“Woman, you seem to want to create a disturbance”1 By Nicola Goc
“Paper presented at FCRC Seminar May 2013. This paper is a draft the author is continuing to develop this research. For any queries please contact the author”
This is a paper by Nicola Goc who has researched in some detail the lives of women sent to the asylum at New Norfolk in the early to mid 1800’s. It talks about treatments and conditions in the Colonies early history.
Some of the knowledge comes from Dr. G. Crabb’s collection of medical knowledge in the book, “The History of Lachlan Park”.
In this paper she explores the use of an “electric machine” which was used here at the Hospital before it was used and recorded in the history books for the well established English Hospitals.
Nicola Goc Madness 24 pages.
This paper looks at the concept of ‘resilience’ through the frame of ‘madness’. It draws upon primary historical documents, namely a nineteenth century New Norfolk Lunatic Asylum Casebook HSD246/1/2 Female (mental) (Volume No. 3), and secondary sources to address two key questions:
1. Were the convict women admitted to New Norfolk Asylum suffering from insanity/mania/amentia as a result of hereditary factors, criminality, moral and physical degeneracy and a low social status – or was their mental state a combination of factors including an emotional response to the trauma of forced migration?
2. How was female ‘insanity’ understood and managed in the penal and medical institutions of colonial Van Diemen’s Land?