A town without pity? Three stories of public exposure, print media, and family histories of madness in Western Australia. Issue 1 (2nd January 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Martyr, Philippa
• Is Part Of: History Australia. Volume 19:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 54
• Page End: 72
• Publication Date: 2022-01-02
• Subjects: Ellis -- Harcourt Whipple -- Davies -- Edward -- Shawcross -- Mildred; Australia -- History -- Periodicals; Australia; History; Periodicals; 905
• DOI: 10.1080/14490854.2022.2028554
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1449-0854

Abstract

Abstract: It is sometimes easier to understand the chimeric experience of mental disorder by accessing individual episodes and incidents. This paper will review the lives of three strong-willed, charismatic individuals who all had influential and very public brushes with mental disorder in the small outpost city of Perth, Western Australia, between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. This opens up questions of retrospective diagnosis, the challenges of being mad in a small town, how print media has preserved these precarious individual narratives, and how individual histories of mental disorders can help to cast light on other aspects of mainstream Australian histories.