This research is also important for the history of the family more generally; a topic frequently examined through fiction, social commentary, legislature, press reports and autobiographies.98 Histories of the family are flourishing, but there are still more studies on women than men, and on middle-class families.99 What is more, historians tend to focus on either the middle classes or the poor; for example, Tosh and Sanders on bourgeois fatherhood, and Strange on the emotions of poor families.100 This thesis attempts to redress some of the imbalance by focusing primarily on men and on both the
96 Julie-Marie Strange also found that asylum cases ‘provide a rare snapshot of familial relationships’.
Death, Grief and Poverty, p. 222.
97 John Tosh, ‘The History of Masculinity: An Outdated Concept?’, in What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics From Antiquity to the Contemporary World, ed. by John H. Arnold and Sean Brady (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 17-34.
98 Brady, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality; Martin Danahay, Gender at Work in Victorian Culture:
Literature, Art and Masculinity (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2005); Emelyne Godfrey, Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Ying S. Lee, Masculinity and the English Working-Class: Studies in Victorian Autobiography and Fiction (New York and London: Routledge, 2007); Peter Stearns, Be A Man!: Males in Modern Society, 2nd edn (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1990); John Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2006).
99 Claudia Nelson, Susan B. Egenolf and Julie-Marie Strange, ‘General Introduction’, in British Family Life, 1780-1914, ed. by Nelson, Egenolf and Strange, 5 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto Ltd., 2012), V1, pp. i-xi (p. x).
100 Ibid., p. ix.
35 middle and working-classes, although, given Broadmoor’s predominantly working-class population, working-class men and their families dominate overall.
Since the mid-1990s, research into middle-class men’s involvement in family life has blossomed in part because of a belief that men had been written out of histories of the home.101 Initially, historians challenged the view that there was a divide between men’s public and domestic lives.102 Since then, exciting research has taken place on men’s engagement with the domestic sphere: Karen Harvey, for example, developed our view of middle-class men’s gendered engagement with the home in the eighteenth century, and Joanne Bailey shows that Georgian fathers actively engaged with their children in the home.103 In addition, it is now generally accepted that Victorian fathers had both a breadwinning and domestic role: they not only provided for their families, but they were loving and engaged fathers also.104 Studies of fatherhood tend to focus on middle-class men, and thus this thesis adds to current histories on the family and masculinity because it provides evidence for affectionate and engaged working-class fathers; a difficult insight to gain given the paucity of evidence.105 It is shown in Chapter Four that affectionate, temperate, playful and bread-winning working-class fathers were deemed to epitomise an
‘ideal’ model of fatherhood. Historians should be cautious to rely on prescriptive literature and middle-class representations to recreate working-class family life. As
101 John H. Arnold and Sean Brady, ‘Introduction’, in What is Masculinity?, ed. by Arnold and Brady, pp.
1-4 (p. 10).
102 Karen Harvey, ‘Masculinity Acquires a History’, in The SAGE Handbook of Historical Theory, ed. by Nancy Partner and Sarah Foot (London: SAGE, 2013), pp. 282-93 (p. 290).
103 Karen Harvey, ‘Men Making Home: Masculinity and Domesticity in Eighteenth Century Britain’, in Homes and Homecomings: Gendered Histories of Domesticity and Return, ed. by K. H. Adler and Carrie Hamilton (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011), pp. 66-86. Also, Karen Harvey, The Little Republic:
Masculinity and Domestic Authority in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 187; Bailey, ‘Masculinity and Fatherhood’.
104 For example, Tosh, A Man’s Place; Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, ‘Domestic Fathers and the Victorian Parental Role’, Women’s History Review, 15 (2006), 551-9. Leonore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle, Janet Fink and Katherine Holden, The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830-1960 (London:
Longman, 1999), p. 149. See also various essays in Gender and Fatherhood in the Nineteenth Century, ed.
by Broughton and Rogers.
