Manchester University Press

Out of His Mind interrogates how Victorians made sense of the madman as both a social reality and a cultural representation. Even at the height of enthusiasm for the curative powers of nineteenth-century psychiatry, to be certified as a lunatic meant a loss of one's freedom and in many ways one's identify. Because men had the most power and authority in Victorian Britain, this also meant they had the most to lose. The madman was often a marginal figure, confined in private homes, hospitals, and asylums. Yet as a cultural phenomenon he loomed large, tapping into broader social anxieties about respectability, masculine self-control, and fears of degeneration. Using a wealth of case notes, press accounts, literature, medical and government reports, this text provides a rich window into public understandings and personal experiences of men's insanity.

Reviews

'An original contribution to our understanding of how gender, and especially masculinity, impacted the experience and representation of madness in Victorian Britain.'
Katie Barclay, The American Historical Review

'Out of His Mind builds upon and strengthens work already done in the history of science to destabilise gendered notions of scientific and medical authority.'
Heather Ellis, Women's History Review

'Amy Milne-Smith makes an important contribution to historical understandings of the multi-dimensional interactions between gender and mental health, encompassing the medical, social, attitudinal and cultural.'
Leonard Smith, Cultural and Social History

'Out of His Mind contributes to the recent, growing scholarship on the history of disability and mental health... Milne-Smith's range of sources make this work a compelling read.'
H-Disability

Introduction: Madmen in the attic?
1 Men in care: the asylum
2 Men in the community: homecare, doctor's care, and travellers
3 Personal shame: failures of morality and the will
4 Madmen out of the attic: reputation, rage, and liberty
5 Media panics: stories of violence, danger, and men out of control
6 Degeneration and madness: inheritance, neurasthenia, criminals, and GPI
Epilogue