Written at the close of the nineteenth century, this article in the Daily Mail mentions four Scottish, one South African, one English, and one American title in circulation in the 1890s. Though incomplete, this list shows recognition that by the end of the century, periodical publishing in asylums was a global phenomenon. Furthermore, while placing a disputable emphasis on patients’ status as social outsiders, the article positions physicians as facilitators, guiding patients out of their isolation. Asylum periodicals served as threads connecting the insides of asylums to the rest of the world. The history of asylum periodicals indeed recasts the asylum as an open system, embedded in ongoing exchanges of people and publications.

The permeability of institutional boundaries is already evident from various documented interactions. Barfoot and Beveridge have discovered that the writings of John Willis Mason, a patient and regular contributor to the Morningside Mirror, were published in the Meteor of the Alabama Insane Hospital. In fact, the Mirror travelled regularly to other institutions and was exchanged for similar publications.² In her study of the New Moon of the Crichton Royal Asylum, Jill McMillan has identified a broader system of connections between asylums and their publications and inmates:

The ‘greater asylum community’ McMillan mentions remains ill-defined, and my aim here is to flesh it out. Asylum periodicals arose from and sustained international networks of medical professionals and publications. Their launch and development also depended on interactions with wider periodical culture and relationships with the print trade. Embedded in social and print networks, asylum periodicals require a re-evaluation of the isolation of the asylum and its inhabitants. The history of these publications was a history of transgression, of resistance to marginalisation, and of continuous participation in social life.

Physicians as Facilitators: Medical Networks and the International Spread of Asylum Periodicals

Nineteenth-century medicine was shaped by growing internationalism, and, as pioneers of a new medical branch, early psychiatrists formed networks crossing geographical and national boundaries. Developments in the treatment of insanity in Britain, America, and the rest of the world informed each other, as physicians travelled abroad, visited each other’s institutions, and read each other’s publications.⁴ National differences naturally emerged. However, this happened in the context of multidirectional communication and increased mobility.

The periodical press was a major channel through which medical exchanges occurred. The publications of local and national medical societies had an international reach and included writing from foreign correspondents. The first psychiatric periodical was no exception. Launched in 1844, the American Journal of Insanity (known today as the American Journal of Psychiatry) aimed to inform readers of new developments in the field around the world. In Britain, the Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology and the Asylum Journal of Mental Science (later published as the British Journal of Psychiatry) followed suit in 1848 and 1853, respectively. Asylum annual reports were widely circulated and reprinted not only in medical journals but also in the general press. Print thus facilitated and reflected the formation and expansion of a well-connected professional community of physicians interested in the treatment of insanity.

Asylum periodicals themselves were part of these networks, as they carried medical news across and beyond institutions. The New Moon promised to ‘offer occasional observations on the management and success of other Houses of the same kind, both at home and abroad’.⁵ Other asylum periodicals often referenced the writings of medical professionals about their own practices or those of their colleagues abroad. The Meteor, for example, enclosed an excerpt from a letter from Dr Thomas Kirkbride of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane to the superintendent of the state asylum of Alabama.⁶ Notes about other institutions’ annual reports in asylum periodicals hint at their far-reaching circulation. The Asylum Gazette of the New Hampshire Asylum mentions the receipt of the Seventh Annual Report of Ohio Lunatic Asylum, while the annual reports of two asylums in Virginia reached the office of the Asylum Journal in Vermont.⁷ Asylum periodicals also reprinted cross-national and cross-institutional comparative studies by physicians. Between April and November 1846, the Asylum Journal serialised Dr Isaac Ray’s ‘Observations on the Principal Hospitals for the Insane, in Great Britain, France & Germany’, originally published in the American Journal of Insanity.⁸ Similarly, the Meteor included a report by the Commissioner of Lunacy for California, containing his observations of 149 asylums, of which 45 were in the United States and the rest in Canada, Britain, Ireland, and Europe.⁹ Finally, asylum periodicals reported events of importance for the medical profession, such as the second meeting of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane.¹⁰ It is unlikely that the patient-editors had access to these publications and news without the assistance of asylum staff. Asylum periodicals thus embody the transatlantic networks of alienists who were interested in each other’s work and had various ways of acquiring and sharing knowledge nationally and internationally.