105 Strange, ‘Fatherhood, Providing and Attachment’, p. 1010.
36 Strange writes, such sources tell us ‘more about middle-class anxieties concerning
working-class men than the family experiences of working-class people.’106 To overcome this, historians need to uncover sources that provide evidence of working-class family life;107 an examination of Broadmoor cases grants access to such sources. In Chapter Four it is shown that in the late nineteenth century distinctions were made between good and bad fathers (those who were neglectful, abusive, and intemperate) by judges, juries, journalists and, crucially, by members of the working classes. This is important because it shows that the ‘idealised’ picture of fatherhood was not just promoted and lived by the middle classes, as has been suggested.108 One of the main contributions of this thesis is thus to current scholarship on working-class fathers who, despite bourgeoning research into men’s involvement in nineteenth-century family life, remain ‘“strangers in the midst”
in “family” studies’.109
An examination of Broadmoor cases adds to the existing literature on male domesticity and men’s engagement with the home: it shows that both middle and working-class men engaged with the domestic sphere; they were enthusiastic and kind fathers who endeavoured to provide for their families. In addition, it has revealed that men of both classes endeavoured to be part of the domestic sphere despite their absence from it; a desire historians have shown also existed in middle-class men in the twentieth century. Through an examination of correspondence and autobiographies, Martin Francis shows that some pilots in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War ‘strove to maintain a presence in the domestic domain’; they openly celebrated their roles as fathers,
106 Strange, ‘Introduction’, in British Family Life, pp. ix-ixi.
107 Sian Pooley, ‘Child Care and Neglect: A Comparative Local Study of Late Nineteenth-Century Parental Authority’, in The Politics of Domestic Authority, ed. by Delap, Griffin, Wills, pp. 223-242 (p. 223).
108 Ginger Frost, ‘“I Am Master Here”: Illegitimacy, Masculinity and Violence in Victorian England’, in The Politics of Domestic Authority, ed. by Delap, Griffin and Wills, pp. 27-42 (p. 27).
109 Strange, ‘Fatherhood, Providing and Attachment’, p. 1009. Also, John Gillis, A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual and the Quest For Family Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.
179.
37 others were fraught with guilt over their absence from the home, and some were
overcome with worry over household finances.110 As this thesis will show, these were all preoccupations of men committed to Broadmoor. From the eighteenth century and into the twentieth century, then, the domestic male was thus both an idealised image and, for some, a lived experience. Through an examination of never-before-seen records, this thesis complements studies undertaken by Harvey and Francis, and builds upon the recent research of Doolittle and Strange, by showing that the domestic male belonged to both the middle and working classes.
Through an examination of letters to and from the asylum, it is possible to gauge some sense of patients’ relationships with other family members, including their wives, siblings, and parents. In Chapters One, Four and Six the anger, fear and uncertainty of women who lost their husbands and thus their livelihoods is uncovered. It is shown that some women had no choice but to commit adultery or bigamy or file for divorce
following their husband’s committal to Broadmoor because they could not support themselves or their children alone. Such evidence supports the literature on nineteenth-century women that portrays wives as ‘dependent creatures’ who, when their husbands failed to provide, were effectively forced out of their marriage.111 On the other hand, the Broadmoor cases reveal supportive and caring wives who waited indefinitely for their husbands’ discharge. We also see evidence of patients’ children sending them upbeat letters in an attempt to relieve their sadness, of patients’ parents trying to provide them comfort and support from outside the asylum, and of patients being sent Christmas cards, perhaps in an effort to make them feel as though they were still part of the family.112
110 Francis, Flyer, pp. 86. 93. 96.
111 John. R. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 244; Ginger Frost, Living in Sin: Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 79.
112 D/H14/D2/2/1/925/7, Christmas card.
38 Chapter One shows that being made to feel as though they were still part of their family and the emotional support provided by their relatives, was vital to some patients’ survival in the asylum, and when this emotional support was lacking and they felt ‘deserted’, they looked elsewhere for companionship and advice.113 As Leonore Davidoff, Megan
Doolittle, Janet Fink and Katherine Holden write, ‘Familial relationships were found and are still found in a range of other institutions and places where we no longer expect
them.’114 They provide all-male institutions such as guilds and the mafia as examples. In Chapters One and Two it is shown that familial relationships also developed, and were fostered, in Broadmoor, with the Superintendent acting as a father to the patients, and the attendants and other patients acting as brothers and confidants.