Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.: 1866 - 1939), Saturday 27 November 1869, page 9

THE WOOGAROO LUNATIC ASYLUM.

Perhaps the saddest and most painful scenes it is possible to witness anywhere are to be found within the walls of a madhouse. The man or woman who could visit an institution of this kind without being affected by the sights to be seen must possess an unenviable strength of nerve and indifference to human suffering. Eastern travellers report that the Turks and Arabs treat the insane with marked consideration and respect, under the belief that they are divinely inspired. It is not difficult to conceive how such a belief originated amongst an ignorant, devout, and imaginative race with respect to such a mysterious, peculiar, and terrible visitation. To see a number of fellow creatures, most of whom seem to be in the possession of robust health and all their faculties except for that crowning one reason, to listen to their strange weird talk, and observe their conduct, arouses feelings of awe and dread, of pity and commiseration, of deep humility and self-abasement, which are never experienced in the same force under any other circumstances. It is a painful task to witness such a scene, and very few persons ever think of undertaking it except from a sense of duty in some shape. This, in all probability, is the chief reason why the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum was allowed to become such an accumulation of unutterable horrors before any effectual steps were taken to reform the abuses which had crept in. The only visitors were officials of one kind or another, who, as a matter of routine duty, went through the form of an inspection at stated times, and hurried away as soon as possible from the disagreeable scene. The public left the management to the Government and the officials appointed by them and were content to accept the word of these people that everything was being done which could be done for the unfortunate inmates until at last the horrible truth leaked out that nothing, absolutely nothing, was being done for them except locking them up in a foul den out of sight, and leaving them there to their own fearful devices, until the place became more like a pandemonium than a habitation of human beings. Of course, it was never the deliberate intention of any Colonial Secretary or other official person that the Asylum should become such a den of horrors. No one was, or pretended to be, more shocked than these officials when a searching inquiry finally revealed the truth—still, that miserable parsimony which was eternally begrudging any outlay or expense in connection with the institution. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of pounds were being recklessly squandered in other directions; the ignorant apathy of the public, and the apparent want of sufficient firmness and decision of character on the part of those entrusted with the management, produced the result just as certainly as though it had been a carefully devised scheme from the first.

With the present Acting Surgeon Superintendent in charge, and after the public exposure which has taken place, it is hardly likely that the Asylum will be allowed to again fall into such a state as it was found to be at the commencement of the present year. Still, the only sure way to prevent this is for the public to keep a vigilant watch over the institution and ensure that it is not neglected.

The most devoted and energetic of surgeon-superintendent is apt to lose heart in time if he finds himself left single-handed to battle with all kinds of obstacles, and the present Government seem just as much wedded to the " penny wise and pound foolish" policy as were any of their predecessors. An overactive zeal for economy by saving the " pickings" is, unless checked, almost certain to result in the striking off of necessaries, where it can be done with impunity, rather than superfluities, which are likely to be resisted. The present Government, like all previous ones we have had in this colony, are exceedingly pacific, not to say pusillanimous, and its action is influenced in a great measure by the probabilities of meeting with active resistance from any quarter, not by any simple rule of right. If the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum is made what it ought to be, and can be made,—a clean, comfortable, and healthy re-treat where the insane can be treated under the conditions most favourable to their recovery—it will be because the Government are urged on to make it so by the pressure of public opinion not from any voluntary action on their part. At present, the asylum is far from what it ought to be, and there are already symptoms of peddling, with makeshift expedients advocated by the Government rather than a thorough and sweeping reform as is needed.

