Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1 'An Asylum for the Safe Custod yand Proper Treatment of the Insane'; 2 'A Proper Man to Have Charge of Lunatics'; 3 'We Have Always Conducted Ourselves Independently'; 4 Artisans of Reason; 5 Proper Instructions: Excellent Attendants; 6 'A Different Class of Attendants'; 7 'You Have to be Firm and Determined with Them'; 8 'Some of Us are Married Men and Have Families'; 9 'I Would Not Give an Ounce of Practical Experience for a Pound of Theory'; Select Bibliography; Index
Summary
'He is what we would call a very good attendant, who would not run away or flinch from any patient, but would try to have his orders carried out if possible'. Such was the view of William Coady, attendant to the insane in the British settler colony of Victoria, Australia in the 1870s. This book is a history of William Coady's occupation, a history asylum work and workers in nineteenth-century Australia. It considers not only who attendants were and why they worked in the asylum, but also how they and others variously defined 'the very good attendant'. Colonial asylum advocates imagined the atten
