Kew Cottages: The World of Dolly Stainer by Cliff Judge and Fran van Brummelen

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges.

At four years of age, Dolly Stainer was admitted to Kew Cottages, an institution for the intellectually disabled situated in suburban Melbourne. The Cottages were Dolly's home for the next seventy-five years. Dolly was unable to read or write but she liked to talk. In her old age, she co-operated in the making of a series of tape recordings about her life.

Kew Cottages: The World of Dolly Stainer is based on these recordings and places them in the context of the wider Cottages' history. Dolly's story is primarily a picture of life at the coalface. It is a story about the staff and other residents of the institution who entered Dolly's world and helped form her unique personality and independent spirit.

In every sense, Dolly was a victim, but the authors of this book are at pains not to write the sort of revisionist history that focuses only on victimhood. Rather, they show that despite everything, Dolly grew to be a loving, hard-working and moral human being, no less adequate than the rest of us.

This fact precipitates a truth that is seldom recognised, namely, that institutions possess similar ingredients to society. (back cover)