FHSC Seminars: Inconvenient People, and how to find them: Tales from the Victorian ‘lunacy panics’ by Sarah Wise

Sarah Wise is an author and her latest book "Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England" explores how Victorian-era laws were used to confine individuals deemed "inconvenient" by their families, which is the basis for this talk. The 19th century saw a series of scandals concerning sane individuals being locked away in lunatic asylums – the victims of unscrupulous persons, who wanted to be rid of a ‘difficult’ family member, spouse or friend. But who were the victims of this trade? How much can you find out about contested cases, private asylums and dodgy doctors in the surviving archives? Sarah Wise explains what she learnt during research for her book and has some fascinating, if not very sad examples.

This event is for members only and registration opens on 1st April, when the ‘Register [Individual]’ button will show on the bottom left of the Event details on the FHSC website for you to click and then process your registration, you will receive an email confirmation. Registration will close on 13th April.

The zoom links/meeting protocol will be forwarded the day before the talk.  If you run into any difficulties with this, then please contact us on the dedicated seminar email address – . The Seminar series is co-ordinated by Margaret Spate, Jean Laidlaw and Margaret Roberts and ALL correspondence, queries etc should be sent to the dedicated email address.

PLEASE NOTE WE DO NOT RECORD SEMINAR TALKS