Migration and Mental Illness in the British West Indies 1838–1900: The Cases of Trinidad and British Guiana

Gramaglia, Letizia

doi:10.1057/9781137303233_4

Migration, Health and Ethnicity in the Modern World 2013

DOI: 10.1057/9781137303233_4

|View full text |Cite

Migration and Mental Illness in the British West Indies 1838–1900: The Cases of Trinidad and British Guiana

Letizia Gramaglia¹

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2020

2024

Publication Types

Select...

Article3

Relationship

Self Cite0

Independent3

Authors

Journals

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Thereon, the British established a range of institutions, and associated rules and regulations, to manage the labouring population. They included hospitals, a reform school, and a lunatic asylum (Aickin 2001; De Barros 2002, 2014; Gramaglia 2013; Smith 2014). Of interest here is the colony's jail‐building programme, which established both the prison infrastructure and the cultures of penal practice that are still in evidence in Guyana today.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Guyana's Prisons: Colonial Histories of Post‐Colonial Challenges

Anderson

Ifill

Adams

et al. 2020

Howard J Crime Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article argues that history can play a role in addressing present‐day concerns about the form and function of incarceration in the post‐colonial nation of Guyana. It analyses some of the key features of imprisonment during the British colonial period (1814–1966), and connects them to the challenges faced by the prisons sector since Independence in 1966. The authors suggest that an appreciation of the history of jails in Guyana – including issues connected with prison capacity, overcrowding, training and education, and rehabilitation – can play a role in inspiring and supporting change in the Guyana Prison Service. In this way, the article suggests, historical research can impact on the administration of criminal justice in Guyana – and potentially in other contemporary post‐colonial contexts, both within, and beyond, the Caribbean region.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Guyana's Prisons: Colonial Histories of Post‐Colonial Challenges

Anderson

Ifill

Adams

et al. 2020

Howard J Crime Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…At the same time, there were claims that Indian immigrants suffered 'mental depression' after their hopes for a better life in the colony were not realised (Law 1888, 25). This was part of a larger discourse of racialisation, which sought to explain the prevalence and character of insanity among the colony's cosmopolitan population (Donald 1876;Grieve 1880;Grieve 2010;Gramaglia 2013).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Insanity and Imprisonment in British Guiana, 1814-1966

Anderson

Moss

Adams

2020

LWPS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores links between incarceration and enslavement, migration, and mental health, in the colony of British Guiana. Contemporaries recognised the negative impact that mobility and labour had on the health and well-being of enslaved persons and Asian immigrants, including on plantations. Understandings of ‘insanity’ later developed to bring ideas about biology, context, and behaviour into dialogue, including through the racialisation of its prevalence and character amongst the colony’s diverse population. Before the construction of separate institutions, people who were believed to be suffering from mental illness were sometimes kept in jails, and due to a lack of capacity this continued even after lunatic asylums were developed from the 1840s. At the same time, colonial administrators recognised that incarceration itself could cause mental ill-health, and as such into the early twentieth century British Guiana engaged with global debates about criminal insanity.

show abstract

Mental health care in Guyana's jails before and after Independence

Anderson,

Halliwell

2024

Howard J Crime Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article considers the intersecting geographical, social, medical and political frameworks necessary to construct an understanding of mental health in Guyanese prisons, historically and in the present day. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to integrate archives, modern records and interviews, it looks first at colonial and independent state management of mental health impacts with respect to sentencing, incarceration and rehabilitation. It moves on to reflect on recent efforts to provide co‐ordinated policies and practices at national level to tackle more effectively moderate to severe mental health conditions. Here it shows that, as in the colonial period, prisoners and prison officials are typically neglected. Overall, our appreciation of the importance of what we term the coloniality of incarceration and public health enables us to deepen an understanding of the development and ongoing significance of approaches to mental ill health in the modern state, following Guyana's independence from colonial rule in 1966.

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

hi@scite.ai

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Migration and Mental Illness in the British West Indies 1838–1900: The Cases of Trinidad and British Guiana

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Guyana's Prisons: Colonial Histories of Post‐Colonial Challenges

Guyana's Prisons: Colonial Histories of Post‐Colonial Challenges

Insanity and Imprisonment in British Guiana, 1814-1966

Mental health care in Guyana's jails before and after Independence

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About