From Promising Settler to Undesirable Immigrant: The Deportation of British-born Migrants from Mental Hospitals in Interwar Australia and South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article examines the process by which British-born migrants to Australia and South Africa were deported from mental hospitals in the 1920s and 1930s. It shows how men and women who arrived as permanent settlers could be re-classified as immigrants subject to expulsion. Debates over who was responsible for those who through mental illness or alcoholism were deemed ‘undesirable’ were conducted at the levels of both high diplomacy and petty bureaucracy. Tracing the history of deportation as a means of social engineering within the empire, this article highlights the tension between the transnational ideology of white supremacy and its expression in national terms. Using the case files of those deported from two settler colonial mental hospitals, Callan Park in Sydney and Valkenberg in Cape Town, as well as official deportation paperwork, it also traces how such diplomatic decisions were refracted through the process of attempted implementation. These files show firsthand both the social history of deportation and the mechanisms through which the settler colonial state aimed to shape its population by excluding not only those perceived to be racially other, but also those judged to be racially unfit. The process of determining domicile and of deportation itself reveals much about the frequently precarious circumstances and life histories of these migrants and their often far-flung networks, as well as the ways in which migrants and their families were able to negotiate the regulatory mechanisms of both the state and the asylum.

KEYWORDS:

• Deportation
• Australia
• South Africa
• race
• migration
• settler colonialism
• immigration
• repatriation
• mental illness
• alcoholism

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers, Will Jackson and the participants of the Private Lives of Empire conference at the University of Sydney and the Modern British Studies conference at the University of Birmingham for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank the University of Cape Town Special Collections and the State Archives of New South Wales for access to the Valkenberg and Callan Park archives respectively.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jean P. Smith http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0444-1607

Notes

1. ME 3276, BC 1043, University of Cape Town Archives (hereafter UCT). All patients have been given a pseudonym in accordance with the conditions of access for both the Valkenberg and Callan Park records.

2. Admission file 1933-23, Inebriate, 14/10129, State Records New South Wales (hereafter SRNSW).

3. On the analytical difference between settlers and migrants in the settler colonial context, see Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present, 32–49; Veracini, Settler Colonialism, 3–4, 14, 108.

4. Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line.

5. Bashford, Imperial Hygiene, 137–63; Carey, ‘White Anxieties’, 199.

6. Jackson and Manktelow, ‘Introduction’, 2–3, 17.

7. Bailkin, The Afterlife of Empire, 203. Exceptions include Dhupelia-Mesthrie, ‘Betwixt the Oceans’; Heaton, ‘Elder Dempster’; Martyr, ‘Having a Clean Up?’

8. Schler, ‘The Facts Stated’, 146.

9. Jackson, ‘Unsettled States’, 85–87.

10. On the use of case files, see Coleborne, Insanity, Identity and Empire, 4, 84–91; Coleborne, ‘Locating Ethnicity’; Coleborne, Madness in the Family, 88–121; McCarthy, ‘Ethnicity, Migration’, 49–50, 53–54.

11. McCarthy, ‘Migration and Madness’, 69; Schwarz, ‘Colonial Lunatic Asylum’, 285–302.

12. For more on the histories of these institutions and of mental hospital provision in New South Wales and the Cape, see Garton, Medicine and Madness; Marks, ‘The Microphysics of Power’; Schwarz, Homeless Wanderers.

13. Of these cases, the majority were men: one woman and eight men in the case of Callan Park and six women and eight men in the case of Valkenberg.

14. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 41.

15. Ibid., 35.

16. Ibid., 6.

17. For the longer history of this ‘administrative anxiety’ in settler colonial mental hospital records, see Coleborne, Insanity, Identity and Empire, 2, 8–9, 27–28, 164–66.

18. McCarthy, ‘Exporting and Repelling’, 146–61.

19. Bashford, ‘At the Border’, 353; Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 156–58; Murphy, A Decent Provision, 55–182; Seekings, ‘Not a Single White Person’, 375–94.

20. Coleborne, Insanity, Identity and Empire, 5–6; Coleborne, Madness in the Family, 8–10, 144–45.

21. Setter-colonial immigration policies were not only similar but were often modelled on each other. See Martens, ‘A Transnational History’.

22. Ernst, Mad Tales from the Raj, 14–15, 23–24, 26, 39–40, 51–52, 56, 162–63, 166; Fischer-Tiné, Low and Licentious Europeans, 44–45, 104–05, 143, 205, 290.

23. This became more difficult after 1945 in Kenya due to a growing population of white settlers born in Kenya who could not be deported. On Kenya, see Jackson, ‘Dangers to the Colony’; Jackson, Madness and Marginality, 15, 54–61, 68–69, 121, 159; Kennedy, Islands of White, 73, 177; Shadle, The Souls of White Folk, 65–66. On Shanghai, see Bickers, Empire Made Me, 19, 202, 234–36.

24. Bashford, ‘Insanity and Immigration Restriction’, 17; Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 5; Mongia, ‘Race, Nationality, Mobility’.

25. Holdridge, ‘ Pageantry of the Anti-Convict Cause’, 141–64; McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies, 171–79; Reid, Gender, Crime and Empire, 210–46.

26. Bashford, ‘Insanity and Immigration Restriction’, 15–16; Picker, ‘A State of Infancy’, 226–40.

27. McCarthy, ‘Exporting and Repelling’, 155.

28. Bashford, ‘Insanity and Immigration Restriction’, 16–17; McCarthy, ‘Migration and Madness’, 65.

29. Schwarz, Homeless Wanderers, 121–26.

30. Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 137–38, 236.

