Description: A history of 'insane' women committed to criminal lunatic institutions in Victorian England which argues that they were places of recuperation, recovery and rehabilitation.
Brief description: Anne-Marie Kilday is Principal Lecturer in History at Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Review Quotes:
"[With] such a wealth of information drawn from so diverse a range of sources and methodologies-from court reports to genealogical insights-this research is far from exhausted. I look forward to reading more from Alison Pedley and about the companions she walks alongside in her tender and worthwhile endeavors." --Journal of British Studies
"An engaging and well-written monograph that provides important insights into the relationship between medicine and the law, as well as detailed histories of understudied Victorian asylums." --H-Net Reviews "Pedley offers a detailed study of the nineteenth-century development of the insanity plea for mothers who murdered their children and the path of women through the courts, into asylums, and, for some, back into society ... Pedley has done valuable archival work." --Victorian Studies Journal