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A Plea for the Insane by Lionel Weatherly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

Claire Hilton Open the ORCID record for Claire Hilton [Opens in a new window]
Claire Hilton*
Affiliation:
A consultant old age psychiatrist for 17 years and has a PhD in history from King's College London. She is historian in residence at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London, UK, and an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health, Birkbeck University of London, UK, where her current research is on mental hospitals in England in the 1920s.
*
Correspondence Claire Hilton. Email: claire.hilton6@gmail.com
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Summary

In A Plea for the Insane (1918), Lionel Weatherly outlined the inadequacies of the Lunacy Act 1890 and of asylum care in England and Wales, and proposed solutions and ways to bring about improvements. It took courage to persist, but Weatherly was undeterred by controversy or criticism. This article reflects on his book and its context and timing at the end of the First World War, and considers whether we may be inspired to confront current healthcare crises with the same sort of passion and fervour as he did.

Keywords

History of psychiatryLunacy Act 1890asylum reformpublic educationRoyal College of Psychiatrists’ values
Type
Memory Lane
Information
BJPsych Advances , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 2024 , pp. 64 - 66
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

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References

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