By Kirsten Harris, University of Nottingham The University of Sheffield’s one day conference ‘Rethinking the Nineteenth Century’, held on 24th August, centred on the timely question ‘what constitutes nineteenth century studies today?’. This stimulated a thought-provoking and broad set of responses, with some papers offering rethinkings of specific texts, ideas or historical assumptions while others focused on considerations of the changing field itself. The day began with Mark Llewellyn’s interrogation of contemporary engagement with Victorian culture in his keynote paper,
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Standard Cuts and Lace Collars: What Patients Wore in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Asylums
Jane Hamlett and Lesley Hoskins Forthcoming article ‘Comfort in Small Things? Clothing, Control and Agency in County Lunatic Asylums in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century England’ This photograph offers us a glimpse of the women’s day ward at Long Grove Asylum in Surrey in the early twentieth century. The nurses standing in the background are immediately identifiable by their uniforms. The patients, meanwhile, are dressed apparently warmly and comfortably, but their clothes seem to have been cut to a standard pattern.
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