At Home in the Institution Material Life in Asylums, Lodging Houses and Schools in Victorian and Edwardian England

At Home in the Institution takes a new look at institutions in Victorian England, by exploring their material life. The book focuses on asylums, lodging houses and schools - examining decoration and the use of space as well as the things that inmates were allowed. Although all three had very diverse aims, their authorities were often influenced by the relationships, rituals and material culture of contemporary domesticity, demonstrating the reach and importance of these ideas in society.. Yet an assessment of the everyday life of these places often shows the limits of these ideals in practice, the disruptions to domestic routines and the notions of class and gender that they were supposed to inculcate. While the material world was used to control, it also afforded agency to patients, lodgers and pupils - from the schoolboy carving initials on a desk to the pauper lunatics who bred songbirds.

Jane Hamlett is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her first book, Material Relations: Middle-Class Families and Domestic Interiors in England, 1850-1910, was published in 2010. Together with Lesley Hoskins and Rebecca Preston, she also edited Residential Institutions in Modern Britain, which came out in 2013.

Introduction
1. Public Asylums
2. Asylums for the Upper and Middle Classes
3. Schools for Boys
4. Schools for Girls
5. Common Lodging Houses
6. Model Lodging Houses
Conclusion: At Home in the Institution