Tracing the experiences of women who were designated insane by judicial processes from 1850 to 1900, this book considers the ideas and purposes of incarceration in three dedicated facilities: Bethlem, Fisherton House and Broadmoor. The majority of these patients had murdered, or attempted to murder, their own children but were not necessarily condemned as incurably evil by medical and legal authorities, nor by general society. Alison C. Pedley explores how insanity gave the Victorians an acceptable explanation for these dreadful crimes, and as a result, how admission to a dedicated asylum was viewed as the safest and most human solution for the ‘madwomen’ as well as for society as a whole.
Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England considers the experiences, treatments and regimes women underwent in an attempt to redeem and rehabilitate them, and return them to into a patriarchal society. It shows how society’s views of the institutions and insanity were not necessarily negative or coloured by fear and revulsion, and highlights the changes in attitudes to female criminal lunacy in the second half of the 19th century. Through extensive and detailed research into the three asylums’ archives and in legal, governmental, press and genealogical records, this book sheds new light on the views of the patients themselves, and contributes to the historiography of Victorian criminal lunatic asylums, conceptualising them as places of recovery, rehabilitation and restitution.
List of Charts List of Images List of Tables Acknowledgements 1. ‘One of the very gravest of crimes.’: Introduction 2. ‘How Criminal Lunatics Are Made’: Pathways to the Asylum – Court Cases, Criminal Responsibility, Insanity Defence and the Power of Medical Evidence 3. ‘To be held until her Majesty’s pleasure be known’: Confinement – Opinions, Discussions, and Decisions 4. ‘God bless all hear for the good nursing I get now.’ Dynamics of Treatment and Care in the Asylums 5. ‘They should be … happy and comfortable.’ Patient Life in the Asylums and the Impact of Behaviour and Relationships 6. ‘The paramount importance of gentleness and kindness to all patients.’ Therapeutic Agency - Medical Men, Chaplains and Attendant Staff in the Asylums. 7. ‘She might, without unwarrantable risk, be discharged.’ Release or Retention and the Protocols of Discharge. 8. ‘A depth of sympathy and a breadth of charity’: Conclusion. Bibliography Index
Alison C. Pedley is an independent scholar based in the UK, specialising in the history of ‘criminal lunatic’ mothers and the medical and legal systems of Victorian England. She was awarded her PhD from University of Roehampton, UK, in 2020.
Reviews for Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England: Cure, Redemption and Rehabilitation
An engaging and well-written monograph that provides important insights into the relationship between medicine and the law, as well as detailed histories of understudied Victorian asylums. * H-Net Reviews *
