The Popular Defence of Chidley

2017

This chapter provides an overview of the developments leading up to the admission of paying patients to private, voluntary and district asylums. Focusing primarily on the reports of Ireland’s lunacy inspectors, the national press and the emerging psychiatric community, it is concerned with the debates aired at national level on how best to accommodate different social groups. It examines proposals for the establishment of separate accommodation for paying patients, negative press coverage of private asylums and the abuses identified by the lunacy inspectors, the growing social importance of Ireland’s four voluntary asylums and the implications of the eventual reception of paying patients in the district asylum system. Ultimately, this chapter argues that in the absence of a single effective solution, the result was a patchwork of public, voluntary and private accommodation, each the outcome of a set of shared convictions as to how, why and by whom the non-pauper insane should be treated.

Section: 'Confinement Of the Higher Orders'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: 'Confinement Of the Higher Orders'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: 'Asylums For the Lunatic Poor'?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: 'Confinement Of the Higher Orders'mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Non-Pauper Insane: Private, Voluntary and State Concerns

2017

“…As Mark Finnane noted in his highly regarded exploration of Ireland's public asylum system, 'the Irish government was, of course, the English government in Ireland'. 4 Moreover, some historians have convincingly suggested that post-Famine Ireland was mid-Victorian, at least where the absorption of Victorian attitudes towards living standards, devotional routine and the decline of the Irish language were concerned. 5 Nonetheless, to assume that Ireland is unworthy of separate investigation would be to ignore key disparities between Ireland and Britain.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

2017

The Introduction sets out key themes and arguments relating to private, voluntary and public asylum care in nineteenth-century Ireland. It situates the book within exiting scholarship, providing context on Irish and British frameworks. The nine asylums selected as case studies are introduced, along with an explanation of the other sources consulted and methodology used. It includes a discussion of the difficulties in accessing the patient’s view and defining social class in Ireland. Extract: Overall, this book argues that the failure of the nineteenth-century Irish state to provide accommodation for the non-pauper insane when setting up the district asylum system gained public, state and medical recognition, both at national and local level. Fresh and revised legislation and increased centralisation sought to address the challenges of accommodating this social cohort, while the lunacy inspectors, the medical community and the press raised the question of who should be legally, financially and morally accountable. No single solution was reached; instead, the state, philanthropists and private asylum proprietors came to share responsibility. This enabled many families to select between rival sectors of asylum provision. Meanwhile, the emerging psychiatric profession, sometimes sharing a sense of social equality with their paying patients, constructed class- and gender-based readings of their disorders, fashioning treatments and accommodation accordingly. The patients, acutely conscious of their own status and the threat incarceration posed to their social standing, entertained certain expectations of what their care should entail. Ultimately, however, mental illness apparently overtook class identity and often patients themselves threatened to disrupt the social decorum of the institutions in which they resided.

The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

2018

Covering all historical periods and geographical contexts, the series explores how mental illness has been understood, experienced, diagnosed, treated and contested. It will publish works that engage actively with contemporary debates related to mental health and, as such, will be of interest not only to historians, but also mental health professionals, patients and policy makers. With its focus on mental health, rather than just psychiatry, the series will endeavour to provide more patient-centred histories. Although this has long been an aim of health historians, it has not been realised, and this series aims to change that.The scope of the series is kept as broad as possible to attract good quality proposals about all aspects of the history of mental health from all periods. The series emphasises interdisciplinary approaches to the field of study, and encourages short titles, longer works, collections, and titles which stretch the boundaries of academic publishing in new ways.