Close confinement in a mighty prison: Thomas Bakewell and his campaign against public asylums,1810-1830

Abstract

Thomas Bakewell, the proprietor of Spring Vale private asylum in Staffordshire, was an outspoken critic of the movement to develop public lunatic asylums. The County Asylums Act of 1808 encouraged the building of asylums for pauper lunatics. Bakewell contended that the system under which large public asylums operated would lead to a failure of the therapeutic intentions of those who projected them. He campaigned vigorously over a twenty year period against the concept and the practices of these asylums, and argued for a fundamental change in state policy toward the insane. He advocated an alternative system of state run curative hospitals, to replace institutions that were largely custodial in their orientation.