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Social History of Medicine 1996 9(2):159-174; doi:10.1093/shm/9.2.159
© 1996 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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Articles

‘Religious Fanaticism’ and Wrongful Confinement in Victorian England: The Affair of Louisa Nottidge

JOSHUA JOHN SCHWIESO*

*University of the West of England Bristol BS16 2JP.

SUMMARY Louisa Nottidge was kidnapped and committed to a private asylum in 1846 by her family because she had joined a millenarian sect of which they disapproved. After eighteen months the Commissioners in Lunacy were pressurised into ordering her release. Subsequently, she successfully sued her brother and brother-in-law for wrongful imprisonment. The judge's criticisms of the medical profession led to an acrimonious public debate about the nature of mental illness and its treatment, a debate that involved some of the leading ‘mad doctors’ of the day including Dr. John Conolly. The complex history of this case, frequently referred to in recent scholarly work, but never discussed in detail, is examined together with its implications for our understanding of Victorian psychiatry, and its attitude to mental illnesses involving religious matters.

Keywords: lunacy; Commissioners in Lunacy; wrongful confinement; Nottidge v. Ripley; John Conolly; Victorian psychiatry; religious monomania; female insanity


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