Pursuing Families for Maintenance Payments to Hospitals for the Insane in Australia and New Zealand, 1860s–1914

Abstract

Between the 1860s and 1914, the collection of maintenance payments for the public care of the insane was improved, yet attempts to encourage full payments from families and friends of the insane consistently failed. These efforts to recover maintenance reveal the vulnerabilities of the colonial family in relation to mental illness. This article argues that cooperation and resistance to maintenance payments by families of the institutionalised coexisted during the period. Archival evidence of the struggles that took place over the care of the insane demonstrates contestation during the period about the relationship between state and private responsibility.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Shurlee Swain, Stuart Macintyre, Christina Twomey, and two anonymous referees for their advice on this article. I appreciate the archival research conducted by Thomas Gibbons (Auckland) and Meg Parsons (Sydney). State Records New South Wales has granted permission for their archival materials to be quoted in publications arising from my research in accordance with their rules. This research has been funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand's Marsden Fund.

Notes

¹ The subject of maintenance payments for deserted wives has received some attention; see Christina Twomey, Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002); Bronwyn Dalley, ‘Criminal Conversations: Infanticide, Gender and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand’, in The Gendered Kiwi, edited by Caroline Daley and Deborah Montgomerie (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1999), 63–85; Fiona Kean, ‘Illegitimacy, Maintenance and Agency: Unmarried Mothers and Putative Fathers in Auckland, 1900–1910’, (MA thesis in History, University of Waikato, 2004).

²David Wright, ‘Getting out of the Asylum: Understanding the Confinement of the Insane in the Nineteenth Century’, Social History of Medicine 10: 1 (1997), 137–155; Mark Finnane, ‘Asylums, Families and the State’, History Workshop 20 (1985), 134–148; Marjorie Levine-Clarke, ‘Dysfunctional Domesticity: Female Insanity and Family Relationships among the West Riding Poor in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Family History , 24 (2000), 341–361; Catharine Coleborne, ‘“His Brain was Wrong, his Mind Astray”: Families and the Language of Insanity in New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand, 1880s–1910’, Journal of Family History 31: 1 (January 2006), 45–65.

³International histories of the family include Lenore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle, Janet Fink and Katherine Holden, The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830–1960 (London and New York: Longman, 1999). For discussion of the nature of the colonial family, see Michael Gilding, The Making and Breaking of the Australian Family (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991) and Families in Colonial Australia, edited by Patricia Grimshaw, Chris McConville and Ellen McEwen (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1985); for specific comment about family economies in Australia, see Shirley Fisher, ‘The Family and the Sydney Economy in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Families in Colonial Australia, 153–62. On the changing relationship between the state and families in the matter of child welfare, see Robert van Krieken, ‘Children and the State: Child Welfare in New South Wales, 1890–1915’, Labour History 51 (1986), 33–53.

⁴W. Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, vol 2 (Melbourne: Macmillan Australia, 1969 [1902]), 243–249; Margaret Tennant, Paupers and Providers: Charitable Aid in New Zealand (Wellington: Allen & Unwin and Historical Branch, 1990), 163–180.

⁵Brian Dickey, No Charity There: A Short History of Social Welfare in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987); Stephen Garton, ‘Rights and Duties: Arguing Charity and Welfare 1880–1920’, in Welfare and Social Policy in Australia: The Distribution of Social Advantage, edited by Michael Wearing and Rosemary Bereen (Sydney and London: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 23–38. For New Zealand, see Tennant, Paupers and Providers; David Thomson, A World Without Welfare: New Zealand's Colonial Experiment (Auckland: Auckland University Press with Bridget Williams Books, 1998).

⁶See the discussion about the shift towards notions of ‘universal’ welfare policies, away from the conceptions of ‘charity’, in Garton, ‘Rights and Duties’. See also Margaret McClure, A Civilised Community: A History of Social Security in New Zealand 1898–1998 (Auckland: Auckland University Press and Historical Branch, 1998), 17–23.

⁷All of these institutions were called ‘asylums’ before 1914, but name changes occurred at different points over the period of this study; therefore the proper names used in the article alternate between ‘asylum’ and ‘hospital for the insane’.

⁸Maintenance bonds at the Yarra Bend include both records of persons released on bond to the care of families, and payments of maintenance bonds for asylum confinement; see ‘Maintenance Bonds’ for the Yarra Bend at Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) VA 2839, VPRS 7568.

⁹See Andrew Crowther, ‘Administration and the Asylum in Victoria, 1860s–1880s’, in ‘Madness’ in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum, edited by Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press with the API network, 2003), 85–95; Eric Cunningham-Dax, ‘Smith, William Beattie (1854–1921)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 11 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1988), 664–665.

¹⁰See The Brisbane Courier, 9 July, 1898, 6.

¹¹D. I. McDonald, ‘Frederic Norton Manning (1839–1903)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1974), 204–5; Rex Wright-St Clair, ‘Skae, Frederick William Adolphus, 1842–1881’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography vol. 2 (1870–1900) (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books and Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 1993).

¹²Tennant, Paupers and Providers, 39; Dickey, No Charity There, 57.

¹³Tennant, Paupers and Providers, 13.

