Library

When Dave Sheppard retired in 2020 he kindly gave me permission to publish the contents of his website (originally named after his firm, "Dave Sheppard Associates", then called "MHAandMCA"). It is a treasure trove. I've not had time to prepare everything for publication but have put the main headings online: let me know if you would like a copy of anything listed.

John Brydall, Non compos mentis: or, the law relating to natural fools, mad-folks, and lunatick persons, 1700

Richard Burn, The History of the Poor Laws, 1764

Thomas Bowen, An historical account of the origin, progress, and present state of Bethlem Hospital, 1783

Dr William Perfect, Select cases in the different species of insanity, lunacy, or madness, 1787

Report of the Select Committee into the state of criminal and pauper lunatics, 1807 (external link)

Anthony Highmore, A treatise on the law of idiocy and lunacy, 1807

George Dale Collinson, A Treatise on the Law Concerning Idiots, Lunatics and Other Persons Non Compotes Mentis, Volume 1, 1812

George Dale Collinson, A Treatise on the Law Concerning Idiots, Lunatics and Other Persons Non Compotes Mentis, Volume 2, 1812

First report on the Committee on Madhouses, House of Commons, 1815

Jonathan Gray, A history of the York Lunatic Asylum, 1815

First report from the Select Committee for the better regulation of Madhouses, April 1816

Second report from the Select Committee for the better regulation of Madhouses, May 1816

Third report from the Select Committee for the better regulation of Madhouses (Scotland), June 1816

John Haslam, Benjamin Ridge, John Conolly, Sketches in Bedlam, 1823

John Mitford, A description of the crimes and horrors in the interior of Warburton's private mad-house at Hoxton, 1825

Report from Select Committee on Pauper Lunatics in the County of Middlesex and on Lunatic Asylums, 1827

John Conolly, An inquiry concerning the indications of insanity, 1830

Leonard Shelford, A Practical Treatise on the Law Concerning Lunatics, Idiots, and Persons of Unsound Mind, 1833

J G Millingen, Aphorisms on the Treatment and Management of the Insane, 1840

Richard Paternoster, The madhouse system, 1841

Edward De Vitre, Observations on the necessity of an extended legislative protection to persons of unsound mind, 1843

Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, 1844

Supplemental report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy relative to the general condition of the insane in Wales, 1844

William Golden Lumley, The New Lunacy Acts, Shaw & Sons, 1845 (external link)

Further report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, 1847

Leonard Shelford, A Practical Treatise on the Law Concerning Lunatics, Idiots, and Persons of Unsound Mind, 2nd edition, 1847

Lunatic Asylums Act 1853

An Act to amend the Lunatic Asylums Act, 1853, and the Acts passed in the Ninth and Seventeenth Years of Her Majesty, for the Regulation of the Care and Treatment of Lunatics, 1855

Robert Gardiner Hill, A concise history of the entire abolition of mechanical restraint, 1857

Charles Palmer Phillips, The law concerning lunatics, idiots, & persons of unsound mind, 1858

John Arlidge, On the state of lunacy and the legal provision for the insane, 1859

Lunacy Acts Amendment Act 1862

William Gilbert, Shirley Hall Asylum - Or, the Memoirs of a Monomaniac, 1863

Danby P Fry, The Lunacy Acts, 1864

John Lambert, Vagrancy laws and vagrants, 1868

Robert Gardiner Hill, Lunacy: its past and its present, 1870

James Sabben and J. H. Balfour Browne, Handbook of law and lunacy, 1872

Lyttleton Forbes Winslow, Manual of lunacy, 1874

John Charles Bucknill and Daniel Hack Tuke, A manual of psychological medicine, 1874

Brief history of the Warneford Lunatic Asylum, 1875

Lyttleton Forbes Winslow, Handbook for attendants on the insane, 1877

Joseph Elmer, The practice in Lunacy Under Commissions and Inquisitions, 6th edition, Stevens and Sons, 1877

Danby P Fry, The Lunacy Acts, 2nd edition 1877

John Millar, Hints on Insanity, 1877

Lunacy in its relations to the state: a commentary on the evidence taken by the Committee of the House of Commons on Lunacy Law in the session of 1877, 1878

