Authors: Kate Summerscale
He was the author of nearly …
His research suggested that young women who indulged in intercourse or masturbation while menstruating could experience convulsive fits, and he experimented in treating sexual mania with potassium bromide (this turned out to be highly effective in the treatment of epilepsy).
Dr Forbes Winslow, shiny-pated …
Photograph of Forbes Winslow in 1864 by Ernest Edwards in NPG, and Jonathan Andrews’s entry in
ODNB.
Though the press reported sparingly …
The condition of
furor uterinus
, or excessive sexual feeling in women, was identified during the Renaissance. See Carol Groneman’s ‘Nymphomania: the Historical Construction of Female Sexuality’ in
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
, Vol. 19 (1994).
about ten per cent of sufferers …
According to Charles Bucknill and Daniel H. Tuke’s
A Manual of Psychological Medicine
(1858), quoted in Shuttleworth’s
Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology
(1996).
After giving birth … local irritation.’
Bennet’s
A Practical Treatise on Inflammation of the Uterus, Its Cervix, and Appendages, and on Its Connection with Uterine Disease
(third edition, 1853). In a later edition, published in 1864, Bennet revised this sentence to make explicit that nymphomania could lead to ‘self-abuse’. W. Tyler Smith’s
Manual of Obstetrics
(1858) also made a connection between childbirth and sexual mania: ‘sexual excitement is sometimes apparent during or after labour in a very high degree; indeed cases of this kind may pass into erotomania after parturition’.
Alternatively, the trigger …
See E. J. Tilt’s
The Change of Life in Health and Disease
(1857).
Forbes Winslow, too …
In his
Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology
(1854), Forbes Winslow wrote: ‘Sometimes erotism breaks out at the time of the suppression of the catamenia [menstruation], and is evidently connected with a special state of the sexual organs.’
Tilt argued that ‘sub-acute ovaritis’.
Tilt,
The Change of Life.
When Euphemia Ruskin petitioned …
Information on the Ruskins’ divorce from Phyllis Rose’s
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages
(1983). Euphemia was seeking an annulment because she had fallen in love with the artist John Millais, who was painting her husband’s portrait.
These were distinct illnesses …
Esquirol’s book was published in France in 1838, and translated into English in 1845. His ideas had been introduced to Britain a decade earlier, in James Cowles Prichard’s
A Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders Affecting the Mind
(1835). Monomania could afflict anyone, however seemingly sane, wrote Esquirol, and it could depart as swiftly as it had arrived. The clever and inquisitive were especially susceptible: ‘The more the understanding is developed, and the more active the brain becomes, the more is monomania to be feared.’
erotomania was a disorder …
‘Erotomania is the result of an excited imagination,’ explained James Copland in
A Dictionary of Practical Medicine
(1858), ‘unrestrained by the powers of the understanding; satyriasis and nymphomania proceed from the local irritation of the sexual organs, reacting upon the brain, and exciting the passions beyond the restraints of reason.’
According to the Scottish alienist Sir Alexander Morison, erotomania was revealed in ‘restlessness, melancholy and silence’; he observed one sufferer ‘continually writing the name of the beloved object on paper, on the walls of the room, or on the ground’. See Morison’s
Outlines of Lectures on the Nature, Causes, and Treatment of Insanity
(1848).
Nymphomaniacs were less prone … she met a man.
Horatio Storer’s ‘Cases of Nymphomania’ in
American Journal of Medical Science,
Vol. 32 (1856), quoted in Groneman’s ‘Nymphomania: the Historical Construction of Female Sexuality’.
‘The two may exist together … in the head.’
See Daniel H. Tuke’s ‘On the Various Forms of Mental Disorder’ in
The Asylum Journal of Mental Science
, Vol. 19 (1857).
Older women were especially likely …
See Mary Poovey’s
Uneven Developments: the Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
(1988). The phrase ‘redundant women’ is from W. R. Greg’s ‘Why are Women Redundant?’ in the
National Review
, Apr 1862.
