"Hard Cash" by Charles Reade is a novel published in 1863. This matter-of-fact romance exposes the poor treatment of patients in Victorian insane asylums. When bankrupt banker Richard Hardie defrauds sea-captain David Dodd of £14,000, both men's lives spiral into madness and confinement. Hardie's son Alfred, who loves Dodd's daughter Julia, discovers his father's crime and faces a harrowing consequence: imprisonment in an asylum among the insane. Reade's reformist work combines maritime adventure, courtroom drama, and a penetrating analysis of mental illness and institutional abuse. (This is an automatically generated summary.)