Abstract
Our perceptions of 'class' and what it meant to be a pauper or a private patient require redefinition before we can draw any firm conclusions on the importance of class to the patient experience in the nineteenth-century Scottish asylum. This chapter argues that a range of influences within the asylum, including financial concerns and a striving for respectability, led to the reconceptualisation of the private patient in this period, thus negating any direct translation of rich and poor into private and pauper. Such an interpretation challenges Scull's suggestion that divisions between private and pauper asylum patients was an accurate reflection of class divisions within Victorian society.
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