There Was Once an Asylum
This site not only provides an overview of mental health history and its implications for Goodna, but also explores the complex relationship between memory and history.
There are stories we may never know, but this site uncovers the history, revealing the layers of understanding that underpin the present.
It is done in a way that honours the patients, clients, and the people.
Alexandre Arsène Girault
Alexandre Arsène Girault (9 January 1884 – 2 May 1941) was an American entomologist specialising in the study of chalcid wasps.
An eccentric and controversial figure, Girault was also a prolific and dedicated entomologist. He published more than 325 papers and described over 3000 new taxa from Australia. Alexandre Arsène Girault was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on January 9, 1884, to Joseph Bonaparte Girault and Elizabeth Frances Girault (née Goodwin). He is named after his grandfather, Arsène Napoleon Alexandre Girault de Saint Fargeau, one of the founding faculty members of the US Naval Academy. Girault earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1903. From 1904 to 1907, he was employed as a field assistant for the United States Bureau of Entomology. During this time, he was involved in research on plum curculios (Conotrachelus nenuphar), Colorado potato beetles (Leptinotarsa decemlineata), and American plum borers (Euzophera semifuneralis). In 1908, he moved to Urbana, Illinois, where he worked as a laboratory assistant to the Illinois State Entomologist. From 1909 to 1911 (still in the employ of the Illinois State Entomologist), he worked as an assistant in entomology at the University of Illinois, studying bedbugs (Cimex spp.) and Colorado potato beetles.
In a 1908 paper, Girault vividly described an encounter with bedbugs in a Cincinnati, Ohio, hotel room in 1907. He was reluctant to sleep on the bed after discovering the bedbugs as he entered the room a little after midnight. He eventually decided to keep the lights on and to lie across the bed without getting under the covers. He slept fitfully, constantly waking up to find bedbugs scurrying away after feeding on him. At 3:30 AM, he eventually gave up and slept on a rocking chair. Despite the discomfort, he systematically described the behaviour and developmental stages of the bedbugs, as well as the general conditions of the room. He attempted to search for insect eggs and moults.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, the Government of Queensland requested the services of an entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to determine the cause of the failure of sugarcane crops in Queensland. Highly recommended by his superiors, Girault moved to Australia in 1911. He worked for the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES) in Nelson (now Gordonvale, Queensland) at an annual salary of £400. His main area of study during his BSES was the cane beetle (Dermolepida albohirtum), a pest of sugarcane. Still, he also studied parasitoid wasps (his area of expertise and personal interest), as well as some true bugs and thrips. Here, he met and married Elizabeth Jeannette Pilcher in 1911. Their first child, Ernest Alexandre Girault, was born on November 3, 1913.
In 1914, Girault returned to the United States to resume work for the USDA. He worked in Washington, D.C., on the systematics of Chalcidoidea. During this time, his wife gave birth to their second son, Lawrence Joseph Girault, on August 27, 1915, and their first daughter, Helen Joan Girault, on August 10, 1917. He strongly disliked the city, describing it as a "bedlam" and "a place unfit for scholarship.
Yet during this time, he also finished his major work, a 900-page monograph on chalcid wasps. Girault returned to Australia in 1917 to work as an assistant entomologist in the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock. He and his family lived in Indooroopilly, Brisbane, where his second daughter, Daisy Lydia Girault, and third son, Frank Stephen Girault, were born (on July 19, 1925, and May 23, 1928, respectively).
He never returned to the United States, though he retained his American citizenship. Girault's employment in Australia was irregular, including periods of unemployment. This was exacerbated by adverse economic conditions in Australia resulting from World War I.
His work at the Department of Agriculture and Stock ceased in 1919 but resumed again from 1923 to 1930.
At times, Girault was forced to work in jobs unrelated to his field of expertise out of necessity (including working as a shopkeeper and as a rock-breaker in a stone quarry). He also increasingly became disillusioned with economic entomology (which also prompted his departure from the United States). He began to include acerbic criticism, poems, and essays in his papers, which led publishers to reject his work and resulted in frequent clashes with superiors and colleagues. His love for pure taxonomy, however, led him to publish numerous papers privately.
