Jacqui Sanders explores the lives of the women who were imprisoned in Old Ararat Gaol and the J Ward Asylum during the nineteenth century. Perched on a hill in Ararat, nestled behind the perennials, natives, ferns, and alpines in Alexandra … Continue reading
Continuing our mental health series, Georgina Rychner explores insanity in trials for infanticide in late nineteenth-century Victoria. In the late nineteenth century, a woman charged with murder in Victoria was most likely to be charged with the killing of an … Continue reading
Mimi Petrakis examines the issue of mental illness in academia as part of our continuing series on history and mental health. My psychologist once called academia “a mental illness factory” and I remember laughing. As someone who had struggled with … Continue reading
As part of our mental health series, Catharine Coleborne considers the histories of institutionalised women and the relationship between researcher, historical subject and archive. In recent years historians have re-imagined the archive as what I call an ‘unstable’ site for … Continue reading
Effie Karageorgos investigates male psychological trauma in the Boer War as part of our series on mental health. On 28 April 1902, Edgar Robert Howell, a 30-year-old banker from Armidale, New South Wales, travelled to Sydney to enlist in the … Continue reading
Continuing our mental health series, Philippa Martyr shares her research on the female experience of leucotomy in twentieth-century Western Australia. Psychosurgery – especially leucotomy (called lobotomy in the US) – is probably one of the most misunderstood elements in twentieth … Continue reading
Dolly MacKinnon explores auditory constructions of female madness in the start of our series on the history of women and mental health. From the claim a woman sounds ‘hysterical’ to having their opinions met with the colloquialism ‘mad cow’, women … Continue reading