Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Insanity, institutions and society: the case of the Robben Island Lunatic Asylum, 1846–1910
- 2 The confinement of the insane in Switzerland, 1900–1970: Cery (Vaud) and Bel-Air (Geneva) asylums
- 3 Family strategies and medical power: ‘voluntary’ committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876–1914
- 4 The confinement of the insane in Victorian Canada: the Hamilton and Toronto asylums, c. 1861–1891
- 5 Passage to the asylum: the role of the police in committals of the insane in Victoria, Australia, 1848–1900
- 6 The Wittenauer Heilstätten in Berlin: a case record study of psychiatric patients in Germany, 1919–1960
- 7 Curative asylum, custodial hospital: the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum and State Hospital, 1828–1920
- 8 The state, family, and the insane in Japan, 1900–1945
- 9 The limits of psychiatric reform in Argentina, 1890–1946
- 10 Becoming mad in revolutionary Mexico: mentally ill patients at the General Insane Asylum, Mexico, 1910–1930
- 11 Psychiatry and confinement in India
- 12 Confinement and colonialism in Nigeria
- 13 ‘Ireland's crowded madhouses’: the institutional confinement of the insane in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland
- 14 The administration of insanity in England 1800 to 1870
- Index
13 - ‘Ireland's crowded madhouses’: the institutional confinement of the insane in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Insanity, institutions and society: the case of the Robben Island Lunatic Asylum, 1846–1910
- 2 The confinement of the insane in Switzerland, 1900–1970: Cery (Vaud) and Bel-Air (Geneva) asylums
- 3 Family strategies and medical power: ‘voluntary’ committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876–1914
- 4 The confinement of the insane in Victorian Canada: the Hamilton and Toronto asylums, c. 1861–1891
- 5 Passage to the asylum: the role of the police in committals of the insane in Victoria, Australia, 1848–1900
- 6 The Wittenauer Heilstätten in Berlin: a case record study of psychiatric patients in Germany, 1919–1960
- 7 Curative asylum, custodial hospital: the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum and State Hospital, 1828–1920
- 8 The state, family, and the insane in Japan, 1900–1945
- 9 The limits of psychiatric reform in Argentina, 1890–1946
- 10 Becoming mad in revolutionary Mexico: mentally ill patients at the General Insane Asylum, Mexico, 1910–1930
- 11 Psychiatry and confinement in India
- 12 Confinement and colonialism in Nigeria
- 13 ‘Ireland's crowded madhouses’: the institutional confinement of the insane in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland
- 14 The administration of insanity in England 1800 to 1870
- Index
Summary
In 1921 the popular Irish novelist known as George A. Birmingham published a short story entitled ‘A Lunatic at Large’. This concerns a young Englishman working as a dispensary doctor in the west of Ireland. Although only recently appointed to the post, Dr Lovaway has already been startled at the number of lunatics he is being called upon to certify, especially by the police. Indeed, as the story begins he is in the process of attempting to compose an article entitled, ‘The Passing of the Gael. Ireland's Crowded Madhouses’ for the British Medical Journal. He ponders various explanations for this startling phenomenon.
He balanced theories. He blamed tea, inter-marriage, potatoes, bad whisky, religious enthusiasm, and did not find any of them nor all of them together satisfactory as explanations of the awful facts. He fell back finally on a theory of race decadence. Already fine phrases were forming themselves in his mind: ‘The inexpressible beauty of autumnal decay.’ ‘The exquisiteness of the decadent efflorescence of a passing race.’
The doctor's musings are interrupted by the arrival of a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, announcing that, according to information received from his aunt, a young labourer on a distant and isolated farm is in immediate need of committal.
Accompanied by the police constable and also the local sergeant, Dr Lovaway makes an arduous journey in pouring rain to the farm.
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- The Confinement of the InsaneInternational Perspectives, 1800–1965, pp. 315 - 333Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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