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Exhibition: Prisoners or Patients? Criminal Insanity in Victorian Scotland

About the exhibition

This exhibition explores the lives of nine offenders admitted to the Perth Criminal Lunatic Department (CLD) between 1857 and 1887. Called ‘prisoner-patients’, each offender has a profile that details their difficult lives through their admission into the CLD, their treatment, release and re-admission.

The original exhibition took place in General Register House, Matheson Dome, Edinburgh, in August 2019. It was a partnership exhibition between National Records of Scotland (NRS) and guest curator Professor Rab Houston of the University of St Andrews. It was informed by Professor Houston’s project ‘Promoting mental health through the lessons of history’.

Warning 

Some of these resources contain:

  • references to historical medical terms no longer accurate or socially acceptable
  • descriptions of mental health issues, violence and suicide

This exhibition examines the treatment of ‘criminal lunatics’ in the Victorian era. It uses vocabulary that is present in this historical context and features words no longer medically accurate or socially acceptable. The exhibition does not attempt to correct the language of the past. Instead, it examines how people suffering from mental health issues were treated and recorded in the 19th century.

The Place and its Prisoners

Each profile contains a curated selection of records. The full files are accessible in the Historical Search Room in General Register House. For further information please see the Accessing Our Search Rooms page. A limited number of records are accessible via NRS’ Scotland’s People service.

The Audio recordings were created with the help of the Acting for Stage & Screen Course at Queen Margaret University and their lecturer, Marion Scott. All the recordings include voice credits for the students involved.

More information

Learn more about the 2019 exhibition in Edinburgh.

Further resources

Visit our Other resources page to:

  • listen to the public talk about the exhibition
  • download the printable version