The ‘redundant women’ …
See Tilt,
The Change of Life.
Though Dr William Acton famously …
In Acton’s
Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs
. In a later edition, published in 1862, Acton seemed to have (slightly) modified his views on the basis of this and other divorce cases. He added: ‘It is too true, I admit, as the divorce courts show, that there are some few women who have sexual desires so strong that they surpass those of men, and shock public feeling by their exhibition. I admit, of course, the existence of sexual excitement terminating in nymphomania, a form of insanity that those accustomed to visit lunatic asylums must be fully conversant with; but, with these sad exceptions, there can be no doubt that sexual feeling in the female is in abeyance, and that it requires positive and considerable excitement to be roused at all; and even if roused (which in many instances it never can be) is very moderate compared with that of the male.’
back of her skull with cold water.
See Alexander Morison’s
The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases
(1840). George Combe’s brother had also insisted that sexual disorders
were based in the brain: ‘the affection of the generative organs,’ wrote Andrew Combe, ‘is generally the effect, and not the cause, of the cerebral disturbance’. Andrew Combe studied Esquirol’s work in France in the 1840s. ‘Remarks on the Nature and Causes of Insanity’,
The Phrenological Journal
, Vol. 15 (1842).
hip baths, deep baths and showers.
In
A Practical Treatise on Inflammation of the Uterus,
Bennet noted that uterine inflammation was particularly prevalent immediately after childbirth – the time that Isabella first consulted Kidd. The symptoms, Bennet wrote, included ‘intense headache, great depression and lowness of spirits, and groundless terrors’, often ‘accompanied by delusions or hallucinations, and by the fear of insanity’.
Locock advised the application …
In his entry on amenhor-rhea in the
Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine
(1833).
A London surgeon relieved … The Lancet
, 5 Jun 1853. In the early 1850s the physician Isaac Baker Brown performed his first successful clitoridectomy, upon his sister, and he was to become notorious for the practice in the 1860s. See Ornella Mosucci’s ‘Clitoridectomy, Circumcision and the Politics of Sexual Pleasure in Mid-Victorian Britain’ in
Sexualities in Victorian Britain
(1996), ed. Andrew H. Miller and James Eli Adams.
‘My dear Lady Drysdale …
Letter IHR to Lady D, 14 Feb 1858.
The tone was ‘too light … actual occurrences’.
Letter GC to Lady D, 3 Mar 1858.
She begged him: ‘assist me … me to retain’.
Letter IHR to GC, 21 Feb 1858.
In his reply … vindicate yourself & Dr Lane’.
Letter GC to IHR, 23 Feb 1858.
On the same day … is insanity’.
Letter GC to EWL, 23 Feb 1858.
‘It looks like insanity.’
Letter GC to HOR, 6 Jan 1858.
‘The woman was not mad … down as facts.’
Letter GC to Sir James Clark, 4 Jan 1858.
‘I will make my reply … but the writer’s.’
Letter IHR to GC, 26 Feb 1858.
Gustave Freytag’s
Debit and Credit … Mrs Malcolm’s translation of the novel was reviewed in
The Times
, 31 Dec 1857.
‘Could I dream …
not
how
this can be.’ Letter IHR to GC, 26 Feb 1858.
‘I have been reconsidering … another word to add.’
Letter IHR to GC, 28 Feb 1858.
Isabella’s latest letter … on the brink of insanity’.
Letter GC to EWL, 2 Mar 1858.
In a letter to Lady Drysdale … ‘an
insane
account’.
Letter GC to Lady D, 3 Mar 1858.
George Combe believed …
Combe was drawing here on the teachings of his younger brother Dr Andrew Combe, who in
Observations of Mental Derangement
(1831) had warned of what might happen to upper-or middle-class women who had no outlet for their energies: ‘their own feelings and personal relations necessarily constitute the grand objects of their contemplations: these are brooded over till the mental energies become impaired, false ideas of existence and providence spring up in the mind, the fancy is haunted by strange impressions, and every trifle which relates to self is exaggerated into an object of immense importance’.
to his friend William Ivory, an advocate …
Ivory had been a classmate of George Drysdale at the Edinburgh Academy from 1834 to 1841. See
Edinburgh Academy Register 1824– 1914
(1914).