Asylum periodicals themselves contributed to the discussion of the treatment of insanity, by offering original essays on the topic and embodying a new therapeutic practice. Their distribution beyond their host institutions sparked medical interest and strengthened professional connections. Physicians were among the first subscribers of asylum periodicals, as they learnt about the publications either from the press or their colleagues. Such was the case of Dr Samuel Bayard Woodward of the Worcester Lunatic Asylum in Massachusetts, who subscribed to the Retreat Gazette of the Hartford Retreat in Connecticut right after its launch in August 1837.¹¹ Woodward had been involved in the establishment of the Hartford Retreat, so he and Silas Fuller, who was the superintendent at the time, were acquainted before the launch of the Gazette.¹² The periodical became another form of communication that nourished their professional bond.

This exchange suggests that, though largely produced by patients, asylum periodicals resisted the growing distinction between lay and specialist publications. The intertwining of medical publications and asylum periodicals is uniquely embodied by the printing press of the New York State Asylum, which produced not only the American Journal of Insanity but the patients’ publication, the Opal, launched in 1851. Even before the birth of the patients’ magazine, the American Journal of Insanity featured current and former patients’ writings.¹³ However, as Reiss observes in relation to the Opal, asylum periodicals ‘received relatively little attention in the writings of the medical authorities’.¹⁴ Although direct expressions of medical interest in patients’ contributions and publications were not consistent, asylum periodicals continued to be shared between physicians and were exchanged for medical journals, such as the Lancet, the Medical Times and Gazette, and the Asylum Journal of Mental Science – the organ of the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane, later known as Royal College of Psychiatrists.

These interactions enabled both the spread of periodical publishing in mental institutions and communication between periodical producers across institutions. As physicians moved between different establishments and corresponded with each other, they carried the practice across institutional and country borders. In 1854, Dr William Lauder Lindsay became Physician Superintendent of the James Murray Royal Asylum in Perth, after working as an assistant physician to the famous William Alexander Francis Browne at the Crichton Royal Asylum in Dumfries, where the New Moon had continuously been published for ten years. In his first superintendent’s report published in 1855, Dr Lindsay complained that his institution was not prepared to support a periodical, but disclosed that this did not prevent his patients from publishing their works.¹⁵ Indeed, two contributions from the Murray Royal had recently appeared in the New Moon.¹⁶ Their publication in the periodical of the Crichton Royal Asylum was likely driven by Lindsay’s enduring connection with his former employers. His professional experience in the other institution had also equipped him with the know-how for running his own literary project. He launched Excelsior two years later.

In turn, Excelsior participated in the spread of periodical publishing in asylums south of the Scottish border. In the late 1860s, William Hyslop left his position as head attendant at the Murray Royal Asylum and became the proprietor of the private institution at Church Stretton in England. Under his governance, the establishment launched Loose Leaves in 1872.¹⁷ In the introductory article of the publication, he openly discussed the influence of existing periodicals on his project and expressed hopes that his venture will itself serve to promote the practice:

This was the second English asylum periodical to appear in nearly forty years. After the High Beech publication of the 1830s, it was not until 1861 that the practice was renewed in England, again under Scottish influence. The York Star of York Lunatic Asylum in Bootham was launched in that year and edited by the physician superintendent, Dr Frederick Needham. The Latin motto of the Morningside Mirror, translating as ‘Spare these pages that are destined to perish’, is directly quoted in the first issue of the York Star, and its single-column octavo format visually resembles the Mirror. These peculiarities suggest that the English physician at the very least had seen the Edinburgh periodical.

