The Discovery of the Asylum

The Discovery of the Asylum

Author: David J. Rothman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1351483633

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This is a masterful effort to recognize and place the prison and asylums in their social contexts. Rothman shows that the complexity of their history can be unraveled and usefully interpreted. By identifying the salient influences that converged in the tumultuous 1820s and 1830s that led to a particular ideology in the development of prisons and asylums, Rothman provides a compelling argument that is historically informed and socially instructive. He weaves a comprehensive story that sets forth and portrays a series of interrelated events, influences, and circumstances that are shown to be connected to the development of prisons and asylums. Rothman demonstrates that meaningful historical interpretation must be based upon not one but a series of historical events and circumstances, their connections and ultimate consequences. Thus, the history of prisons and asylums in the youthful United States is revealed to be complex but not so complex that it cannot be disentangled, described, understood, and applied.This reissue of a classic study addresses a core concern of social historians and criminal justice professionals: Why in the early nineteenth century did a single generation of Americans resort for the first time to institutional care for its convicts, mentally ill, juvenile delinquents, orphans, and adult poor? Rothman's compelling analysis links this phenomenon to a desperate effort by democratic society to instill a new social order as it perceived the loosening of family, church, and community bonds. As debate persists on the wisdom and effectiveness of these inherited solutions, The Discovery of the Asylum offers a fascinating reflection on our past as well as a source of inspiration for a new century of students and professionals in criminal justice, corrections, social history, and law enforcement.


Book Synopsis The Discovery of the Asylum by : David J. Rothman

Download or read book The Discovery of the Asylum written by David J. Rothman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a masterful effort to recognize and place the prison and asylums in their social contexts. Rothman shows that the complexity of their history can be unraveled and usefully interpreted. By identifying the salient influences that converged in the tumultuous 1820s and 1830s that led to a particular ideology in the development of prisons and asylums, Rothman provides a compelling argument that is historically informed and socially instructive. He weaves a comprehensive story that sets forth and portrays a series of interrelated events, influences, and circumstances that are shown to be connected to the development of prisons and asylums. Rothman demonstrates that meaningful historical interpretation must be based upon not one but a series of historical events and circumstances, their connections and ultimate consequences. Thus, the history of prisons and asylums in the youthful United States is revealed to be complex but not so complex that it cannot be disentangled, described, understood, and applied.This reissue of a classic study addresses a core concern of social historians and criminal justice professionals: Why in the early nineteenth century did a single generation of Americans resort for the first time to institutional care for its convicts, mentally ill, juvenile delinquents, orphans, and adult poor? Rothman's compelling analysis links this phenomenon to a desperate effort by democratic society to instill a new social order as it perceived the loosening of family, church, and community bonds. As debate persists on the wisdom and effectiveness of these inherited solutions, The Discovery of the Asylum offers a fascinating reflection on our past as well as a source of inspiration for a new century of students and professionals in criminal justice, corrections, social history, and law enforcement.

Conscience and Convenience

Conscience and Convenience

Author: David J. Rothman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1351526537

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Conscience and Convenience was quickly recognized for its masterly depiction and interpretation of a major period of reform history. This history begins in a social context in which treatment and rehabilitation were emerging as predominant after America's prisons and asylums had been broadly acknowledged to be little more than embarrassing failures. The resulting progressive agenda was evident: to develop new, more humane and effective strategies for the criminal, delinquent, and mentally ill. The results, as Rothman documents, did not turn out as reformers had planned.For adult criminal offenders, such individual treatment could be accomplished only through the provision of broad discretionary authority, whereby choices could be made between probation, parole, indeterminate sentencing, and, as a measure of last resort, incarceration in totally redesigned prisons. For delinquents, the juvenile court served as a surrogate parent and accelerated and intensified individual treatment by providing for a series of community-based individual and family services, with the newly designed, school-like reformatories being used for only the most intractable cases. For the mentally ill, psychiatrists chose between outpatient treatments, short-term intensive care, or as last resort, long-term care in mental hospitals with new cottage and family-like arrangements. Rothman shows the consequences of these reforms as unmitigated disasters. Despite benevolent intentions, the actual outcome of reform efforts was to take the earlier failures of prisons and asylums to new, more ominous heights.In this updated edition, Rothman chronicles and examines incarceration of the criminal, the deviant, and the dependent in U.S. society, with a focus on how and why these methods have persisted and expanded for over a century and a half despite longstanding evidence of their failures and abuses.


