Abstract
This thesis sets out to expound both the character and determinants of Irish Catholic asylum experiences in nineteenth-century Scotland, and, by extension, Irish mental health as it was defined at the time. In doing so, the study contributes to the existing body of historical and sociological research concerned with the existence of Irish vulnerabilities to asylum committal and a host of negative mental health outcomes in both domestic and migrant contexts. Specifically, the thesis queries whether Irish Catholics were more vulnerable to specific admission pathways, diagnoses, symptomatologies, treatments and outcomes in Scotland during this time; and by focusing on the Glasgow area (a major destination for Irish emigration in the nineteenth century), the study addresses a significant lacuna in studies of Irish asylum experiences in the major diaspora countries.Responding to a lack of historical consensus on the determinants of the Irish mental health record throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the study adopts a retrospective cohort design to isolate and elicit the influence of more specific (and under-investigated) variables potentially subsumed within the broader category of Irish ethnicity (for example, ethnoreligious marginalisation and the potential epigenetic impact of the Great Famine). As such, the study defines a primary cohort of predominately Irish-born and Irish-descended Catholics in the Glasgow area and matches this cohort to a control group of predominately Scottish-born Protestants of similar sociodemographic composition.
Overall, whilst it was found that Irish-born patients were more vulnerable to being removed from asylum care and returned to the country of their birth (where they were entitled to poor relief), the study evidenced few differences between the cohorts at almost every stage of the patient journey. So whilst the study cannot rule out the possibility that the Great Famine or migration shaped Irish ‘insanity’ in the diaspora countries, it proposes that poverty (minimised here as part of the cohort design) may be the crucial variable at play in Irish migrant asylum experiences. To conclude, the study calls for greater methodological rigour and care when comparing the Irish to other groups and drawing broad associations between Irish ethnicity and ‘insanity’ in the nineteenth century.
| Date of Award | 2023 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Oonagh Walsh (Supervisor) |