Abstract
Mental asylums of the nineteenth century were intended to be reformative in a number of senses – reformative of society, of the insane themselves, and of the institutions to which they were confined. This paper draws on four institutions from New South Wales, Australia, to consider the tensions between reformist ideals and material realities. These tensions are not particular to nineteenth - century asylums but persist in their modern forms. An archaeological understanding of mental institutions in the past can therefore inform, and reform, our understanding of institutions in the present, interwoven with the material and ideological residue of the original asylums.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Roland Fletcher and Martin Gibbs for their comments on and guidance of the research that formed the basis for this paper. I would like to thank Megan Springate and Kim Christensen for their invitation to submit this paper and the useful feedback they have provided. I am also grateful for the assistance of the Kenmore Hospital Museum, and particularly its secretary Leone Morgan.
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Longhurst, P. Madness and the Material Environment: An Archaeology of Reform in and of the Asylum. Int J Histor Archaeol 21, 848–866 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-017-0399-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-017-0399-0