Mad-Doctors in the Dock: Defending the Diagnosis, 1760–1913 - Couverture rigide

Eigen, Joel Peter

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1421420481 ISBN 13 : 9781421420486

Editeur : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016

Synopsis

A captivating history of the defense of the insanity plea in England.

Shortly before she pushed her infant daughter headfirst into a bucket of water and fastened the lid, Annie Cherry warmed the pail because, as she later explained to a police officer, "It would have been cruel to put her in cold water." Afterwards, this mother sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. At Cherry's trial at the Old Bailey in 1877, Henry Charlton Bastian, physician to the National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic, focused his testimony on her preternatural calm following the drowning. Like many other late Victorian medical men, Bastian believed that the mother's act and her subsequent behavior indicated homicidal mania, a novel species of madness that challenged the law's criterion for assigning criminal culpability.

How did Dr. Bastian and his cohort of London's physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries--originally known as "mad-doctors"--arrive at such an innovative diagnosis, and how did they defend it in court? Mad-Doctors in the Dock is a sophisticated exploration of the history of the insanity defense in the English courtroom from the middle of the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. Joel Peter Eigen examines courtroom testimony offered in nearly 1,000 insanity trials, transporting us into the world of psychiatric diagnosis and criminal justice. The first comprehensive account of how medical insight and folk psychology met in the courtroom, this book makes clear the tragedy of the crimes, the spectacle of the trials, and the consequences of the diagnosis for the emerging field of forensic psychiatry.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Joel Peter Eigen(LANCASTER, PA)is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Franklin and Marshall College and Principal Fellow (Honorary) at the University of Melbourne. Mad-Doctors in the Dock is the final volume in his trilogy examining the insanity defense in the British courtroom. The first two volumes are Witnessing Insanity: Madness and Mad-Doctors in the English Court and Unconscious Crime: Mental Absence and Criminal Responsibility in Victorian London.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Date d'édition: 2016
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1421420481
• ISBN 13: 9781421420486
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 224
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible