Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die
Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die

Author: Andro Linklater

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-05-09

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1408831716

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On 11 May 1812 Spencer Perceval, the British Prime Minister, was fatally shot at close range in the lobby of the House of Commons. In the confused aftermath, his assailant, John Bellingham, made no effort to escape. A week later, before his motives could be examined, he was tried and hanged.Here, for the first time, the historian Andro Linklater looks past the conventional image of Bellingham as a 'deranged businessman' and portrays him as an individual, driven by personal anxieties and by the raw emotions that convulsed his home town of Liverpool. But as the evidence accumulates, a wider, darker picture emerges - John Bellignham was not alone in hating the prime minister.Two hundred years later, Andro Linklater examines the ecidence and brilliantly deconstructs the assassination of Spencer Perceval - the only British Prime Minister ever to have suffered that fate - to offer a fresh perspective on Britain and the Western world at a critical moment in history.

Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century
Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century

Author: Thomas Knowles

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-06

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1317318544

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The nineteenth-century asylum was the scene of both terrible abuses and significant advancements in treatment and care. The essays in this collection look at the asylum from the perspective of the place itself – its architecture, funding and purpose – and at the experience of those who were sent there.

In the Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology
In the Secret Theatre of Home: Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology

Author: Jenny Bourne Taylor

Publisher: Victorian Secrets

Published:

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13:

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In his 1852 novel Basil, Wilkie Collins' narrator concludes that "those ghastly heart-tragedies laid open before me ... are not to be written, but ... are acted and reacted, scene by scene, year by year, in the secret theatre of home." Taking this memorable quote as her starting point, Jenny Bourne Taylor demonstrates how Victorian psychology is central to an understanding of the complexity and vitality of Collins' fiction, exploring the boundaries of mind/body, sanity/madness, and consciousness/unconsciousness. Taylor's depth of research and thoughtful analysis establishes the importance of Collins as a writer whose fiction challenges the cultural constructions of the nineteenth century, and proves "the impossibility of drawing a precise boundary between fictional and psychological codes". Going beyond conventional discussion of the sensation genre, here we see the depth and range of Collins' writing and gain an understanding of its relation to Victorian medical thought. The study includes close readings of five novels: Basil (1852), The Woman in White (1859-60), No Name (1862-3), Armadale (1864-66), and The Moonstone (1868). Consideration is also given to Man and Wife (1870), The New Magdalen (1872), The Law and the Lady (1875), Jezebel's Daughter (1879), Heart and Science (1882-3), The Fallen Leaves (1879), and The Legacy of Cain (1889). CONTENTS Foreword by Andrew Mangham Introduction - Collins as a sensation novelist Chapter 1 - The psychic and the social: Boundaries of identity in nineteenth-century psychology Chapter 2 - Nervous fancies of hypochondriacal bachelors - Basil, and the problems of modern life Chapter 3 - The Woman in White - Resemblance and difference - patience and resolution Chapter 4 - Skins to jump into - Femininity as masquerade in No Name Chapter 5 - Armadale - The sensitive subject as palimpsest Chapter 6 - Lost parcel or hidden soul? Detecting the unconscious in The Moonstone Chapter 7 - Resistless influences - Degeneration and its negation in the later fiction

Madness, Murder and Mayhem
Madness, Murder and Mayhem

Author: Kathryn Burtinshaw

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2018-10-30

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1526734567

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Following an assassination attempt on George III in 1800, new legislation significantly altered the way the criminally insane were treated by the judicial system in Britain. This book explores these changes and explains the rationale for purpose-built criminal lunatic asylums in the Victorian era.Specific case studies are used to illustrate and describe some of the earliest patients at Broadmoor Hospital the Criminal Lunatic Asylum for England and Wales and the Criminal Lunatic Department at Perth Prison in Scotland. Chapters examine the mental and social problems that led to crime alongside individuals considered to be weak-minded, imbeciles or idiots. Family murders are explored as well as individuals who killed for gain. An examination of psychiatric evidence is provided to illustrate how often an insanity defence was used in court and the outcome if the judge and jury did not believe these claims. Two cases are discussed where medical experts gave evidence that individuals were mentally irresponsible for their crimes but they were led to the gallows.Written by genealogists and historians, this book examines and identifies individuals who committed heinous crimes and researches the impact crime had on themselves, their families and their victims.

Doctors and Ethics
Doctors and Ethics

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-01-29

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 9004418342

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Medical ethics has been a constant adjunct of Western medicine from its origins in Greek times. Although the Hippocratic Oath has been intensely studied, until recently there has been very little historical work on medical ethics between the Oath and Thomas Percival's Medical Ethics of 1803, which is commonly thought of as the first treatise on modern medical ethics. This volume brings together original research which throws new light on how standards of behaviour for medical practitioners were articulated in the different religious, political and social as well as medical contexts from the classical period until the nineteenth century. Its ten essays will place the early history of medical ethics into the framework of the new social and intellectual history of medicine that has been developed in the last ten years.

Hearing Voices
Hearing Voices

Author: Brendan Kelly

Publisher: Irish Academic Press

Published: 2016-11-07

Total Pages: 610

ISBN-13: 1911024442

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Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland is a monumental work by one of Ireland’s leading psychiatrists, encompassing every psychiatric development from the Middle Ages to the present day, and examining the far-reaching social and political effects of Ireland’s troubled relationship with mental illness. From the “Glen of Lunatics”, said to cure the mentally ill, to the overcrowded asylums of later centuries – with more beds for the mentally ill than any other country in the world – Ireland has a complex, unsettled history in the practice of psychiatry. Kelly’s definitive work examines Ireland’s unique relationship with conceptions of mental ill health throughout the centuries, delving into each medical breakthrough and every misuse of authority – both political and domestic – for those deemed to be mentally ill. Through fascinating archival records, Kelly writes a crisp and accessible history, evaluating everything from individual case histories to the seismic effects of the First World War, and exploring the attitudes that guided treatments, spanning Brehon Law to the emerging emphasis on human rights. Hearing Voices is a marvel that affords incredible insight into Ireland’s social and medical history while providing powerful observations on our current treatment of mental ill health in Ireland.