Post-rationalisation and Misunderstanding: Mental Hospital Architecture in the New Zealand Media

Abstract

With an increase in government funding for mental hospital facilities in the late 1940s, New Zealand had the opportunity to create new architectural typologies in response to changing approaches to patient care. The Cherry Farm villa was originally designed in 1949 for the Cherry Farm Hospital, near Dunedin. In 1953 the decision was made to replicate this villa design nationally across six hospitals. The construction of these villas (following 1955) was accompanied by a nationwide media campaign that claimed this architecture was world-class and groundbreaking in its modernity.

This paper reads departmental press releases, newspaper articles, documentary films (1954–77) and the architecture itself (1949–59) in conjunction with institutional knowledge and leading medical literature of the era. It shows that the Cherry Farm villa design was not the innovative architectural solution the Division of Mental Hygiene claimed. Instead, a retrograde architectural design was given a post-rationalised explanation, aimed to counteract long-standing prejudices towards mental hospitals. This astute media campaign maximised the potential of the Cherry Farm villa by juxtaposing the modernity of its design against traditional asylum architecture and popular myths of mental health care.

Notes

^1. World Health Organization, The Community Mental Hospital: Third Report of the Expert Committee on Mental Health (Geneva: 1953).

^2. The “new approach” is a term that appeared in press releases prepared by the Division of Mental Hygiene between May and August 1954. The term referred generally to improvements in accommodation, clothing, food and recreation for mental patients, instigated by Mabel Howard, Minister of Health, 1947–49.

^3. Research conducted to date suggests this type of information was not retained until 1970, with the earliest archival documents pertaining to the design of a Psychiatric Inpatient Unit at Wakari General Hospital (Dunedin, 1970). Prior to this date “Government Buildings (mental hospitals)” files held by Archives New Zealand predominately contain funding requests and approval slips for miscellaneous items such as new basins, interior painting, etc.

^4. Anne Hunt, The Lost Years: From Levin Farm Mental Deficiency Colony to Kimberley Centre (Christchurch: A. Hunt, 2000), 47.

^5. This hospital type, developed in Germany in between 1878 and 1891, was alternately known as the cottage, pavilion or colony system. “Villa system” was the term favoured by Dr Theodore Gray, Director-General of Mental Hospitals 1927–47, and so became the term commonly used in the New Zealand context.

^6. This procedure is known more commonly as a “lobotomy”. Leucotomy was the term used by New Zealand medical practitioners in 1945.

^7. T. G. Gray, “Presidential Address,” New Zealand Medical Journal 46 (1947): 85.

^8. D. H. Clark, “The Therapeutic Community Concept, Practice and Future,” British Journal of Psychiatry 111 (1965): 948.

^9. D. H. Clark, “The Therapeutic Community Concept, Practice and Future,” 948.

^10. Warwick Brunton cites references by the Seacliff Superintendent to this journal as early as 1897 although it is likely the journal was subscribed to prior to this date. See Warwick Brunton, “The Origins of Deinstitutionalisation in New Zealand,” Health and History 5, no. 2 (2003): 81–89.

^11. Noel G. Harris, ed. Modern Trends in Psychological Medicine 1948 (London: Butterworth's, 1948).

^12. T. F. Main, “The Hospital as a Therapeutic Institution,” Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 10, no. 3 (1946): 66–71.

^13. D. H. Clark, “Social Psychiatry: The Therapeutic Community Approach,” in Penelope Campling and Rex Haigh, eds., Therapeutic Communities: Past, Present and Future (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1988), 34.

^14. J. Ivison Russell, “The Role of the Mental Hospital in the National Health Service: The Presidential Address Delivered at the One Hundred and Eighth Annual Meeting of the Association on Wednesday, 20 July, 1949,” Journal of Mental Science 95 (1949): 785–94.

^15. World Health Organization, The Community Mental Hospital, 32.

^16. Shayleen Ann Thompson, “Keepers of Happiness: European Psychiatry and the Insane in New Zealand, 1911 to 1950” (master's diss., University of Auckland, 1992), ii, 65–66.

