Politics, Professionalization, and Poverty: Lunatic Asylums for the Poor in Ireland, 1817-1920

This dissertation examines the bureaucracy created to administer one of the largest institutional structures in nineteenth-century Ireland, the system of district asylums for the lunatic poor. I argue that although the Irish lunacy inspectorate is usually portrayed as one of many functionaries of the Irish executive, it quickly developed its own rationale and sphere of influence largely independent of government. Such development had significant ramifications for the psychiatric profession, patients' experiences of the asylum, and the governance of a society fractured along religious, political, and class lines. Unlike their British counterparts, the Irish lunacy inspectorate grew to monopolize the asylum system. As a consequence, Irish psychiatry professionalized differently because the inspectorate molded the position of Resident Medical Superintendent (the immediate ancestor of Irish psychiatrists) as they saw fit. In spite of their protests and efforts to the contrary, and because of the nature of the population they served, these physicians ultimately functioned more as managers of medical poor relief than independent practitioners of medicine. Local and national funding was less ideologically problematic for lunatic poor than 'healthy' poor, and thus more consistently generous. By demonstrating that the effects of the Great Famine of the 1840s and 1850s are deeper and longer-lasting than has previously been acknowledged, I argue that the district lunatic asylum system was one of the most successful poor relief ventures in nineteenth-century Ireland.