Women and Asylums

Melanie Meng Xue, New York University Abu Dhabi

The 19th c. England saw a massive expansion of mental asylums. After the Lunacy Act 1845 and the County Asylums Act 1845, each county was required to have at least one asylum. The increasing trend in mental illness patients far outpaced that in the total population thereafter. By compiling a large number of historical sources, I create the first systematic dataset on mental asylums in the 19th c. England. I use it to examine the relationship between women and asylums, among other lines of inquiries. In addition, I glean information from over 2,000 reports compiled by those mental asylums in various years. I begin the paper by reviewing a few key concepts regarding mental illness and by carefully documenting the historical context of the Lunacy Act 1845. In particular, I survey the economic conditions and political discourse near the point that the Lunacy Act was passed. Subsequently, a descriptive analysis is provided on the size and composition of mental asylum populations over time, before a closer look is taken at women in the asylums specifically. In popular culture, women and mental asylums are closely related to each other. I confirm this impression in my data. I then ask the question of why more women than men were kept in the asylums. Using regional variation, I uncover the main correlates of the share of women in mental asylums. How did asylums affect women? Taking advantage of individual-level census data, I document benchmark characteristics of women admitted to the asylums, and examine the impact of stays in the asylums on a range of outcomes for them. The last part of the paper deals with the long-run consequences of the wave of asylums in 19th c. England.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 199. Women, Power and Institutions