^17. Catherine Mary (Kate) Prebble, “Ordinary Men and Uncommon Women: A History of Psychiatric Nursing in New Zealand Public Mental Hospitals, 1939–1972,” (PhD diss., University of Auckland, 2007), 79–80.

^18. Refer Archives New Zealand file ADCB 16173 H-MHD1/51 8/116/12/1 1 (R16195751).

^19. W. J. T. Kimber, “Social Values in Mental Hospital Practice,” Journal of Mental Science 85 (1939): 29–44.

^20. Cameron Logan, “The Modern Hospital as Dream and Machine: Modernism, Publicity and the Transformation of Hospitals,” Fabrications 19, no. 1 (2009): 71.

^21. Division of Mental Hygiene, “The Doctor in Annam,” (emphasis added) “Witch Doctors and Hoodoos,” “Nursing Career Grows in Popularity,” Draft Press Releases, April–August 1954. Archives New Zealand file: ADCB 16173 H-MHD1/51 8/116/12/1 1 (R16195751).

^22. Division of Mental Hygiene, “A Community within the Community,” emphasis added.

^23. Division of Mental Hygiene, “Interest and Pleasure Help Towards Recovery of Mental Sickness,” Draft Press Release, 1955. Archives New Zealand file: ADCB 16173 H-MHD1/51 8/116/12/1 1 (R16195752).

^24. Janet Frame, Faces in the Water (Auckland: Random House, 2005).

^25. T. F. Main, “Rehabilitation and the Individual,” In Noel G. Harris, ed., Modern Trends in Psychological Medicine 1948 (London: Butterworth, 1948), 405–07.

^26. World Health Organization, The Community Mental Hospital, 29.

^27. “More Psychiatric Nurses Are Needed in Nelson,” Nelson Evening Mail, February 19, 1958. Similar wording appears within the following two articles: “Psychiatric Nursing Is a Rewarding and Interesting Career,” Rotorua Post, February 23, 1957 and “Northland Has Considerable Interest in Kingseat Hospital,” Northland Times, February 22, 1957.

^28. Division of Mental Hygiene, “A Community within the Community.”

^29. Division of Mental Hygiene, “Male Attendants See Many Changes in N.Z. Mental Hospitals,” Draft Press Release, 1955. Archives New Zealand file: ADCB 16173 H-MHD1/51 8/116/12/1 1 (R16195752).

^30. Division of Mental Hygiene, “Male Attendants See Many Changes in N.Z. Mental Hospitals.”

^31. “Attractive New Otago Hospital Villa, Cherry Farm's Approach to Mentally Ill ‘Advanced’,” Otago Daily Times, January 12, 1957.

^32. Division of Mental Hygiene, “A Community within the Community.”

^33. Prebble, “Ordinary Men and Uncommon Women,” 66.

^34. Division of Mental Hygiene, “Witch Doctors and Hoodoos.”

^35. “Psychiatric Nursing a Satisfying Career: ‘Bad Old Days’ Gone,” Waikato Times, February 23, 1957.

^36. Division of Mental Hygiene, “Interest and Pleasure Help Towards Recovery of Mental Sickness.” The Archives New Zealand file: ADCB 16173 H-MHD1/51 8/116/12/1 1 (R16195752) contains the remaining articles referred to under the heading of “Press Release Package.”

^37. World Health Organization, The Community Mental Hospital, 18.

^38. World Health Organization, The Community Mental Hospital, 31.

^39. Division of Mental Hygiene, Ethics and Rules of Conduct for Staff. Refer Hocken Collections (University of Otago), “McLaughlan, Colin James: Papers,” reference MS1202. While undated this would have been published following 1947 after the Mental Hospitals Department came under the management of the Division of Mental Hygiene.

^40. Pers. comm. a Cherry Farm villa owner previously acquainted with a number of patients (name withheld), November 20, 2010.

^41. Prebble, “Ordinary Men and Uncommon Women,” 112.

