Mental Disability in Victorian England

Book excerpt: 'Exemplary study... this is a wonderfully detailed study. One of its virtues is that it shows how tenuous disciplinary lines can be. To try to classify this work as institutional history, history of medicine, social history etc. would be to do a disservice to a volume that covers all these areas.' -English Historical ReviewThis book contributes to the growing scholarly interest in the history of disability by investigating the emergence of 'idiot' asylums in Victorian England. Using the National Asylum for Idiots, Earlswood, as a case-study, David Wright investigates the social history of institutionalization and reveals the diversity of the 'insane' population and the complexities of institutional committal in Victorian England. He contends that institutional confinement of mentally disabled and mentally ill individuals in the nineteenth century cannot be understood independently of a detailed analysis of familial and community patterns of care.