Recently, we have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in the history of disability. In this book, David Wright investigates the social history of institutionalization and reveals the diversity of the "insane" population and the complexities of institutional committal in Victorian England--using the National Asylum for Idiots (Earlswood) as a case study. He contends that institutional confinement of mentally disabled and mentally ill individuals in the nineteenth century cannot be understood independently of a detailed analysis of familial and community patterns of care.