BOOK TALK | Janet Weston- Looking After Miss Alexander

DETAILS AND REGISTRATION:

 Janet Weston will be in conversation with Magda Furgalska about capacity and mental health. 

This monthly virtual discussion is part of the Mental Health and Medical Humanities Initiative, instigated by the Institute for Mental Health, but owned by scholars across campus at the University of Birmingham. Online each month, speakers act as ‘provocateurs’, offering brief 5-minute presentations that might be rooted in a reading, a piece of art, or a key theme from their research. The Salon aims to recreate stimulating, interdisciplinary discussions, which maximise ideas and collaborations and slot into busy schedules.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-salon-presents-capacity-and-mental-health-tickets-570563499787

Janet Weston is assistant professor at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

about the book

In July 1939, at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, fifty-nine-year-old Beatrice Alexander was found incapable of managing her own property and affairs. Although Alexander and those living with her insisted that she was perfectly well, the official solicitor took control of her home and money, evicted her “friends,” and hired a live-in companion to watch over her. Alexander remained legally incapable for the next thirty years.

In the mid-twentieth century, Alexander was one of about thirty thousand people in England and Wales who were, at any time, legally “incapable” and under the auspices of what is now the Court of Protection. Focusing on the period between the 1920s and the 1960s, Looking After Miss Alexander explains the workings of the court, using Alexander’s unusual case to consider the complexities of this aspect of mental health law. Drawing on Court of Protection archives - some of which were made publicly available for the first time in 2019 - and micro-historical methods, Janet Weston also highlights the role of chance, subjectivity, and uncertainty in shaping how events unfolded then, and the stories we tell about those events today.

An engaging and accessible history of mental capacity law, Looking After Miss Alexander examines ideas of citizenship and welfare, gender and vulnerability, care and control, and the role of the state. It also offers reflections on historical research and writing itself.