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'A Burden on the County': madness, institutions of confinement and the Irish patient in Victorian Lancashire
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Cox, Catherine and Marland, Hilary (2015) 'A Burden on the County': madness, institutions of confinement and the Irish patient in Victorian Lancashire. Social History of Medicine, 28 (2). pp. 263-287. doi:10.1093/shm/hku082 ISSN 0951-631X.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hku082
Abstract
This article explores the responses of the Poor Law authorities, asylum superintendents and Lunacy Commissioners to the huge influx of Irish patients into the Lancashire public asylum system, a system facing intense pressure in terms of numbers and costs, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In particular, it examines the ways in which patients were passed, bartered and exchanged between two sets of institution—workhouses and asylums. In the mid-nineteenth century removal to asylums was advocated for all cases of mental disorder by asylum medical superintendents and the Lunacy Commissioners; by its end, asylum doctors were resisting the attempts of Poor Law officials to ‘dump’ increasing numbers of chronic cases into their wards. The article situates the Irish patient at the centre of tussles between those with a stake in lunacy provision as a group recognised as numerous, disruptive and isolated.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History > Centre for the History of Medicine | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Mentally ill -- Lancashire (England) -- 19th century, Asylums, Workhouses, Irish, Poor laws | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Social History of Medicine | ||||||
Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||||
ISSN: | 0951-631X | ||||||
Official Date: | May 2015 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 28 | ||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 263-287 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1093/shm/hku082 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 20 October 2016 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 20 October 2016 | ||||||
Funder: | Wellcome Trust (London, England) |
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