We paid a visit to the asylum a few days ago for the purpose of seeing what had actually been done and what was proposed to be done, for the purpose of rendering the place more endurable, and a more fitting hospital for the treatment of the insane. We dropped in quite unexpectedly in the afternoon and were received very cordially by the Acting Surgeon-Superintendent, Dr Challinor, and shown over every part of the buildings

and grounds. The Doctor seems to take a real pleasure in pointing out what has been done, what he intends doing, and what he hopes to be able to do, in the way of improvements and reforms, and he is justified in feeling a little proud of his work so far. He, at all events, appears to be the right man in the right place at Woogaroo. He has evidently entered upon his duties con amore and made the treatment and cure of the insane an absorbing study, to which he brings that genuine kindness of heart, singleness of aim, and persistent tenacity of purpose, which rendered him such an intractable politician. He also seems to have a good first lieutenant in the present chief warder, Mr Jessie, who, in addition to his experience as a warder in the Melbourne Lunatic Asylum, evidently possesses the qualities of kindness, decision of character, love of order, and administrative faculty, so requisite in an officer of this kind. The Doctor and Mr Jessie have already effected many and significant improvements, as may be seen at once by anyone visiting the place, but having, as it were, to begin with chaos, the distance from thence to perfect order is very great, and the Government are beginning to discover that it is also costly to traverse. They have not yet gone the length of decidedly refusing to carry out the reforms to the desired consummation which have been commenced. Still, they are not showing the alacrity required by the necessities of the case and demanded by the public. The male wards are fearfully overcrowded, and although the number of patients continues to increase, we could not ascertain that any provision whatsoever was being made, or in contemplation, for increased accommodation for them. The building itself was not originally intended for occupation by patients, and therefore can never be made a very commodious and well-arranged asylum. Still, a great deal could be done to improve the accommodation at present provided. In the first place, the over-against without any unnecessary delay.

The building is a brick two-story one, and the upper-floor rooms are used as dormitories. These are being made as comfortable as circumstances permit. The ghastly white walls are being colored to a warm, cheerful tint, and the patients are provided with clean sheets, pillowcases, and coverlets to their beds, in addition to the blankets, or fragments of blankets, which before time were their only bed clothing. But the beds themselves are so thickly placed that it is difficult to walk between them. The occupant of one bed can, by merely stretching out his arm, reach over to the middle of the bed occupied by his neighbour on either side. Even in the daytime, when all the rooms were unoccupied, as they were at the time of our visit, those rooms in which the windows were closed to keep out the rain, had a close and sickly smell. When every bed is occupied, and the door closed, during a hot summer's night, the atmosphere must be terribly oppressive and injurious to health, not to speak of comfort. The dormitories, four on each side, if our memory serves us correctly, are divided by a narrow corridor. Each room is crowded with beds in the manner described, some containing as many as fifteen, and there is no means of separating the noisy from the quiet patients. A sane man of nervous and excitable temperament, doomed to pass a week in such a place, would inevitably become as mad as the maddest of his fellow denizens. The warders are no better provided for than the patients.

The chief warder, his wife and family, seven in all, occupy, and are obliged to reside, in a couple of rooms at the end of a range of wooden buildings near and at right angles to the main entrance. The remainder of the building is used as a doctor's office, a chief warder's office, and a storeroom. By taking a portion of the storeroom, the chief warder has added a small sleeping room to his quarters, and, by close packing, he and his family can now sleep there. But the door is close to the refractory yard on the one side, and the hospital on the other, every word uttered in these places and the language is sometimes horrible, is heard by the chief warder's wife and children, even when the door is closed, and there is no back-yard accommodation whatever. Another range of wooden buildings, running parallel to those already mentioned, forms the kitchen for the men, and a miserable little room at the end is made to accommodate four wardens. The size of the beds and their closeness together reminds one of the 'tween decks of an immigrant ship more than anything else, and the proximity to the kitchen, being only divided by a wooden partition, must render the room particularly lively at night with one kind of vermin or other. The remaining warders are accommodated in the same luxurious style within the main building. The ground floor of the main building comprises hospital dayrooms for patients, a warders' dayroom, and a dormitory for soiled patients. Currently, only eight patients are required to be placed in this ward. Under the old regime, patients were left to decide for themselves how they went to bed, and the result was that some, from perversity, and others from paucity of bedclothes or the like, went to bed without undressing.

The majority of the j patients did so, and some even carried the practice so far as to go to bed in their hats, as well as in their coats and boots.

