Citation

MacKinnon D. Clio Med. 2009; 86: 267-288.

Affiliation

School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Editions Rodopi B.V.)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

19842343

Abstract

This chapter examines the official 'entertainment', in all its forms, provided to inmates in Australian and New Zealand asylums--later mental hospitals--between c.1860 and c.1945. Visitors came into asylum grounds and patients were permitted periods of leave, all for the purposes of entertainment and recreation. Surviving recreation buildings, their grounds and institutional archives, bear silent witness to the noisy and lively recreational activities of past patients, staff and visitors. This chapter reconstructs these practices in twenty public and three private asylums from this period by examining a diverse range of sources, including archives, histories of asylums and newspaper articles.

Language: en