Despite recent advances in the history of madness, we still know little of the mad themselves. This "silence at the centre" of the subject might be due to over-reliance on printed sources or institutional records (especially of famous institutions such as Bethlem or the Retreat), both of which may be unrepresentative.' More fairly, the absence is probably due to the acute difficulties inherent in any attempt to search behind the published debates and individual cases for the social contexts that produced the mentally afflicted. Even for the nineteenth century, it has been admitted that the key processes by which the mentally abnormal, particularly pauper lunatics, were discovered, labelled, and sent to workhouses and asylums remain obscure. The detailed institutional records have been described as "abundant but ultimately frustrating" evidence. 2 Yet the project of taking the study out of the institutions into a local social context is of crucial importance. The mentally abnormal were routinely mentioned in a wide variety of records in the early modern period, mostly as part ofthe organization of charity or poor relief, suggesting that this was the first era of widespread public attention to the problems they posed. These sources may unintentionally reveal the general concepts of mental disability that shaped the processes of social and official classification and response. The questions that require examination are why local authorities became concerned with the mentally disabled, and how they reacted. It is argued here that people such as overseers and magistrates were experienced, if not enthusiastic, in dealing with cases of mental disability. Secondly, it is the firm impression that they reacted to the problems in a coherent and consistent manner within the structure oflimited resources, a concern for public order, and a division of welfare responsibilities between the family and the community. Whatever the solution adopted, it marked a shift from the predominantly familial system that dominated the medieval period, although there are some signs among the wills of the propertied that private provision was still not uncommon.3

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