This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how the body was investigated in the late nineteenth-century asylum in Britain. As more and more Victorian asylum doctors looked to the bodily fabric to reveal the ‘truth’ of mental disease, a whole host of techniques and technologies were brought to bear upon the patient's body. These practices encompassed the clinical and the pathological, from testing the patient's reflexes to dissecting the brain. Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum takes a unique approach to the topic, conducting a chapter-by-chapter dissection of the body. It considers how asylum doctors viewed and investigated the skin, muscles, bones, brain, and bodily fluids. The book demonstrates the importance of the body in nineteenth-century psychiatry as well as how the asylum functioned as a site of research, and will be of value to historians of psychiatry, the body, and scientific practice.

This open access book is the first comparative study of public, voluntary and private asylums in nineteenth-century Ireland. Examining nine institutions, it explores whether concepts of social class and status and the emergence of a strong middle class informed interactions between gender, religion, identity and insanity. It questions whether medical and lay explanations of mental illness and its causes, and patient experiences, were influenced by these concepts. The strong emphasis on land and its interconnectedness with notions of class identity and respectability in Ireland lends a particularly interesting dimension. The book interrogates the popular notion that relatives were routinely locked away to be deprived of land or inheritance, querying how often “land grabbing” Irish families really abused the asylum system for their personal economic gain. The book will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century Ireland and the history of psychiatry and medicine in Britain and Ireland.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. An electronic version of this book is also available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) license, thanks to the support of the Wellcome Trust. The Industrial Revolution produced injury, illness and disablement on a large scale and nowhere was this more visible than in coalmining. Disability in the Industrial Revolution sheds new light on the human cost of industrialisation by examining the lives and experiences of those disabled in an industry that was vital to Britain’s economic growth. Although it is commonly assumed that industrialisation led to increasing marginalisation of people with impairments from the workforce, disabled mineworkers were expected to return to work wherever possible, and new medical services developed to assist in this endeavour. This book explores the working lives of disabled miners and analyses the medical, welfare and community responses to disablement in the coalfields. It shows how disability affected industrial relations and shaped the class identity of mineworkers. The book will appeal to students and academics interested in disability, occupational health and social history.

“A fascinating insight into the country’s most famous asylum for criminals” which reveals Victorian England’s care and management of the mentally ill (Your Family Tree). On 27 May 1863, three coaches pulled up at the gates of a new asylum, built amongst the tall, dense pines of Windsor Forest. Broadmoor’s first patients had arrived. In Broadmoor Revealed, Mark Stevens writes about what life was like for the criminally insane, over one hundred years ago. From fresh research into the Broadmoor archives, Mark has uncovered the lost lives of patients whose mental illnesses led them to become involved in crime. Discover the five women who went on to become mothers in Broadmoor, giving birth to new life when three of them had previously taken it. Find out how several Victorian immigrants ended their hopeful journeys to England in madness and disaster. And follow the numerous escapes, actual and attempted, as the first doctors tried to assert control over the residents. As well as bringing the lives of forgotten patients to light, this thrilling book reveals new perspectives on some of the hospital’s most famous Victorian residents: Edward Oxford, the bar boy who shot at Queen Victoria. Richard Dadd, the brilliant artist and murderer of his own father. William Chester Minor, veteran of the American Civil War who went on to play a key part in the first Oxford English Dictionary. Christiana Edmunds, The Chocolate Cream Poisoner and frustrated lover from Brighton. “Detailed and thoughtful.” —Times Literary Supplement “It challenges preconceptions about mental illness and public reaction to shocking crimes.” —Bracknell Forest Standard

The psychiatric profession in Germany changed radically from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War I. In a book that demonstrates his extensive archival knowledge and an impressive command of the primary literature, Eric J. Engstrom investigates the history of university psychiatric clinics in Imperial Germany from 1867 to 1914, emphasizing the clinical practices and professional debates surrounding the development of these institutions and their impact on the course of German psychiatry.The rise of university psychiatric clinics reflects, Engstrom tells us, a shift not only in asylum culture, but also in the ways in which social, political, and economic issues deeply influenced the practice of psychiatry. Equally convincing is Engstrom's argument that psychiatrists were responding to and working to shape the rapidly changing perceptions of madness in Imperial Germany. In a series of case studies, the book focuses on a number of important clinical spaces such as the laboratory, the ward, the lecture hall, and the polyclinic. Engstrom argues that within these spaces clinics developed their own disciplinary economies and that their emergence was inseparably intertwined with jurisdictional contests between competing scientific, administrative, didactic, and sociopolitical agendas.

