Pursuing Families for Maintenance Payments to Hospitals for the Insane in Australia and New Zealand, 1860s–1914

Abstract

Between the 1860s and 1914, the collection of maintenance payments for the public care of the insane was improved, yet attempts to encourage full payments from families and friends of the insane consistently failed. These efforts to recover maintenance reveal the vulnerabilities of the colonial family in relation to mental illness. This article argues that cooperation and resistance to maintenance payments by families of the institutionalised coexisted during the period. Archival evidence of the struggles that took place over the care of the insane demonstrates contestation during the period about the relationship between state and private responsibility.