Now that clean sheets, pillows and pillowcases, blankets, and coverlets have been provided for the beds, the doctor has had shelves installed on the corridor wall at the entrance to each dormitory, and the patients are obliged to undress and place their clothes on the shelves until morning. The poor, unfortunates not only understand and duly appreciate the change, but already there is a marked improvement in their habits. Cases of dirtiness are becoming less frequent, and men who would never rise to satisfy the calls of nature have latterly been known, during an attack of diarrhoea, to get up four times in a single night. A few of Mr Tiffin's self-acting earth closets have been supplied to the institution on trial and have been found to perform admirably. The presence of these in the rooms has undoubtedly contributed to the gratifying result.

The sooner a full supply of these is provided for every ward, the better. The old hospital, a miserable little shed quite unfitted for the purpose, has now been converted into a bath and lavatory, where a certain number of the patients are once a week provided with a very comfortable plunge bath, with ample supply of soap and water, and can get an extra swill from a shower bath to wash the soap off after. Indeed, baths and lavatories have now been fitted up in every ward, and in addition to a force pump, which supplies water from the creek, a new underground tank has just been constructed, capable of containing 32,000 gallons, to store the rainwater from the roof of the buildings, so that an ample supply of water will be provided. The present hospital consists of three adjoining rooms at the main entrance to the building on the left-hand side; they have recently been furnished with half-tester iron bedsteads, which are to be provided with mosquito curtains in addition to the sheets, coverlets, and other modern conveniences. The third room is darkened and designated for the use of patients with ophthalmia. The hospital might be rendered more comfortable by opening a door from the first room into the yard at the back, called No. 1 yard, which is currently unused, and by erecting a verandah over a recess in the building near the door. It is doubtful whether this will be done without some pressure being brought to bear in the proper quarter, the objection being the expense. The extra space and greater comfort, however, that would be thereby provided, fully justify the outlay, which, after all, would not be considerable. The day rooms for the patients are at the opposite end of the building from the main entrance and open onto a yard known as No. 2 yard. Initially, this was a small place enclosed by a tall hardwood fence that completely blocked everything except the sky. The cross fence has been removed, and the yard extended nearly to the river so that now the poor fellows can obtain a view of the river and a portion of the surrounding country, as well as having more space for exercise, and a much better supply of fresh air.

The yard is not so complete as it might be made, as it is still only provided with the old-fashioned privies, the wells of which are now full to overflowing. Half a dozen new earth closets are standing in the shed of No. 1 yard, apparently for the purpose of supplying the place of these privies, but they have not been put up as yet, although they have been there some time. To the right of the main entrance is the refractory ward and yard called No. 3 yard. This yard, which used to be a mudhole in wet weather, has been gravelled and made comfortable, and on the far side, a lavatory, bath, and shower-bath have been provided. The tank over the bathroom can hold 1400 gallons of water. Once a week, the refractories are stripped to the skin, thoroughly cleansed with soap and water in the plunge bath, and finished in the shower bath. The latter is designed to discharge only a small volume of water. Because the operation is performed in the afternoon, the water in the tank above is generally tepid and therefore not disagreeable. The only room in the building remaining to be mentioned is the warders' day and dining room.

A list is kept in this room of every patient in the hospital, and each warder has to enter a return on this list three times each day, morning, noon, and night, of every man under his charge. All the rooms are kept scrupulously clean, the men are supplied with clean clothes, and the beds with clean sheets and pillowcases once a week, and clean blankets, coverlets, and bed ticks as frequently as occasion requires. How this is managed is a mystery that we shall not attempt to fathom, but we were assured that it was done, although the laundry is only supplied with two ten-gallon coppers, the Government being such rigid economists. Mr Hodgson, in the first burst of public indignation on the discovery of the state of the asylum, took it upon himself to order a recreation ground of about four acres in extent to be fenced in; this has been done, and an admirable improvement it is, for the men can and do make holiday here every Saturday, playing cricket, quoits, and a number of games, to their evident gratification and permanent benefit. But there is no shady place for them to retire to except a temporary shelter contrived by the chief warder with some fragments of Osnaburg cloth utterly inadequate for the purpose. And what is worse, the laundry is within the fence, and the women employed are therefore subjected to some annoyance from the male patients when admitted to the recreation ground.

