School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemPrison or paradise: disease and medicine in the Bermudian convict establishment (1824-1863)( 2015)This PhD thesis is an inquiry into the rates of disease among the convict population in the Bermudian convict establishment and the medical practices used to treat these patients as a way to understand their living conditions. It has gone beyond the Colonial Office 37 series to survey other available data such as the ADM 101 series of the Royal Naval Hospital records and Commissioners’ Inquiries to show the extent to which the hulks themselves played a role in the cause and exacerbation of disease among the convict population. A quantitative analysis of hospital data uncovered the dominant diseases by considering both the contemporary methods of disease nomenclature and ICD-10. This comparison proves that no matter how a disease was classified the most dominant diseases were those that were the result of or were exacerbated by the filthy accommodation within the hulks. Comparisons of mortality and patterns of illness between Millbank and Gibraltar show a wider context of disease causation, and the extent to which conditions in Bermuda were better or worse than these other prisons. Quantitative analysis of therapeutics used in Bermuda and comparison of therapeutic trends between Bermuda, the hulk establishment at Woolwich and convict ships at sea, will show that practices in Bermuda were in part relative to the availability of therapeutics yet also conformed to West Indian norms of treating inflammatory conditions. Part of this investigation into medical facilities shows the extent to which clinical medicine influenced the doctor-patient relationship in Bermuda; how convicts had little or no say in their treatment. Furthermore, the doctor had access to the patient’s body as an instrument of the production of medical knowledge, the outcome of which seems to benefit the Bermudian convicts in cases of epidemic yellow fever when other treatments failed. Further investigation into the convicts in the First Fleet and Swan River Colony in Australia, Wakefield prison, Coldbath Fields prison, and Woolwich and Chatham hulk establishments in England will demonstrate that this use of the convicts’ body as an instrument in the production of medical knowledge was common-place and not limited to Bermuda. Overall, these factors paint a more accurate picture of the lived experience for the Bermudian convict.