To this end, he wrote … in Edinburgh.
Letter GC to EWL, 29 Feb 1858. There is room for confusion between the Bennett who Combe hoped would appear in court and the Bennet who did appear as an expert witness. The legal reports on the case spell the witness’s name as ‘Bennet’, and describe him only as an MD, not a professor, which identifies him as James Henry Bennet, the London doctor who specialised in women’s diseases, rather than John Hughes Bennett, the Edinburgh doctor and lecturer to whom Combe alluded. The two were likely to have known one another – in his book on uterine inflammation, J. H. Bennet makes admiring reference to J. H. Bennett’s work on cancer of the uterus.
‘a fantastical, vain … corrupt imagination’.
Letter EWL to GC, 13 Apr 1858.
170 (
all three were ‘speculumisers’
)
…
In
The Elements of Social Science
(1861), George praised ‘Bennett’s [sic]’ work on uterine inflammation and commended his use of the speculum.
patient of the homeopath John Drysdale.
Kidd’s obituary in
British Medical Journal.
John Drysdale treated Kidd in Liverpool in the early 1850s, and advised him that he should take holidays from work.
‘a history of events … innocent person’.
Letter RC to Cecilia Combe, 26 Feb 1858.
‘Had you only seen the Journal …
Letter RC to GC, 2 Mar 1858. His allusion was to Christ’s warning, in the Gospel of St Matthew, that ‘anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’.
‘whether peace … a sea of uncertainty.’
Letter EWL to GC, 16 Mar 1858.
‘perfectly impassable & determined’.
Letter EWL to GC, 25 Mar 1858.
‘evidently does not wish … a complete fanatic’.
Letter EWL to GC, 28 Mar 1858.
CHAPTER 11: A GREAT DITCH OF POISON
The heat of London …
Details of weather from
The Annual Register 1858
(1859).
It was ‘pestiferous …
See
The Morning Post,
20 Jun 1858.
‘A great ditch of poison …
See
Illustrated London News,
19 Jun 1858.
In the Westminster courts …
See
Annual Register 1858
. A barrister in the Court of Exchequer asked the judge if they could dispense with their wigs.
When a wife sued for divorce … behind her back’.
See John Fraser Macqueen’s
A Practical Treatise on Divorce and Matrimonial Jurisdiction
(1858).
When formulating the new law …
See Stone’s
Road to Divorce
(1990), p. 322.
On 21 June …
Account of
Curtis v Curtis
from divorce papers in NA, J77/8/4; from Swabey and Tristram’s
Reports
;
and, for the Court of Chancery proceedings, from the
Law Times
, 24 Sep 1859.
Fanny’s father …
Later, as Attorney General of Gibraltar, Fanny’s father, Frederick Solly Flood, set in motion the conspiracy theories about the
Mary Celeste
, a merchant ship that was found abandoned 600 miles west of Portugal in 1872. In Gibraltar’s Vice-Admiralty Court, Solly Flood refused to countenance an innocent explanation for the ship’s desertion. Instead, he suggested that the crew had mutinied, murdering the captain and his family; or that the captain had murdered the crew, and then handed the ship to a co-conspirator to claim the reward for finding an abandoned vessel; or that the crew of another ship had murdered all those onboard in order to claim the salvage reward. The Court found no evidence for any of these suggestions, concluding instead that the ship had been abandoned because she was sinking, and that her crew had been subsequently lost at sea. None the less, Solly Flood’s theories passed into legend, notably through Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story ‘J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement’ (1884). See Bob Solly’s ‘Solly-Flood Family Notes’ in the Nov 1999 edition of
Soul Search
, the journal of The Sole Society.