Disorder Contained Mental Breakdown and the Modern Prison in England and Ireland, 1840–1900 reviewed by Grace Maly
Published in Social History of Medicine, January 2026.
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Abstract

The topic of mental health in institutions has received significant study among historians, with a focus on asylums and workhouses. In this work, Cox and Marland contribute to understandings of mental breakdown in prisons. They aim to investigate the prison system and the accusations that it produced and exacerbated mental illness. It analyses the punitive regimes that destroyed the minds of prisoners and how they faced obstruction to treatment. This work joins a very limited literature on mental breakdowns in prisons, with the cross-comparison between England and Ireland being particularly unique. The comparative analysis allows exploration of the differences between England and Ireland. In the era presented in this book, England was a colonial power over Ireland. Thus, any differences identified may be indicative of colonial racial attitudes. The primary contribution of Cox and Marland’s scholarship lies in their documentation of the consistently high prevalence of mental illness within English and Irish penal institutions. Their analysis exposes a systemic refusal among prison officials to accept accountability for inmate insanity, noting a tendency to attribute pre-existing psychiatric issues such as mania and melancholy.