William Wood, Insanity and the lunacy law, 1879

Herman Merivale, My experiences in a lunatic asylum, 1879

Sydney E Williams, The law and practice relating to petitions in Chancery and Lunacy, 1880

Sir John Bucknill, The care of the insane and their legal control, 1880

Daniel Hack Tuke, Chapters on the history of the insane in the British Isles, 1882

Lionel Weatherly, The care and treatment of the insane in private dwellings, 1882

James Greenwood, A concise handbook of the laws relating to medical men, 1882

Louisa Lowe, The bastilles of England or The lunacy laws at work, 1883

Bailliere Tindall and Cox, Handbook for the instruction of Attendants on the insane, 1885

Lunacy Act 1890

George Chambers, Fry's Lunacy Laws, 3rd edition, 1890

Francis Walmsley, Outlines of Insanity, 1892

Edwin Brand, Mad authors; or, Daft Dan's diary. Marvellous revelations respecting madhouse management, 4th edition, 1893

Charles Mercier, Lunatic Asylums: Their Organisation and Management, 1894

Charles Arthur Mercier, Lunacy law for medical men, 1894

Archbold's Lunacy, 4th edition, Shaw and Sons, 1895

A. Wood Renton, The Law of and Practice in Lunacy, W Green & Sons, 1897 (external link)

Report of the Royal Commission on the blind, the deaf and dumb, 1899

Heywood & Massey's lunacy practice, Stevens & Son, 1st edition, 1900

William Gattie, Lunacy practice: A Practical Guide for the Certification and Detention of Persons of Unsound Mind, 1903

Heywood & Massey's Lunacy Practice, 3rd edition, 1907

Report of the Royal Commission on the care and control of the feebleminded, Vol. VIII, 1908

Lyttleton Forbes Winslow, Recollections of forty years, 1910

Marcia Hamilcar, Legally dead: experiences during seventeen weeks' detention in a private asylum, 1910

Herbert Davey, The law relating to the mentally defective, 2nd edition, 1913

Mental Deficiency Act 1913

John and Samuel Wormald, A guide to the Mental Deficiency Act 1913

Martin Barr and E.F. Maloney, Types of Mental Defectives, Blakiston's Son & Co, 1920

Montagu Lomax, The experiences of an asylum doctor; with suggestions for asylum and lunacy law reform, 1921

Report of the Committee on Administration of Public Mental Hospitals, Ministry of Health, 1922

Rachel Grant-Smith, Experiences of an asylum patient, 1922

Lunacy and Mental Treatment Rules 1930

The Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts, 1890 to 1930 and the Mental Treatment Rules, 1930. Shaw & Sons, 1931

Mental Health Act 1959

Dale Peterson (editor), A Mad people's history of madness, 1982 (external link)

David Wright and Anne Digby (eds), From idiocy to mental deficiency, Routledge, 1996

Articles

D. J. Mellett, Bureaucracy and mental illness: The Commissioners in Lunacy 1845-90, Medical History, 1981

Nicholas Hervey, Advocacy or folly: the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society, 1845-1863, Medical History, 1986

Charlotte MacKenzie, A family asylum: a history of the private madhouse at Ticehurst in Sussex, 1792-1917, University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1987

David Wright, Getting Out of the Asylum: Understanding the Confinement of the Insane in the Nineteenth Century, The Society for the Social History of Medicine, 1997

David Wright, The certification of insanity in nineteenth-century England and Wales, History of Psychiatry, 1998

Professor Gail Hornstein, Bibliography of First Person Narratives of Madness, 4th edition, 2008

Leonard Smith. A gentleman's mad-doctor in Georgian England: Edward Long Fox and Brislington House. History of Psychiatry, 2008

Chantal Stebbings, Protecting the property of the mentally ill: the judicial solution in nineteenth century lunacy law, Cambridge Law Journal, 2012

Sarah Wise, A tale of whistle-blowing and the English lunacy laws, The Lancet, 2014

Leonard Smith, Lunatic Asylum in the Workhouse: St Peter's Hospital, Bristol, 1698-1861, Medical History, 2017

Dan Degerman, 'Am I mad?': the Windham case and Victorian resistance to psychiatry, History of Psychiatry, 2019

Managing mental incapacity in the 20th century: A history of the Court of Protection of England & Wales, Janet Weston, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Volume 68, January-February 2020

DSA archive