Leonard Smith is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has written extensively on the history of provision for the insane in the 18th and 19th centuries. His publications include 'Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody': Public Lunatic Asylums in early Nineteenth-Century England (1999) and Lunatic Hospitals in Georgian England, 1750-1830 (2007). He has worked in mental health services since 1973.