ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the potential of applying modern historiographical trends in the history of asylums to the experiences of children with mental health problems. The chapter reveals more significant roles for the public authorities and reliance on testimony from neighbours. It reviews a number of debates about insane children in the Victorian period and then goes on to explore contemporary ideas about links between poverty and morbid heredity. The terms such as idiot, imbecile or feebleminded were in common usage amongst members of the medical profession and the public. Insanity, on the other hand, was a term used to describe disorders signifying mental illness in which the healthy mind deviated from normal activities and patterns, as often evidenced by behaviour considered socially unacceptable. The medical community and the public used both insanity and lunacy to refer to these individuals. The final section of the chapter explores a number of individual to examine the experiences of insane children and their families.
