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Marland, Hilary
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Marland, Hilary
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Marland, Hilary
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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
- Publication“He Must Die or Go Mad in This Place”: Prisoners, Insanity, and the Pentonville Model Prison Experiment,1842–52The relationship between prisons and mental illness has preoccupied prison administrators, physicians, and reformers from the establishment of the modern prison service in the nineteenth century to the current day. Here we take the case of Pentonville Model Prison, established in 1842 with the aim of reforming convicts through religious exhortation, rigorous discipline and training, and the imposition of separate confinement in its most extreme form. Our article demonstrates how following the introduction of separate confinement, the prison chaplains rather than the medical officers took a lead role in managing the minds of convicts. However, instead of reforming and improving prisoners’ minds, Pentonville became associated with high rates of mental disorder, challenging the institution’s regime and reputation. We explore the role of chaplains, doctors, and other prison officers in debating, disputing, and managing cases of mental breakdown and the dismantling of separate confinement in the face of mounting criticism.
377Scopus© Citations 11 - Publication'A Burden on the County': Madness, Institutions of Confinement and the Irish Patient in Victorian LancashireThis 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.
483Scopus© Citations 15 - PublicationEmaciated, Exhausted and Excited: The Bodies and Minds of the Irish in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire AsylymsDrawing on asylum reception orders, casebooks and annual reports, as well as County Council notebooks recording the settlement of Irish patients, this article examines a deeply traumatic and enduring aspect of the Irish migration experience, the confinement of large numbers of Irish migrants in the Lancashire asylum system between the 1850s and the 1880s. This period saw a massive influx of impoverished Irish into the county, particularly in the post-Famine years. Asylum superintendents commented on the impact of Irish patients in terms of resulting management problems in what became, soon after their establishment, overcrowded and overstretched asylums. The article examines descriptions of Irish patients, many of whom were admitted in a poor state of health. They were also depicted as violent and difficult to manage, though reporting of this may have been swayed by anti-Irish sentiment. The article suggests that a hardening of attitudes took place in the 1870s and 1880s, when theories of degeneration took hold and the Irish in Ireland exhibited exceptionally high rates of institutionalization. It points to continuities across this period: the ongoing association between mental illness and migration long after the massive Famine influx had abated, and claims that the Irish, at one and the same time referred to as volatile and vulnerable, were particularly susceptible to the challenges of urban life, marked by their intemperance, liability to general paralysis, turbulence and immorality. Asylum superintendents also noted the relative isolation of the Irish, which led to their long-term incarceration. The article suggests that commentary about Irish asylum patients provides traction in considering broader perceptions of the Irish body, mobility and Irishness in nineteenth-century England, and a deeper understanding of institutionalization.
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