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Research title The locational history of lunatic asylums / mental health institutions in Scotland: archival inquiries and contemporary resonances. Summary of research This research looks into the emergence and development of the ‘Asylum Age’ in nineteenth century Scotland, from the charitable Royal Asylums, the establishment of a national Asylum system and the Lunacy (Scotland) Act of 1857, to the construction of state-run District Asylums. Asylums possess fascinating geographies, with distinctive urban, local, regional, and environmental connections, with the sites and architecture of the former institutions carefully chosen by a variety of people, for very specific reasons. The predominant line of thought emerging in the nineteenth century was of a treatment that should remove those people regarded as mentally ill from the stress of community and family life – freeing the mind from, in particular, the city and factory – by moving them to the isolated, ‘idyllic’, ‘natural’, rural setting. This brought together ‘moral’, medical and hygienic dimensions – the ‘medico-moral’ discourse – ultimately outlining the institutional geography by having a profound influence on asylum location and design. Approaching the archive from a specifically geographical Foucauldian perspective, the ideal Scottish ‘blueprint’ for asylum location and architecture is uncovered and reconstructed by ‘picking out’ the macro and micro-geographies discussed, then applying this model to the District Asylums to see what extent the ‘ideal’ was reached, but also to see how it was moulded and developed over the following decades. As asylum location and architecture was a relatively novel concern, questions of siting and design became more pertinent, and indeed central, in institutional planning during the years after the mid-century lunacy reforms. ‘Fitting the building to its purposes’ involved a variety of structural innovations, stylistic refinements and new ways of organizing the “space reserved by society for insanity” (Foucault, 1965:251). My research aims to survey the emergence of an overall asylum system in Scotland: from the period of the ‘Royal Asylums’, charitable institutions with royal patronage, starting in the late-1700s; through into the rise of the state-run ‘District Asylums’ after the 1850s and then into their recasting as psychiatric ‘hospitals’ in the earlier 20th century. Using statistical evidence, map-work and a systematic reading of reports from official inspectorates and regulatory bodies, the research will trace the numbers, locations, changing sizes and fortunes of all of the asylums involved, in order to reconstruct, from the macro to the micro scales, the specific geography of the Asylum system in Scotland. Supervisors Professor Chris Philo
Professor Malcolm Nicolson (History of Medicine, University of Glasgow)
Dr Dan Clayton (University of St Andrews) Recent research grants AAG Historical Geography Speciality Group Student Paper Award Winner 2012: Ralph Brown Award ($250) ESRC Kindrogan Consortium Scholarship 2010-2013 |
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