Disorder Contained is the first historical account of the complex relationship between prison discipline and mental breakdown in England and Ireland. Between 1840 and 1900 the expansion of the modern prison system coincided with increased rates of mental disorder among prisoners, exacerbated by the introduction of regimes of isolation, deprivation and hard labour. Drawing on a range of archival and printed sources, the authors explore the links between different prison regimes and mental distress, examining the challenges faced by prison medical officers dealing with mental disorder within a system that stressed discipline and punishment and prisoners' own experiences of mental illness. The book investigates medical officers' approaches to the identification, definition, management and categorisation of mental disorder in prisons, and varied, often gendered, responses to mental breakdown among inmates. The authors also reflect on the persistence of systems of punishment that often aggravate rather than alleviate mental illness in the criminal justice system up to the current day. This title is also available as Open Access.

This ambitious book presents an across-the-board study of medicine, in any urban centre, for any period of British history. By selecting Wakefield and Huddersfield as contrasting types of northern towns, and examining in details their systems of medical care, Dr Marland has written a local history that says something important about the country as a whole. Wakefield and Huddersfield contrasted in their economic demographic and social development during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, allowing an effective comparative analysis of medical facilities in the two communities. By drawing on diverse sources: from Poor Law and philanthropy to self-help organisations, fringe medicine and medical practice, the book places the development of medical services against the backdrop of the communities in which they evolved, their class structure, organization and social, civic and economic developments.