Acknowledgements
Writing this book has been a fascinating and troubling process, one that has led us into many archives and libraries and involved numerous interactions with scholars from many disciplines. Our research and writing took place alongside many public engagement activities, which brought us into contact with people in prison or who have been in prison, making us ever more aware of the enduring nature of many of the issues that we discuss in this book. It has led us to reflect on the continuing high rates of mental illness in prisons, and, despite the efforts of prison services and organisations working to reform prisons and improve care and conditions, the ongoing challenges of providing effective responses and treatment. We have also been made aware of the obstacles involved – both current and historical – in removing prisoners experiencing mental ill health from the prison system and of preventing them entering the system in the first place. One of our intentions in writing this book was to offer the backstory of the emergence of prison psychiatry and an exploration of the experiences of prisoners suffering from mental disorders in the past. It also provides an examination of the impact of prison disciplines in the modern prison, initially introduced under a banner of reform and effective rehabilitation, on the minds of those experiencing these regimes and on the medical staff tasked with implementing them.
First and foremost, we would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Wellcome Trust in funding our Investigator Award, ‘Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in English and Irish Prisons, 1840–2000’ (1003341/Z/13/Z and 1003351/Z/13/Z), which provided support for the research that underpins this book and allowed us the time to write it. It also gave us the opportunity to work with an exceptional team of scholars. Fiachra Byrne, Oisín Wall and Holly Dunbar at University College Dublin (UCD), Margaret Charleroy, Rachel Bennett, Max Hodgson and Becky Crites at the University of Warwick, William Murphy at Dublin City University, and Virginia Berridge and Janet Weston at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, offered feedback, evidence and leads discovered while conducting their own research and enabled us to build a strong sense of community and collaboration around the project. Nicholas Duvall worked at both Warwick and UCD, and ably assisted us in our archival research during the first two years of the project. Henrietta Ewart, Louise Hide and David Durnin provided research support in the early stages of our project, while Lynn Kilgallon conducted additional research as we neared the end of the book project. Our wonderful public engagement officers, Flo Swann at Warwick and Sinead McCann at UCD, gave truly outstanding support, advice and expertise in developing our public engagement projects in tandem with the book. They enriched our experiences of public engagement, as did our many partners in the arts, policy, prison reform and prisons. Much of our public engagement was based on our research on mental illness in prison, which in turn fed back into the framing of our ideas for the book.
We have also both been fortunate in having excellent support beyond the project team from our two host research centres and universities. Colleagues at UCD’s Centre for the History of Medicine and School of History provided ongoing practical support and expert knowledge as well as great enthusiasm and interest in our work: thanks to Sarah Feehan, Roy Fletcher, Robert Gerwarth, James Grannell, Mary Hatfield, Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi, Jen Keating, Emma Lyons, Alice Mauger, Ciarán McCabe, Ivar McGrath, William Mulligan, Elizabeth Mullins, Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Susannah Riordan, Michael Staunton, Fionnuala Walsh, Jennifer Wellington and Sandy Wilkinson. Beyond the UCD Centre and the School of History, Ian O’Donnell and Deirdre Healy in Law, Lynsey Black, now in Law at Maynooth University, and Justin Synnott, Máire Coyle and colleagues in UCD Research and Innovation engaged with and supported our work with great interest. Colleagues at Warwick’s Centre for the History of Medicine have been a source of knowledge, expertise, and ongoing support and conviviality: Roberta Bivins, Andrew Burchell, Michael Bycroft, Tania Cleaves, Jennifer Crane, Kelly-Ann Couzens, Faby Creed, Angela Davis, Hannah Elizabeth, Jane Hand, Sheilagh Holmes, Sophie Mann, Gareth Millward, Michelle Nortey, James Poskett, Claire Sewell, Claire Shaw, Chris Sirrs, Elise Smith, Claudia Stein and Mathew Thomson, and our fantastic PhD community, and beyond our Centre for the History of Medicine, Anna Hájková, Sarah Hodges, Maria Luddy and Charles Walton in History, Jackie Hodgson in Law, Ana Chamberlen in Sociology, and David Duncan, James Green, Katie Klaassen, Liese Perrin and Emma Roberts in Research and Impact Services.
Over the years we have been researching and writing the book we have had many opportunities to present at seminars, workshops and conferences, and to share and discuss our work with colleagues from many institutions. We would like to thank the audiences at these events for their questions, comments and feedback, particularly Clare Anderson, Catharine Coleborne, Ian Cummins, Margot Finn, Barry Godfrey, Louise Hide, James Kelly, Laura Kelly, Kathleen Kendall, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Alice Mills, James Moran, Laura Sellers, Sonu Shamdasani, Len Smith, Matt Smith, Barbara Taylor, Nancy Tomes and David Wright.
We would like to thank many archivists and librarians for supporting our research on visits to the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University, particularly Helen Ford and Elizabeth Wood, The National Archives, the National Archives of Ireland, particularly Brian Donnelly and Gregory O’Connor, who sadly passed away in December 2020, the Wellcome Library, the British Library, the National Library of Ireland, the London Metropolitan Archives, Dublin City Archives, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Liverpool Record Office, Berkshire County Record Office, Lancashire Archives and Wakefield County Record Office.
Our research and public engagement activities have brought us into contact with many outstanding organisations and individuals working in prison reform and the arts, too many to list here, but including Anita Dockley at the Howard League, Kimmett Edgar at the Prison Reform Trust, Fíona Ní Chinnéide and all the team at the Irish Penal Reform Trust, Annie Bartlett at St George’s, University of London, Sharon Shalev at the Oxford Centre for Criminology, Derek Nisbett, Peter Cann and the actors and production team of Talking Birds Theatre Company, Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan of Brokentalkers Theatre Company and their production team and cast, including Rachel Bergin and Willie White, Saul Hewish at Rideout and his colleagues, theatre maker Helena Enright, Andy Watson, Liz Brown and the rest of the team at Geese Theatre Company, Kate McCrath, Molly Sharpe and their colleagues at Fuel, the team at the Bridge Project, Dublin, who supported the artistic work of Sinead McCann, Anne Costello and her colleagues at the Education Unit, Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, the governors at Mountjoy Prison, the team at PACE, and Brian Crowley and Niall Bergin at Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Dublin. Many thanks too to the staff at HMP Hewell, HMP Peterborough and HMP Stafford, in particular Governor Gareth Sands, Governor Ralph Lubkowski and Fran Southall, and to the men and women in prison who contributed so much to our projects. In addition to support from the Wellcome Trust, our public engagement work was awarded further funding from UCD Research Seed Funding and Warwick University’s Impact Fund.
We would like to thank Lucy Rhymer, Rachel Blaifeder, Stephanie Taylor and Dhanuja Ragunathan and the rest of the team at Cambridge University Press for guiding us through the production process, Matthew Seal for his meticulous copyediting and Kate McIntosh for compiling such a comprehensive index, and the anonymous referees for their insightful comments and feedback on our manuscript. We would like to acknowledge the British Library, Howard League for Penal Reform, Irish Architectural Archive, The National Archives, New York Public Library and Wellcome Collection for permission to reproduce illustrative material.
Last, and most importantly, we would like to thank our families, Sebastian, Sam, Daniel and Catherine, and William, Damian and Michelle for their enormous support, advice and encouragement.
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