reviews
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"It may have been felt impossible to add anything meaningful to Parry-Jones's magnificent The Trade in Lunacy (1972), but Len Smith has undoubtedly managed to do so. Drawing on an incredible range of often obscure sources, many culled from local archives, he provides a definitive survey of these strange places integral to the first stirrings of specialist institutional treatment for people with mental health problems. The combination of broad canvas and local detail is remarkable, substantially resetting what we know about these 'madhouses', their constitution and contribution, for both good and ill, with a treasure-trove of new insights and information provided on every page." (Christopher Philo, Professor of Geography, University of Glasgow, UK, and author of The Space Reserved for Insanity (2004))
- Table of contents (9 chapters)
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The Rise of the Private Madhouse
Pages 1-17
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Houses for the Distracted, 1600–1700
Pages 19-44
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Madhouses in the Market-Place, 1701–1774
Pages 45-87
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An Expanding Madhouse Network, 1775–1815
Pages 89-134
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Madhouse Patients
Pages 135-172
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Private Madhouses in England, 1640–1815
- Book Subtitle
- Commercialised Care for the Insane
- Authors
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- Leonard Smith
- Series Title
- Mental Health in Historical Perspective
- Copyright
- 2020
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-030-41640-9
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-030-41640-9
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-3-030-41639-3
- Series ISSN
- 2634-6036
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XIX, 323
- Number of Illustrations
- 12 b/w illustrations, 5 illustrations in colour
- Topics