¹⁴See the Destitute Persons Relief Ordinance (New Zealand), 10 Vict., no. 1846, preamble.

¹⁵Some legal and medical costs were incurred at the time of certification. The Lunatics Act (1868) in New Zealand gave power to Justices to seek maintenance payments from relatives (s. 155). The Lunacy Act (1878) in New South Wales gave powers to the Master-in-Lunacy seek legal assistance to collect maintenance fees from families or inmates’ estates; this was also true in Victoria. In Queensland, the Curator of Insanity was granted similar powers under the terms of the Insanity Act (1884).

¹⁶W. Beattie Smith, ‘The Housing of the Insane in Victoria, with Special Relation to the Boarding-Out System of Treatment’, Intercolonial Medical Congress of Australasia (1889), 898–908.

¹⁷See Michael Horsburgh, ‘Some Issues in the Government Subsidy of Hospitals in New South Wales: 1858–1910’, Medical History, 21 (1977), 172; see also Anne Crichton, Slowly Taking Control? Australian Governments and Health Care Provision, 1788–1988 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990), 14–17.

¹⁸Stephen Garton, Out of Luck: Poor Australians and Social Welfare (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990), 43; Dickey, No Charity There, 27; Thomson, A World Without Welfare, 18–19.

¹⁹Horsburgh, ‘Issues in the Government Subsidy of Hospitals in New South Wales’, 174.

²⁰R. A. Cage, Poverty Abounding, Charity Aplenty: The Charity Network in Colonial Victoria (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1992), 20.

²¹Nancy Tomes, ‘The Anglo-American Asylum in Historical Perspective’, in Location and Stigma: Contemporary Perspectives on Mental Health and Mental Health Care, edited by Christopher Smith and John A. Giggs (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 12.

²²See Stephen Garton, Medicine and Madness: A Social History of Insanity in New South Wales 1880–1940 (Kensington NSW: UNSW Press, 1988), 109. On private institutions in New Zealand, see Alan Somerville, ‘Ashburn Hall, 1882–1904’, in ‘Unfortunate Folk’: Essays on Mental Health Treatment 1863–1882 edited by Barbara Brookes and Jane Thomson (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2001), 83–103. On private institutions in Britain, see Charlotte MacKenzie, Psychiatry for the Rich: A History of Ticehurst Private Asylum, 1792–1917 (Routledge; London and New York, 1992).

²³Finnane, ‘Asylums, Families and the State’, 145. See also Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe, The Politics of Madness: the state, insanity and society in England, 1845–1914 (Routledge: London and New York, 2006), 173. On Callan Park, see Garton, Medicine and Madness, 109; and on Kew, see a report in the Australasian Medical Gazette, October 1892, 394.

²⁴Some patients admitted to public asylums in England were pursued for maintenance payments; see Melling and Forsythe, The Politics of Madness, 173; 194; 221 n 24.

²⁵Garton, Out of Luck, 44–54; Dickey, No Charity There, 21–47; Tennant, Paupers and Providers, 15. Christina Twomey has argued that in colonial Victoria and New South Wales, some women exercised their agency and sought assistance and welfare services from state-run institutions; see Twomey, ‘Gender, Welfare and the Colonial State: Victoria's 1864 Neglected and Criminal Children's Act’, Labour History 73 (1997), 169–186. See also Twomey, Deserted and Destitute.

²⁶Twomey, ‘Gender, Welfare and the Colonial State’, 171.

²⁷Warwick Brunton, ‘Colonies for the Mind: The Historical Context of Services for Forensic Psychiatry in New Zealand’, in Psychiatry and the Law: Clinical and Legal Issues, edited by Warren Brookbanks (Wellington: Brookers, 1996), 12–13. Tennant, Paupers and Providers, 13; Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), Reports on the Lunatic Asylums in New Zealand, H-4 (1876), 2.

²⁸ Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Management of Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum and the Lunatic Reception Houses of the Colony, Queensland Parliament, Votes and Proceedings, Legislative Assembly vol 1 (Brisbane: James C Beal Government Printer, 1877), xiii.

²⁹Garton, Medicine and Madness, 109.

³⁰Victoria Parliamentary Papers (VPP) Report on the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum 1856 (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1857), 8.

³¹F. N. Manning, Report on Lunatic Asylums (Sydney: Thomas Richards Government Printer, 1868), 159.

³²Manning, Report on Lunatic Asylums, 117.

³³Legislative Assembly NSW Parliament, ‘Hospital for the Insane, Tarban Creek’, (1869), 10.

³⁴Legislative Assembly NSW Parliament, ‘Hospital for Insane, Gladesville’ (1876–1877), 5.

³⁵Victoria Parliamentary Papers (VPP) Report of the Inspector of Lunatic Asylums on the Hospitals for the Insane 1879 (Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1880), 15.

³⁶ AJHR, Annual Report of Lunatic Asylums in New Zealand 1880 H- 6 (1881), 1–2.

³⁷ AJHR, Annual Report of Lunatic Asylums in New Zealand 1880 H-6, 5

³⁸Donella Jaggs, Asylum to Action: Family Action 1851–1991 (Melbourne: Family Action, 1991), 7.

