This 1986 book explores the theory and practice of late nineteenth-century psychiatry. Psychiatric theory is discussed less as an objective body of biomedical k

This book explores the understudied history of the so-called ‘incurables’ in the Victorian period, the people identified as idiots, imbeciles and the weak-m

This highly original book brilliantly exposes the phenomenon of false allegations of lunacy and the dark motives behind them in the Victorian period. Gaslight t

An archaeology of lunacy is a materially focused exploration of the first wave of public asylum building in Britain and Ireland, which took place during the lat

The phenomenon of false allegations of mental illness is as old as our first interactions as human beings. Every one of us has described some other person as cr