PRONI | The Life, Love and Lunacy of Stella Moutray

Despite a privileged upbringing as a member of the landed Moutray family of the Favour Royal Estate on the Tyrone/Monaghan border, Stella Moutray could not escape the clutches of mental illness. The latter years of her short life were marred by its effects; her engagement to a young and eligible Trinity College-educated doctor was called off as a result of her increasingly acute and frequent bouts of illness, and her final months were spent in ‘genteel’ asylums reserved for the wealthy. In early 1902, she was confined to the Stroud District Nursing Association in Gloucestershire, England, by her father following a series of troubling events. Despite being released and returning to Ireland after a short period of treatment, her worsening state of mind led to her committal to Farnham House Asylum in Dublin, before her tragic death at the age of just twenty-seven.

This talk uses the writings of Stella herself, correspondence between her father and doctors in both Stroud and Farnham House, and letters of sympathy written upon her death to reconstruct the final months and days of her life. It provides a window into attitudes towards mental health and lunacy in the early years of the twentieth century, as well as first-hand insight into the treatment received by the wealthy. Most importantly, it gives Stella, as a member of a marginalized and often stigmatised group, a voice and allows for the telling of a poignant and instructive story.

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