Introduction

Abstract

AbstractThis comparative study of patient work and occupation throws new light on a topic that has only recently attracted scholarly attention. Patient work emerged in the context of moral treatment in the early nineteenth century in both France and England and was used similarly in both asylum systems until World War I. After the war, the approach to patient work and occupation diverged, as Freebody demonstrates using three institutional case studies from each country. An overview of the historiography, not only of patient work and occupational therapy but also of the history of work and working practices, welfare, the emergence of the asylum system, psychiatry, mental nursing and the patient experience, puts Freebody’s analysis in context. Criticism of the use of patient labour in 1918 by asylum medical officer Montagu Lomax provides a benchmark for developments during the interwar period.