Bedlam at Botany Bay, James Dunk
Type
Label
Bedlam at Botany Bay, James Dunk
Language
eng
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references (page 288-297) and index
Index
index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
Bedlam at Botany Bay
Nature of contents
bibliography
Responsibility statement
James Dunk
Summary
What happened when people went mad in the fledgling colony of New South Wales? In this important new history of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, we find out through the correspondence of tireless colonial secretaries, the brazen language of lawyers and judges and firebrand politicians, and heartbreaking letters from siblings, parents and friends. We also hear from the mad themselves. Class, gender and race became irrelevant as illness, chaos and delusion afflicted convicts exiled from their homes and living under the weight of imperial justice; ex-convicts and small settlers as they grappled with the country they had taken from its Indigenous inhabitants, as well as officers, officials and wealthy colonists who sought to guide the course of European history in Australia. This not a history of the miserable institutions built for the mentally ill, or those living within them, or the people in charge of the asylums. These stories of madness are woven together into a narrative about freedom and possibilities, and collapse and unravelling. The book looks at people at the edge of the world finding themselves at the edge of sanity, and is about their strategies for survival
Target audience
adult
Creator
Subject
- Sydney (N.S.W.) -- History -- 19th century
- New South Wales -- History -- 18th century
- Sydney (N.S.W.) -- Social conditions -- 19th century
- Mentally ill -- New South Wales -- Sydney -- History -- 19th century
- Penal colonies -- New South Wales -- Sydney -- History -- 19th century
- Mentally ill + Treatment -- New South Wales -- Sydney -- History -- 19th century
- Australia -- Politics and government -- 19th century
Content
Author
Incoming Resources
- Has instance1
Outgoing Resources
- Creator1
- Subject7
- Sydney (N.S.W.) -- History -- 19th century
- New South Wales -- History -- 18th century
- Sydney (N.S.W.) -- Social conditions -- 19th century
- Mentally ill -- New South Wales -- Sydney -- History -- 19th century
- Penal colonies -- New South Wales -- Sydney -- History -- 19th century
- Mentally ill + Treatment -- New South Wales -- Sydney -- History -- 19th century
- Australia -- Politics and government -- 19th century
- Content1
- Author1