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Social History of Medicine Advance Access originally published online on July 10, 2007
Social History of Medicine 2007 20(2):297-313; doi:10.1093/shm/hkm043
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved

Patients' Relatives and Psychiatric Doctors: Letter Writing in the York Retreat, 1875–1910

Louise Wannell*

* History Department, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK. Email: ljw117{at}york.ac.uk


  Abstract

This article investigates the practice of letter writing from family and friends of patients to doctors at the York Retreat asylum at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. During this time, letter writing was an important part of asylum practice and a collection of incoming and outgoing letters remain in the Retreat archive. Using mainly incoming correspondence, this article will show how families and friends remained significantly involved in asylum life and patient care. It will investigate the practice of family letter writing, asking questions such as who wrote to the Retreat, how often and why. It will also look at what types of relationships families and friends constructed with doctors, proposing that they regarded them in a variety of ways, ranging from seeing them as employees to treating them as confidants.

Keywords: psychiatry; York Retreat; letters; patients' families; employees; confidants; professional mediators


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