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Charles Cleland (2001: 2) argues that historical archaeology has become focussed too much on event based archaeology and not on wider cultural questions. This book has taken up this challenge and has sought, not just to explain the visible remains on the landscape - the buildings of the Parkside Lunatic Asylum and the New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane, but to understand both the forces at work within society shaping these buildings and what life was like within them for the unvoiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Chapter Four, the ideas of a range of nineteenth century lunacy reformers were discussed, and models developed from the books and articles of Browne, Jacobi, Conolly, Sankey, Arlidge and Robertson. These authors presented the most detailed specifications for the physical environment of the lunatic asylum, and from their works a range of features were identified that were archaeologically testable against the data sets of documents, photographs, plans, and building histories. From this research it became clear that John Conolly's ‘ideal' asylum of 1847 could be used as the core of a comparative model. This work provided the first full description of what an asylum should be, and later British writers were to build on it, with variations in the physical arrangement of rooms and sleeping accommodation. While the data sets generated by the testing of these features against the three case studies of British, South Australian and Tasmanian asylums allowed me to determine which features of the ‘ideal' asylum the built asylums had, and from this to build a picture of life in these institutions, it is possible to go beyond this event based archaeology and ask further questions of the generated data sets. These form the highest level of questions as advocated by Cleland (2001: 2, 5, 7), which go beyond the single site or country in this case to identify wider forces at work in the provision of these places. These questions are: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If South Australia, a free colony, was to struggle to realize the provisions required by the ‘ideal' asylum models of John Conolly and later asylum reformers, what then was to be the fate of the insane in Tasmania where a portion of the colonists were convicts serving out their sentences in Australia and not the prisons of England? This question leads to other important questions such as did the social and class based judgments about the perceived inmates of the lunatic asylum affect the type of buildings provided and the treatment regime undertaken? Was the treatment of the convicts more punitive? South Australia had provided purpose-built asylums for its colonists; did Tasmania provide similar institutions for its convict population? Were there separate institutions for convicts and free colonists? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first colonists arrived in Australia in 1788 with the establishment of the convict colony of New South Wales. Subsequently other areas of Australia were to become colonies, with some like Van Dieman's Land and Queensland beginning as penal colonies, while others such as Western Australia and South Australia established as free colonies without a resident convict population, although Western Australia later became a penal colony to survive. Each colony had a different history and they were not to join together under a federal Parliament until 1901. Consequently for this study two colonies, South Australia and Van Diemen's Land, were chosen as they reflect fundamental variations in Australia's past. South Australia was unique amongst the other colonies in Australia as its foundation was based on a plan of colonization developed by private individuals rather than the English Colonial Office. South Australia was not a penal colony, unlike Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania) which had a predominantly convict population for many decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1859 John Arlidge argued that most, if not all; lunatic asylums were based on the design of Bethlem Hospital, itself based on the design of monasteries which had provided the early accommodation for the insane (Arlidge 1859: 200). Was this true? Were those given the task of designing and constructing lunatic asylums merely copying an established template? Or were they responsive to the current ideas about what was required in an ‘ideal' asylum environment? This chapter examines a collection of British lunatic asylum plans to try and clarify to what extent the models of the ‘ideal' asylum were realized in nineteenth century lunatic asylums. This is done by analyzing the buildings, their layouts, and the use of rooms as indicated on the plans or in accompanying legend, and comparing the results to the features detailed in the ‘ideal' asylum models, such of those of Conolly, Jacobi, Sankey and Robertson as discussed in the last chapter. If the ‘ideal' was not realized do they instead show an internal consistency that might be based on a replication of the Bethlem design? