Kleptomania in Victorian Era Tied to Class and Sex

The definition of kleptomania as a disease in the second half of the 19th century was tied to Victorian assumptions about class and gender, according to a historian at Princeton University.

People diagnosed as kleptomaniacs in the late 19th century were almost always female and middle class, writes Elaine S. Abelson in the autumn issue of the journal Signs. The diagnosis arose partly, she argues, out of the medical belief at that time that mental instability in women was linked to their reproductive function. Menstrual disorders, uterine disease, and “ovarian insanity” were commonly given as root causes for the women’s kleptomania.

At the same time, Ms. Abelson argues, diagnoses of kleptomania were also linked to class considerations: Middle-class respectability was so valued in the Victorian era that no member of the class could possibly be thought guilty of common theft.

Ms. Abelson offers as an example the highly publicized case of Ella and Walter Castle, a well-to-do American couple arrested in 1896 for stealing a sable muff from a fashionable London store. Both were indicted, and stolen goods were eventually found among his possessions, but Mr. Castle was eventually exonerated.

Mrs. Castle became the focus of the case, in which doctors and other experts testified to her “troubles incidental to female life” and her “excessive nervousness since the birth of her child.” Although she pleaded guilty and was convicted, British officials immediately deemed her mentally irresponsible and released her “on her husband’s promise to take care of her.”