As the royal family celebrated Christmas at Windsor Castle in December 1841 concern was expressed about Queen Victoria’s poor state of health. Following her recent confinement, she was reported to be ‘troubled with lowness… I should say that Her Majesty interests herself less and less about politics’. 1 A year earlier, in September 1840, the author William Makepeace Thackeray had set off with his young wife, Isabella, already dejected and melancholic following the birth of their third child, to visit her mother in Ireland. During the voyage Isabella flung herself into the sea, where she remained for twenty minutes before she was discovered ‘floating on her back, paddling with her hands’. 2 In November of that year, Thackeray, at his wits’ end, surrendered Isabella, by then in a desperate and violent state, to the asylum of the celebrated psychological physician Dr Jean-Etienne-Dominique Esquirol at Ivry in France. 3 Several years later in the Welsh countryside a young, unmarried farmer’s daughter gave birth to a ‘fine’child. All went well at first, but three days after her delivery she alarmed the household waking from sleep exclaiming that she was dying. She was convinced that she was carrying another child, declared hatred for the infant that she had just borne and was ‘scarcely a moment without raving’. 4 Into the next decade, in April 1853, Mrs Janet Smith was admitted to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum ten days after a difficult labour, which had required the use of forceps: a few days after this her mind became gloomy & she wept much; this was followed by sleeplessness, restlessness and a disposition to be noisy & obstinate & destructive of clothing: she rhymes over the letters of the alphabet for hours at once, she often sings, she inclines to run about the room… 5