³⁹Finnane, ‘Asylums, Families and the State’, 140.

⁴⁰John Ramsland, Children of the Backlanes: Destitute and Neglected Children in Colonial New South Wales (Kensington: New South Wales University Press, 1986), 70–74; Dickey, No Charity There, 42–47.

⁴¹Manning, Report on Lunatic Asylums, 162.

⁴²Garton, Out of Luck, 66, 68. On New Zealand pay rates, see the New Zealand Official Year-Book (Wellington: John Mackay, Government Printer, 1898), 290–297. However, economic historians have argued that in nineteenth century Victoria, ‘average’ men and women left very little personal property, although increases in personal wealth occurred in the 1860s and the 1880s; see W. D. Rubenstein, ‘The Distribution of Personal Wealth in Victoria 1860–1974’, Australian Economic History Review xix (1979), 38. As Jim McAloon has demonstrated for the wealthy in New Zealand, family and household mattered in the accumulation of wealth, see No Idle Rich: The Wealthy in Canterbury and Otago 1840–1914 (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2002), 76.

⁴³Hospital for the Insane, Tarban Creek’ (1869), 8.

⁴⁴Tennant, Paupers and Providers, 90.

⁴⁵National Archives New Zealand (NANZ) YCAA (Carrington Hospital, previously Auckland Asylum) 1044 (Record Book of Maintenance Investigations), folio 31.

⁴⁶YCAA 1044, 1887, folio 27.

⁴⁷SRNSW, Gladesville Hospital, Maintenance Books 1879–84, CGS 3/14225; 3/14234; Patient case files, 4/8179, folio 154.

⁴⁸Annie was described in her notes as a ‘pay patient’; see VPRS 7400/P0001, unit 1, folio 370.

⁴⁹Garton, Medicine and Madness, 118; Queensland State Archives (QSA), Wolston Park Hospital (formerly Goodna Hospital) A/45643, 25 October 1905, letter 26.

⁵⁰Garton, Medicine and Madness, 109.

⁵¹SRNSW, Maintenance Books, 1879–1884, CGS 3/14224, vol 1.

⁵²In the case of Queensland, for example, such commentary also led to legislative change; see The Brisbane Courier, 29 August 1879, 2.

⁵³Dickey, No Charity There, 83–91; 102.

⁵⁴‘Lunacy Act Administration’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1913, 12.

⁵⁵ Argus, 3 July, 1872, 6; 23 July 1872, 5; 25 July 1872, 7; 3 August, 1872, 5; 7.

⁵⁶QSA, 30 November 1885, A/45607, letter 93.

⁵⁷YCAA 1044, 1889–1898, folio 52; folio 150.

⁵⁸YCAA 1044, 1894, folio 38.

⁵⁹YCAA 1044, 30 September 1886, folio 22.

⁶⁰YCAA 1044, July 1889.

⁶¹YCAA 1044, folio 38.

⁶²YCAA 1044, folios 52, 150.

⁶³YCAA 1044, folio 299; folio 309.

⁶⁴Lorelle Burke, ‘”The Voices Caused Him to Become Porangi”: Māori Patients in the Auckland Lunatic Asylum, 1860–1900’, MA thesis in History, University of Waikato, 2006.

⁶⁵Fisher, ‘The Family and the Sydney Economy in the Late Nineteenth Century’, 154.

⁶⁶YCAA 1044, folio 21.

⁶⁷QSA, A/45611, folio 269, 17 September 1888.

⁶⁸QSA A/45607, folio 212, Letter 212.

⁶⁹YCAA 1044, Letter from the Public Trust Office, Wellington, 5 April 1898, to the Lunatic Asylum, Auckland.

⁷⁰YCAA 1026/12, patient case files no 4119–4141, case 4125, 22 January, 1913. See also VPRS 7417/P1, unit 11.

⁷¹Tennant, Paupers and Providers, 14; see also ‘Lunacy Act Administration’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1913, 12.

⁷²Garton argues that in New South Wales, attempts to encourage paying patients from the latter decades of the nineteenth century was a failure, also citing data from the 1920s; Medicine and Madness, 109. Brunton comments that in 1932, despite a better centralised system of maintenance collection in New Zealand, 59 per cent of patients remained a ‘full charge on the State’; ‘Colonies for the Mind’, 13.

⁷³Around 34 patients were boarded-out in Victoria in the early 1890s. See also C. R. D. Brothers, Early Victoria Psychiatry 1835–1905 (Melbourne: A. C. Brookes, Government Printer, 1959), 164. Boarding-out was entertained in New Zealand in the 1880s; see William Armstrong, ‘Lunacy Legislation in the Australian Colonies’, Intercolonial Medical Congress of Australasia (1889), 879. On the practice of boarding-out the insane elsewhere, see Harriet Sturdy and William Parry-Jones, ‘Boarding-out Insane Patients: The Significance of the Scottish System 1857–1913’, in Outside the Walls of the Asylum: the History of Care in the Community 1750–2000, edited by Peter Bartlett and David Wright (London and New Brunswick, NJ: The Athlone Press, 1999), 86–114.