‘Noisy, restless and incoherent’: puerperal insanity at Dundee Lunatic Asylum

Abstract

Puerperal insanity has been described as a nineteenth-century diagnosis, entrenched in contemporary expectations of proper womanly behaviour. Drawing on detailed study of establishment registers and patient case notes, this paper will examine the puerperal insanity diagnosis at Dundee Lunatic Asylum between 1820 and 1860. In particular, the study aims to consider whether the class or social status of the patients had a bearing on how their conditions were perceived and rationalised, and how far the puerperal insanity diagnosis, coloured by the values assigned to it by the medical officers, may have been reserved for some women and not for others. This examination of the diagnosis in a Scottish community, suggesting a contrast in the way that middle class and working class women were diagnosed at Dundee, engages with and expands on work on puerperal insanity elsewhere.

Gender and madness in nineteenth‐century Britain

“…The surprising sympathy shown to desperately poor women who committed infanticide was rooted in both gendered and classed preconceptions (Marland, 2004). The diagnosis of puerperal mania has inspired numerous scholars to explore its treatment in asylums and in criminal insanity cases (Campbell, 2017; Cossins, 2015; Pegg, 2009; Quinn, 2002).…”

Unnatural Womanhood: Moral Treatment, Puerperal Insanity and the Female Patients at the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, 1858–1908

“…Morag Allan Campbell notes that a focus on puerperal insanity patients can obscure the fact that all female patients were expected to adhere to the ideal female role. 36 Moral treatment in Fremantle was not exclusive to puerperal patients and was used across all diagnoses and genders. 37 However, women diagnosed with puerperal insanity offer a unique insight into the gendered experience of diagnosis and treatment in a nineteenth-century asylum.…”