Cumberland Hospital, Psychiatric hospital in North Parramatta, Australia.
Cumberland Hospital is a public psychiatric hospital in Westmead, western Sydney, part of the Western Sydney Local Health District. Its grounds occupy the site of the former Female Factory, where female convicts were housed and worked, and have served as a mental health institution since 1849.
The site housed female convicts in separate quarters; in 1817 Governor Macquarie commissioned permanent structures, and it became known as The Female Factory, holding unassigned, unmarried women and their children. Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, but the site remained a place for female convicts until 1847. In 1849 the buildings were redesignated a lunatic asylum, and the institution took its current name in 1983.
The name Cumberland Hospital dates only from 1983; before that the site was the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum from 1849. Its earlier identity was the Female Factory, where unassigned, unmarried female convicts and their children lived and worked. One inmate, William Cresswell, claimed to be the Tichborne heir, was convicted of perjury and died here in 1904.
Cumberland Hospital stands in Westmead, in Sydney's west, and is part of the Western Sydney Local Health District; with Bungarribee House and Blacktown Hospital it serves the mental health needs of Western Sydney. It is a working public psychiatric hospital, so access to the grounds and buildings is not that of a visitor attraction.
In the late 19th century the site held William Cresswell, an inmate put forward as a claimant in the Tichborne case; he died there in 1904. The hospital only took its present name in 1983, more than 130 years after the buildings became an asylum.
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