The Mirror itself was inspired by Crichton Royal’s New Moon, which was launched a year earlier. Reviewing the second issue of the Edinburgh publication, the Athenaeum appended the following correspondence with the superintendent William Mackinnon: ‘Dr Mackinnon has … the candour to inform us that he cannot claim the credit of having been the first to establish a newspaper within the precincts of an asylum. “To my friend, Dr. Brown[e],” he says, “of the Crichton Institution, Dumfries … this merit is due.”’¹⁹ Both the Morningside Mirror and the New Moon continued their lives well into the twentieth century. The wide circulation, longevity, and publicity of these two titles increased the chances that physicians in Britain and beyond would hear about the practice and attempt to replicate it. Indeed, references to them appear in other titles, such as the Sunnyside Chronicle, published in the Montrose Asylum in the 1880s. The Chronicle started its run with the following hopeful statement: ‘The Morningside Mirror and The New Moon … have now each reached the mature age of forty-two years. They will, we feel sure, welcome the appearance of the oldest Asylum in Scotland in a sphere where they have shone so long.’²⁰

Similar exchanges happened in America. Dr William Rockwell, under whose supervision the Asylum Journal of the Vermont Asylum appeared in 1842, had worked for nine years as the assistant physician at the Hartford Retreat, which issued the Retreat Gazette in 1837.²¹ He had left the institution a year before the launch of the Gazette, but he likely stayed informed of the developments in his former workplace. In turn, his Asylum Journal inspired the New Hampshire Asylum Gazette, launched in 1846. The blatant similarity of the title was criticised by the American Journal of Insanity, which expressed ‘regret that some other name [emphasis in original] was not selected as there is danger of confounding it with [the Asylum Journal]’.²² The launch of the manuscript ‘Illuminator’ at the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1843 indicates Dr Kirkbride’s attempt to keep up with the latest innovations.²³ The idea for the Opal of the New York State Asylum potentially came from Dr Amariah Brigham, who was also connected to the Hartford Retreat.²⁴ The Opal was likely influenced by the Asylum Journal, the Asylum Gazette, and even the Scottish New Moon, as references to all of them appear in the American Journal of Insanity during Brigham’s editorship.²⁵ The emergence of asylum periodicals in Britain and America in the 1830s–1850s was therefore likely interlinked, promoting cross-institutional and transatlantic exchanges of medical practices and ideas between medical professionals.

As the century progressed, the practice of printing and periodical publishing in asylums spread further. In 1881, Dr Robert Grieve of the Public Lunatic Asylum for British Guiana employed his patients in printing another Asylum Journal, which, however, did not feature patients’ writing. The 1890s saw the birth of the Fort England Mirror (1891–1899?), a quarterly launched by another Scottish physician, Thomas Duncan Greenlees, at the mental institution in Grahamstown, South Africa, and the Lancaster Argus (1891–1897?) of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum at St John in New Brunswick, Canada.²⁶

The expansion of periodical publishing in asylums continued beyond the English-speaking world. At least two titles were launched in France: Le Glaneur de Madopolis of the Charenton Hospital and ‘L’Anti-Aliéniste’, a manuscript periodical run by a patient in the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris.²⁷ In 1865, the asylum of San Baudilio del Llobregat in Catalonia launched La Razón de la sin Razón (‘The Reason of Unreason’). It was printed and partly written by the patients, and according to Robert H. Le Bow, it preceded the first Spanish official medical journal by sixteen years.²⁸ Prior to its launch, the superintendent, Dr Antonio Pujadas, had travelled across Europe and England, visiting mental institutions and observing their practices. It is possible that he had also heard of the existence of asylum periodicals in Scotland during this period. A more palpable connection is evident in the spread of periodical publishing to Argentina. In 1899, the director of the Hospicio de las Mercedes in Buenos Aires, Dr Domingo Cabred, purchased a press. According to Fabio Ares, Cabred first used the machine for a Spanish translation of an English psychiatric nursing manual.²⁹ As the original use of the press suggests, Cabred kept track of English medical publications. Mentions of existing asylum periodicals in the press were therefore a possible source of inspiration for the Ecos de las Mercedes, issued between 1905 and 1907. Two published letters written by Cabred, however, suggest a more direct influence. In them, he reflects on the management of Scottish asylums, many of which he personally visited in 1896. He pays special attention to the Royal Edinburgh and the Crichton Royal Asylums, which at the time were still publishing the Morningside Mirror and the New Moon.³⁰ The Argentinian Ecos openly echoed other asylum periodicals’ promises to offer healthy recreation to patients, claiming that: ‘The essentially therapeutic aims pursued by this and other publications found in some major European asylums signifies a new means of treating madness.’³¹