BY THE AUTHOR OF MULTI-AWARDWINNING #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: THE FIVE, THE WOMEN KILLED BY JACK THE RIPPER A fascinating feminist retelling of the historical true-crime story of infamous wife-murderer Dr Crippen in Edwardian England, brought to justice by an extraordinary group of musichall women 'Unbelievably addictive. Written with a unique combination of sleuthing, storytelling and compassion' LUCY WORSLEY ___________ No murderer should ever be the keeper of their victim's story ... On 1 February, 1910, vivacious musichall performer, Belle Elmore, suddenly vanished from her north London home, causing alarm among her circle of female friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild who demanded an immediate investigation. They could not have known what they would provoke: the unearthing of a gruesome secret, followed by a fevered manhunt for the prime suspect: Belle’s husband, medical fraudster, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. Hiding in the shadows of this evergreen tale is Crippen’s typist and lover, Ethel Le Neve – was she really just ‘an innocent young girl’ in thrall to a powerful older man as so many people have since reported? And what is the story behind the death of Crippen's first wife, Charlotte, who died so quietly, never to be heard of again? In this epic examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century, prizewinning social historian Hallie Rubenhold gives voice to those who have never properly been heard – the women. Featuring a carnival cast of eccentric entertainers, glamorous lawyers, zealous detectives, medics and liars, STORY OF A MURDER is forensically researched and multi-layered, offering the contemporary reader an electrifying snapshot of Britain and America at the dawn of the modern era.

This book offers a general introduction to historical sources in the history of psychiatry, delving into the range of sources that can be used to investigate this dynamic and exciting field. The chapters in this volume deal with physical sources that might be encountered in the archive, such as asylum casebooks, artwork, material artefacts, post-mortem records, more general types of source including medical journals, literature, public enquiries, and key themes within the field such as feminist sources, activist and survivor sources. Offering practical advice and examples for the novice, as well as insightful suggestions for the experienced scholar, the authors provide worked-through examples of how various source types can be used and exploited and reflect productively on the limits and constraints of different kinds of source material. In so doing it presents readers with a comprehensive guide on how to ‘read’ such sources to research and write the history of psychiatry. Methodically rigorous, clear and accessible, this is a vital reference for students just starting out within the field through to more experienced scholars experimenting with new and unfamiliar sources in the history of medicine and history of psychiatry more specifically. Chapters 4, 8, 9, 10, and 13 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This open access book explores the history of asylums and their civilian patients during the First World War, focusing on the effects of wartime austerity and deprivation on the provision of care. While a substantial body of literature on ‘shell shock’ exists, this study uncovers the mental wellbeing of civilians during the war. It provides the first comprehensive account of wartime asylums in London, challenging the commonly held view that changes in psychiatric care for civilians post-war were linked mainly to soldiers’ experiences and treatment. Drawing extensively on archival and published sources, this book examines the impact of medical, scientific, political, cultural and social change on civilian asylums. It compares four asylums in London, each distinct in terms of their priorities and the diversity of their patients. Revealing the histories of the 100,000 civilian patients who were institutionalised during the First World War, this book offers new insights into decision-making and prioritisation of healthcare in times of austerity, and the myriad factors which inform this.

Sexual attitudes and behaviour have changed radically in Britain between the Victorian era and the twenty-first century. However, Lesley A. Hall reveals how slow and halting the processes of change have been, and how many continuities have persisted under a façade of modernity. Thoroughly revised, updated and expanded, the second edition of this established text: • explores a wide range of relevant topics including marriage, homosexuality, commercial sex, media representations, censorship, sexually transmitted diseases and sex education • features an entirely new last chapter which brings the narrative right up to the present day • provides fresh insights by bringing together further original research and recent scholarship in the area. Lively and authoritative, this is an essential volume for anyone studying the history of sexual culture in Britain during a period of rapid social change.