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Bay View House Private Lunatic Asylum, Cooks Ri...

Bay View House Private Lunatic Asylum, Cooks River 1869

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

(Illustrated Sydney News, 23 December 1869, p316)

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Tempe

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Bayview House

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State Library of New South Wales

Hospitals

Mental health

Tempe

Inner-west suburb on the northern bank of Cooks River which grew from the workers camp established to build the Cooks River dam in 1839. By the 1850s it was also home to limeburners, woodsmen and fishermen.

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Bayview House

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Situated near the Cooks River near Tempe, the building was a private residence before it operated as a 'private lunatic asylum' with its first patient admitted on 8 November 1865. The asylum was owned by Dr George Tucker and was opened as an alternative for those who considered confinement in a government asylum 'repulsive to their feelings'. Initially it was licensed for 35 patients and one newspaper article notes that many of its patients 'owed their derangement' to the consumption of absinthe.