The links between physicians also enabled much wider circulation of asylum periodicals: through the superintendents, the publications reached the libraries and inmates of other institutions. The 1846 annual report of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum mentions the Asylum Journal and Asylum Gazette among the periodicals that it received.³² Exchanges were recorded in asylum periodicals themselves: The Meteor in Alabama declared that the Morningside Mirror ‘comes to us regularly from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum’.³³ The Alabama newspaper was also exchanged for Excelsior of the Murray Royal Asylum. Further evidence of asylum periodicals’ external circulation are the pieces celebrating the launch of new asylum publications. When the Asylum Gazette began publication in 1846, the Asylum Journal commented: ‘We have received the first number of this interesting little sheet, published monthly, by the inmates of the N. H. Asylum. We wish it all manner of success.’³⁴ These exchanges were likely driven by physicians’ keenness to share their professional achievements, which were both described and embodied by asylum periodicals. In doing so, physicians promoted the formation of an asylum periodical network, uniting readers and contributors from institutions across vast distances.

The cross-institutional circulation of asylum periodicals enabled patients to communicate with each other, not only with the permission but the encouragement of physicians. In contrast with the widespread institutional policies that restricted patients’ correspondence with the outside world, the pages of asylum periodicals allowed interaction. For instance, the Asylum Journal published letters from patients in New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island.³⁵ The Meteor in Alabama announced that it had

Even if the answer was intercepted, the essence of the response was carried by the Meteor itself. Though there is no evidence that a paper was published in Iowa State Hospital, this exchange embodied the new opportunities for patients’ communication that asylum periodicals created.

Physicians supported such interactions and even welcomed the writing of patients from different institutions. Dr Mackinnon of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum discussed external communications in the Morningside Mirror with palpable contentment: ‘It is interesting to note’, he wrote, ‘that in its pages have appeared contributions from the inmates in two other Asylums’.³⁷ In the first two years of its publication, the Mirror featured pieces from at least three correspondents from the Aberdeen Royal Asylum, as well as submissions from Hanwell Asylum and the York Retreat in England, and Richmond Asylum and St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin.³⁸ Jill McMillan observes a similar trend in the New Moon, which published pieces by residents in the Aberdeen Royal Asylum and the McLean Asylum in Somerville, Massachusetts.³⁹ Patients from the New York State Asylum and the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane also contributed to this title.⁴⁰

Physicians had a key role in these cross-institutional exchanges. Patients in the Aberdeen Asylum were encouraged to contribute to other asylums’ periodicals.⁴¹ In the case of the Mirror, professional connections could further explain the presence of ‘foreign’ correspondents. Dr Mackinnon had previously worked at Aberdeen Royal, the matron had been employed at St Patrick’s, and one of the assistant physicians had studied under John Conolly of Hanwell.⁴² Professional links with the other institutions are also possible. Proof of direct influence or intervention of the physicians in these exchanges can be hard to find. However, Mackinnon’s satisfaction with patients’ interaction through the Mirror and the practice of monitoring patients’ correspondence suggest that physicians were instrumental in the initiation of this printed correspondence, as well as the overall spread of asylum periodicals.

