This chapter takes the particular example of feigning to explore claims of experience and expertise among prison medical officers. The feigning of insanity in prisons was believed to be prevalent and the sorting of prisoners between ‘genuine’ cases of insanity and those feigning or shamming insanity a key duty of prison medical officers. Particular concern was expressed about malingers’ ambitions to be removed to the better conditions offered by asylums, which then also presented opportunities for escape. The prison has been neglected in the broader historiography of feigning or malingering, yet has much to tell historians about the way it was seen as a particular problem among criminals; its detection, in the view of prison medical officers, both labour- and skill-intensive. Highlighting exchanges of medical expertise and knowledge among English and Irish alienists and prison medical officers, the chapter describes the often drawn-out processes of assessing whether a prisoner was feigning mental illness or was a genuine case of insanity, and reveals the tension between prison psychiatry and forensic experts and asylum doctors in claiming special knowledge in uncovering deception.

Demonstrates that music was a vital part of the daily routines of those interned in prisoner of war camps. The forming of orchestras and theatrical revues were a popular way of passing the time and maintaining morale, but in many cases musical activities were used by prisoners of war to conceal attempts to escape. This chapter will give examples of how prisoners of war used music as a means of keeping up their morale to stave off feelings of ‘mouldiness,’ later identified as barbed wire disease.