Work, paperwork and the imaginary Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum, 1846

Abstract

ABSTRACTFollowing the injunction of the field of paperwork to look at paper, rather than through it for information, a close read of the first volumes of the New South Wales State Archives & Records series NRS 5031 discloses a surprising history. The New South Wales Legislative Council appointed a select committee in 1846 to enquire into the management of Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum – into its work. Finding the work in order, the committee quickly turned to its paperwork failures. The Legislative Council, created in 1843, worked tirelessly through the 1840s to establish control over the penal colony, anticipating self-government. Cited as an example of its humanitarian impulses and thorough committee work, the 1846 committee’s report shows parliamentarians embracing bureaucratic forms and medicine’s promise to cure madness. The absence of proper records was taken up by the committee and by the colonial press as a weapon; attacking the asylum officers, they attacked also the structure of colonial government and the likeness of irresponsible government in the colonies. NRS 5031, a series of casebooks filled out from 1847, helped to create the ‘imaginary’ lunatic asylum on paper which was demanded by these politics.