Asylum Periodicals and Their ‘Brethren’: Periodicals as Bridges with the Outside World

The engagement with the world that asylum periodicals offered patients was not strictly bound to the contemporary medical circles and their institutions and publications. Interaction with the general press was another important aspect of asylum publishing. As many of the contributors and producers of asylum periodicals came from a publishing background, these publications can be perceived as branches in contemporary print trade and literary networks rather than novel publications existing outside regular literary production. Asylum periodicals were also part of a diverse stream of periodicals circulating in mental institutions, all of which contributed to fostering a sense of inclusion and connection with the local community. These networks offered patients opportunities not only to observe but to participate in social life. Therefore, in addition to informing the public and patrons about the workings of mental institutions, asylum periodicals enabled inmates’ continuous involvement in public discussions and life beyond the walls of the institution. By allowing looking not only from the outside into institutions, but from the inside out, asylum periodicals challenged the boundaries between the sane and the insane.

The local press was usually keen to note the launching of asylum periodicals, and the news spread quickly. The Factory Girls Gazette in Exeter, NH, ‘exploded a compliment’ to the first number of the Asylum Gazette of the New Hampshire Asylum, which answered the greeting with a poem.⁴³ Within two weeks of its birth, the Retreat Gazette was reviewed by the New Heaven Courant, the Liberator in Boston, and Nile’s Weekly Register in Baltimore.⁴⁴ In its fourth issue, the Vermont Asylum Journal reprinted the salutes of one Boston and two New York newspapers.⁴⁵ Patients’ writings were occasionally quoted and reprinted in other periodicals. A poem published in the first issue of the Morningside Mirror appeared in Chambers’s Journal and other British periodicals. An ode to Robert Burns, recited at the 1859 celebration of the poet in the Royal Murray Asylum, ‘attracted considerable notice in the outside newspaper press’.⁴⁶ External periodicals published several pieces written by Joseph Alexander Goree (1825–1896), the editor, while he was an inmate at the Alabama Insane Hospital.⁴⁷ The press was clearly interested in what asylum inmates had to say, and, quite often, this publicity arose from their peculiar situation.

Other factors could be at play too. Many of those involved in the production of asylum periodicals were enmeshed in the professional print trade networks prior to their institutionalisation. Barber Badger, who produced the Retreat Gazette in the Hartford Retreat, was a prominent editor of religious newspapers in New York. Alexander Smart, who printed and edited the Morningside Mirror in the early 1850s, was a working-class printer-poet. Prior to his admission to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, he had published two editions of his poetry collection and received the praise of Francis Jeffrey, Charles Dickens, and Charles MacKay.⁴⁸ William Selden George was a seventeen-year-old apprentice printer who was given permission to use the equipment in the office of the Vermont Phoenix newspaper to produce the Asylum Journal while an inmate at the Brattleboro Retreat in Vermont. After his discharge, he continued his career in publishing. He joined the Vermont Phoenix officially as their political editor and then headed about a dozen newspapers.⁴⁹ At the time of his death in 1881, he was a major figure in the Michigan publishing scene. He was the senior proprietor and editor of the Michigan State newspaper, the Lansing Republican, and headed the State Printing Firm, the largest publishing company in the state.⁵⁰ The Boston Sun reveals that some of the producers of the Asylum Gazette had close links with the newspaper trade too:

The article refers to politician and publisher Isaac Hill, whose firm, Isaac Hill and Sons, in fact printed the Asylum Gazette, and likely to William Warland Clapp Sr or Jr, both of whom were prominent newspapermen in Boston.⁵² All of these examples show that the press had reasons to be interested in asylum periodicals other than their novelty. Newspaper editors, publishers, and printers had friends, family, and colleagues staying in asylums. Periodicals were a means through which the print trade community kept in touch and expressed support and solidarity with its members in distress.

Asylum periodicals were often offshoots of a well-connected network of book trade professionals and literary men. They emerged in perpetual exchange with other serials and sought to establish a relationship on equal grounds with their peers, or ‘brethren’, as the Asylum Gazette emphatically referred to them.⁵³ These aspirations are observable in asylum periodicals’ emphasis on their literary quality and their attempts to mimic established publications in tone, contents, and appearance.⁵⁴ The involvement of professional print producers in these projects, however, urges us to see at least some of the titles in a different light. Rather than outsiders’ projects trying to live up to externally imposed standards, they were extensions of the regular press, little different from other small periodicals fighting for survival.

