Madness on Trial: A Transatlantic History of English Civil Law and Lunacy by James E. Moran (review)

Reviewed by: Madness on Trial: A Transatlantic History of English Civil Law and Lunacy by James E. Moran Ann Westmore (bio) James E. Moran, Madness on Trial: A Transatlantic History of English Civil Law and Lunacy (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2022), Social Histories of Medicine. ISBN: 978 1 526 16379 0 (PB). Tables. 257pp. The history of madness in the English-speaking world has focused largely on the asylum and its successor, the mental hospital. This book provides a different perspective, taking readers inside court rooms in England and the United States, where decisions were made about the distribution of individuals' property after they were declared insane, and how they would be cared for and managed. Madness On Trial came about almost by accident, but this in no way detracts from its importance. At the outset author James Moran, a Canadian professor of history, intended to write about the development of the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum. But he changed tack when he unearthed in the state's archives a wealth of hand-written civil legal documents relating to madness in New Jersey dating from the 1790s to the early twentieth century. The trove included trial transcripts, judges' and witness statements, and lawyers' interventions and appeals, the likes of which are a rarity. Moran's investigations led him to realise the significance of courts as sites where civil law related to madness evolved. They were at the crossroads where the rights of the propertied insane person intersected with lawyers' expertise and the trial process. He came to believe that the underpinning rationale for the development of what has come to be known as lunacy investigation law was to shore up any familial property that was under threat, while providing long-term care and management options for the insane person. The [End Page 133] law allowed both the individuals deemed to be non compos mentis (literally, not sane or not in one's right mind) and their property to be put in the hands of a guardian or a government official. Importantly, the possibility of recovery from an episode of mental derangement was embedded in lunacy investigation law and, with it, 'the right of traverse', meaning the right to overturn the legal decision of insanity. Having drawn such conclusions from North American court documents, Moran wondered to what extent they reflected the original English legal precedents. This led him to familiarise himself with the English Reports, a series derived from English court cases heard from around 1600 to the 1820s. It was this sequence of events that gave rise to the apposite transatlantic comparison to which the title refers. In exploring this comparison over the course of an introduction, eight chapters and a conclusion, Moran adopts a chronological approach that effectively transposes the order in which his book actually took shape: Chapters one to five deal with the evolution of lunacy investigation law in England, while the remaining chapters have a North American focus. Throughout, he delves deeply into the family/asylum/madness interactions in court-based case studies he has unearthed, providing convincing evidence that the asylum was 'as much the product of family agency as it was the product of parliamentary or professional fiat' (p. 10). Troubling cases such as that of Elizabeth Ludlow in England and Abraham W. in New Jersey demonstrate family decision-making that enmeshed individuals with perceived mental impairment and their assets in guardianship support. The interplay between family, friends, power, and property was influenced by social and community norms and economic factors as well as by interpersonal dynamics. Moran suggests that while lunacy investigation law in England was largely restricted to those with considerable property at stake, in New Jersey the transplanted body of law came to operate across a wider section of the population. He contends that 'In the North American context, the civil law provided a structured response to madness for a much broader socio-economic spectrum of colonists and, later, American citizens' (p. 234). As such, the transplanted lunacy investigation law 'delayed the need for asylum provision in this part of the United States' (p. 234). In Chapter six, "Atlantic Crossing: Lunacy Law as Colonial Inheritance" Moran's analysis becomes...

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