Description
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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publish Date | October 27, 2016 |
| Pages | 224 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781421420486 |
| Dimensions | 9.0 X 6.1 X 0.9 inches | 0.7 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
An excellent piece of historical scholarship: intrinsically interesting in subject matter, fully alive to the creative and analytical potential in attending to historical particularity, mindful of the lives that populate the often-tragic cases examined, and resolutely opposed to simplistic readings, Mad-Doctors in the Dock is a fitting conclusion to Eigen's assiduous search for the right question.
-- "Metascience"An unlikely subject for vacation or bedtime reading? On the contrary, the 'mad-doctors'' task is unequivocally compelling. Eigen translates his extensive research clearly as a scientific rather than sensational exposition. Readers interested in criminal jurisprudence, the complexities of temporary insanity, and contemporary criminal procedure in light of the historical background will be fascinated.
-- "Seattle Book Review"By bringing together legal and medical history, the book makes an important methodological contribution to historiographies that do not always engage each other directly. The analysis of interlocking medical and legal discourses and of the effects that they had on each other reveals that neither is an isolated system of thought. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars interested in the history of legal insanity as well as for those interested in broader questions related to responsibility.
-- "American Historical Review"Eigen covers his territory in an informed, assured fashion.
-- "Irish Jurist"Eigen has gone deeper than anyone to date in analysing the course of the insanity defence in English law. His trilogy is the go-to source for this fascinating and distressing topic.
-- "Times Higher Education"From a historical perspective, the narrative is very interesting and easily flows. The work is highly recommended for undergraduates, graduate students in psychiatry and forensic medicine, and researchers in jurisprudence.
-- "Choice"Vital for understanding the development of the English trial... This book and the trilogy of which it is a part provide a major chapter in the history of the public sphere. Historians of law, medicine, and psychiatry will seek out Eigen's work, but the trilogy has much to offer scholars in Victorian studies more generally.
-- "Victorian Studies"Earn by promoting books
