The Politics of Madness The State, Insanity and Society in England, 1845–1914

The discovery and treatment of insanity remains one of the most debated and discussed issues in social history. Focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century, The Politics of Madness provides a new perspective on this important topic, based on research drawn from both local and national material. Within a social and cultural history of the English political and class order, it presents a fresh appraisal of the significance of the asylum in the decades following the creation of a national asylum system in 1845. Arguing that the new asylums provided a meeting place for different social interests and aspirations, the text asserts that this then marked a transition in provincial power relations from the landed interests to the new coalition of professional, commercial and populist groups, which gained control of the public asylums at the end of the period surveyed.

1 Introduction: The English Asylum and its Historians 2 The Origins of the Asylum 3 The Asylum and the British State in the administration of pauper lunacy, 1845-1914 4 The Ethos of Treatment, Care and Management at the Asylum, 1845-1914 5 Journey to the Asylum: Residence, distance and migration in admissions to the Asylum, 1845-1914 6 Community, Friends and Family: Asylum, Lunatics and the social environment, 1845-1914 7 Reading the Rules of Domesticity: Gender, insanity and the asylum, 1845-1914 8 Madness and the Market: Occupations, class and the asylum, 1845-1914 9 The Patient Experience of the Pauper and Private Asylum 10 From Asylum Inmate to Outpatient: The remaking of the institutional landscape in the Twentieth Century, 1914-1990