The Politics of Difference

Abstract

This chapter places London County Council’s apparently positive treatment of foreign lunatics within the framework of anti-alien sentiment that was developing at the end of the nineteenth century. It considers London’s place as a hub of national and international in-migration and focusses on the perceived threats that immigrants had to public order, public health and public finances. By exploring the longer-term histories of foreign lunatics in London’s asylums, and the treatment of Jewish immigrants in particular, it demonstrates the important shifts in attitudes that followed the introduction of the 1905 Aliens Act and, crucially, the 1907 London County Council election. It argues that moves to deport foreign lunatics in the period were informed, primarily, by political ambitions to reduce public spending.