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sarah
A few years ago I caught the 1940 original film version of Gaslight at the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank – shown as part of the BFI’s “Gothic” season. It’s not as glossy or sophis as the much… Continue reading →
It was reasonably rare for an asylum proprietor to admit that there were corrupt practices in certifying patients. Perhaps it is because Dr Bodington had already won his spurs for his expertise in tuberculosis that the authorities sat up and… Continue reading →
One of the most mysterious figures in Inconvenient People is Dr John Parkin. He first crops up in 1838 as a very early member of the patient advocacy body the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society; but eight years later he was… Continue reading →
There was a lucrative trade in handbooks for doctors of psychological medicine – guides published on how to comply with the latest laws on the certification and detention of alleged lunatics. John Millar, superintendent of East London lunatic asylum Bethnal… Continue reading →
. . . and the gatepost, both taken by me during a long walk. Below, Ticehurst in the 1830s. Tweet
In the V&A Museum is an opulent example of gratitude to someone who fought on behalf of sane patients who found themselves certified into insane asylums. In the late 1840s, Gloucestershire magistrate Purnell B. Purnell (pictured below) single-handedly instigated an… Continue reading →
On a visit to Somerset I made a long overdue field trip to the various sites where The Abode of Love religious cult was located, 1840s to 1960s. In Chapter 4 of Inconvenient People I tell the story of how… Continue reading →
Charles Mercier (1851-1919) wrote his Text-Book on Insanity in 1902; it’s more straight-laced than most, and the following section should be read in your best Mr Cholmondley-Warner voice. (In the final paragraph, Mercier is unable to deal with the love… Continue reading →
There were many guidebooks and manuals of insanity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a competitive, potentially lucrative field, in which the mind doctors could put into print their theories and guidance based on their own… Continue reading →
These two adverts on the back page of The Asylum Journal of Mental Science, July 1854, show a female “lunatics” attendant advertising for a position (bottom), and a male attendant adding that he knows of some good women for such… Continue reading →