ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the sociological factors underpinning the incarceration of ‘the mad’ in designated spaces and explores the social, cultural and political factors underpinning the development of lunatic asylums and the widespread growth of these. In 1790, Hannah Mills, a young widowed Quaker from Leeds, died in York Asylum shortly after her admission. The emergence of asylums was paralleled by the creation of other total institutions such as prisons, workhouses and juvenile reformatories, with which there are obvious similarities. The original doughnut-shaped design of the Panoptican was of minimal use to asylum architecture. With fewer discharges and increasing admissions, numbers swiftly increased exponentially, from nine asylums averaging 116 patients in 1827 to 66 asylums averaging 802 patients by 1890. The mass institutionalisation of individuals continued to be the dominant response to madness until 1954, where various factors such as the rise of psychotherapies and pharmacologies, led to a gradual decline leading eventually to the closure of the Victorian asylums.
