"Fit objects for an asylum": The Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum and its patients, 1852-1899

This research uses the records of the Hampshire County Asylum (HCA) between itsopening in 1852 and the end of the nineteenth century to offer a different perspectiveon asylum history. Though it discusses the asylum in legal, medical and social welfarecontexts it focuses on the experience of individuals and their families and the partplayed by the HCA in their lives. The perspective and methodology of the researchreflect the recognition of the importance of individual experience in the constructionof historical exposition.In the course of the research a database of patients' personal information wasconstructed from asylum records. The resulting analysis of individual experience ofadmission to the HCA suggests that, for many patients, admission was short-term andtemporary, caused by a combination of symptoms and events that erupted into crisis.For others the HCA provided a level of care that could not be sustained at home andfor some an asylum admission was only part of a wider and continuing strategy of carewhich enabled troubled families to continue to function.The thesis concludes that, although the county asylum was a potent symbol of manyaspects of Victorian society, it should be seen, not as defining those who encounteredit, but as a part, sometimes essential but often small, of their personal and familynarratives