In 2019, the literary world was shocked by revelations that the author Charles Dickens attempted to wrongfully confine his wife Catherine in an asylum with the claim that she had “a mental disorder under which she sometimes labors,” trying to convince a doctor to diagnose her as insane (Thulin). Fortunately for Catherine, his efforts failed. This is more than just a tale of a terrible husband, however. This story provides insight into the Victorian world and how corrupt individuals could use the system of doctors and asylums for personal gain. In Victorian England, wrongful confinement was possible and likely common due to malleable definitions of insanity by doctors, immoral and unconventional behavior mistaken for insanity, corruption of doctors and family members benefitting from another’s commitment to an asylum, and insufficiency of reforms.
To commit a person to an asylum, it is first necessary for a doctor to have some definition of insanity from which to work from. One man, William Griggs, who himself was wrongfully committed to Kensington House, laments that:
Our learned medical men, and more especially those who make affliction of the mind their constant study, assert most positively, that almost every person afflicted with mental derangement presents a new case, but do not tell us by what means they discover a person to be of unsound mind. If it is owing to certain little eccentricities which they have, and it appears to be the only rational criterion they have to judge by, then indeed might they send to confinement half the human race, for heaven knows we are eccentric enough. (3-4)
Diagnosis is problematic if each doctor is working from his own, subjective definition of insanity. According to McCandless, “the doctors themselves frequently differed sharply over the mental state of a particular individual” (368). Thus, one doctor might label a person a lunatic while another would consider him just to be eccentric. Making things worse, “many doctors seemed to be constantly trying to enlarge the boundaries of insanity, constantly adding to the symptoms that indicated mental derangement” (McCandless 368). Occasionally these symptoms bordered on the absurd. For example, the doctor “George Burrows claimed that maniacs emitted a particular smell, a ‘symptom so unerring, that if detected in any person, I should not hesitate to pronounce him insane, even though I had no other proof of it.’” (McCandless 374).
Definitions of insanity became even more muddled when the term “moral insanity” entered into medical terminology. As a result, doctors began to “declar[e] persons sane or insane according to the ‘rightness’ of their opinions and thoughts.” (McCandless 375). H. Lander, who wrote for The British Medical Journal in 1857, described a case of insanity in which a man “had been living an irregular life for years, drinking, smoking, dancing; boasting of his own abilities”— which are not symptoms of a mental illness and certainly would not constitute a conclusive case for insanity (542). Lander went on to describe the man’s appearance as “mean looking” and “extremely ugly,” as if it were relevant to the sanity (542). John Kitching, who wrote for the same journal, recommended education and religion to cure moral insanity, further proving that this is not actual insanity but instead immorality and ignorance (336). John Ordronaux demonstrates that all Victorians at the time were not in agreement on whether moral insanity was a legitimate mental illness. He claims moral insanity is a mistaken “new revelation relating to man’s mental nature as separated from his moral responsibility” (Ordronaux 161).
Some modern critics such as Elaine Showalter also found a disparity between the numbers of women and men committed to asylums, showing that there potentially were some misogynistic biases when it came to diagnosing insanity. Showalter pointed out that “According to the census of 1871, for every 1,000 male lunatics, there were 1,182 female lunatics; for every 1,000 male pauper lunatics, 1,242 females. By 1872, out of 58,640 certified lunatics in England and Wales, 31,822 were women” (160). Joan Busfield challenged Showalter’s claim that “in nineteenth-century Britain madness was first and foremost a female condition” by explaining that women had longer lifespans and men were more likely to be released from asylums, explaining the numbers (259, 265-266).
In addition to problems of defining insanity properly and problems of sexism in diagnosing mental illness, there were also issues with corruption. There were claims that asylums “receive large numbers of Patients, who pay very highly for their care,” and doctors “are allowed by Law to confine persons without any Certificate of Insanity, or any written Order” (Thomas 2). McCandless confirmed that “in the minds of many Victorians money was at the root of the problem of wrongful confinement” (369). This was not just a problem for the wealthy. According to George Wingrove Cooke, “If a person of small property goes mad and is confined, any person whether with or without a well-founded claim, may bring an action against him, obtain judgment by default, and sweep all his property away” (10). Griggs describes how this could happen:
A person is taken ill with fever; a medical gentleman is sent for; in a few days his disorder increasing, the patient, dissatisfied, complains to his doctor; he of course advises the calling in of the physician. Now here lies the danger. Well all know that fever is often attended with delirium. Suppose from interested motives a mad physician is called in, you may be immediately declared mad; your certificate signed, a keeper sent for (5).
