Homeless Wanderers: Movement and Mental Illness in the Cape Colony in the Nineteenth Century

Lunatic asylums in the colonies in the nineteenth century mirrored those of ‘home’, in Britain. But in a European settler context, the administration and policies of the asylums, and the treatment of their patients, took on many different nuances. This book breaks new ground in tracing the route of people thought to be ‘of unsound mind’ from their homes and families to eventual committal to a lunatic asylum in the Cape Colony in the late nineteenth century.