Research Catalog

Forgotten lunatics of the Great War / Peter Barham.

Title: Forgotten lunatics of the Great War / Peter Barham.
Author: Barham, Peter.
Publication: New Haven : Yale University Press, c2004.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	RC550 .B34 2004	Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 451 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., ports.; 25 cm.

Summary

"Although the shell-shocked British soldier of World War I has been a favoured subject in both fiction and nonfiction, focus has been on the stories of officers, and the history of the thousands of rank-and-file servicemen who were psychiatric casualties, and put into lunatic asylums, has never been told. Drawing on records from the front lines, case histories, personal letters and war pensions files, this profoundly moving book recounts the poignant, sometimes ribald life stories of this neglected group for the first time." "Peter Barham shows how public feeling about the injustice being shown to servicemen who had become 'insane through fighting for their country' resulted in the emergence of the People's Lunatic, producing major concessions from the authorities. He examines the fate of the People's Lunatic in the class antagonisms between the wars and the uphill struggles that ex-servicemen faced trying to secure justice from the ironic behemoth that was the Ministry of Pensions."--Jacket.

Subject

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 422-430) and index.

Processing Action (note)

committed to retain

Contents

The war mental hospital -- The new lunacy protest -- "D Ward (imbecile)" -- The Napsbury cast -- "Greetings from Napsbury" -- Albert goes to war again -- Justice for the war psychotic -- "Insane through fighting for their country" -- Justice for the citizen soldier -- Albert gets a war psychosis pension -- "Revolting" psychology -- How the weak progress -- Psychosis and life -- Homecomings -- Family fortunes -- Officialdom and the pensioner -- "A very public madness" -- Demobbed to the asylum -- A disappointed homecoming -- Hard times -- "Any man in any street" -- Lunatic officers -- "Hardening" -- The service patients between the wars -- Connie and Alex -- Mad activists of the Great War -- Independent lives -- War psychosis pentathlons -- Caring : families and doctors -- Futures -- The Captain's valedictory letter -- Remembering the forgotten lunatics.

ISBN

0300103794 (hc)

LCCN

^^2004107441

OCLC

56376583

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library