The other available amusements for the patients are cards, draughts, dominoes, and bagatelle, most of which are impossible due to insufficient room to play without interruption. Mr Hodgson, before leaving, presented the Asylum with a very handsome and costly bagatelle board, his private property, but the Doctor is obliged to keep it packed up in his store because there is no room in which it could be set up for play. The kitchen for this division of the Asylum is large and appears to provide ample accommodation for all requirements. The rations, too, are of excellent quality and ample in quantity, as the following dietary scale will show: Each patient receives daily 1 lb. of fresh meat, 1 lb. of bread, 1 lb. of vegetables, and 1 oz. rice, 1/2 oz.

Salt, 1 gill milk, 1/2 oz. Tea, 2 ozs. Sugar, 2 ozs. Maize meal for hominy, 2 ozs. Molasses, 1 oz. Soap and 1 oz. of butter to sick patients, or those who desire it. The weekly diet list is Sunday, roast beef, plum pudding, soup, vegetables, and tea; Monday, corned meat, potatoes, pumpkins, or other vegetables; Tuesday, stew and roast beef; Wednesday, mutton, roast and boiled, soup and vegetables; Thursday, roast beef and vegetables, and soup; Friday, mutton, roast and boiled, and vegetables; Saturday, roast beef and vegetables.

All the men who work are supplied with tea each day, and half a pint of beer each day. The work for the men consists of road-making, fencing, gardening, and other occupations of a similar character; and, from a daily return of the chief warder, we found that, out of 118 healthy patients, the daily average number of workers is over 76. Of 54 women, 38 are employed in useful occupations of one kind or another. These facts speak volumes in favour of the new management. In fact, all that is now required to render the male portion of the Asylum very comfortable, and tolerably complete, are the addition of a cottage-ward, capable of accommodating about forty patients; ten or eleven new cells for refractories; new quarters for the chief warder; better accommodation for the under warders; the removal of the laundry to a more convenient situation; and providing it with a better supply of utensils; and the erection in every ward and yard of the self-acting earth-closets. As yet, however, we could not determine whether any of these improvements would be implemented.

The Colonial Architect prepared plans for the whole. Still, when the estimates were submitted, some members of the Ministry shrank from the outlay. They thought it must be deferred until the public purse was better supplied with cash, an event which may happen in some succeeding generation, but is not at all likely to occur in this. In the female portion of the Asylum, a number of extensive improvements have been commenced, which, when completed, will leave little to be desired. Fortunately, they were well begun before the Government were taken with their last fit of economy and retrenchment so that they are in a fair way of being carried out. They will consist, in the first place, of a detached cottage ward of wood, two stories in height, with eight-foot-wide verandahs around three sides and most of the fourth.

This building is being erected on an elevated site, a short distance from the present female wards. It will command extensive views of the river, the village, and the surrounding country, including Mount Flinders in one direction, altogether a beautiful and pleasant site.

The ground floor will consist of a day room and a dormitory, 24 feet by 40 feet, and the remainder of the available space, both below and above, is divided into a lavatory and bathrooms, a nurses' room, sleeping rooms, and the like. Six of the sleeping rooms will be single ones, 8 feet by 9 feet 6 inches, for quiet and convalescent patients. The windows, instead of being barred, will be made with narrow panes in frames of wrought iron, in shape and size like the ordinary wooden sashes, from which, when painted, they cannot be distinguished.

This will eliminate the prison-like appearance of the place, which is now objectionable and depressing to patients. There will be no balcony to the upper rooms, but the windows will be fitted with Venetian shutters. The entire ward is to be enclosed by a substantial fence to provide a significant recreation ground of approximately four acres. Another improvement, which is also at a satisfactory stage of progress, consists of a large, well-appointed kitchen and offices. The ground floor is about equally divided. One part of the main building, consisting of a kitchen 20 feet by 20 feet, is to be fitted with a Russell stove capable of cooking for 80 persons, two large boilers, and other kitchen requisites. The other part, consisting of a large room, also twenty feet by twenty feet, is to be a warders' or nurses' dining and day room. It was initially designed to have the kitchen chimney so constructed as to admit of a fireplace for this room, but, by an unwise alteration, as we think, the fireplace in the dining room is to be dispensed with. Even in Queensland, and especially by the riverside, in winter, a fire in a room is necessary to render it all comfortable, and there is no reason why the nurses should not be made as comfortable as circumstances will permit.

