This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by McCrae, N. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

The beer Ration in Victorian Asylums

Box P026, Health Services Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, UK. sphsnmc{at}iop.kcl.ac.uk

Routine distribution of alcoholic beverages to mental hospital patients would be a fanciful prospect today, yet in the formative decades of lunatic asylums, beer was standard issue. A staple item in the supposedly healthy Victorian asylum diet, beer also served as inducement for patient labour. Around the mid-1880s, this commodity was abolished throughout Britain’s mental institutions. This paper explores the factors that combined to condemn the beer barrel to asylum history, and, in particular, how this small comfort for inmates fell foul of the medicalization of the asylum and of the professional project of psychiatry.

Key Words: alcohol • asylums • Britain • diet • history • psychiatry • temperance • 19th century

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 15, No. 2, 155-175 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X04039348


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?