Poverty and mental health: the work of the female sanitary inspectors in Bradford (c. 1901–1912)
Dale, P
Date: 19 June 2018
Journal
Palgrave Communications
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Although there are many excellent studies of the work of pioneer women
public health officers, few accounts dwell on mental health issues or discuss any relationship
that such staff might have understood to exist between poverty and mental health in the early
twentieth century. This is a remarkable omission considering that social ...
Although there are many excellent studies of the work of pioneer women
public health officers, few accounts dwell on mental health issues or discuss any relationship
that such staff might have understood to exist between poverty and mental health in the early
twentieth century. This is a remarkable omission considering that social and feminist historians
have highlighted the problems created by the way early practitioners sought to
manage poverty and arguably the poor. Drawing on records created by Female Sanitary
Inspectors (FSIs) in Bradford, this study chronicles distressing economic and social conditions
but also reveals encounters between the staff and people experiencing mental health problems
and mental health crises. The ways in which the FSIs chose to both make and deny
links between the abject poverty witnessed in the slum districts and cases of mental disorder
forms an important strand to the analysis that follows. Interestingly, it is the well-being of the
staff that emerges as a persistent and even over-riding concern.
History
Collections of Former Colleges
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