Bad enough at any time, the charge of “mental disorder” was a particularly frightening one in the 1850s. In the same month that Dickens and Catherine had separated, his close friend and fellow novelist Edward Bulwer- Lytton successfully plotted to have his wife Rosina seized, certified insane and incarcerated in a private asylum. Only after a widespread public outcry was she judged sane and freed. The law provided few safeguards for awkward family members whose relatives wanted to put them away, and Dickens, like Bulwer, was exceptionally well connected. John Forster was secretary to the Commissioners of Lunacy, and both he and Dickens had close friendships with key figures in the mad-doctoring trade, such as Dr John Conolly. As John Sutherland put it in Victorian Fiction: Writers, publishers, readers,
To be accused of . . . “mental disorder” with Dr John Conolly and John Forster . . . hovering in the background was highly ominous . . . . For a physician like Conolly, Mrs Dickens’ alleged “languor” and her excitability about her husband’s infidelity would have been quite sufficient for a certificate of “moral insanity” to be drawn up. He did it for Lord Lytton, would he not do the same for his friend Mr Dickens?