McCandless offers a real-life example of how bribery and greed could cause a person to be wrongfully confined:
Lewis Phillips, a glass and lamp manufacturer, was committed in March, 1838, to Bethnal Green Asylum. Phillip’s confinement was ordered by his brothers, his partners in the family firm. He claimed that they put him away to get his share in the enterprise and that the officers of the asylum had “assisted in this nefarious scheme” (372).
Reforms, though they continued to happen in response to public outrage against such cases, did not solve the problem. When Griggs was confined in an asylum for four weeks, he did not see a single commissioner inspect the asylum. The Madhouse Act, which was meant to prevent such cases from occurring, “left great room for abuse” (McCandless 366).
In the end, the powerful authority of corrupt or mistaken doctors contributed significantly to the number of people wrongfully confined. Sexism, women’s longer life spans, and the greater likelihood of men being released from an asylum earlier than women were major factors in why there were more women than men in asylums. Reforms could not prevent wrongful confinement, even though they undoubtedly had some effect. Unlike with Catherine, there were likely many instances of successful wrongful confinement in Victorian England.
Sources
Busfield, Joan. “The Female Malady? Men, Women and Madness in Nineteenth Century Britain.” Sociology, vol. 28, no. 1, 1994, pp. 259–277. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42855327. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
Cooke, George Wingrove. A Letter to the Right Hon. the Lord Denman, Lord Chief Justice of England, on the Enactments Conferring Jurisdiction upon Commissions to Try Legal Rights, and the Practice upon Such Trials, and upon the Feigned Issues Resulting Therefrom, with Especial Reference to the Tithe and Inclosure Commissions. 1849. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/10.2307/60203803. Accessed 3 Apr. 2021.
Griggs, William. Lunacy versus Liberty. A Letter to the Lord Chancellor, on the Defective State of the Law, as Regards Insane Persons, and Private Asylums for Their Reception: with Remarks, Original and Select, Including the Author’s Own Case, and Others. 1832. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/10.2307/60204435. Accessed 3 Apr. 2021.
Kitching, John. “Lecture on Moral Insanity.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 17, 1857, pp. 334–336. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25191230. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
Landor, H. “Cases of Moral Insanity.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 26, 1857, pp. 542–543. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25191434. Accessed 2 Apr. 2021.
McCandless, Peter. “Liberty and Lunacy: The Victorians and Wrongful Confinement.” Journal of Social History, vol. 11, no. 3, 1978, pp. 366–386. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786820. Accessed 22 Mar. 2021.
Ordronaux, John. “‘Moral Insanity.’” The College Courant, vol. 11, no. 14, 1872, pp. 161–162. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45014747. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
Showalter, Elaine. “Victorian Women and Insanity.” Victorian Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, 1980, pp. 157–181. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3827084. Accessed 8 Apr. 2021.
Thomas, Vaughan. Refutation of the Assertions Made by the Writer of the Article in the Quarterly Review for October, 1844, Entitled Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy, Pp. 436-441, as Far as They Relate to the Conduct and Practice of the Warneford Asylum on Headington Hill, near Oxford, and Also to an Appeal to Parliament on Behalf of the Non-Chargeable Poor When Visited by Lunacy, and for the Encouragement of Charitable Asylums for Their Reception, Relief, and Cure: Being the Substance of the Chairman’s Observations at the Weekly Meeting of the Committee of Management: Nov. 12,Nov. 19, and Nov. 26, 1844. 1844. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/10.2307/60206331. Accessed 20 Mar. 2021.
Thulin, Lila. “Trove of Letters Reveal Charles Dickens Tried to Lock His Wife Away in an Asylum.” Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Feb. 2019, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/newly-analyzed-trove-letters-charles-dickens-180971545/. Accessed 3 April 2021.
