Backrooms, wards and backlanes : the landscape of disability in nineteenth-century Melbourne

Abstract

The spatial and the historical dimensions of disability have both been poorly documented and analysed in Western social sciences. The spatial social sciences — geography, urban planning and architecture — have either largely ignored or trivialised the issue of disability. The discipline of history has also paid scant attention to the question of disability. This paper contributes to the historical-geographical understanding of disability by exploring the spatial context ofphysical impairment in nineteenth-century? Melbourne. The paper has two specific objectives (i) to ‘locate'disabled people in nineteenth-century Melbourne by showing where and how they lived; and (ii) to illustrate the socio-spatial relations that shaped their lives. The analysis focuses on three key sites of everyday life for disabled people: home, workplace and institution. It is argued that the sociospatial relations which cohered around and between these pivotal locations played an important role in shaping the everyday life patterns ofdisabled people.