Abstract
SummaryThis article shows how the practice of seclusion—the confinement of asylum patients in locked rooms alone—entered the spotlight during the bitter controversy over the abolition of mechanical restraints in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Drawing on letters to The Lancet, asylum reports, reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy and polemical pamphlets, and focusing on the two asylums at the centre of the controversy, Lincoln and Hanwell, the article sets out the range of positions taken, from pro-restraint and anti-seclusion to anti-restraint and pro-seclusion. It shows how seclusion was associated with a lack of transparency, how it was seen as parallel to the disputed practice of solitary confinement in the prison system and how both the practice of seclusion and the single room itself were modified in the face of these challenges. John Conolly emerges as the most committed proponent of seclusion.
Highlights
It shows how seclusion was associated with a lack of transparency, how it was seen as parallel to the disputed practice of solitary confinement in the prison system and how both the practice of seclusion and the single room itself were modified in the face of these challenges
The campaign beginning within asylum medicine in the late 1830s to abolish the devices and practices of mechanical restraint was for a small minority the first step towards the abolition of seclusion as well—this small minority recast both practices as abuses
The introduction of non-restraint policies in asylums led to the increased use of seclusion, which was justified as an alternative to mechanical restraint—while strait-jackets and coercion chairs became instruments of harm, periods of forcible confinement in solitude were promoted as calming and restorative
Summary
Drawing on letters to The Lancet, asylum reports, reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy and polemical pamphlets, and focusing on the two asylums at the centre of the controversy, Lincoln and Hanwell, the article sets out the range of positions taken, from pro-restraint and anti-seclusion to anti-restraint and pro-seclusion It shows how seclusion was associated with a lack of transparency, how it was seen as parallel to the disputed practice of solitary confinement in the prison system and how both the practice of seclusion and the single room itself were modified in the face of these challenges. Hamlett’s examination of private alcoves and single bedrooms in boarding schools and asylums draws on an innovative study by Thomas Crook looking at the phenomenon of the cubicle, especially as constructed in Victorian bathhouses and public conveniences.2 Both Crook and Hamlett are interested in these separate spaces as sites of privacy, havens for individuality and potential opportunities for deviance within the controlling and collective frameworks of the institution. As Michael Ignatieff has shown in his study of British carceral policy, the battles over the separate system were not concerned with stench or the clanking of chains—but with the hugely fraught question of whether solitary confinement was a force for good or for ill.
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