Taming the Mind : Women in the Lunatic Asylums of Colonial Bengal

Abstract

The Lunatic Asylums in the colonial period did not have proper medical treatment or identification of female patients. The infrastructural facilities for the women were not given attention by the asylums.The Victorian morality recognized ‘work’ as a therapy and the ‘mentally ill’ were made to work in the garden, carpentry, grinding wheat and other works, leading to monetary gain in the asylums of Bengal.. The funds were applied to maintain the asylums, sometimes the local jails and led to profits for the British. The paper seeks to look into the colonial policy with regard to asylums and the hard work imposed upon the female lunatics leading to asylum ‘industries’ and how it received a new direction of economic gain.