Dr Anna Jamieson (Birkbeck) joined us in November to discuss ‘Practical Hints: The Art of the Asylum Visitor Book in the early nineteenth-century’

Abstract: By the early decades of the nineteenth century, asylums and hospitals had become mainstays of England’s philanthropic tourist circuit. Providing visitors with the opportunity to interact with human suffering, they were uniquely placed to encourage and facilitate the display of humanity and refinement deemed socially appropriate during this period. At the end of the asylum tour, many visitors had the opportunity to publicly record their responses in a communal visitor book – where they would write their name, place of residence, and typically a few lines discussing what they had seen. Characterising the asylum visitor book as a material site where themes of philanthropy and performance meet, this paper explores the issues at stake in the act of committing one’s thoughts to paper within this space. On the one hand, it argues that this ritual enabled the performance of one’s philanthropy, demonstrating the tourist’s fluency in topics surrounding the smooth running of the institution. On the other, I argue that writing in the asylum visitor book allowed a reflective moment of emotional recovery – an ameliorating endpoint to the psychological strain of a visit to the asylum itself.

Bio: Anna Jamieson is an interdisciplinary art historian specialising in visual and material cultures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Anna is currently working on a book exploring asylum tourism between 1770-1845. Her research interests include: women and patient agency; illness, fashion and consumerism; dark tourism and enfreakment; material culture and the history of emotions.

You are warmly invited to join us for the first online meeting of 2022-23 of the Nineteenth Century Research Group at the University of Lincoln.

Matthew Bayly will be presenting on ‘Biteing Another Pauper With Whom She Slept: Lunatics, Idiots and Imbeciles under the New Poor Law, c.1836-1852’

Abstract: The first half of the nineteenth century saw important legislative developments regarding the treatment of mental illness and cognitive disability, as well as the provision of welfare within England and Wales. In regard to the former, the period saw the growth of the asylum as the officially sanctioned response to lunacy. In regard to the latter, the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act issued in the era of the New Poor Law where relief was ostensibly to be delivered within a workhouse. That the Poor Law was crucial for the support of the mentally ill and cognitively disabled has been well noted; thus, such cohorts sat at the interface between these legislative changes. What this meant in practice for the experiences of those deemed lunatics, idiots and imbeciles in the early decades of the New Poor Law will be the focus of this paper. Analysis will focus on two Poor Law Unions in Lincolnshire and try to discern life cycles of support for mentally ill and cognitively disabled paupers, focussing on the loci of care of the parish, the asylum and the workhouse.

Bio: Matthew Bayly is a PhD student at Nottingham Trent University with a submitted thesis titled ‘The Human Ecology of Need and Relief on the Lincoln Heath, c.1790-1850.’ His research interests include the history of welfare; the history of mental illness; local history and public engagement with a specific focus on Lincolnshire. Currently, he is a Senior English for Academic Purposes Tutor in the International College at the University of Lincoln.

This event is open to all and will take place on MS Teams. Register via Eventbrite here, or email Laura Gill (lgill@lincoln.ac.uk) for a direct link to the meeting. The Teams meeting room will open at 4pm and the talk will begin at 4.15pm.

The next event in this series will be on Wednesday 23rd November (4–5.30pm), when Anna Jamieson (History of Art, Birkbeck) will be joining us to speak about ‘Practical Hints: The Art of the Asylum Visitor Book in the early nineteenth-century’. Further details will follow soon.

The Nineteenth Century Research Group is hosting two events across the week starting 16th May (one in-person, one online).

On Monday 16th May 4-6pm we will have our first in-person research event in two years!
Join us for an interdisciplinary panel session with postgraduate researchers from across the College of Arts working on the nineteenth century. Alyson Cunningham will be presenting on coaching in nineteenth-century British literature, Conor Broughton will be presenting on Italian opera and ‘national indifference’ and Phillipa McDonnell will be presenting on nineteenth-century paint.
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Please join us in MB3203. All are welcome!

On Wednesday 18th May, via MS Teams, we have a research seminar co-organised with the 21st Century Research Group, to mark the end of the teaching year.

Dr Claire O’Callaghan (Loughborough) will be giving a talk on ‘The Afterlives of Wuthering Heights and the Legacy of Wide Sargasso Sea; Or, Reading Race, Identity and Violence in Caryl Philip’s The Lost Child and Michael Stewart’s Ill Will.’ Dr O’Callaghan’s research interests lie in Victorian and neo-Victorian studies, with a focus on the politics of gender, sexuality and identity. She is an expert on the lives and works of the Brontës and the writing of the contemporary novelist, Sarah Waters.

The paper will begin at 4.30pm, but the Teams room will open at 4.15pm. The paper will be recorded, but the Q&A session will not.

Again, all are welcome: please email Laura Gill (lgill@lincoln.ac.uk) for a link to join the meeting, and do get in touch if you have any queries.

You are warmly invited to attend a lunchtime seminar organised by the Nineteenth-Century Research Group on Monday 13th December, starting at 12pm (ending before 2pm). The meeting will be held on Microsoft Teams and the meeting room will be open from 11.50am. Please email Laura Gill (lgill@lincoln.ac.uk) to register and receive the meeting link.

This event brings together scholars from the College of Arts working in different disciplines to share focused aspects of their current writing and research. Researchers working in English and History will each give a short paper of c. 10 minutes, covering a range of topics related to the nineteenth century:

• Dr Jim Cheshire (History): Remembering ‘Hodson’s Horse’: Commemoration and the Indian Uprising of 1857–8.

This paper will analyse a memorial to William Hodson in Lichfield Cathedral designed by George Edmund Street in 1859 and question the way that it commemorates Hodson’s controversial military career. I will argue that the aesthetic agenda of the Gothic Revival and the moral agenda of muscular Christianity combined with Anglo-Catholicism to generate an ideologically partisan and inaccurate representation of events surrounding the Indian Uprising of 1857-8 and that the monument has subsequently functioned as a focus of conservative military historians.

• Dr Rebecca Styler (English): George Macdonald and Human-Animal Fellowship.

The Scottish author George Macdonald (1824-1905) is best known for his fairy tales which embody some of his most cherished theological and moral ideals. In the context of Macdonald’s beliefs about animals’ spiritual consciousness and afterlife, stated in his Unspoken Sermons, I consider the depiction of inter-species sympathy in ‘The History of Photogen and Nycteris’ (1879) as a poetic form of ecotheology, and ecofeminism. Macdonald can be placed among other Victorian ecotheological poets, and a longer Christian tradition of reverencing animals as spiritual fellows and co-tenants of the earth.

[The story can be found at http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/26/69.pdf.]

• Dr Pietro Di Paola (History): A Furious Champion of Goodness: Anarchist Women and Emotions.

Focusing on the contrasting representations of the revolutionary Louise Michel, a furious champion of goodness, the paper investigates emotions as an analytical tool to reassess the political significance of militant women in the anarchist and radical movements.

Talks will be followed by a Q&A. Please note that the research papers will be recorded, but the Q&A section of the seminar will not be recorded. The event is open to all and you are welcome to join us just for the talks if you are not able to stay for the whole session.