'The great class which lies between': Provision for the non-pauper insane in Ireland, 1830-1900. (360G-Wellcome-093058_Z_10_Z)

Through a close survey of the records of selected private and district asylums, Commission of Lunacy reports, and official records, the project will explore the domestic and institutional provision for the Irish non-pauper insane from c.1830 to 1900, a period marked by significant socioeconomic change. It will assess whether the emergence of a strong middle-class in this period informed interactions between gender, religion, identity, and insanity, and question whether underlying medical, legal and lay explanations of mental illness and its predisposing factors in this group differed from those attributed to pauper patients in Ireland. The project will reflect on the anxieties that were prompted among local and national authorities, the medical profession and families, inside and outside the asylum, while devising management strategies. It will then assess the impact of these strategies upon patient and family experiences of insanity. This project will consider whether some Irish asylums operated as a mixed economy' of care and will explore how class and religious divisions were played out among the patient and staff populations within the asylums thereby contributing to emerging debates on presence of emotional communities' within asylums. The main outputs comprise a PhD thesis, three articles two policy-related and a workshop.