Family Strategies and the Institutional Confinement of "Idiot" Children in Victorian England

This article examines the role of families in the institutional confinement of idiot children in Victorian England. First, it surveys the changing historiography of mental hospitals, showing how historians of medicine are increasingly looking to paradigms of familial strategies and household structure to understand why people were committed to asylums. Second, it contributes to the growing literature on the characteristics of patients by examining the results of admission records for more than 2,000 children admitted to one philanthropic institution—the Earlswood Asylum for Idiots. Third, it selects a sample of 400 inmates to investi gate more extensively the geographical location of the "institutionalising " family and the occupation of guardians. Last, this article applies the technique of nominal record linkage to medical records and census enumerators'schedules to discover any demographic factors involved in families' decision to commit children to the Earlswood Asylum

Census · Commit · Criminology · Developed country · Genealogy · Historical demography · Historiography · Idiot · Insanity · Institution · Political science · Population · Probate · Psychiatry · Sociology · Demography · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Medicine

• The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

  Open Access•Alice Mauger•The Cost of Insanity in…•2018

  Incluir item

• Confinement of the Higher Orders

  A Mauger•Journal of the History of…•2012

  Incluir item

• Families and Institutions for Shell-Shocked Soldiers in Australia after the First World War

  Matilda Larsson•Social History of Medicine•2008

  Incluir item

• Conceptualizing confinement

  Open Access•Andrew M Jefferson•Criminology & Criminal Justice•2012

  Incluir item

• Children, poverty and mental health in rural and urban England (1850–1907)

  Open Access•Steven J Taylor•Rural History•2020

  Incluir item

• Supply or demand? Institutionalization of the mentally ill in the emerging Swedish welfare state, 1900–59

  Open Access•Liselotte Eriksson, Johan Junkka et al.•History of Psychiatry•2022

  Incluir item

• Conventions of Madness

  Open Access•Ann Goldberg•Central European History•2000

  Incluir item