Using interviews, oral histories, historical documents and records, Corinne Manning has assembled a compelling history of Kew Cottages, an Australian institution that opened in 1887 and was scheduled to close in 2008. Like many institutions that housed people with intellectual disabilities, the Kew Cottages contain the stories of people who found a home at the institution, but they also contain stories of neglect and abuse, and most horrifically, of the April 1996 deaths of nine residents who perished in a cottage fire.
Resisting the temptation to paint a picture of the institution as either a generous and supportive place for its residents or as a "snake pit," Manning uses large portions of the book to tell the stories of particular residents and their good and bad experiences at the Kew Cottages. For example, she begins by telling the story of James Barry Woods who entered the Kew Cottages in 1992 after living in another facility. James could remember little of his first years at Kew, but he was able to remember his mother making pancakes. Other residents interviewed by Manning remember more about their years at the facility.
When she interviews parents of residents placed in the Kew Cottages, she discovers that physicians had often recommended that the family place their "burdensome" child in the institution where they would be among "others of their own kind." Not all families took the advice of the physician; instead, they chose to keep their child at home. But as their child grew older, he or she sometimes proved hard to manage, or as the child's safety became a source of parental concern, some parents reluctantly chose to place their child at the Kew Cottages.
Many parents kept in regular contact with their children, but some parents and relatives of Kew residents lost contact with their children. On holidays and at birthdays, for example, residents often had visits from loved ones, and on occasion, residents were taken home for a visit. But other residents had no visitors and were never taken home.
Just as parents and relatives maintained relationships with residents, so too did the Kew Cottage staff members feel affection for their charges. Not all care giving was kind and generous, but a good deal of it was. Manning tells the stories of several cottage workers who devoted most of their working years to the residents of the Kew Cottages. Besides cottage staff, Manning relies on the memories of Philip Brady, the son of the psychiatric superintendent of the facility. His childhood memories of living at Kew Cottages are happy ones. As Manning writes, "Philip evoked images of childhood antics and bygone days. . . . Philip and his childhood friends were able to freely explore the grounds, creating imagined worlds and enjoying the parkland that enveloped both institutions. For Philip, it was an extraordinary place of wonderment" (70).
In contrast to the happy memories of Kew Cottages, there were also memories that were neither happy nor pleasant. Former residents remembered the boredom, the down time with only a television set on for entertainment. Other residents remembered the loud noises, and still others recalled the lost and destroyed clothing as the result of the massive laundry that the institution necessitated. Others hated the bland and predictable food. Still others complained about the work that residents were required to perform for little or no pay.
Manning concludes her book with the 1996 fire that tragically killed nine residents, and led to a major government investigation that ultimately caused the Kew Cottages' demise. Its residents, like others before them, were deinstitutionalized to community-based facilities. Through photographs and narratives, she shows that many of these residents are doing well in the community.
The strength of Bye-Bye Charlie lies in the voices of the many different actors that are brought together. Too often these voices — of residents, parents, care givers and staff — are left in silence. Manning has wisely developed her ethnographic history of the Kew Cottages by relying on these usually forgotten voices. The voices along with compelling photographs make this volume a wonderful institutional history. Would that we had more of this quality!
