Lunacy and Mad Doctors

Mental Illness, a History

Sarah Wise

Did the Victorian Asylum Allow the Rich to Evade Justice?

A member of the establishment is accused of a sex crime but avoids trial by being declared unfit to plead. A scandal erupts. It's England, 1854

Gaslight Stories: Putting Papa Away

A surprising number of Victorian wives resorted to the misuse of the lunacy laws in order to deal with their husbands.

Gaslight Stories: Wilkie Collins’s The Woman In White

It was the most sensational of 'Sensation Novels', and the Woman in White was also a subtle, sustained undermining of confidence in Victorian legislation on lunacy and those 'of unsound mind'. . .

Religious Freedom and the Mad-Doctors

Believers beware: the dangers of being too enthusiastic in worshipping your God

Gaslight Stories: The Early Days of Broadmoor

150 years ago, England opened its first criminal lunatic asylum

Gaslight Stories: Mistreatment of Patients, Then and Now

The abuse of mental health patients coming to light in the UK would have been horribly familiar to some Victorian campaigners

Gaslight Stories: The Madwoman in the Attic

Why did Mr Rochester keep his 'filthy burden' confined upstairs?

Gaslight Stories: Driving 'Ingrid Bergman' Insane

Could Charles Boyer have had Ingrid Bergman declared a lunatic?

Gaslight Stories: The Mania for Monomania

The Mania for Monomania