Sarah Wise: Inconvenient People - Lunacy, Liberty And The Mad-Doctors In Victorian England (Bodley Head)

Saturday 27 October 2012

At the end of a study that reprises the cases of various individuals locked up in dubious circumstances and subjected to the attentions of the "mad-doctors" of their times for being of "unsound mind", Wise draws this conclusion "...

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Review: Lesley McDowell

until the misuses of Darwinist theory began to make their impact in the early twentieth century, little 'advance' or significant change can be traced in psychological medicine".

The incarceration of healthy women, sometimes by scheming relatives, servants or unhappy spouses, was highlighted in Elaine Showalter's The Female Malady: Women, Madness And English Culture (1830-1980). Lisa Appignanesi also cast a cynical eye over the treatment of women by psychiatrists in Mad, Bad And Sad: A History Of Women And The Mind Doctors From 1800 To The Present.

The general impression given by all three books is that the relationship between women and mind-doctors is particularly abusive. But Wise takes her history further than Showalter and Appignanesi, arguing that it wasn't only women who were robbed of their autonomy by faulty diagnoses or relatives seeking to put them away. It was men too. Her first case study, Edward Davies, reveals a mother trying to put away her son in order to gain control of his business, aided and abetted by George Man Burrows. The law allowed for those considered mentally weak to be carted off to the nearest asylum, as long as there were two doctors' signatures on the warrant. It took Edward a long time and a public "inquisition" before his release.Among the 12 cases here, Wise looks at John Perceval, the son of assassinated Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, whose family had him locked up (although with some reason, given the extent of his delusions and behaviour) and who wrote an account of his time in an asylum; Richard Paternoster, who while incarcerated made a survey of his fellow patients, and together with Perceval, formed the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society; Catherine Cumming, who kept a filthy house; Mrs Shuttleworth, an elderly woman taken advantage of by a rogue doctor; Rosina Bulwer-Lytton, who was incarcerated by her abusive husband, the writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton; and Louisa Lowe, who had turned to spiritualism. The mother of the film actress, Elsa Lanchester, was kidnapped by her father and brothers and "deposited at the Priory" for daring to live in sin with her lover.Most of the cases are women and some don't show mercenary families, simply distressed and bewildered ones who don't know what to do. Wise accuses the alienists (or psychiatrists) of the 19th century of not knowing much more themselves – "(they) knew that they were still advancing guesswork. What is less easy to forgive, though, is the flawed or even specious reasoning used by certain doctors...".Wise is largely anti-psychiatry. Interestingly, she does not cite Roy Porter, a major figure in the compilation of psychiatric histories who is sympathetic, and she views even the "moral management" of the early 19th century, with its emphasis on care, kindness, health and fresh air, with scepticism.The move to return troubled souls to their families was advocated by Conolly, who later changed his mind and favoured the asylum system instead. Wise suggests this was purely for mercenary reasons. She is a little hard on those early psychiatrists, and the families who struggled to deal with often frightening and inexplicable behaviour. Hers is certainly not the last word on the history of psychiatry, but it tips the balance in favour of those opposed to it.Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty And The Mad-Doctors In Victorian England Sarah WiseBodley Head, £25

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Sarah Wise: Inconvenient People - Lunacy, Liberty And The Mad-Doctors In Victorian England (Bodley Head)

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