scholarly journals An Effective Model of Institutional Taxation: Lunatic Asylums in Nineteenth-Century England

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Stebbings
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Effective Model ◽  
Lunatic Asylums

scholarly journals Proposals for Mental Health in Italy at the End of the Nineteenth Century: between Utopia and Anticipating the “Basaglia Law”

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Bongiorno
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Lunatic Asylums

The present work refers to the debate which took place in Italy in the final years of the nineteenth century in relation to mental health and lunatic asylums, from which emerged various innovative proposals for avoiding compulsory confinement in numerous cases. Some of them became part of new legislative regulations regarding asylums, but most were excluded. Today, a new historical interpretation allows us to grasp a connection between Law 180, dated 1978 and known as the “Basaglia Law” from the name of its promoter, and alternative proposals to asylum custody omitted from the 1904 law.

Madwomen and Attics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Talairach-Vielmas
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Mary Elizabeth Braddon ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
Moral Insanity ◽  
The Status ◽  
Lunatic Asylums

The chapter examines the evolution of the figure of the madwoman in Gothic narratives, focusing particularly on representations of emotions and on the ways in which definitions of madness evolved in the nineteenth century, from ‘passion’ to ‘moral insanity’ and ‘hystero-catalepsy’. Recognising that locking madwomen up has always been one of the most significant features of Gothic fiction, their imprisonment putting an end to deviance and thus maintaining the status quo, it also charts the changes in madwomen’s places of confinement - coffins and deadhouses more and more replacing attics in Victorian narratives that then capitalised on fears of premature interment. In the second half of the nineteenth century, such images of madwomen locked up in attics were revisited, as madness and ‘badness’ became the object of medical investigation and as research into mental physiology attempted to probe the mysteries of brain mechanisms. Sensation novelists such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon rewrote the clichés of the genre, finding their sources of inspiration in real-life cases and denouncing the wrongful incarceration of women in lunatic asylums

scholarly journals ‘Appeasing the Unstrung Mental Faculties’: Listening to Music in Nineteenth-Century Lunatic Asylums

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-425
Author(s):  
Rosemary Golding
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Controlled Environment ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
Lunatic Asylums ◽  
Set Up ◽  
New Institutions

Listening to music found a new context during the early nineteenth century, in the shape of large, closed institutions set up to house and treat the insane. In response to social reform as well as a growing problem of mental health, lunatic asylums for paupers were set up across Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. Replacing the previous practices of restraint and containment, a system of ‘moral management’ dominated the new asylums. Patients’ lives were kept busy and ordered, with careful attention given to their employment, their diet and their recreational activities. Music played an important part in establishing the routine of the new institutions. Formal dances offered a social occasion and a controlled environment within which the two sexes could meet. Both dances and concerts were used as a reward for patient behaviour, encouraging the kind of self-control which was seen as crucial to recovery and rehabilitation. Musical events acted as a diversion from the grim realities of institutional life and played an important role in allowing patients to engage with religious observance. Musical experience could be active or passive; patients might engage by dancing or making music of their own, and their music might be symptomatic of illness or wellbeing. Using documents including formal records, patient notes and newspaper reports, it is possible to investigate some of the ways in which listening to music played a therapeutic role, and the place of musical experience in the lives of asylum patients.

Aboriginal Australian mental health during the first 100 years of colonization, 1788–1888: a historical review of nineteenth-century documents

2021 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2110532
Author(s):  
Toby Raeburn ◽  
Kayla Sale ◽  
Paul Saunders ◽  
Aunty Kerrie Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Aboriginal Australians ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
Lunatic Asylums ◽  
Newspaper Articles

Past histories charting interactions between British healthcare and Aboriginal Australians have tended to be dominated by broad histological themes such as invasion and colonization. While such descriptions have been vital to modernization and truth telling in Australian historical discourse, this paper investigates the nineteenth century through the modern cultural lens of mental health. We reviewed primary documents, including colonial diaries, church sermons, newspaper articles, medical and burial records, letters, government documents, conference speeches and anthropological journals. Findings revealed six overlapping fields which applied British ideas about mental health to Aboriginal Australians during the nineteenth century. They included military invasion, religion, law, psychological systems, lunatic asylums, and anthropology.

scholarly journals Accounting for madness: the “Real Casa dei Matti” of Palermo 1824-1860

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 1111-1141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warwick Funnell ◽  
Valerio Antonelli ◽  
Raffaele D’Alessio ◽  
Roberto Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lunatic Asylums ◽  
Accounting Reports ◽  
First Time

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the role played by accounting in managing an early nineteenth century lunatic asylum in Palermo, Italy. Design/methodology/approach The paper is informed by Foucault’s studies of lunatic asylums and his work on governmentality which gave prominence to the role of statistics, the “science of the State”. Findings This paper identifies a number of roles played by accounting in the management of the lunatic asylum studied. Most importantly, information which formed the basis of accounting reports was used to describe, classify and give visibility and measurability to the “deviance” of the insane. It also legitimated the role played by lunatic asylums, as entrusted to them in post-Napoleonic early nineteenth century society, and was a tool to mediate with the public authorities to provide adequate resources for the institution to operate. Research limitations/implications This paper encourages accounting scholars to engage more widely with socio-historical research that will encompass organisations such as lunatic asylums. Originality/value This paper provides, for the first time, a case of accounting applied to a lunatic asylum from a socio-historical perspective.

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