^42. Catherine Thomas, “Ngawhatu Hospital…Home or Nightmare?” Accessed February 8, 2012. http://www.theprow.org.nz/ngawhatu-hospital/

^43. Warwick Brunton, Sitivation 125: A History of Seaview Hospital, Hokitika and West Coast Mental Health Services, 1872 − 1997 (Hokitika, New Zealand: Seaview Hospital 125^TH Jubilee Committee, 1997), 51.

^44. World Health Organization, The Community Mental Hospital, 18.

^45. Carla Yanni, The Architecture of Madness; Insane Asylums in the United States (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 15.

^46. Leslie Topp, “The Modern Mental Hospital in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany and Austria: Psychiatric Space and Images of Freedom and Control” in Leslie Topp, James E. Moran and Jonathan Andrews, eds., Madness, Architecture and the Built Environment: Psychiatric Spaces in Historical Context (New York, London: Routledge, 2007), 241–61.

^47. Logan, “The Modern Hospital as Dream and Machine,” 70–71.

^48. “Northland Has Considerable Interest in Kingseat Hospital,” Northland Times, February 22, 1957.

^49. The Cherry Farm design likely emerged from the Dunedin office of the Ministry of Works. Despite efforts to confirm the principal architect for the Cherry Farm villa design, this has yet to be determined. In 1949 the District Architect was William A. Garth; the Government Architect was Robert Patterson.

^50. Peter Shaw, A History of New Zealand Architecture (Auckland: Hodder Moa Beckett, 1997), 102, 119.

^51. Joan Kerr, “Forward,” in James Semple-Kerr and Joan Kerr, Out of Place, out of Mind: Australia's Places of Confinement 1788–1988 (Sydney: Shervin Gallery, 1988), 6.

^52. Division of Mental Hygiene, “Interest and Pleasure Help Towards Recovery of Mental Sickness.”

^53. Janet Frame, An Angel at My Table (Auckland: Random House, 2000), 11.

^54. Division of Mental Hygiene, “Interest and Pleasure Help Towards Recovery of Mental Sickness.” Within this typed draft these words had been struck out with a pen, the remainder of the article was stamped “approved for publication.”

^55. Television New Zealand, Dateline Monday: Mental Health, June 13, 1977. Television New Zealand Archive reference: P1173.

^56. Division of Mental Hygiene, “New Methods Mean More Cures for Mental Illness,” Draft Press Release, 1955. Refer Archives New Zealand file: ADCB 16173 H-MHD1/51 8/116/12/1 1 (R16195752).

^57. “Halfway! The Borderland. ‘Twixt Madness and Sanity. Need for a Great Reform,” Auckland Star, January 10, 1923.

^58. “Mental Hospitals Report,” Christchurch Press, August 1, 1923.

^59. “Mental Patients,” New Plymouth Daily News, August 2, 1923.

^60. “Is all right at Avondale?,” Eden Gazette, March 29, 1923.

^61. Arthur Sainsbury, Misery Mansion: Grim Tales of New Zealand Asylums (Auckland: Wright & Jacques Ltd, 1946), 7, 14, 38.

^62. “Our Mental Hospitals, 2 – The ‘New Freedom’ Comes to Avondale, Cities Oldest Mental Hospital is Living Down the Past,” New Zealand Herald, September 7, 1954.

^63. “Psychiatric Nursing a Satisfying Career”.

^64. Marjorie Hackett for the Division of Mental Hygiene, “Mental Illness in New Zealand its Treatment and Cure,” The Mirror, March 1953.

^65. Prebble, “Ordinary Men and Uncommon Women,” 125.

^66. “More Psychiatric Nurses Are Needed in Nelson”.

^67. Brunton, “The Origins of Deinstitutionalisation in New Zealand,” 81–89.

^68. Brunton, “The Origins of Deinstitutionalisation in New Zealand,” 257. Gray resigned as Director-General of Mental Hospitals in 1947; the land for Cherry Farm was purchased under his directorship but constructed under that of his successor.