Book Synopsis Conscience and Convenience by : David J. Rothman

Download or read book Conscience and Convenience written by David J. Rothman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conscience and Convenience was quickly recognized for its masterly depiction and interpretation of a major period of reform history. This history begins in a social context in which treatment and rehabilitation were emerging as predominant after America's prisons and asylums had been broadly acknowledged to be little more than embarrassing failures. The resulting progressive agenda was evident: to develop new, more humane and effective strategies for the criminal, delinquent, and mentally ill. The results, as Rothman documents, did not turn out as reformers had planned.For adult criminal offenders, such individual treatment could be accomplished only through the provision of broad discretionary authority, whereby choices could be made between probation, parole, indeterminate sentencing, and, as a measure of last resort, incarceration in totally redesigned prisons. For delinquents, the juvenile court served as a surrogate parent and accelerated and intensified individual treatment by providing for a series of community-based individual and family services, with the newly designed, school-like reformatories being used for only the most intractable cases. For the mentally ill, psychiatrists chose between outpatient treatments, short-term intensive care, or as last resort, long-term care in mental hospitals with new cottage and family-like arrangements. Rothman shows the consequences of these reforms as unmitigated disasters. Despite benevolent intentions, the actual outcome of reform efforts was to take the earlier failures of prisons and asylums to new, more ominous heights.In this updated edition, Rothman chronicles and examines incarceration of the criminal, the deviant, and the dependent in U.S. society, with a focus on how and why these methods have persisted and expanded for over a century and a half despite longstanding evidence of their failures and abuses.

"Asylum for Mankind"

Author: Marilyn C. Baseler

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780801434815

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Baseler explains how British and colonial officials and landowners lured settlers from rival nations with promises of religious toleration, economic opportunity, and the "rights of Englishmen," and she identifies the liberties, disabilities, and benefits experienced by different immigrant groups. She also explains how the exploitation of slaves subsidized the living standards of Europeans who came by choice.


Book Synopsis "Asylum for Mankind" by : Marilyn C. Baseler

Download or read book "Asylum for Mankind" written by Marilyn C. Baseler and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseler explains how British and colonial officials and landowners lured settlers from rival nations with promises of religious toleration, economic opportunity, and the "rights of Englishmen," and she identifies the liberties, disabilities, and benefits experienced by different immigrant groups. She also explains how the exploitation of slaves subsidized the living standards of Europeans who came by choice.

The European Discovery of America

The European Discovery of America

Author: Samuel Eliot Morison

Publisher:

Published: 1974

Total Pages: 786

ISBN-13:

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Emphasizes the discoveries and explorations of Columbus, Magellan and Drake during the period.


Book Synopsis The European Discovery of America by : Samuel Eliot Morison

Download or read book The European Discovery of America written by Samuel Eliot Morison and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emphasizes the discoveries and explorations of Columbus, Magellan and Drake during the period.

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

Author: Emilie Autumn

Publisher:

Published: 2017-06

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780998990910

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Book Synopsis The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls by : Emilie Autumn

Download or read book The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls written by Emilie Autumn and published by . This book was released on 2017-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Village and Colony Asylums in Britain, Ireland and Germany, 1880-1914

Village and Colony Asylums in Britain, Ireland and Germany, 1880-1914

Author: Gillian Allmond

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 9781407357591

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This text analyses the buildings, interiors and landscapes of asylums for the insane poor in the early part of the twentieth century, exploring the ways in which environments were seen as therapeutic. An innovative type of asylum layout - the village or colony asylum - is considered in detail. Gillian Allmond offers an original approach to asylum analysis, using field observation, documents and published materials to connect asylum materiality to contemporary discourses of health and poverty.


Book Synopsis Village and Colony Asylums in Britain, Ireland and Germany, 1880-1914 by : Gillian Allmond

Download or read book Village and Colony Asylums in Britain, Ireland and Germany, 1880-1914 written by Gillian Allmond and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text analyses the buildings, interiors and landscapes of asylums for the insane poor in the early part of the twentieth century, exploring the ways in which environments were seen as therapeutic. An innovative type of asylum layout - the village or colony asylum - is considered in detail. Gillian Allmond offers an original approach to asylum analysis, using field observation, documents and published materials to connect asylum materiality to contemporary discourses of health and poverty.

