Looking After Miss Alexander: Care, Mental Capacity, and the Court of Protection in Mid-Twentieth-Century England Weston Janet
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…
Specifikacia Looking After Miss Alexander: Care, Mental Capacity, and the Court of Protection in Mid-Twentieth-Century England Weston Janet
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