A History of London County Lunatic Asylums & Mental Hospitals

A History of London County Lunatic Asylums & Mental Hospitals

Author: Ed Brandon

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2022-09-21

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1399008765

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From the Middle-Ages onwards, London’s notorious Bedlam lunatic hospital saw the city’s ‘mad’ locked away in dank cells, neglected and abused and without any real cure and little comfort. The unprecedented growth of the metropolis after the Industrial Revolution saw a perceived ‘epidemic’ of madness take hold, with ‘county asylums’ seen by those in power as the most humane or cost-effective way to offer the mass confinement and treatment believed necessary. The county of Middlesex – to which London once belonged – would build and open three huge county asylums from 1831, and when London became its own county in 1889 it would adopt all three and go on to build or run another eight such immense institutions. Each operated much like a self-contained town; home to thousands and often incorporating its own railway, laundries, farms, gardens, kitchens, ballroom, sports pitches, surgeries, wards, cells, chapel, mortuary, and more, in order to ensure the patients never needed to leave the asylum’s grounds. Between them, at their peak London’s eleven county asylums were home to around 25,000 patients and thousands more staff, and dominated the physical landscape as well as the public imagination from the 1830s right up to the 1990s. Several gained a legacy which lasted even beyond their closure, as their hulking, abandoned forms sat in overgrown sites around London, refusing to be forgotten and continuing to attract the attention of those with both curious and nefarious motives. Hanwell (St Bernard’s), Colney Hatch (Friern), Banstead, Cane Hill, Claybury, Bexley, Manor, Horton, St Ebba’s, Long Grove, and West Park went from being known as ‘county lunatic asylums’ to ‘mental hospitals’ and beyond. Reflecting on both the positive and negative aspects of their long and storied histories from their planning and construction to the treatments and regimes adopted at each, the lives of patients and staff through to their use during wartime, and the modernisation and changes of the 20th century, this book documents their stories from their opening up to their eventual closure, abandonment, redevelopment, or destruction.


Asylum

Asylum

Author: Mark Davis

Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited

Published: 2014-07-15

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1445636425

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A photographic journey into the Pauper Lunatic Asylums of Victorian Great Britain


The Last Asylum

The Last Asylum

Author: Barbara Taylor

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-04-15

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 022627392X

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In the late 1970s, Barbara Taylor, then an acclaimed young historian, began to suffer from severe anxiety. In the years that followed, Taylor's world contracted around her illness. Eventually, she was admitted to what had once been England's largest psychiatric institutions, the infamous Friern Mental Hospital in London


A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England

A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England

Author: Michelle Higgs

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-02-12

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1473834465

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An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books Monthly, UK). Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK). Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book blends accurate historical details with compelling stories to bring alive the fascinating details of Victorian daily life. It is a must-read for seasoned social history fans, costume drama lovers, history students, and anyone with an interest in the nineteenth century.


The Trade in Lunacy

The Trade in Lunacy

Author: William Ll. Parry-Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-28

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 113503141X

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First published in 2006. A private madhouse can be defined as a privately owned establishment for the reception and care of insane persons, conducted as a business proposition for the personal profit of the proprietor or proprietors. The history of such establishments in England and Wales can be traced for a period of over three and a half centuries, from the early seventeenth century up to the present day. This volume is a study of private madhouses in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.


London and its Asylums, 1888-1914

London and its Asylums, 1888-1914

Author: Robert Ellis

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2021-06-04

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9783030444341

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This book explores the impact that politics had on the management of mental health care at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 1888 and the introduction of the Local Government Act marked a turning point in which democratically elected bodies became responsible for the management of madness for the first time. With its focus on London in the period leading up to the First World War, it offers a new way to look at institutions and to consider their connections to wider issues that were facing the capital and the nation. The chapters that follow place London at the heart of international networks and debates relating to finance, welfare, architecture, scientific and medical initiatives, and the developing responses to immigrant populations. Overall, it shines a light on the relationships between mental health policies and other ideological priorities.


Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum

Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum

Author: Jennifer Wallis

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-11-14

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 3319567144

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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.


Life in the Victorian Asylum

Life in the Victorian Asylum

Author: Mark Stevens

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-10-30

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1473842387

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A vivid portrait of the day-to-day experience in the public asylums of nineteenth-century England, by the bestselling author of Broadmoor Revealed. Life in the Victorian Asylum reconstructs the lost world of nineteenth-century public asylums. This fresh take on the history of mental health reveals why county asylums were built, the sort of people they housed, and the treatments they received, as well as the enduring legacy of these remarkable institutions. Mark Stevens, a professional archivist, and expert on asylum records, delves into Victorian mental health hospital documents to recreate the experience of entering an asylum and being treated there—perhaps for a lifetime. Praise for Broadmoor Revealed “Superb.” —Family Tree magazine “Detailed and thoughtful.” —Times Literary Supplement “Paints a fascinating picture.” —Who Do You Think You Are? magazine


The Story of Nursing in British Mental Hospitals

The Story of Nursing in British Mental Hospitals

Author: Niall McCrae

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-22

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1317812395

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From their beginnings as the asylum attendants of the 19th century, mental health nurses have come a long way. This comprehensive volume is the first book in over twenty years to explore the history of mental health nursing, and during this period the landscape has transformed as the large institutions have been replaced by services in the community. McCrae and Nolan examine how the role of mental health nursing has evolved in a social and professional context, brought to life by an abundance of anecdotal accounts. Moving from the early nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, the book’s nine chronologically-ordered chapters follow the development from untrained attendants in the pauper lunatic asylums to the professionally-qualified nurses of the twentieth century, and, finally, consider the rundown and closure of the mental hospitals from nurses’ perspectives. Throughout, the argument is made that whilst the training, organisation and environment of mental health nursing has changed, the aim has remained essentially the same: to develop a therapeutic relationship with people in distress. McCrae and Nolan look forward as well as back, and highlight significant messages for the future of mental health care. For mental health nursing to be meaningfully directed, we must first understand the place from which this field has developed. This scholarly but accessible book is aimed at anyone with an interest in mental health or social history, and will also act as a useful resource for policy-makers, managers and mental health workers.