Conscience and Convenience

Conscience and Convenience

Author: David J. Rothman

Publisher: Little Brown

Published: 1980-01-01

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9780316757744

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Book Synopsis Conscience and Convenience by : David J. Rothman

Download or read book Conscience and Convenience written by David J. Rothman and published by Little Brown. This book was released on 1980-01-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Wild Nights

Wild Nights

Author: Benjamin Reiss

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0465094856

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Why the modern world forgot how to sleep Why is sleep frustrating for so many people? Why do we spend so much time and money managing and medicating it, and training ourselves and our children to do it correctly? In Wild Nights, Benjamin Reiss finds answers in sleep's hidden history--one that leads to our present, sleep-obsessed society, its tacitly accepted rules, and their troubling consequences. Today we define a good night's sleep very narrowly: eight hours in one shot, sealed off in private bedrooms, children apart from parents. But for most of human history, practically no one slept this way. Tracing sleep's transformation since the dawn of the industrial age, Reiss weaves together insights from literature, social and medical history, and cutting-edge science to show how and why we have tried and failed to tame sleep. In lyrical prose, he leads readers from bedrooms and laboratories to factories and battlefields to Henry David Thoreau's famous cabin at Walden Pond, telling the stories of troubled sleepers, hibernating peasants, sleepwalking preachers, cave-dwelling sleep researchers, slaves who led nighttime uprisings, rebellious workers, spectacularly frazzled parents, and utopian dreamers. We are hardly the first people, Reiss makes clear, to chafe against our modern rules for sleeping. A stirring testament to sleep's diversity, Wild Nights offers a profound reminder that in the vulnerability of slumber we can find our shared humanity. By peeling back the covers of history, Reiss recaptures sleep's mystery and grandeur and offers hope to weary readers: as sleep was transformed once before, so too can it change today.


Book Synopsis Wild Nights by : Benjamin Reiss

Download or read book Wild Nights written by Benjamin Reiss and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the modern world forgot how to sleep Why is sleep frustrating for so many people? Why do we spend so much time and money managing and medicating it, and training ourselves and our children to do it correctly? In Wild Nights, Benjamin Reiss finds answers in sleep's hidden history--one that leads to our present, sleep-obsessed society, its tacitly accepted rules, and their troubling consequences. Today we define a good night's sleep very narrowly: eight hours in one shot, sealed off in private bedrooms, children apart from parents. But for most of human history, practically no one slept this way. Tracing sleep's transformation since the dawn of the industrial age, Reiss weaves together insights from literature, social and medical history, and cutting-edge science to show how and why we have tried and failed to tame sleep. In lyrical prose, he leads readers from bedrooms and laboratories to factories and battlefields to Henry David Thoreau's famous cabin at Walden Pond, telling the stories of troubled sleepers, hibernating peasants, sleepwalking preachers, cave-dwelling sleep researchers, slaves who led nighttime uprisings, rebellious workers, spectacularly frazzled parents, and utopian dreamers. We are hardly the first people, Reiss makes clear, to chafe against our modern rules for sleeping. A stirring testament to sleep's diversity, Wild Nights offers a profound reminder that in the vulnerability of slumber we can find our shared humanity. By peeling back the covers of history, Reiss recaptures sleep's mystery and grandeur and offers hope to weary readers: as sleep was transformed once before, so too can it change today.

Sick from Freedom

Sick from Freedom

Author: Jim Downs

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-05-01

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0199908788

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Bondspeople who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, suffering, and death. But the war produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century, and as historian Jim Downs reveals in this groundbreaking volume, it had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of freed people. In Sick from Freedom, Downs recovers the untold story of one of the bitterest ironies in American history--that the emancipation of the slaves, seen as one of the great turning points in U.S. history, had devastating consequences for innumerable freed people. Drawing on massive new research into the records of the Medical Division of the Freedmen's Bureau-a nascent national health system that cared for more than one million freed slaves-he shows how the collapse of the plantation economy released a plague of lethal diseases. With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, and exposure. To address this crisis, the Medical Division hired more than 120 physicians, establishing some forty underfinanced and understaffed hospitals scattered throughout the South, largely in response to medical emergencies. Downs shows that the goal of the Medical Division was to promote a healthy workforce, an aim which often excluded a wide range of freedpeople, including women, the elderly, the physically disabled, and children. Downs concludes by tracing how the Reconstruction policy was then implemented in the American West, where it was disastrously applied to Native Americans. The widespread medical calamity sparked by emancipation is an overlooked episode of the Civil War and its aftermath, poignantly revealed in Sick from Freedom.


