Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

95overcrowding pressures. 241 Restraint was practised at the asylum until 1858 whenthe Colonial Surgeon, Dr Moore, introduced a policy of non-restraint. Thispractice mirrored English asylum customs, including the use of secluded, paddedrooms to quieten patients. 242Problems with overcrowding and design led a government commission torecommend the construction of a new asylum that would address these concerns.Thus, the Parkside Lunatic Asylum was opened in March 1870. 243 Despiteawareness of the concerns associated with the functioning of the DestituteAsylum, issues of overcrowding and inadequate design soon became apparentwith the new asylum. The ideal of rehabilitation was, as with the DestituteAsylum, inhibited by a lack of appropriate design features. For example, by 1883,patients of the Parkside Lunatic Asylum were severely limited in theirrecreational pursuit by dint of the asylum still having no boundary walls. As such,recreation was limited to airing courts. 244Adelaide’s lunatic asylums were developed against the backdrop of thenotion of the ‘ideal asylum.’ Whilst there were various models of such an asylum,it is worth noting Piddock’s evaluation of the Adelaide and Parkside asylumsalongside John Conolly’s criteria for such asylum facility. Conolly was a Britisharchitect who wrote concerning asylum design in the nineteenth century. Hereferred to the appropriateness of features related to matters such as scenery;building ventilation; classified wards; open areas for recreation; separate roomsfor recreation, education, work and religious activity; localised access to hygienefacilities; an emphasis on single room accommodation; and patient privacy, aswell as a general predisposition towards light and cheerful physical spaces.Piddock notes that the Adelaide Asylum fulfilled five of Conolly’s 18 criteria orsub-criteria, whilst the Parkside Asylum fulfilled 11. 245 Inadequacies in thedesign and function of the Adelaide Asylum, such as a lack of space and hygiene,were repeated in the design and function of the Parkside Asylum. 246Despite the implied sense of moral care and desire for rehabilitation thataccompanied notions of an ‘ideal asylum’ that pre-dated the Adelaide and241 Piddock, "The 'Ideal Asylum,’” 40.242 ibid., 40-41.243 Piddock, A Space of Their Own, 113-116.244 ibid., 125.245 ibid., 127.246 ibid., 132.