Wrongful confinement

Introduction

In the Preface to his novel Hard Cash (1863), Charles Reade requested information about wrongful confinement from the general public. Rosina Bulwer Lytton (1802-1882) responded with A Blighted Life, an impassioned and occasionally hysterical account the events surrounding her illegal detention in a private lunatic asylum, Inverness Lodge, in July 1858.

In this excerpt, she recounts the circumstances surrounding her initial incarceration and describes her experiences in the asylum. In light of the important role that the press played in debates about wrongful confinement, this excerpt includes supplementary publicity of her case. Though scornful about her husband and his associates, Rosina Bulwer Lytton reserves equal contempt for the medical and legal professions, and for the private lunatic asylum. Providing a valuable and relatively rare first-hand account of wrongful confinement, her tract offers important insights into the complex and intertwined roles that gender, class, and the medical profession played in the detention of sane individuals in Victorian lunatic asylums.

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