Private Madhouses in England, 1640–1815

Leonard Smith is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham, UK. His publications include ‘Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody’: Public Lunatic Asylums in Early Nineteenth-Century England (1999), Lunatic Hospitals in Georgian England, 1750-1830 (2007), and Insanity, Race and Colonialism: Managing Mental Disorder in the Post-Emancipation British Caribbean, 1838-1914 (2014).

“His meticulous research unearths a rich array of publications, print sources, parliamentary evidence, and newspapers, while his close scouring of local archives has produced a mass of detailed evidence across the country with which to compare and contrast provision in different localities. … Smith’s analysis is both readable and well informed as he unpicks the emergence of the trade of lunacy in meticulous detail … concentrated predominantly in the East End, with the various provincial districts of England.” (Hilary Marland,Journal of British Studies, Vol. 60 (2), April, 2021)

• 1 Introduction - The Rise of the Private Madhouse.- 2 Houses for the Distracted, 1600-1700.- 3 Madhouses in the Market-Place, 1701-1774.- 4 An Expanding Madhouse Network, 1775-1815.- 5 Madhouse Patients.- 6 Madhouse Entrepreneurs.- 7 Therapeutics of the Madhouse.- 8 Conditions and Controversy.- 9 Conclusion - Insanity and Enterprise.-