Welcome to The Asylum Archives! Today we’re exploring the legacy and achievements of the Alleged Lunatics’ Friend Society. Thank you for joining me and let me know in the comments if you learnt something new.

Also, remember The Asylum Archives is also on YouTube! Check out the video versions for images and additional visual *pizzazz* 🥰

⏳Time stamps:

00:00 Intro

03:14 The Principles of Peer Support

05:02 The History of the ALFS

12:23 Their Main Achievements, incl. Cases

23:00 Their Dissolution

24:25 Their Legacy

27:22 Summary

🖇 Links to Articles and Petitions:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0025727300045701

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/yn2yyten

💌 Keep in touch 💌

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Insight_Illness

IG: https://www.instagram.com/insight_illness/

TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMRcWrC6N/

🔎 References:

Case Records 1911-1915 https://wellcomecollection.org/works/h9ahrgfm/items?canvas=56
The changing profile of a 19th century Asylum: the York Retreat, A. Digby, CUP, 2009.
Video clips: Pexels: Mart Production, cottonbro, largo editt, Luis C. Tavera, EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA
L. Lowe (1883) The Bastilles of England: or, the lunacy laws at work. London: Crookenden, p. 155.
John Bull, 25 January 1862, p. 54.
S. Wise (2012) Inconvenient people: lunacy, liberty and the mad-doctors in Victorian England. London: The Bodley Head, 84.

🎧 I’m still figuring out my audio and, yes, those are trains in the background that I unfortunately can’t remove completely! Please let me know if anything is particularly off 🙂 

📼 My old videos have been archived but some of them are accessible via this link:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUO7Y7jU9QOeY20ltEnxFlA4_mbiGI_Ka

🎤 Music produced by Papa Boxhead at Boxhead Studios.

Disclaimer:

I mean no offence at all by these videos, my goal is to respectfully raise awareness of often-forgotten people and increase transparency in the history of mental healthcare. Every case I cover is over 100 years old but, whilst the person I’m speaking about is no longer with us, I know their family may be so I treat their history with the same care I would want for my own. For extra anonymity, the names of patients have been changed in every video.

I also recognise that these case studies are drawn from medical records and are therefore recorded from the perspective of medical practitioners rather than the person themselves. Given the level of stigma often present in mental healthcare, especially within the eras we’re discussing, the case studies need to be taken with a grain of salt and not viewed as representing the entirety of the person they discuss. Psychiatric records are not biographies and will never capture the person as they were known to friends, to family, or to themselves. 

Thank you for tuning in! ❤️