The Archaeology of Institutional Life

13. John Conolly’s “Ideal” Asylum and Provisions for the Insane in Nineteenth-Century South Australia and Tasmania

13 John ConollyÕs ÒIdealÓ Asylum and Provisions for the Insane in NineteenthCentury South Australia and Tasmania Susan Piddock The archaeology of institutions presents unique challenges to the archaeologist ; the use of the institutional buildings, the use of institutional material culture, and regulations limiting the possession of personal items may make the task of linking artifacts discovered during excavations to particular groups very difficult. The archaeological study of lunatic asylums presents even more challenges, as the buildings may continue to be in use as psychiatric hospitals (as in the case of the Parkside Asylum in South Australia and the New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane in Tasmania ), or have been completely erased (as in the case of the Adelaide Lunatic Asylum, South Australia). This does not, however, prevent us from undertaking archaeological studies of these buildings. In this chapter a new methodology will be discussed that allows us to draw on the unique insights of archaeology to understand the material culture of lunatic asylums. In this study the buildings themselves are the material culture being studied. Following Lu Ann De Cunzo (2001:23), the material world of the asylums is constructed from photographs, historical documents, and plans. This material world can be as informative as artifacts in understanding life within these institutions for inmates and staff. In England, where the construction of these lunatic asylums was to be required under parliamentary law from 1842, the opportunity existed for those interested or directly involved in the care of the insane to discuss the design of lunatic asylums in books, pamphlets, and articles. From these works it is possible to draw together a number of features into what I have 188 / Susan Piddock called the“ideal”asylum model, with each author providing his or her own model reflecting the time in which it was written (Piddock 2007:49–76). In this study descriptions of what asylums should be are used to create a descriptive framework against which the built reality of the lunatic asylums can be tested, and the discrepancies between the two becomes the basis for new questions that seek to understand the processes affecting the provisions made for the insane and the use of the buildings. It is also possible from these comparisons to access new information about life within the asylums. This is a modification of Mark Leone and Parker Potter Jr.’s interpretation of middle-range theory as it can be applied to historical archaeology . Leone and Potter (1988:13–14) suggested drawing on four parts of middle-range theory: the independence of the archaeological and documentary records; the concept of ambiguity; the use of descriptive grids; and the idea of organizational behavior. This approach uses documents as a descriptive framework (grid) from which to derive expectations of the archaeological record, and uses the deviations from these expectations, which Lewis Binford called ambiguities, as the basis for new questions about the archaeological and documentary records (Leone and Crosby 1987:398; Leone and Potter 1988:14, 18). As Mark Leone and Constance Crosby (1987:408, 409) argue, the goal of this approach is not to explain away exceptions but to create a greater understanding of the archaeological record by seeking to understand the reasons for the differences. The models used for the descriptive framework can be adapted to include those features that are identifiable either through surveys, surviving material culture, or documentary evidence. Hence the models used in my study focused on features that can be identified through plans, photographs and building histories, and limited visual surveys.1 In this chapter the focus is on one of these models, that of John Conolly. To understand the “ideal” asylum models, which are the focus of my methodology, it is important to understand the context from which they arose. The Rise of the Lunatic Asylum The mid- to late eighteenth century saw the rise of the idea that insanity was a treatable, and curable, condition. Vieda Skultans (1975:56) characterized this shift as “the emergence of therapeutic optimism.” Accompanying this shift was the realization that the insane were not insensate, a view that had led to appalling living conditions. This shift gave rise to two John Conolly’s “Ideal”Asylum and Provisions for the Insane / 189 new treatment regimes: moral treatment and non-restraint. Moral treatment was based on the belief that the insane held the keys to their own return to sanity through...