Since the 1950s we have become familiar with pronouncements from political parties on the topic of mental ill-health.1 Often, these seek to address issues around stigma or tackle what appears to be a âcrisisâ in care, or its funding. Concerns about an ageing population and predictions of an apparently inexorable demand for dementia care services, coupled with an apparent growth in the numbers of young people living with mental ill-health, are merely the latest areas of concern to grab the headlines. These issues are not strictly political, and the All Party Parliamentary Group [APPG] which draws it membership from Rethink Mental Illness, a campaigning charity, and members of the Royal College of Psychiatry, as well as cross-party MPs and peers, is just one example of the other groups and individuals with a vested interest in this topic.2 The fact that this is an issue for âAll-Partyâ members, seems to suggest that mental health is somehow above party-political disagreements but we know that wider political philosophies impact on other aspects of health care, not least its funding. Using this as a starting point, this book aims to explore the impact of politics on mental health in a period that has been largely overlooked by scholars. In particular, it will focus on the London County Council [LCC] from its inception, following the passing of the Local Government Act [LGA] in 1888, through until the eve of the Great War in 1914.
This period is important, not least because the passing of the LGA introduced triennial elections and the management of asylums became the responsibility of democratically elected bodies of councillors for the first time. Joe Melling and Bill Forsythe have concluded that the âelaborate system of County Council governanceâ that was ushered in by the LGA âhad a significant impact on the management of the asylumâ, but any discussion of the politics behind these changes is still to be unpicked.3 This is probably because, in this case, the coalescing of groups of councillors around political allegiances was not as obvious as it was in London. It has meant that initial studies of the post-1888 period have been primarily inward facingâthat is focussing on the committee structures of the new County Councils. Until recently, there had been only one article on LCCâs role as an administrator of lunacy policy and while some work has been done on the north-west of England, the changes in the management structures brought about by the new LGA have remained largely unexplored.4 As a result, it is less clear how, or indeed if, this was affected by the new democratic processes instigated by the LGA. Furthermore, we have little or no idea of the role of the new democratically elected council chamber in debating, and vetoing or approving mental health policies.
The chapters that follow go beyond the continuities, or otherwise, of pre- and post-1888 managements, to explore more fully the internecine battles and external negotiations to consider how mental health policy was affected by Londonâs new political landscape and how the new political landscape affected it. For these reasons, a study of London is particularly apposite because its development under the LGA was not just about the creation of a new county or a new unitary authority, it was about the creation of a new administration for the worldâs premier city. This offers a chance to consider the role of asylums in wider debates relating to electioneering and political rhetoric, but also to consider the place of mental health within wider political visions for the management of the capital. Here, it will be argued that although there was not necessarily a distinct political vision for mental health in this period, the discourse and debates surrounding it became an important feature of how the political parties in this period were represented, both in power and in opposition, as well as during election campaigns. It shows that the rhetoric around mental health was important in defining what political parties stood forâeven if in some cases the focus of that rhetoric was on key individuals, rather than the parties themselves. Beyond this rhetoric, this work seeks to show how wider political philosophies impacted on the management of madness and demonstrate that the discussions of mental health were not somehow cut adrift from other political currents, debates and realities.
Table 1.1 lists the asylums managed by LCC in the period covered by this book and within it are the familiar names of places such as Hanwell and Colney Hatch . These already feature in specific as well as broader studies of institutional provision, and in more recent work that explores life in asylums in the period covered by this book.5 Both Louise Hideâs recent monograph, which takes an ethnographic approach to the everyday life for patients and staff at Bexley and Claybury , and Jane Hamlettâs exploration of the material life in a range of institutions that include LCCâs Long Grove Asylum, are evidence of an ongoing interest in these places.6 Rather than replicate these excellent studies, I will shift the gaze from a straightforward overview of Londonâs individual institutions to place LCCâs management of them, and its municipalisation of madness, within their longer-term histories. The aim here is to consider the whole of Londonâs stock in relation to the spatial and political understanding of what London represented.
Table 1.1
London County Council Asylums
Name | Location | Built by | Opened |
|---|---|---|---|
Hanwell | Hanwell | County of Middlesex | 1831 |
Colney Hatch | Colney Hatch | County of Middlesex | 1851 |
Banstead | Sutton, Surrey | County of Middlesex | 1877 |
Cane Hill | Purley, Surrey | County of Surrey | 1883 |
Claybury | Woodford Bridge, Essex | LCC but antecedents with the County of Middlesex | 1893 |
Bexley Heath | Bexley Heath, Kent | LCC | 1898 |
Horton Manor | Epsom, Surrey | LCC | 1899 |
Horton | Epsom, Surrey | LCC | 1902 |
Ewell Epileptic Colony | Epsom, Surrey | LCC | 1903 |
Long Grove | Epsom, Surrey | LCC | 1907 |
West Park | Epsom, Surrey | LCC | 1924 |
A Spatial Understanding of London
Strictly speaking, before the passing of the 1888 Local Government Act [LGA] âLondon was officially the City of London (that is the area administered by the Corporation) and nothing elseâ.7 The Times claimed in 1855 that âthere is no such place as London at allâ and the framing and understanding of London as a single metropolis was to be influenced as much by cartographers, statisticians, census enumerators and social reformers, as it had been by a demarcation of âofficialâ boundaries and legislation.8 Culturally too, London had already expanded beyond the square mile and it was, for example, on the road to London that Walter Harcourt first met the eponymous heroine of The Woman in White (1859), and it was the roads to and from the capital that played an import...