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      ‘Those, that die by reason of their madness’: dying insane in London, 1629–1830

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          Abstract

          Dying insane provoked ‘great fear, and apprehension’ in the minds of men and women. Death as a lunatic disrupted deathbed performance and rendered the victim incapable at law. This article examines lunacy as a cause of death in the metropolis between 1629 and 1830. It draws on new material from the admission registers of St Luke’s Hospital, existing data from Bethlem and the London Bills of Mortality and unique biographical data on pauper lunatics dying in the parish of St Martin in the Fields. The article argues that lunacy being ascribed as a cause of death had a distinctive chronology in this period. Those most vulnerable to the stigma of lunacy at death were those dying as parish paupers and those who inhabited metropolitan institutions.

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          Searchers of the dead: authority, marginality, and the interpretation of plague in England, 1574-1665.

          R Munkhoff (1999)
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            Lunacy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England: analysis of Quarter Sessions records. Part I.

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              • Abstract: not found
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              Mad farming in the metropolis. Part 1: a significant service industry in East London.

              E. Murphy (2001)
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Hist Psychiatry
                Hist Psychiatry
                HPY
                sphpy
                History of Psychiatry
                SAGE Publications (Sage UK: London, England )
                0957-154X
                1740-2360
                March 2012
                March 2012
                : 23
                : 1 , Special Issue: Lunacy’s last rites: dying insane in Britain, c. 1629–1939
                : 27-39
                Affiliations
                [1-0957154X11428930]Newcastle University
                [2-0957154X11428930]Newcastle University
                Author notes
                [*]John Black, School of Historical Studies, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. Email: john.black@ 123456newcastle.ac.uk
                Article
                10.1177_0957154X11428930
                10.1177/0957154X11428930
                3764771
                22701925
                4f0fa687-6e65-47b4-b336-f1fdfea847a6
                © SAGE Publications 2011

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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                bills of mortality,cause of death,england,pauper lunatics,private madhouses,searchers

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