207  Vππb Hπdde π Sa S Gπe Jacqueline Leckie Since 1884 Suva has had a mental asylum, first known as the Public Lunatic Asylum or the Suva Asylum: a physical site that has conjured fear and mystery, and been pivotal to the stigma associated with mental illness in Fiji. In 1936 the asylum was renamed the Suva Mental Hospital, because the old name was ‘too redolent of Bedlam’. 1 During the early 1960s the name St Giles Psychiatric Hospital came into use, but the term ‘asylum’ has persisted. 2 One reason mental asylums were so foreboding is because they were physically separated from the rest of the community. St Giles is located on a steep ridge some distance from the main town in Suva. It was surrounded by high concrete walls – impenetrable barriers that screamed incarceration and separation, like the piercing screams and wailing from inside that people could hear from outside the walls. Similar to many asylums, St Giles has vast grounds to accommodate patients and staff, and to supply food for the asylum. By the time St Giles was established, 1 Margaret Guthrie, Misi Utu: Dr D. W. Hoodless and the development of medical education in the South Pacific (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific with the South Pacific Social Sciences Association, 1979), 34. Guthrie was the daughter of Medical Superintendent David Hoodless. Much of this chapter is based on Jacqueline Leckie, Colonizing madness: Asylum and community in Fiji (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020), doi.org/10.1515/9780824881900, where extensive documentation can be found. 2 For example, Sainimili Lewa, ‘Madman attacks asylum staff’, Fiji Times, 18 January 2002, 12; Irene Manueli, ‘Asylum can’t cure morphine addict’, Fiji Times, 5 January 2002.