Life Inside Victoria's 19th-Century 'Lunatic' Asylums

From self-help, therapy and pills to websites, apps and outreach, the trappings of modern-day mental health treatment are modelled on empathy and agency. It's a different universe to 19th century offerings, when stigma and fear shaped institutional care and dysfunction was attributed to gender, class or sin.

The release today of almost 150,000 historical records from 15 former Victorian 'mental' asylums now lets us peer into the lives of our anguished descendants. Sourced from archival storage held by the Public Records Office Victoria and digitised by genealogy website Ancestry, the material (paywall) includes medical records, newspaper clippings, photos, letters, and suicide notes.

"A 19th century asylum would not have been a particularly enjoyable place to find yourself," says Jason Reeve, who sorted through the material as content acquisition manager at Ancestry.

Louis Perrody, Kate Dunphy, and Charles Wharton each found themselves there. Here is a glimpse of their lives inside.

Dunphy's was admitted to Ballarat Asylum in 1905 as a 32-year-old. Her patient file lists "dementia" and having been "peculiar all her life", the latter snippet presumably provided by her family, who could not rid themselves of her fast enough. Dunphy's peculiarities, according to her records, include trying to burn a church down "because she doesn't believe in religion", "cruel to animals", and "hears voicing saying her father and sister are mad" (which, when you read her letters you might agree with). The letters in Dunphy's file are testament to her desperation for contact, and her family's determination to wipe her clean from their lives. In one, she begs for clothes and shoes and asks why her father won't reply to her correspondence. In another, her late-father's lawyer informs the asylum she has been left out of her father's will entirely.

In a third letter in Dunphy's file, written by her sister on behalf of their father while he was still living, the asylum staff are asked to "destroy" any further letters from Dunphy to her family. “She is there and cannot return to her people and answering her letters would only aggravate her position for both sides,” it reads.

The last note on Dunphy record, written in 1922 when she was 49, notes that she suffers from "congenital mental deficiency" but is "clean, tidy, and quiet".

Admitted to Ararat Asylum in 1912 at age 36, Frenchman Louis Perrody also died inside, aged 59. Meantime, according to his file, he was “full of delusions he is Prince Leopold of Belgium” and periodically exposed himself to female patients (although claimed it was actually the reverse, which doctors were not buying). Perrody's delusions, drawn out in his numerous letters to “His Majesty the King Albert of Belgium”, are vivid, persistent and rambling. In one, he implores the king to help him find his "princess" mother and details a dramatic upbringing:

"Born in Spa, Belgique, under the most mysterious circumstances ever heard … I found myself living among a troop of acrobates or Ishmael peoples, constantly abused mostly mocked and scorned … till anxious to free myself from ill-treatment and tyranny, I eventually made off…"

In another, he begs the king over four pages to reinstate him into the royal family and to send money that would “contribute toward a decent upkeep”.

Perrody was filled with loathing for the asylum and his fellow patients. "I have had to experience the most cruel and diabolic of suspicions," he wrote to the king, aghast at his surroundings. "Stupidly, forcibly assimilated with criminals lunatics and sexual perverts of the most dangerous description."

He also complained bitterly to staff about the slowness of his requested extradition to Belgium, and asked doctors to help him join the war with Australian Imperial Forces. “I am certain," he wrote in yet another letter, "that the results of this request shall be attended with success and welcome by the public as an ample and honorable means of restoring downfallen Belgian Prince a new birth, a glorious reputation, a new Australian name."

Charles Wharton, a miner, was admitted to Ararat Asylum in 1872, aged 38. His patient file describes his condition as a one-month "attack" of "mania", with "delusion" as his "specific sign of insanity". He didn't want to be there, didn't believe he should be there, and appeared to have no idea how he had been committed in the first place. Three years in, after valiant efforts at protesting his sanity proved futile, Wharton managed to escape. He was caught and put into police custody, where he asked to go before a court to prove his sanity.

The Maryborough Standard speculated at the time on whether Wharton should be locked up at all, referring to the "the painful doubt whether there are not sane persons in our asylums". The paper added that Wharton was entirely "sober and rational" in court and showed "no sign of lunacy whatsoever". He claimed no memory of first entering the asylum (his file shows he was brought in by police) and was "anxious to go to work with some mates at Chinaman’s, who were quite satisfied to take him with them". Even the judge thought Wharton was perfectly fine, but sent him back to Ararat anyway, from where he was eventually discharged as "much improved" — 10 years later.