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This paper explores the historical developments of admission registers of psychiatric asylums and hospitals in England and Wales between 1845 and 1950, with illustrative examples (principally from the archives of the Rainhill Asylum, UK). Standardized admission registers have been mandatory elements of the mental health legislative framework since 1845, and procedural changes illustrate the development from what, today, we would characterize as a predominantly psychosocial understanding of mental health problems towards primarily biomedical explanations. Over time, emphasis shifts from the social determinants of admission to an asylum to the diagnosis of an illness requiring treatment in hospital. We discuss the implications of this progressive historical diminution of the social determinants of mental health for current debates in mental health care.

During World War I, civilians became a target of the war machine. Air raids transformed the lives of those not involved in active combat and blurred the lines between the home front and the war front. This paper argues that the experience of air raids in World War I was comparable to the combat stress at the Western Front. The author bases her argument on contemporary publications in medical journals, measures taken by British authorities to prevent air-raid shock, and contemporary case records. The narratives of air-raid shock – similarly to those of shell-shocked soldiers – reflect the feelings of terror and loss of control, and demonstrate the profound effect these experiences could have on individuals' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until around 1979, ‘confused’ or mentally unwell people over 65 years of age tended to be labelled as having ‘senile dementia’. Senile dementia was usually regarded as a single, inevitably hopeless condition, despite gradually accumulating clinical and pathological evidence to the contrary. Specific psychiatric services for mental illness in older people began to emerge in the 1950s, but by 1969 there were fewer than 10 dedicated services nationally. During the 1970s, ‘old age psychiatrists’ established local services and campaigned nationally for them. By 1979, about 100 old age psychiatrists were leading multi-disciplinary teams in half the health districts in England. This paper explores the tortuous development of these new services, focusing on provision for people with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Little is known of Joshua Harrison Stallard other than that he was a provincial medical practitioner who moved to London and campaigned for improvement in metropolitan workhouses. In the pamphlet reproduced here, Stallard draws attention to the build-up of lunatics in workhouses due to lack of asylum beds. He also argues for the increased use of home care for lunatics instead of continually expanding asylum provision, and points to the need for training of asylum doctors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article surveys evolving and competing medico-legal concepts of pyromania and insane arson. Exploiting evidence from medical jurisprudence, medico-legal publications, medical lexicography and case histories, it seeks to explicate the key positions in contemporary professional debates concerning arson and mental derangement. A major focus is the application of the doctrines of moral and partial insanity, monomania, instinctive insanity and irresistible impulse to understandings of pyromania and insane arson. The limited extent to which mental defect provided a satisfactory diagnosis and exculpatory plea for morbid arson is also explored. Additionally, this article compares and contrasts contemporary debates about other special manias, especially kleptomania. Part 2 will be published in the next issue, History of Psychiatry 21(4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]