Introduction

Robben Island, an island off the southern coast of South Africa barely six miles from Cape Town, the capital city of the Cape Colony in the nineteenth century, accommodated ‘lunatics’, ‘lepers’ and the ‘chronic sick’ for nearly a century after 1846. The ‘General Infirmary’ was established just eight years after the emancipation of slaves was finalized, at a time when the colonial government and a nascent middle class in Cape Town were trying to impose a new order on the undisciplined urban underclass in preparation for self-rule. The Cape's most dangerous insane were sent to the island asylum from 1846, that, until 1875, was the only asylum in the colony. By 1921, there were a number of other asylums established: Grahamstown (1875), Port Alfred (1889), and Fort Beaufort (1894) in the Eastern Cape, and Valkenberg (1891) near Cape Town.

While Britain and some of her colonies provided extensive provision for the insane, the Cape did not. Most of the colonial insane were cared for at home or through private boarding arrangements: only the most desperate resorted to the asylum. In 1890, the proportion of registered white insane to the white population at the Cape was 1:1,180, about three times lower than that in Ireland, New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria and Britain (from 1:294 to 1:380). There was also a much larger proportion of people classified as ‘criminal’ insane in the Cape than in Britain or New South Wales, although in New South Wales and elsewhere, police were still responsible for a large proportion of asylum committals before 1900.