The relationship with their ‘brethren’ remained unbalanced, as producers of asylum periodicals naturally had restricted resources. However, the imbalance could occasionally be inversed. Such was the case when the Tuscaloosa Weekly Times found themselves in a difficult situation:

This instance of charity and fellowship presents patients as equal members of their local communities, willing and capable of offering help in times of need. It also shows that asylum periodicals could provide access to the print trade to individuals who would not be necessarily admitted otherwise: though an avid reader and newspaper contributor, Goree was not a printer by trade. He learnt to print using the amateur press in the asylum (see Chapter 5).

The circulation of lay periodicals in asylums allowed inmates not only to find a healthy occupation in reading but also to keep in touch with their communities and local and global events. These functions of the press were often highlighted in superintendents’ reports and asylum periodicals. Dr David Skae observed that the Reading Room at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum ‘brings its occupants into close intermediate contact with the world of every-day life, with sane thoughts and projects, and real events’.⁵⁶ Likewise, Dr Rockwell of the Vermont Asylum assured readers that patients were enabled to stay in touch with their communities through print: ‘We have been able to furnish every patient with a newspaper from his own immediate vicinity, every politician with a newspaper of his own political views, and every sectarian with a religious periodical of his own peculiar sentiments.’⁵⁷ The Meteor expressed similar views, stating that ‘newspapers most agreeably entertain the mind, and are therefore remedial’.⁵⁸ It described the periodical press as ‘a privileged hole in the canvass of a circus which enables one to enjoy the show almost as much as those regularly admitted’ and observed that ‘the friends of many patients so seldom write them, that their only means of learning of their acquaintances, and of events transpiring at home, is through their county newspapers’.⁵⁹ The editor of the Morningside Mirror offers another portrayal of periodicals as a bridge to the rest of society, helping patients to overcome isolation. He states that ‘newspapers, and other weekly and monthly publications, … have tended to keep up our interest in that world outside of us that we are debarred from mixing with and participating in’.⁶⁰ Continuous access to news and literary culture through newspapers and other periodicals was an important aspect of healing by physicians and patients alike. It provided patients with a distraction from unhealthy thoughts, dispelled boredom, and kept them connected with their past lives and the rest of the world.⁶¹

Access to print was frequently facilitated by asylum periodicals themselves, in a variety of ways. Several asylums raised funds and donations through their publications to provide inmates with reading materials. The profits from the sales of the Morningside Mirror, for instance, were used to establish a reading room and pay for periodical subscriptions.⁶² The proceeds from the Opal allowed the New York State Asylum to purchase 650 volumes for its library.⁶³ Mentions of book and periodical donations from well-wishing benefactors, inspired and encouraged by asylum periodicals, appear frequently in their pages.⁶⁴ Furthermore, American titles were also exchanged for other periodicals. Within the first years of launching their publications, the Brattleboro Retreat received over 200 titles in exchange for the Asylum Journal.⁶⁵ The New York State Asylum got ‘two hundred and twenty weeklies, 4 semi-weeklies, 8 dailies and 33 monthlies’ for its Opal.⁶⁶ The latest surviving issue of the Meteor of the Alabama Insane Hospital lists twenty-one exchange papers from Alabama and five foreign ones, including the Morningside Mirror.⁶⁷ Until 1876, the institution also regularly received Excelsior of the Murray Royal Asylum in Scotland.⁶⁸ At least two American publications, the Opal and the Conglomerate, supplanted the profits of their sales through advertisements.⁶⁹

Throughout the Meteor’s run, increasingly urgent calls for newspaper donations appeared in its pages. In 1874, the newspaper declared that Dr Bryce, the superintendent, was considering installing a donation box for old periodicals:

The plan was not carried out until 1879, by which point the tone of the Meteor on the matter had become significantly more hostile.⁷¹ In his Christmas greeting, the editor wished ‘all those Alabama editors and publishers who ha[d] failed to send us their papers have a bad time of it in this world, lest they miss the bliss of the hereafter’.⁷² As institutions’ restrained budgets did not allow regular purchases of serials and books, asylum periodicals were crucial to attracting donations of reading material.

