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Lunacy is a crime when Lizzie sets foot in the new colony of Victoria, Australia, in 1855. Based on extensive research, this is the story of her struggle with mental illness - at a time when limited medical knowledge about her condition existed, stigma was omnipresent, and treatment was archaic and inhumane. Shrouded in secrecy for more than a century, her story, as told through her own voice and that of her daughter and estranged husband, begins with her journey from her home in England with three young children in tow, to her eventual incarceration in gaol and Victoria's first mental institution - Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum - where she spent the last four decades of her life.
The Yarra Bend Park marks one of the most important post-contact places in the Melbourne metropolitan area, and is of great significance to Victorian Aboriginal people. At this site was located the Merri Creek Aboriginal School, the Merri Creek Protectorate Station, The Native Police Corps Headquarters and associated Aboriginal burials.
Gold-fuelled Melbourne was booming, but dwelling in the fault lines of the proud young colony was an alarming fact – Victoria had the highest rate of insanity in the world. Was it the antipodean sun, gold mania, excessive masturbation, the heady pace of modern life? The true story of colonial Victoria’s quest to cure insanity unfolds through the lives of three English newcomers – a gifted artist, exiled from his homeland for his madness; an ambitious doctor, bringing enlightened treatment ideals to his post in charge of the overflowing asylum; and a mysterious undercover journalist, who sensationally exposed the lunatics’ plight in Melbourne’s press. Amid the clamour of fraught endeavours and maddened minds, the story reveals unexpected hope, creativity and ennobling humanity – and surprising contemporary relevance as we continue to grapple with this ancient human malady. Jill Giese is a clinical psychologist and writer, whose extensive career in mental health encompasses many years of clinical practice and executive roles in policy and advocacy.
Erudite, affectionate and witty, with more meanders and diversions than the river itself, Yarra is a fascinating read and a fitting tribute to the 'noble stream'. From the creation stories of Kulin owners and geologist blow-ins to the twenty-first-century waterside building boom, Otto traces the course of Melbourne's murky river.
The rise of the asylum constitutes one of the most profound, and controversial, events in the history of medicine. Academics around the world have begun to direct their attention to the origins of the confinement of those deemed 'insane', exploring patient records in an attempt to understand the rise of the asylum within the wider context of social and economic change of nations undergoing modernisation. Originally published in 2003, this edited volume brings together thirteen original research papers to answer key questions in the history of asylums. What forces led to the emergence of mental hospitals in different national contexts? To what extent did patient populations vary in terms of their psychiatric profile and socio-economic background? What was the role of families, communities and the medical profession in the confinement process? This volume therefore represents a landmark study in the history of psychiatry by examining asylum confinement in a global context.
It was John Wedge, Batman's private surveyor, who named the Yarra Yarra. In September 1835 he was at the Turning Basin with some Kulin and heard them identify the river as it came over the Falls as, he wrote, 'Yarrow Yarrow'. It was only some months later that Wedge discovered they had been referring to the pattern and movement of water over the Falls, not the river itself. And ever since, it has been the Yarra's fate to be misunderstood- maligned for its muddiness, ill-used as sewer and tip; scooped, sculpted, straightened and stressed, 'cleaned up' to the detriment of its natural inhabitants; built-over, under and beside; worked mercilessly and then bridged almost to maritime extinction. In Kristin Otto's superbly entertaining new history, the whole sorry tale is laid bare. From the creation stories of Kulin owners and geologist blow-ins (and Robert Hoddle's bad-tempered expedition to the headwaters) to the twenty-first-century waterside building boom, Otto traces the course of Melbourne's murky river.
"The brave independence of the 'roaring days', the camaraderie of the gold fields, jolly diggers on a spree - these are the images that have come down to us of the gold era of the 1850s in Australia and California. But these images were largely shaped decades later, by writers such as Henry Lawson and Bret Harte - they speak of later nostalgia rather than the experience of the time." "In this study of the contemporary response to the discoveries of gold in Victoria and California, David Goodman argues that people at the time were apprehensive about gold rushing, and the kind of society it seemed to prefigure. In the chaos of the gold rushes, individual self-interest seemed to be all that could motivate people to any exertion. And it was only the economic rationalists of the day - those who believed in political economy and its promise, that out of the confusion of individual self-interest would come some sort of social order - who could wholeheartedly endorse the gold rushes as events." "This is a history of the ways people talked about gold. As the first full-length cultural history of the gold rushes on two continents, it examines the meanings of gold at the time, and the narratives which were told about social disruption. It locates the deeper underlying themes in the response to gold. It also looks at the ways in which the dominant later memories of gold were shaped. And it is about national differences, about the construction of distinctive national cultures out of materials common to the British world. This book should be read not only by Australian and American historians but by anyone with an interest in the cultural history of modernity."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Over two years, writer Nick Gadd and his wife Lynne circled the city of Melbourne on foot, starting at Williamstown and ending in Port Melbourne. Along the way they uncovered lost buildings, secret places and mysterious signs that told of forgotten stories and curious characters from the past. Soon after they completed the circle, Lynne passed away from cancer. Melbourne Circle is the story of their journey, a memoir, and a stunning meditation on personal loss. ‘What a gem this book is! Oddity, wonderment, weirdness: these splendid essays reveal a marvellous Melbourne most of us have never encountered before. This is a psychogeography dense with vernacular history, humane detail, and from beneath the shadow of grief, love.’ –­ Gail Jones, author of Five Bells and The Death of Noah Glass ‘‘‘Psychojogging”’ and the pleasures of walking.’ – interview with Hilary Harper on Radio National, Life Matters ‘Marvellous Melbourne: the books that capture our city and its life.’ – The Age/Sydney Morning Herald ‘Melbourne Circle: Walking, Memory and Loss is a very special book. Just read it, and then take to the streets and walk with the same spirit of enquiry.’ – Sophie Cunningham, The Age ‘A beautiful meditation on the streets in which we live, ghosts, love and loss … While there is sadness in this book, Gadd writes with warmth, humour and a generosity of spirit.’ – Stephen Romei, The Weekend Australian ‘An endearing book about enduring love and serendipitous discoveries; of remnants of the past pasted onto old buildings, and the way these ghost signs are portals into another time.’ – The Saturday Paper
Behind the glittering image of 'Marvellous Melbourne' there existed in the popular imagination another, very different, picture of the colonial metropolis. This was the city of 'low life', of crowded slums, poverty, disease and vice. The nine essays in The Outcasts of Melbourne attempt to reveal the social realities behind this picture. They include new accounts of the forces which created the city's physical environment. They show how perceptions of a city can be shaped by campaigning journalists, artists and writers. They present collective portraits of the poor and the 'criminal classes' - and of those who set out to save them. They describe how the city's guardians - the police, public health authorities and charity workers - responded to the challenge of the slums. By imaginative use of the rich deposits in the public records, these explorations in social history present new ways of documenting the lives of people whose daily activities were seldom reported in the popular press. In doing so, they also map the chains of causation which link the actions of individuals - appearing before a committee of a benevolent society, getting arrested, evangelising at a Salvation Army rally - to the social forces which have shaped the cities in which we live.