Book Synopsis Sick from Freedom by : Jim Downs

Download or read book Sick from Freedom written by Jim Downs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bondspeople who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, suffering, and death. But the war produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century, and as historian Jim Downs reveals in this groundbreaking volume, it had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of freed people. In Sick from Freedom, Downs recovers the untold story of one of the bitterest ironies in American history--that the emancipation of the slaves, seen as one of the great turning points in U.S. history, had devastating consequences for innumerable freed people. Drawing on massive new research into the records of the Medical Division of the Freedmen's Bureau-a nascent national health system that cared for more than one million freed slaves-he shows how the collapse of the plantation economy released a plague of lethal diseases. With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, and exposure. To address this crisis, the Medical Division hired more than 120 physicians, establishing some forty underfinanced and understaffed hospitals scattered throughout the South, largely in response to medical emergencies. Downs shows that the goal of the Medical Division was to promote a healthy workforce, an aim which often excluded a wide range of freedpeople, including women, the elderly, the physically disabled, and children. Downs concludes by tracing how the Reconstruction policy was then implemented in the American West, where it was disastrously applied to Native Americans. The widespread medical calamity sparked by emancipation is an overlooked episode of the Civil War and its aftermath, poignantly revealed in Sick from Freedom.

The Asylum as Utopia (Psychology Revivals)

The Asylum as Utopia (Psychology Revivals)

Author: Andrew Scull

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-17

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1317911741

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What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be, first published in 1837, was of considerable significance in the history of lunacy reform in Britain. It contains perhaps the single most influential portrait by a medical author of the horrors of the traditional madhouse system. Its powerful and ideologically resonant description of the contrasting virtues of the reformed asylum, a hive of therapeutic activity under the benevolent but autocratic guidance and control of its medical superintendent, provided within a brief compass a strikingly attractive alternative vision of an apparently attainable utopia. Browne’s book thus provided important impetus to the efforts then under way to make the provision of county asylums compulsory, and towards the institution of a national system of asylum inspection and supervision. This edition, originally published in 1991 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, contains a lengthy introductory essay by Andrew Scull. Scull discusses the social context within which What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be came to be written, examines the impact of the book on the progress of lunacy reform, and places its author’s career in the larger framework of the development of Victorian psychiatry as an organised profession. Through an examination of Browne’s tenure as superintendent of the Crichton Royal Asylum in Dumfries, Scull compares the theory and practice of asylum care in the moral treatment era, revealing the remorseless processes through which such philanthropic foundations degenerated into more or less well-tended cemeteries for the still-breathing – institutions almost startlingly remote from Browne’s earlier visions of what they ought to be.


Book Synopsis The Asylum as Utopia (Psychology Revivals) by : Andrew Scull

Download or read book The Asylum as Utopia (Psychology Revivals) written by Andrew Scull and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be, first published in 1837, was of considerable significance in the history of lunacy reform in Britain. It contains perhaps the single most influential portrait by a medical author of the horrors of the traditional madhouse system. Its powerful and ideologically resonant description of the contrasting virtues of the reformed asylum, a hive of therapeutic activity under the benevolent but autocratic guidance and control of its medical superintendent, provided within a brief compass a strikingly attractive alternative vision of an apparently attainable utopia. Browne’s book thus provided important impetus to the efforts then under way to make the provision of county asylums compulsory, and towards the institution of a national system of asylum inspection and supervision. This edition, originally published in 1991 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, contains a lengthy introductory essay by Andrew Scull. Scull discusses the social context within which What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be came to be written, examines the impact of the book on the progress of lunacy reform, and places its author’s career in the larger framework of the development of Victorian psychiatry as an organised profession. Through an examination of Browne’s tenure as superintendent of the Crichton Royal Asylum in Dumfries, Scull compares the theory and practice of asylum care in the moral treatment era, revealing the remorseless processes through which such philanthropic foundations degenerated into more or less well-tended cemeteries for the still-breathing – institutions almost startlingly remote from Browne’s earlier visions of what they ought to be.