In addition to the rooms already mentioned, there will be nurses' bedrooms, a storeroom, a pantry, & etc. At the front of the kitchen will be a verandah eight feet wide, floored, and at the back a ten-foot-wide verandah, not floored. Among the minor improvements in this portion of the institution are the enlargement of the yards and the construction of covered airing courts in the refractory yard. The main yard has been opened out nearly to the river, giving a splendid view from the upper part of it, and the refractory yard has been vastly extended in the opposite direction. The previously mentioned covered airing courts are an excellent scheme developed by the Doctors for dealing with refractories.

They consist of a series of courts 7 ft. 6 in. wide and about 20 ft. long, covered at the top, with the sides constructed of narrow hardwood boards fixed upright, allowing small spaces, much like an ordinary sawn-wood paling fence, only much higher. The boards are all nailed on from the inside, so that escape is impossible,

and the inmates cannot injure either themselves or the building. However refractory and troublesome a patient may be, all that is necessary is to put her into a strait waistcoat and lock her up in one of these courts for a few hours. She is there, secluded from the other patients, and at the same time has the benefit of fresh air and the exercise she prefers, without the necessity of being attended by a nurse.

One poor creature we saw there could never be taken out into the fresh air without two nurses to attend to her until these courts were constructed. Adjoining the courts are the refractory cells, or rather, they are in the process of removal from their old site to the bottom end of the new refractory yard. The female ward, although at present too crowded, is much better adapted for a lunatic asylum than those occupied by the men. One-half of the ground floor forms a day room or covered court, and along the sides are the sleeping rooms, each capable of comfortably accommodating three beds but now containing four. The chief nurse's cottage is also as crowded as the male warder's rooms, but when the new kitchen and cottage ward are completed, this objection will be removed. An objection has been raised to the site of the asylum, but we cannot agree with the objectors in this particular. There are all the natural features requisite to render the site both healthy and pleasant. By rearranging the fences, extending the yard, and other similar improvements, a good deal has already been done in this direction. The doctor appears to have been indefatigable in his efforts to effect improvements in this way and has been eminently successful. Indeed, the amount of valuable work accomplished by the patients alone in fencing, road construction, clearing, and beautifying the grounds over the last six or seven months is truly remarkable. A great deal more is under consideration and will, we hope, be carried out, as it involves very little expense and provides beneficial occupation for the inmates.

One of these is the construction of a wharf and approaches, partly done already, for the landing of Government stores and other requisites for the asylum from the river. Another is the laying out of a large garden, so that the inmates may grow their own vegetables.

A third is to beautify the grounds, and for this purpose, Mr Walter Hill has not only promised to furnish designs but also the requisite number of trees and ornamental shrubs. A very popular innovation has been introduced in the form of biweekly balls on Tuesday and Friday evenings, to which the neighbouring villagers are occasionally admitted, as well as all patients who can attend. One of the patients, a warder, and two visitors provide the music, and the dancing is performed with equal enthusiasm. The enjoyment is as real and significant as at the most fashionable ball in the grandest room in the colony. What is better still, it has been found to have a permanent beneficial effect on the health and spirits of patients. Sometimes visitors drop in from Ipswich, although it is ten miles distant; Brisbane is almost out of the question, being fifteen miles away, and attending one of the balls would necessitate staying in the village all night and returning to town the next day. The general impression left on our mind by this visit to the Asylum is that Dr Challinor is well qualified for the duty he has undertaken, is really and heartily desirous of conscientiously performing that duty both to the letter and spirit, and that he is well seconded by his present chief warder and chief nurse. That a wonderful change for the better has been effected in almost every direction, but that still more is required to be done to render the Asylum decently comfortable; and that the only way of securing this end is to keep public attention constantly directed to it. 

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