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Broken minds and beaten bodies : cultures of harm and the management of mental illness in mid- to late nineteenth-century English and Irish prisons
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Cox, Catherine and Marland, Hilary (2018) Broken minds and beaten bodies : cultures of harm and the management of mental illness in mid- to late nineteenth-century English and Irish prisons. Social History of Medicine . hky038. doi:10.1093/shm/hky038 ISSN 1477-4666.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hky038
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between the prison and mental illness, focusing on the ways in which the system of separate confinement was associated with mental breakdown and how maintaining the integrity of prison discipline mitigated against prisoners obtaining treatment or removal to an asylum. Examples are taken from English and Irish prisons, from the introduction of separate confinement at Pentonville Prison in London in 1842 until the late nineteenth century, exploring the persistence of the system of separation in the face of evidence that it was harming the minds of prisoners. The article also briefly examines the ways in which prison doctors argued that they were dealing with special categories of prisoner, adept at feigning, intrinsically weak-minded and whose mental deterioration was embedded in their criminality, factors that served to reinforce the harmful environment for mentally ill prisoners.
Item Type: | Journal Article | |||||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare | |||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History Faculty of Arts > History > Centre for the History of Medicine |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Prisons -- History -- England -- 19th century, Asylums -- History -- England -- 19th century, Mental illness -- History -- England -- 19th century, Prisons -- History -- Ireland -- 19th century, Asylums -- History -- Ireland -- 19th century, Mental illness -- History -- Ireland -- 19th century | |||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Social History of Medicine | |||||||||
Publisher: | Oxford University Press | |||||||||
ISSN: | 1477-4666 | |||||||||
Official Date: | 15 June 2018 | |||||||||
Dates: |
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Article Number: | hky038 | |||||||||
DOI: | 10.1093/shm/hky038 | |||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | |||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | |||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | |||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 18 June 2018 | |||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 18 June 2018 | |||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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