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As was discussed in Chapter Three, to answer the questions posed in the research design it is necessary to develop a descriptive framework of what lunatic asylums should be that then can be tested against the reality of the built asylums, and the discrepancies between the two be used to understand life within the asylums. The descriptive framework acts as a launch pad to explore ideas about the asylum, and gives us a starting point in understanding asylums, which in turn can go beyond a simple list of rooms and spaces provided. As was seen in Chapter Four, lunatic asylums were not simply buildings rather they were to provide a curative environment that would return the insane person to sanity and society. This chapter will explore the ideas about what asylums should be as written about by those interested in seeing the new regimes of moral treatment and non-restraint applied. It is important to realise that these ideas did not just appear but developed with the passage of time in response to the fleshing out of the new treatment regimes, and in response the provisions made for the insane in madhouses and county asylums. Consequently in this chapter the ‘ideal' asylums discussed are presented chronologically with some of the earlier works discussed first before the discussion of John Conolly's ‘ideal' asylum, which as l mentioned in Chapter Three is the most detailed and useful for understanding lunatic asylums and forms the core descriptive framework in the case studies. The chronology is based on the publication date of various books and pamphlets rather than on the date of the erection of an asylum which may be discussed in the particular text. For example, while The Retreat was built earlier than some of the asylums discussed below, the book on its management and design was not published until 1813 and this then can be seen as the point when the ideas about the use of the built environment at The Retreat in York became more widely available to those constructing lunatic asylums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While lunatic asylums, hospitals for the insane and madhouses had existed prior to the nineteenth century, it was not until this century that these new emerging treatment regimes bought attention to the physical design of these places and what life was like within them. This attention was to lead to the systematic construction of new lunatic asylums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project initially grew out of a series of questions sparked by a consideration of the plans for the Adelaide Lunatic Asylum in South Australia which l found while doing research on the Destitute Asylum of Adelaide. My research on the Destitute Asylum revealed that the rooms and spaces provided within the asylum compound were determined by a range of factors; the most important being the role of the institution and the nature of the people to be housed there. The Adelaide Destitute Asylum had been based on the English workhouse in its allocation of spaces and rooms, and followed similar principles of work and the separation of family members along gender lines (Piddock 1996 and 2001). Using this work, and the lunatic asylum plans as a basis, a set of initial questions were developed: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nineteenth century landscape in Europe, America and Australia was to become home to almshouses, workhouses, lunatic asylums, female factories, prisons, leper colonies, orphanages, Magadelen Asylums and industrial schools.1 These places ranged from large scale institutions managed by local authorities or governmental bodies to the smaller private institution, and were expressive of the belief that environments designed to certain specifications would control an individual's behaviour, whether they were a criminal, a prostitute, victim of insanity or simply poor. These environments can be seen as ‘moral' environments where the understood moral values would be impressed upon the inmate by the regime imposed, leading to their reformation and acceptance back into society in their appropriate place. These institutions fell in two broad groupings, those that were ‘total' institutions, where inmates were physically separated from society to enable them to be reformed, and those that sought to reform through daily attendance (Spencer-Wood and Baugher 2001: 9). Total institutions were those that sought to completely control inmates' lives through the use of architecture and material culture (Spencer-Wood and Baugher 2001: 9). Within the walls of the institution the inmates' lives were physically controlled by the spaces provided for their use, and by: "highly routinized and tightly scheduled activities established to fulfil institutional aims" (De Cunzo 2006: 167). All types of institutions sought to reinforce particular agendas as determined by groups within society, and to improve the recipient group to some perceived ideal, whether of behaviour, or moral standards. Increasingly the attention of archaeologists is being drawn to these institutions (for an overview see Du Cunzo 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What comes to mind when you read the words lunatic asylum? The idea of imprisonment? Of being locked away from the world, cut off from all contact? The popular media images, whether in films, television, or in books about lunatic asylums tend towards bleak views of imprisonment, harsh uncaring attendants, and patients wondering around in a dazed, detached state, wearing straight jackets or having frenzied psychotic fits. Wards are portrayed as prison-like and undecorated. Is this an accurate portrayal of the reality of the experience of the mentally ill in the past? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]