31. Alison Bashford goes so far as to argue that it was British migrants who were the main object of Australian border control in the first half of the twentieth century. Bashford, ‘At the Border’, 346–52, 355–58.

32. Bashford and Howard, ‘Immigration and Health’, 103.

33. Martyr, ‘Having a Clean Up?’, 175–76; Nichols, Deported, 62–65.

34. Bradlow, ‘Immigration into the Union’, 74–75.

35. Fischer-Tiné, ‘ Drinking Habits of Our Countrymen’, 383–408; Roos, ‘Alcohol Panic’, 1167–89.

36. Roos, ‘Work Colonies’, 61–62.

37. This ordinance operated in a similar way to the 1898 Inebriates Act in the United Kingdom. Garton, ‘Once a Drunkard’, 51.

38. Bashford and Howard, ‘Immigration and Health’, 103, 105.

39. Bashford, ‘At the Border’, 347.

40. Draft Correspondence, 7 Oct. 1933, Deportations: South Africa, 1930–36, DO 35/108/1, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).

41. Draft Memorandum, 29 Oct. 1931, Deportations: Australia, 1930–36, DO 35/108/2, TNA.

42. H. J. Stanley to Sir Henry Batterbee, 11 April 1933, Deportations: South Africa, 1930–36, DO 35/108/1, TNA.

43. Ibid.

44. Percivale Liesching to Sir Charles Dixon, July 1933, Deportations: South Africa, 1930–36, DO 35/108/1, TNA.

45. On this tension, see Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 4.

46. MacDonald, ‘Colonial Trespassers’, 40–42.

47. Angela McCarthy’s study of Irish migrant in mental hospitals in New Zealand found evidence of similar transnational networks. McCarthy, ‘Transnational Ties to Home’. On the functioning of these networks in an earlier period throughout the ‘British world,’ see Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, 64, 105.

48. On the mobility of ‘settlers’, see McCarthy, ‘Migration and Ethnicity’, 81, 93; Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present, 2. On their often precarious and ‘unsettled’ lives, see Jackson, ‘The Settler’s Demise’, 85–87; Jackson, ‘Unsettled States’, 89, 100.

49. A1, National Archives of Australia, Canberra (hereafter NAA). File number withheld to preserve anonymity as, unlike Callan Park case files, these records are open access.

50. FE 2189, BC 1043, UCT.

51. FE 2238, BC 1043, UCT. Similar cases include those of Frances Tierney (FE 2338), Ethel Wells (FE 2300) and Ethel Tucker (FE 2352), BC 1043, UCT.

52. ME 2874, BC 1043, UCT. A similar pattern of serial migration is also evident in the case of William James, ME 2792, BC 1043, UCT.

53. On this point, see Jackson, Madness and Marginality, 14.

54. Case File 1935-158, 20092, 14/9623, SRNSW.

55. A1, NAA. File number withheld to preserve anonymity.

56. Admission file 1935-158, 20092, 14/9623, SRNSW.

57. There are some fragmentary traces of deported British migrants in the National Archives; however, these are few and far between. See, for example, the case of John Dillon, an Irish-born migrant deported to Southampton from Australia in 1930. John Dillon (Deported Migrant from Australia), 18 Jan. 1936, DO 35/467/6, TNA.

58. Admission file 1929-353, 17536, 14/9545, SRNSW.

59. Heaton, ‘Elder Dempster’, 113–20.

60. Finnane, ‘Asylums, Families and the State’, 135. See also Wright, ‘Getting Out of the Asylum’, 137–55.

61. Parle, ‘Family Commitments’, 1–21; Schler, ‘The Facts Stated’, 137.

62. Hyslop, ‘Undesirable Inhabitant of the Union’, 178–97.

63. ME 2885, BC 1043, UCT. This method was also employed as a form of informal deportation in Britain. See Bailkin, The Afterlife of Empire, 208.

64. ME 3992, BC 1043, UCT.

65. ME 4049, BC 1043, UCT.

66. ME 2885, BC 1043, UCT.

67. Ibid. On Canada’s immigration policy, see Menzies, ‘Governing Mentalities’, 135–73.

68. Admission file 1933-23, Inebriate, 14/10129, SRNSW.

69. Ibid.

70. Probate 13660, 1973, SRNSW. File number withheld to preserve anonymity as probate records are open access.

71. Deacon, Russell and Woollacott, ‘Introduction’, 6.

72. Admission file1923-282, 15031, 14/9466, SRNSW.

73. Ibid.

74. A similar case of family intervention contributing to the deportation of a patient is that of Ethel Tucker at Valkenberg. FE 2352, BC 1043, UCT; see also Schler, ‘The Facts Stated’, 139–42.

75. McCarthy, ‘Migration and Madness’, 64.

76. Admission file 1931-52, 18441, 14/9572, SRNSW.

77. Admission file 1928-149, 17330, 14/9538, SRNSW.

78. A1, NAA. File number withheld to preserve anonymity.

79. Admission file 1934-17, 19508, 14/9605; Case File 19508, 14/10078, SRNSW.

80. Conversely the refusal of repatriation could also be used for social engineering as in the case of the white wives of West Africans who were denied passages to West Africa. See Ray, ‘The White Wife Problem’.

81. Case File 144V, 14/10077, SRNSW.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council under grant AH/L004801/1.