Leonard Smith, Private Madhouses in England, 1640–1815: Commercialised Care for the Insane (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Pages xix + 323 + figures 12 + tables 3. £64.99 hardback, £51.99 ebook.

Abstract

primary focus remains on white working-class men and their families. For this reason, the book provides a starting point for scholars embarking on new comparative studies at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Historians of society and the family will find Injury Impoverished valuable, as it reveals the wider impact of workplace injury on a community, and how legal frameworks have a direct and lasting impact on a society. This provides an important and much-needed focus on the experiences of disabled individuals. The book also restores the lived human experience often missing from many economic or legal investigations of workplace injury by encouraging the reader to consider the individual, their perspectives, and their relationships (p. 117). The author successfully traces the multitude of losses associated with an injury, including not only the affected body parts, but also the feelings and thoughts of survivors, as well as the consequences of their injury on family, finances, and future.