Table Of ContentMENTAL HEALTH NURSING
The working lives of paid carers in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries
This book seeks to integrate the history of mental health nursing with
the wider history of institutional and community care. It develops
new research questions by drawing together a concern with exploring
the class, gender, skills and working conditions of practitioners with
an assessment of the care regimes staff helped create and patients’
experiences of them. Such an approach aims to correct the neglect of
mental health workers in recent histories of nursing and care.
Contributors from a range of disciplines use a variety of source material
to examine both continuity and change in the history of care over two
centuries. The rise of the professional nurse is an important part of the
narrative, but the detailed studies in this volume reveal that the working
lives of paid carers were always shaped by wider social, economic and
political forces. Most of the chapters concentrate on Britain and Ireland
but an Australian contribution provides useful insight into how these
models of care were exported and understood in a colonial context.
The case studies engage with classic history of nursing texts but also
develop new perspectives that are brought together in a comprehensive
introduction. The book benefts from a foreword by Mick Carpenter
who thoughtfully locates the work within traditional and new literature
debates. It will appeal to researchers and students interested in all
aspects of the history of nursing and the history of care, and will also be
accessible to practitioners and the general reader.
Anne Borsay was Professor of Healthcare and Medical Humanities in the
College of Human and Health Sciences at Swansea University
Pamela Dale is an Honorary University Fellow at the University of Exeter
MENTAL HEALTH
Cover image: NURSING
Claybury Asylum, Woodford, Essex: thirty-four nurses.
Photograph by the London & County Photographic Co.,
c.1893. Welcome images The working lives of paid carers
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk in the nineteenth and twentieth
ISBN 978-0-7190-9693-8
centuries
Edited by
9 780719 096938 Anne Borsay and Pamela Dale
Borsay
(eds)
MENTAL HEALTH NURSING Dale
Mental Health Nursing
Tis series provides an outlet for the publication of rigor-
ous academic texts in the two closely related disciplines
of Nursing History and Nursing Humanities, drawing
upon both the intellectual rigour of the humanities and the
p ractice-based, real-world emphasis of clinical and profes-
sional nursing.
At the intersection of Medical History, Women’s History
and Social History, Nursing History remains a thriving and
dynamic area of study with its own claims to disciplinary
distinction. Te broader discipline of Medical Humanities
is of rapidly growing signifcance within academia globally,
and this series aims to encourage strong scholarship in the
burgeoning area of Nursing Humanities more generally.
Such developments are timely, as the nursing profession
expands and generates a stronger disciplinary axis. Te MUP
Nursing History and Humanities series provides a forum
within which practitioners and humanists may ofer new
fndings and insights. Te international scope of the series
is broad, embracing all historical periods and including both
detailed empirical studies and wider perspectives on the
c ultures of nursing.
Previous titles in this series:
One hundred years of wartime nursing practices, 1854–1954
Edited by Jane Brooks and Christine E. Hallett
‘Curing queers’: Mental nurses and their patients, 1935–74
Tommy Dickinson
Who cared for the carers? A history of the occupational
health of nurses, 1880–1948
Debbie Palmer
MENTAL HEALTH
NURSING
THE WORKING LIVES OF PAID
CARERS IN THE NINETEENTH AND
TWENTIETH CENTURIES
EDITED BY ANNE BORSAY AND PAMELA DALE
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2015
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press,
c opyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may
be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author
and publisher.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 0 7190 9693 8 hardback
First published 2015
Te publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any
e xternal or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee
that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow
Contents
List of contributors page vii
Foreword: the struggle is never over ix
Mick Carpenter
Acknowledgements xiv
List of abbreviations xv
1 Mental health nursing: the working lives of paid carers from
1800 to the 1990s 1
Anne Borsay and Pamela Dale
2 Psychiatric nurses and their patients in the nineteenth
century: the Irish perspective 28
Oonagh Walsh
3 A duty to learn: attendant training in Victoria, Australia,
1880–1907 54
Lee-Ann Monk
4 ‘Who are these?’ Nursing shell-shocked patients in
Cardif during the First World War 75
Anne Borsay and Sara Knight
5 Discourses of dispute: narratives of asylum nurses and
attendants, 1910–22 98
Barbara Douglas
6 ‘Surely a nice occupation for a girl?’ Stories of nursing,
gender, violence and mental illness in British asylums,
1914–30 123
Vicky Long
v
Contents
7 Reassessing stafng requirements and creating new roles for
nurses during a period of rapid change at the Royal Western
Counties Institution, 1927–48 145
Pamela Dale
8 ‘Te weakest link in the chain of nursing’? Recruitment and
retention in mental health nursing in England, 1948–68 169
Claire Chatterton
9 Wardens, letter writing and the welfare state, 1944–74 190
John Welshman
10 Learning disability nursing: surviving change, c.1970–90 213
Duncan Mitchell
11 Between asylum and community: DGH psychiatric nurses
at Withington General Hospital, 1971–91 235
Val Harrington
Index 259
vi
Contributors
Anne Borsay, who sadly passed away during the fnal stages of
the production of this book, was Professor of Healthcare and
Medical Humanities based in the College of Human and Health
Sciences, Swansea University. She was working on a Wellcome Trust
Programme Award, ‘Disability and Industrial Society: A Comparative
Cultural History of British Coalfelds, 1780–1948’.
Mick Carpenter recently retired from his position as Professor of
Social Policy at the University of Warwick but remains research
active, pursuing his commitment to progressive change and the need
to tackle issues of social justice and inequality.
Claire Chatterton trained as a general and mental nurse before
taking masters degrees in social policy and historical studies. She
works as a staf tutor for the Open University in the North West and
is chair of the Royal College of Nursing’s History of Nursing Society.
Her chapter draws on PhD research completed at the University of
Salford, Manchester.
Pamela Dale is an Honorary Fellow attached to the Centre for
Medical History at the University of Exeter. Her chapter draws on
doctoral research undertaken at the Centre that was generously sup-
ported by the Exeter University Foundation and the AHRB. She has
also worked on Wellcome Trust funded projects exploring the history
of health visiting and stress.
vii
Contributors
Barbara Douglas is a counselling psychologist, having previously
worked as a psychology lecturer. Her chapter draws on doctoral research
undertaken at the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter.
Val Harrington was until recently a post-doctoral fellow at the
University of Manchester. Her doctoral studies, conducted at the
Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and
supported by the Wellcome Trust, examined the post-war history of
mental health services in Manchester and Salford.
Sara Knight completed her PhD in Wales and is now an independ-
ent scholar. She works as a senior archivist for Archives New Zealand
in Wellington. Her contribution to this volume draws on doctoral
research exploring nursing in Cardif during the First World War.
Vicky Long is a senior lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University
and is the author of Destigmatising Mental Illness? Professional
Politics and Public Education in Britain, 1870–1970 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2014).
Duncan Mitchell has a nursing background but is now a Professor at
Manchester Metropolitan University where he is one of the conven-
ers of the Learning Disability Research Group based in the Research
Institute for Health and Social Change.
Lee-Ann Monk is the author of Attending Madness: At Work in the
Australian Colonial Asylum (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008). She is a
Research Associate in the history program at La Trobe University,
Melbourne.
Oonagh Walsh is Professor of Gender Studies at Glasgow Caledonian
University and has published widely on gender and medical history
with a particular interest in the nineteenth-century history of Irish
psychiatry.
John Welshman is a senior lecturer in the Department of History
at Lancaster University. His research interests are at the interface of
contemporary history, social policy and public health.
viii
