From danger and motherhood to health and beauty: health advice for the factory girl in early Twentieth-Century Britain

A survey of government reports and the archives and journals of other agencies interested in industrial health in early twentieth-century Britain has led us to conclude that, in addition to apprehension about the potentially harmful impact of industrial work on the reproductive health of women, there was a great deal of interest in the health of young, unmarried girls in the workplace, particularly the factory. Adopting a broader time frame, we suggest that the First World War, with its emphasis on the reproductive health of women, was an anomalous experience in a broader trend which stressed the growing acceptability of women's work within industry. Concern with girls' health and welfare embraced hygiene, diet, exercise, recreation, fashion and beauty within and outside of the workplace, as well as the impact of the boredom and monotony associated with industrial work. The health problems of young women workers tended to be associated with behaviour and environment rather than biology, as were anxieties about the impact of work on morals, habits and character. Efforts to ensure that young female factory workers would be equipped to take their place as citizens and parents, we argue, often dovetailed rather than diverged with the ‘boy labour’ question

'Close confinement tells very much upon a man' : prison memoirs, insanity and the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century prison

This article explores prisoners’ observations of mental illness in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century prisons, recorded in memoirs published following their release. The discipline of separate confinement was lauded for its potential to improve prisoners’ minds, inducing reflection and reform, when it was introduced to British prisons in the 1840s, but in practice led to high levels of mental breakdown. In order to maintain the integrity of the prison system, the prison authorities played down incidences of insanity, while prison chaplains lauded the beneficent influence of cellular isolation. In contrast, as this article demonstrates, prisoners’ memoirs offer insights into the prevalence of mental illness in prison, and its poor management, as well as inmates’ efforts to manage mental distress. As the prison system became more closed, uniform and penal after the 1860s, the volume of such publications increased. Oscar Wilde’s evocative prison writings have attracted considerable attention, but he was only one of many prison authors criticizing the penal system and decrying the damage it inflicted on the mind. Exploration of prison memoirs, it is argued, enhances our understanding of experiences of mental disorder in the underexplored context of the prison, highlighting the prisoners’ voice, agency and advocacy of reform

Chapter 2 ‘We Are Recreating Bedlam’

This essay explores the historical relationship between mental health and the prison system in England and Ireland, from the introduction of the separate system of discipline in the 1840s. In doing so, we focus on the persistently high rates of confinement of prisoners with mental health problems as well as the impact of prison regimes in producing or exacerbating mental illness. Despite recognition of the harmful relationship between the prison and mental disorder, responses by prison medical officers were stymied by their complex tasks of managing and treating mental illness and preserving prison discipline. Our account concludes by drawing out continuities from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century in terms of the obstacles to the effective care of mentally ill prisoners

‘We are recreating Bedlam’ : a history of mental illness and prison systems in England and Ireland

In May 2014 the Guardian newspaper reported a number of shocking instances of homicide carried out by prison inmates suffering from mental health problems. The article went on to accuse the English prison system of ‘recreating Bedlam’, with a prison service poorly-equipped to deal with the 10% of the prison population who were suffering from serious mental health disorders at any one time. Unable to protect their mentally ill inmates from self harm or from harming other prisoners, mental health support in some prisons was described as ‘virtually non-existent’ and mental health disorders were ‘often viewed by management as a discipline problem rather than a health issue’. The Bradley Report of 2007, investigating the provision of mental health services in prison, had urged the ‘earliest possible diversion of offenders with mental disorders from the criminal justice system’. Yet little progress had been made by 2014 and mentally ill prisoners were still ending up in prison rather than hospital (Guardian, 24 May 2014)

Broken minds and beaten bodies : cultures of harm and the management of mental illness in mid- to late nineteenth-century English and Irish prisons

This article explores the relationship between the prison and mental illness, focusing on the ways in which the system of separate confinement was associated with mental breakdown and how maintaining the integrity of prison discipline mitigated against prisoners obtaining treatment or removal to an asylum. Examples are taken from English and Irish prisons, from the introduction of separate confinement at Pentonville Prison in London in 1842 until the late nineteenth century, exploring the persistence of the system of separation in the face of evidence that it was harming the minds of prisoners. The article also briefly examines the ways in which prison doctors argued that they were dealing with special categories of prisoner, adept at feigning, intrinsically weak-minded and whose mental deterioration was embedded in their criminality, factors that served to reinforce the harmful environment for mentally ill prisoners

Disorder Contained

A major study into mental disorder in English and Irish prisons between 1840 and 1900, Disorder Contained investigates the relationship between prison regimes and mental distress, the complex role of prison medical officers in identifying and mediating mental illness and prisoners' experiences of mental breakdown

Prisoners of solitude : bringing history to bear on prison health policy

Season two of the popular prison drama Orange is the New Black opens in a small concrete cell, no larger than a parking space. The cell is windowless and sparsely furnished; it holds a toilet, a sink and a limp bed. The only distinguishing feature we see is a mural of smeared egg, made by the cell's resident, the show's protagonist Piper Chapman. When a correctional officer arrives at this solitary confinement cell, he wakes her, and mocks her egg fresco. “This is art,” she insists. “This is a yellow warbler drinking out of a daffodil.” Her rambling suggests the confusion and disorientation associated with inmates in solitary confinement, who often become dazed after only a few days in isolation. As the scene continues, we see Piper exhibit further symptoms associated with both short- and long-term solitary confinement—memory loss, inability to reason, mood swings, anxiety—all indicating mental deterioration and impaired mental health. In this and other episodes, we begin to see solitary confinement as the greatest villain in the show, more villainous than any character a writer could create. The new and growing trend of television prison dramas like Orange is the New Black brings the issue of solitary confinement, along with other issues related to incarceration, to a more general audience, exposing very real problems in the failing contemporary prison system, not just in America, but worldwide. The show's success leads us to ask how history, alongside fictional dramas and contemporary case reports, can draw attention to the issue of solitary confinement

Weighting for health : management, measurement and self-surveillance in the modern household

Histories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medicine emphasise the rise of professional and scientific authority, and suggest a decline in domestic health initiatives. Exploring the example of weight management in Britain, we argue that domestic agency persisted and that new regimes of measurement and weighing were adapted to personal and familial preferences as they entered the household. Drawing on print sources and objects ranging from prescriptive literature to postcards and ‘personal weighing machines’, the article examines changing practices of self-management as cultural norms initially dictated by ideals of body shape and function gradually incorporated quantified targets. In the twentieth century, the domestic management of health—like the medical management of illness—was increasingly technologised and re-focused on quantitative indicators of ‘normal’ or ‘pathological’ embodiment. We ask: in relation to weight, how did quantification permeate the household, and what did this domestication of bodily surveillance mean to lay users