Secret and Safe Exploring the archaeology of concealed artefacts from the Ladies’ Cottage of an Australian mental asylum Lauren Bryant Flinders University 2018 Submitted in partial fulfillment of a Master of Archaeology and Heritage Management degree in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia, 2018. Cover page image: The Ladies’ Cottage Building. Photograph by Lauren Bryant 15/2/2018. i Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. iv Declaration .............................................................................................................................................. v Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................. vi List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................ vii List of Tables .......................................................................................................................................... ix Glossary ................................................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: A Unique Opportunity ........................................................................................................... 1 Willow Court, New Norfolk ................................................................................................................. 2 The Ladies’ Cottage ............................................................................................................................. 5 The Ladies’ Cottage Assemblage......................................................................................................... 5 Research Question and Aims .............................................................................................................. 9 Justification ....................................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter Outlines ............................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 2: A Unique Asylum ................................................................................................................. 12 The Tasmanian Asylum Context ........................................................................................................ 12 Willow Court: The First Asylum ......................................................................................................... 15 The Ladies’ Cottage: ‘Ladies’ in the Asylum System ......................................................................... 18 Previous Archaeological Work .......................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 3: At the Crossroads of Research ............................................................................................ 25 Institutional Archaeological Studies ................................................................................................. 26 Mental Asylum Studies ..................................................................................................................... 27 Museum Collections from Mental Asylums ...................................................................................... 30 Studies of the Importance of Objects ............................................................................................... 34 Psychological Studies of Hoarding .................................................................................................... 36 Ritual Concealment Studies .............................................................................................................. 41 Chapter 4: Methods .............................................................................................................................. 45 Retrieval of Artefacts ........................................................................................................................ 46 Cleaning and Cataloguing of Artefacts .............................................................................................. 47 Cleaning............................................................................................................................................. 48 Cataloguing ....................................................................................................................................... 48 Ephemera .......................................................................................................................................... 49 Fabric ................................................................................................................................................. 50 Buttons .............................................................................................................................................. 50 ii Miscellaneous ................................................................................................................................... 50 Analysis ............................................................................................................................................. 50 Understanding location .................................................................................................................... 51 Understanding chronology ............................................................................................................... 51 Understanding ephemera key words................................................................................................ 51 Artefact Storage ................................................................................................................................ 52 Archival Analysis ............................................................................................................................... 52 Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 53 Chapter 5: Results ................................................................................................................................. 55 LCARCH Collection ............................................................................................................................ 55 Ephemera .......................................................................................................................................... 59 Fabric ................................................................................................................................................. 70 Buttons .............................................................................................................................................. 74 Miscellaneous ................................................................................................................................... 74 Packages & Parcels ............................................................................................................................ 79 Archival Research .............................................................................................................................. 83 Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 83 Chapter 6: A Unique Experience ........................................................................................................... 85 Secret and Safe: creating the assemblage ........................................................................................ 85 Understanding significance in artefacts from asylums ..................................................................... 91 Understanding provenance .............................................................................................................. 95 The archaeology of mental institutions ............................................................................................ 97 Reference List:..................................................................................................................................... 100 Appendix 1: Location Notes LCARCH Collection ................................................................................. 110 Appendix 2: Archival Research on Patients: ....................................................................................... 112 iii Abstract Archaeological studies have largely failed to make use of artefacts to try and understand the experiences of individuals living in mental asylums in the past. This thesis examines a collection of objects from the Ladies’ Cottage of Willow Court Asylum in Tasmania in order to consider how artefacts can be used to understand the experiences of individuals from within this institutional context, by considering the behaviours of resistance, concealment, and ritual to exercise agency within a controlling and restrictive environment. A collection of ephemeral, fabric, and other artefacts reveals that despite the restrictions placed on individuals within the environment of a mental asylum during the mid-twentieth