Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary material / Editors Attending Madness -- Dedication / Editors Attending Madness -- Acknowledgements / Editors Attending Madness -- Abbreviations / Editors Attending Madness -- Introduction / Editors Attending Madness -- An Asylum for the Safe Custody and Proper Treatment of the Insane / Editors Attending Madness -- A Proper Man to Have Charge of Lunatics / Editors Attending Madness -- We Have Always Conducted Ourselves Independently / Editors Attending Madness -- Artisans of Reason / Editors Attending Madness -- Proper Instructions: Excellent Attendants / Editors Attending Madness -- A Different Class of Attendants / Editors Attending Madness -- You Have to be Firm and Determined with Them / Editors Attending Madness -- Some of Us are Married Men and Have Families / Editors Attending Madness -- I Would Not Give an Ounce of Practical Experience for a Pound of Theory / Editors Attending Madness -- Select Bibliography / Editors Attending Madness -- Index / Editors Attending Madness.

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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 attendant as an archetype, drawing on ideas from Britain about the nature of insanity and its treatment. In exploring the articulation of these ideas in a specific colonial context and their effect on the colonial asylum workplace, Lee-Ann Monk makes an important contribution to the international history of the asylum. She also opens new dimensions in the history of this occupation, on which the fate of patients very much depended, by analysing attendants’ efforts to construct an occupational identity and give meaning to their work, thus providing new insights into their sense of themselves and their occupation.