Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Insanity, institutions and society: the case of the Robben Island Lunatic Asylum, 1846–1910
- 2 The confinement of the insane in Switzerland, 1900–1970: Cery (Vaud) and Bel-Air (Geneva) asylums
- 3 Family strategies and medical power: ‘voluntary’ committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876–1914
- 4 The confinement of the insane in Victorian Canada: the Hamilton and Toronto asylums, c. 1861–1891
- 5 Passage to the asylum: the role of the police in committals of the insane in Victoria, Australia, 1848–1900
- 6 The Wittenauer Heilstätten in Berlin: a case record study of psychiatric patients in Germany, 1919–1960
- 7 Curative asylum, custodial hospital: the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum and State Hospital, 1828–1920
- 8 The state, family, and the insane in Japan, 1900–1945
- 9 The limits of psychiatric reform in Argentina, 1890–1946
- 10 Becoming mad in revolutionary Mexico: mentally ill patients at the General Insane Asylum, Mexico, 1910–1930
- 11 Psychiatry and confinement in India
- 12 Confinement and colonialism in Nigeria
- 13 ‘Ireland's crowded madhouses’: the institutional confinement of the insane in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland
- 14 The administration of insanity in England 1800 to 1870
- Index
1 - Insanity, institutions and society: the case of the Robben Island Lunatic Asylum, 1846–1910
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Insanity, institutions and society: the case of the Robben Island Lunatic Asylum, 1846–1910
- 2 The confinement of the insane in Switzerland, 1900–1970: Cery (Vaud) and Bel-Air (Geneva) asylums
- 3 Family strategies and medical power: ‘voluntary’ committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876–1914
- 4 The confinement of the insane in Victorian Canada: the Hamilton and Toronto asylums, c. 1861–1891
- 5 Passage to the asylum: the role of the police in committals of the insane in Victoria, Australia, 1848–1900
- 6 The Wittenauer Heilstätten in Berlin: a case record study of psychiatric patients in Germany, 1919–1960
- 7 Curative asylum, custodial hospital: the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum and State Hospital, 1828–1920
- 8 The state, family, and the insane in Japan, 1900–1945
- 9 The limits of psychiatric reform in Argentina, 1890–1946
- 10 Becoming mad in revolutionary Mexico: mentally ill patients at the General Insane Asylum, Mexico, 1910–1930
- 11 Psychiatry and confinement in India
- 12 Confinement and colonialism in Nigeria
- 13 ‘Ireland's crowded madhouses’: the institutional confinement of the insane in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland
- 14 The administration of insanity in England 1800 to 1870
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Robben Island, an island off the southern coast of South Africa barely six miles from Cape Town, the capital city of the Cape Colony in the nineteenth century, accommodated ‘lunatics’, ‘lepers’ and the ‘chronic sick’ for nearly a century after 1846. The ‘General Infirmary’ was established just eight years after the emancipation of slaves was finalized, at a time when the colonial government and a nascent middle class in Cape Town were trying to impose a new order on the undisciplined urban underclass in preparation for self-rule. The Cape's most dangerous insane were sent to the island asylum from 1846, that, until 1875, was the only asylum in the colony. By 1921, there were a number of other asylums established: Grahamstown (1875), Port Alfred (1889), and Fort Beaufort (1894) in the Eastern Cape, and Valkenberg (1891) near Cape Town.
While Britain and some of her colonies provided extensive provision for the insane, the Cape did not. Most of the colonial insane were cared for at home or through private boarding arrangements: only the most desperate resorted to the asylum. In 1890, the proportion of registered white insane to the white population at the Cape was 1:1,180, about three times lower than that in Ireland, New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria and Britain (from 1:294 to 1:380). There was also a much larger proportion of people classified as ‘criminal’ insane in the Cape than in Britain or New South Wales, although in New South Wales and elsewhere, police were still responsible for a large proportion of asylum committals before 1900.
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- Information
- The Confinement of the InsaneInternational Perspectives, 1800–1965, pp. 20 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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