Mad Migrants and the Reach of English Civil Law

Abstract

How did English lawmakers and legal experts understand the legal situations of people who were considered to be mentally unwell but whose circumstances had them moving around, sometimes over considerable distances beyond England’s political boundaries? In an age of extensive population movement, throughout the British Empire and beyond, to what extent did a person’s location affect English courts’ findings? The subject of migration and madness has captured the interest of historians who have arrived at the subject by following a wide range of historical threads. Thus, an exploration of migration and mental health brings us to the intersections of several historical sub disciplines: migration history, mental health/illness history, legal history, and not least, the history of empire.