Sometimes the very publication of asylum periodicals was driven by these exchanges. When William Selden George, the founder, printer, and editor of the Asylum Journal, was discharged from the Vermont Asylum, the population of the institution found themselves lacking reading material:

Driven by the prospects of attracting fresh reading material, patients (and potentially staff) tried to master printing to ensure the survival of the Asylum Journal. While, in the months that followed, George was employed as a printer, he eventually left the institution for good in 1844.⁷⁴ The printing got picked up by another patient who was a printer by trade, and the periodical lived on for two more years.⁷⁵ It is unclear how long the second printer performed his duties. It is however possible to imagine that members of the asylum community were incentivised to teach themselves how to print, to ensure the provision of exchange periodicals.

Access to the latest print was not only necessary for patients’ recreation. It was also important for the operation of asylum periodicals, as it provided new content. As the number of contributors was limited, filling the pages of asylum periodicals was not easy. While some publications (the majority of the British ones, but also the Opal) prioritised the cultivation of authenticity through their contents by insisting on being ‘bona fide the production of the patients’, others made use of the common practice of reprinting.⁷⁶ Towards the end of its run, the Gartnavel Gazette of the Glasgow Royal Asylum included less original verses and essays and more reviews of publications and reprinted poetry.⁷⁷ The first American asylum periodicals published reprints from their launches. The Retreat Gazette, the Asylum Journal, and the Asylum Gazette dedicated a substantial portion of their pages to borrowings from various newspapers.⁷⁸ The Asylum Journal was especially dependent on cut-and-paste journalism, as the superintendent’s account of its operation suggests:

While original writings did appear in it, copying was at least as frequently resorted to (but likely even more often). The periodicals that reached asylums therefore provided a constant stream of material for potential reusing.

The recycling of other publications in asylum periodicals was not merely passive reproduction of informative or amusing filler. Occasionally, they are framed by original commentary that discloses the editorial intentions and shows active engagement with the press in pursuit of patients’ own and/or their institution’s interests. For instance, the Asylum Journal inserted a notice by Governor Charles Paine about new legislation pertaining to institutionalisation. The announcement stated that the Brattleboro Retreat in Vermont was to receive new cases of insanity, and it was accompanied by the following manicule note: ‘The several newspaper publishers in the State are respectfully requested to give the above an insertion in their respective papers, or at least, notice it editorially.’⁸⁰ This was a clear attempt to draw the attention of readers of the Journal and other newspapers that might have followed suit in republishing the notice to matters relevant to the institution and its inmates. In addition to accompanying commentary, information obtained from external publications inspired patients’ own contributions.⁸¹ The result was a sense of participation and, potentially, an ability to contribute to public debates, as was the case of the Asylum Journal whose humorous piece about the presidential elections in 1844 was reprinted in the Michigan-based Signal of Liberty.⁸² While external serials supplied patients with material for their publications, asylum periodicals in turn carried inmates’ opinions to the world beyond.

The early beginnings of asylum periodicals were therefore driven by both individual interests and complex interactions between people, institutions, and objects. Several systems of relationships converged in these publications: networks of medical professionals, patient contributors, internal and external readers, members of the book trade and literary circles, and medical and lay texts and publications. Heike Schaefer has posited that networks make it possible ‘to conceive of complex sociocultural negotiations – particularly of processes of connection and disconnection, of inclusion and exclusion, of emergence and change – in a way that renders problematic such dichotomies as part and whole, internal and external, original and variation’.⁸³ The divisions between madness and sanity, inside and outside, centre and margins have become obstacles to evaluation rather than helpful analytical terms. Recognising asylum periodicals as results of existing networks and the potential sources of new ones (e.g. between patients in different institutions) destabilises these divisions. As periodicals punctured physical, social, and cultural boundaries, it becomes hard to continue seeing asylum inhabitants as isolated outsiders.