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A review by maccymacd
Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise
4.0
This was a very tough read. I plodded on and on with it day after day, getting no closer to the end...
However, when I did finally finish, I had to sit back for a minute to soak up everything I had learned.
What a fascinating yet devastatingly sad read. Sarah Wise has luckily separated each of the 12 cases into sections, as well as combining pictures, photographs and maps together to break up the text.
I always knew that lunacy was a controversial topic in the 19th century, but I didn't truly realise how bad it was. Some poor people were effectively kidnapped and thrown into the madhouse for : wanting to keep their own money that they earned, for wanting to write, for learning more than one language, for being flamboyant and confident in their mannerisms, for being in the way of siblings/relatives getting their money.. the list is endless. And this happened to men and women. So desperately sad. Although this was a massive chunk of a book and I found it emotionally hard going to read, it has certainly whet my appetite for the subject.
However, when I did finally finish, I had to sit back for a minute to soak up everything I had learned.
What a fascinating yet devastatingly sad read. Sarah Wise has luckily separated each of the 12 cases into sections, as well as combining pictures, photographs and maps together to break up the text.
I always knew that lunacy was a controversial topic in the 19th century, but I didn't truly realise how bad it was. Some poor people were effectively kidnapped and thrown into the madhouse for : wanting to keep their own money that they earned, for wanting to write, for learning more than one language, for being flamboyant and confident in their mannerisms, for being in the way of siblings/relatives getting their money.. the list is endless. And this happened to men and women. So desperately sad. Although this was a massive chunk of a book and I found it emotionally hard going to read, it has certainly whet my appetite for the subject.