A Working man's paradise? Reflections on urban mortality in colonial Australia 1860–1900

Abstract

Today, historical research on health and society in nineteenth-century Australia, as elsewhere, is focused on three main areas: the effects ofparticular epidemic diseases on the social fabric, the politics of public health, and the relationship between living standards, sanitary reform, and mortality.By far the greatest attention has been paid to the first, notably by historical epidemiologists, and to the second, by administrative historians.1 Until recently, the third has attracted much less attention.The connexion between living conditions and mortality has long been accepted, but the two phenomena have been investigated separately.The relationship forms a largely unwritten chapter in the history of public health in Australia.But, since the pioneering work of Ken Inglis and Ann Mitchell2 has opened our eyes to the social dynamics of colonial hospitals, and T. S. Pensabene and Evan Willis3 to the colonial medical profession, it has become appropriate to examine afresh the relationship between disease, mortality, and colonial living conditions.For decades, it has been unfashionable to do this.Part of the reason may lie in the nature of Australian social and economic historiography.Certainly, it was possible to overlook critical considerations ofdisease and health as long as Australian history was dominated by mythologies of the "bush"4 and of colonial progress.These had a formidable influence, and were highly functional to conventional interpretations of colonial history.

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