Social History of Medicine Advance Access originally published online on May 21, 2008
Social History of Medicine 2008 21(2):311-328; doi:10.1093/shm/hkn027
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Poverty, Crime and Mental Illness: Female Forensic Psychiatric Committal in Ireland, 1910–1948
* Department of Adult Psychiatry, University College Dublin, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, 62/63 Eccles Street, Dublin 7, Ireland. E-mail: brendankelly35{at}gmail.com
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Abstract |
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This article focuses on case-records of all women admitted to the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dublin between 1910 and 1948. The majority of women were Roman Catholic (85.4 per cent) and had a mean age of 36.4 years. The majority were convicted of a crime (85.7 per cent), of whom 75.0 per cent were convicted of killing, most commonly child-killing. The majority of women detained ‘at the Lord Lieutenant's Pleasure’ (indefinitely) were convicted of murder (51.7 per cent), assault (20.7 per cent) or infanticide (13.8 per cent); mean duration of detention was 5.6 years. The most common diagnoses were ‘mania’ or ‘delusional insanity’ (38.1 per cent) and ‘melancholia’ (23.8 per cent); 7.1 per cent were considered ‘sane’. Following their detention, 28.1 per cent of women were transferred to district asylums and the remainder were released under various different circumstances. In common with similar studies from other countries, these data demonstrate that the fate of these women was largely determined by a combination of societal, legal and medical circumstances, as evidenced by the socio-economic profile of women admitted and changes in admission patterns following the introduction of the Mental Treatment Act 1945. The role of other factors (such as religion) in determining their fate merits further study.
Keywords: history; twentieth century; psychiatric hospitals; mental disorders; forensic psychiatry; crime; homicide; social alienation