Most of these were short notes and often printed poorly. His wife contracted tuberculosis while in Australia, leaving her bedridden for years until her death on September 9, 1931. Devastated, Girault's behaviour increasingly became erratic and paranoid.
One afternoon, around 1936, Girault started shouting at their neighbours for hours for no apparent reason. This continued into the night until someone finally called the police, who took him away. Two days later, his sons, Ernest and Frank, drove him to Goodna Mental Hospital.
He was admitted to the asylum several more times. He was on leave from the Goodna asylum in the care of his son until 9 May 1940, when he was admitted to Dunwich Benevolent Asylum on North Stradbroke Island on 16 July 1940, where he died on 2 May 1941 at the age of 57.
His cause of death was officially listed as paraphrenia and exhaustion.
He was buried at Dunwich Cemetery and now lies in an unmarked grave.
Eddie Gilbert
Eddie Gilbert never got to play cricket on the oval at Wolston Park Mental Hospital, but he was drawn there one night as if by the call of an imaginary crowd. The man who dismissed the mighty Don Bradman for a duck in a Shield match at the Gabba in 1931 - the fastest bowler The Don ever faced - was a patient at Wolston Park for 29 years before dying in a muted haze of alcohol-induced dementia in 1978.
In 1937, Eddie married Edith Owens of Pialba. In 1949, Eddie developed signs of mental instability and was admitted to Goodna Psychiatric Hospital 1949 where he remained until his death on 9 January 1978. Leading sportsmen, including Sir Donald Bradman, attended his large funeral in Cherbourg. At his peak, the lightning-fast bowler from the Aboriginal settlement of Cherbourg was one of the best-known sportsmen in the country. When he died, he was all but forgotten and hadn't held a cricket ball for years. Yet there was that one night when he went missing from his dormitory, and nurses finally found him standing in the darkness on the pitch as if hearing the crowd chant his name just one last time. Admitted on 8 December 1949, he remained there until his death on the 9th of January 1978. Leading sportsmen, including Sir Donald Bradman, attended his large funeral in Cherbourg.
Eddie Gilbert was perhaps the only hero detribalized Aboriginals had in the 1930s.
Edward Benjamin Franz
The story of Edward Benjamin Franz is one of sadness, and of his family one of resilience, courage and of never giving up in the hope of a better tomorrow. Much is told about the lives of the German Missionaries, but little about the lives of their children.
On 30 December in the year 1844, Maria Caroline Dorothea (nee Weiss) and German Missionary Friedrich Theodor Franz welcomed their newborn son, Edward Benjamin, into the world. The years passed, and Ben Franz married Amelia Walthardt in Brisbane in the year 1867. Of their children, Maurice Bernard was born at German Station and Hilda at Hendra (quite possibly at “Heimat”). Their other children were born outside of Brisbane, possibly at Stony Creek, Caboolture, as Ben Franz was listed in the Qld PO Directory of 1874 as living there.
Ben Franz had been a squatter, a selector, a grazier, and a timber-getter, and the family were the first European settlers at Mount Mee. Standing at today’s Mount Mee lookout, one looks out to the Franz farm. Ben Franz owned and leased land, including Portion 117, a pastoral lease of Durundur No. 2, and parts of portions 110 and 12, in the county of Stanley, parish of Byron. Clearly, Ben Franz worked hard. Timber getting into the virgin bush of the D’Aguilar Range would not have been easy. Something happened to Ben Franz that led to his admission to Woogaroo (later renamed Goodna Mental Asylum), and he appears to have been an inmate of that institution for a considerable period.
Amelia and the children, seven in total, had to soldier on as best they could. Ben’s upkeep had to be paid for, and the children had to be educated and fed. Clearly, Amelia Franz was a woman of substance, was held in high regard in the district and just got on with it.
