The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland PDF Author: Alice Mauger
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013270284
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
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 work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland PDF Author: Alice Mauger
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013270284
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
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 work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland PDF Author: Alice Mauger
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319652443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
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.

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland PDF Author: Alice Mauger
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783319652436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
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.

Lunatics, Imbeciles and Idiots

Lunatics, Imbeciles and Idiots PDF Author: Kathryn Burtinshaw
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1473879051
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
“Reveals the grisly conditions in which the mentally ill were kept . . . [and] harrowing details of the inhumane and gruesome treatment of these patients.”—Daily Mail In the first half of the nineteenth century, treatment of the mentally ill in Britain and Ireland underwent radical change. No longer manacled, chained and treated like wild animals, patient care was defined in law and medical understanding, and treatment of insanity developed. Focusing on selected cases, this new study enables the reader to understand how progressively advancing attitudes and expectations affected decisions, leading to better legislation and medical practice throughout the century. Specific mental health conditions are discussed in detail and the treatments patients received are analyzed in an expert way. A clear view of why institutional asylums were established, their ethos for the treatment of patients, and how they were run as palaces rather than prisons giving moral therapy to those affected becomes apparent. The changing ways in which patients were treated, and altered societal views to the incarceration of the mentally ill, are explored. The book is thoroughly illustrated and contains images of patients and asylum staff never previously published, as well as first-hand accounts of life in a nineteenth-century asylum from a patient’s perspective. Written for genealogists as well as historians, this book contains clear information concerning access to asylum records and other relevant primary sources and how to interpret their contents in a meaningful way. “Through the use of case studies, this book adds a personal note to the historiography in a way that is often missing from scholarly works.”—Federation of Family History Societies

Irish Insanity

Irish Insanity PDF Author: Damien Brennan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136237070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
The national public asylum system in Ireland was established during the early nineteenth century and continued to operate up to the close of the twentieth century. These asylums / mental hospitals were a significant physical and social feature of Irish communities. They were used intensively and provided a convenient form of institutional intervention to manage a host of social problems. Irish Insanity identifies the long-term trends in institutional residency through the development of a detailed empirical data set, based on an analysis of original copies of the reports of Inspector of Asylums/Mental Hospitals in Ireland. Damien Brennan explores core social and historical features linked to this data including: the political context governance and social policy the relationship between church and state changing economic structures and social deprivation professionalization legislation and systems of admission and discharge categorisation and diagnostic criteria international developments family dynamics This book demonstrates that the actual rate of asylum utilisation in Ireland was the highest by international standards, but challenges the idea that an "epidemic of Irish insanity" actually existed. Offering a historical and sociological insight into an institutional legacy that is unusual within the international context, this book will be of particular relevance and interest to scholars within the fields of sociology, criminology, law, history, Irish studies, social policy, anthropology, nursing and medicine.

Negotiating insanity in the southeast of Ireland, 1820–1900

Negotiating insanity in the southeast of Ireland, 1820–1900 PDF Author: Catherine Cox
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526129841
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
This book explores local medical, lay and legal negotiations with the asylum system in nineteenth-century Ireland. It deepens our understanding of attitudes towards the mentally ill and institutional provision for the care and containment of people diagnosed as insane. Uniquely, it expands the analytical focus beyond asylums incorporating the impact that the Irish poor law, petty session courts and medical dispensaries had on the provision of services. It provides insights into life in asylums for patients and staff. The study uses Carlow asylum district – comprised of counties Wexford, Kildare, Kilkenny and Carlow in the southeast of Ireland – to explore the ‘place of the asylum’ in the period. This book will be useful for scholars of nineteenth-century Ireland, the history of psychiatry and medicine in Britain and Ireland, Irish studies and gender studies.

Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800-1914

Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800-1914 PDF Author: Bill Forsythe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134668740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
This comprehensive collection provides a fascinating summary of the debates on the growth of institutional care during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Revising and revisiting Foucault, it looks at the significance of ethnicity, race and gender as well as the impact of political and cultural factors, throughout Britain and in a colonial context. It questions historically what it means to be mad and how, if at all, to care.

Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum

Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum PDF Author: Jennifer Wallis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319567144
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
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.

Madness and Civilization

Madness and Civilization PDF Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307833100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.

A most diabolical deed'

A most diabolical deed' PDF Author: Elaine Farrell
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526102242
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
This book examines the phenomenon of infanticide in Ireland from 1850 to 1900, examining a sample of 4,645 individual cases of infant murder, attempted infanticide and concealment of birth. Evidence for this study has been gleaned from a variety of sources, including court documents, coroners’ records, prison files, parliamentary papers, and newspapers. Through these sources, many of which are rarely used by scholars, attitudes towards the crime, the women accused of the offence, and the victim, are revealed. Although infant murder was a capital offence during this period, none of the women found guilty of the crime were executed, suggesting a degree of sympathy and understanding towards the accused. Infanticide cases also allude to complex dynamics and tensions between employers and servants, parents and pregnant daughters, judges and defendants, and prison authorities and inmates. This book highlights much about the lived realities of nineteenth-century Ireland.