In late 1889, some of Ben Franz’s land holdings were court-ordered to be sold off to pay for his maintenance and the maintenance of Gertrude, the youngest child. By 1892, Amelia and the children were living on Portion 117, closer to Delaney’s Creek. Despite financial and physical hardships, Amelia ensured her children received an education. On September 5, 1892, daughter Helena became the first Head Teacher of the newly opened provisional school at Delaney’s Creek, and three of the Franz children were founding students.
To add to Amelia’s hardship woes, in 1892, Ben and Amelia’s eldest son, a young man with his future in front of him, got himself in a spot of difficulty with the law for a common occurrence at the time, but one that resulted in jail time if caught.
Ben Franz joined the great majority on 27 July 1898, and his mortal remains were laid to rest in the grounds of Goodna Mental Asylum.
The family remained at Delaney’s Creek with Amelia still farming until her death on 18 July 1905. Amelia was laid to rest at South Brisbane Cemetery.
Descendants of Edward Benjamin Franz are invited to attend the "All Small Schools" event on Saturday, 20 May 2023, at the Woodford Community Centre. One of the schools to be celebrated will be Delaney's Creek. Other schools that the Franz children attended, Dahmonga (now Mount Mee) and Durundur Road, now Woodford) will also be celebrated on the day.
John Henry Nicholson
John Henry Nicholson (1838-1923), teacher and writer, was born on 12 June 1838 at Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, the eldest surviving son of John Nicholson, orientalist, theologian and linguist, and his wife Anne, née Waring. He was a nephew of Mark and William Nicholson, a sponsor and friend of Leichhardt. Educated privately and at Croft House Academy, Brampton, Cumberland, he was sent at 16 on a sea voyage but left the ship on reaching New South Wales, where, among various occupations, he tried whaling and gold prospecting. After a brief return to England, he settled in Queensland in 1859, opening a private school in Toowoomba. Soon afterwards, he moved to Warwick, where he tutored until 1863 and then started another private school. On 3 March 1860, he married German-born Anna Wagner; they had no children but adopted a daughter. In May 1865, he joined the Board of General Education and had charge of National schools at Nundah in 1865-68, Springsure in 1870-76 and Enoggera in 1877-85.
Between 1867 and 1878, he produced three small books of miscellaneous prose and verse, the first two under the pseudonyms of 'Tadberry Gilcobs' and 'Salathiel Doles'. These books were largely facetious and of little literary merit, the best of them being The Opal Fever (Brisbane, 1878). A volume of undistinguished verse in 1879 was followed by The Adventures of Halek (London, 1882), an allegory, inspired partly by Pilgrim's Progress, of a man's development from sinful worldliness to ideal goodness. Although it attracted considerable praise from some critics and underwent further editions in Brisbane in 1896 and 1904, Halek was never a success, and its sequel, Almoni (Brisbane, 1904), fared no better. Both works had fine sentiments and a dignified, harmonious style, but were too remote from everyday life to have much impact.
In April 1885, Nicholson resigned from government service and, in 1886-90, operated a private school at Enoggera. Always somewhat eccentric and liable to bouts of melancholia, he spent most of 1891 in the mental hospital at Goodna. Thereafter, he continued teaching, mostly privately and at Brisbane, although from September 1893 to December 189,4 he was with the government as head teacher at Cambooya. In February 1898, he was appointed registrar of births, marriages and deaths at Nundah. In 1901, his wife died, and on 7 July 1905, he married another German, Anna Cordes, who had been attracted to him while translating Halek and had come from California to join him. Three months after the marriage, Nicholson was readmitted to the Goodna mental hospital and remained there except for occasional intervals until he died on 30 June 1923; his wife and daughter survived him.
Nicholson's other works included two plays, a humorous mathematical booklet, various prose and verse, and some popular patriotic songs. The English composer, John Ireland (1879-1962), was his nephew. His literary achievement was small, but in his time, after J.B. Stephens and Essex Evans, he was one of the leading writers in Queensland.