The 61HA expanse of the Park

After the Kirkbride complex at Callan Park started as a hospital for the mentally ill in the 1880s, patients held at Gladesville Asylum and other psychiatric institutions in Sydney were routinely redirected to it. Kirkbride had been carefully planned by the hospital’s collaborators, architect Barnet and superintendent Manning, and purpose-built from the start to hold a maximum of 666 patients. But such was the demand for its services that the hospital’s patient population had reached close to 1,000 within three years of its opening (1888), and continued to grow unchecked. By 1960 Kirkbride contained something close to 2,000 patients resident there and in the adjoining auxillary wards.

Unfortunately, political support for care of the insane from around the turn of the 20th century started to diminish, with predictable adverse consequences for mental institutions generally. Without a much-needed injection of capital expenditure from government—a reflection of public apathy about the plight of mentally ill at the time—the essential new building infrastructure required to keep pace with the increasing demands of psychiatric care was stifled. Hospitals like Callan Park, with fewer resources and too many patients, were forced to resort to medical treatments (surgical, chemical and mechanical interventions) to cope with the sheer numbers [M Lewis, Managing Madness. A Social History of Insanity 1788-1980]. The financial stringency occasioned by the Depression and World War was a further blow to hopes for increased funding for mental health.

During the first half of the century there were the occasional, tentative inquiry into the deteriorating conditions in state psychiatric institutions, but these, like the 1948 Public Service Board enquiry, never really went anywhere. In terms of the overcrowding at Callan Park, measures that were at best only stop-gap were employed from time to time, eg, additions to the existing buildings at Kirkbride and Garryowen … which were architecturally out of step with the original Barnet and Manning designs [Peter Reynolds and Ken Leong, “Callan Park Mental Hospital”, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/callan_park_mental_hospital, viewed 07 December 2015].

There were some positive signs, finally, in 1955 with the Stoller Report which forced the Commonwealth Government to provide funds for mental health care in Australia. 1958 marked a watershed year for mental health with the passage of the NSW Mental Health Act, the first significant legislation in the field of institutional psychiatry for 60 years (replacing the 1898 Lunacy Act). The 1958 Act, in an long-overdue enlightened step, legislated that insanity should no longer be viewed as a criminal offence. It also made provisions for welfare officers to do follow-up visits of patients after their release. A further consequence of the Act was the construction of North Ryde Psychiatric Centre, the first such NSW institution in 35 years!

Within three years of the new act a Royal Commission on Callan Park was undertaken (in 1961), the first detailed investigation into mental health in NSW for 60 years. The Royal Commission was in part triggered by revelations of staff delinquency and dereliction of duty made by Dr Harry Bailey (newly appointed medical superintendent of Callan Park) in early 1960. The reformist-minded but over-zealous Bailey impetuously went over his superior’s head in presenting a report directly to the head of the PSB. Bailey’s act of ‘whistle-blowing’ concerned allegations of staff cruelty to and neglect of patients, and the discovery that staff were withholding food and groceries from patients with the purpose of profiting from these stolen supplies.

Bailey’s action provoked a revolt amongst the workers with staff members of the Nurses Association and the Hospital Employees Union taking industrial action. Bailey, who was later universally reviled for his central role in the horrific Chelmsford Hospital “Deep Sleep Therapy” scandal, was ‘scapegoated’ and pressured by the government into resigning the following year. But, with the newspapers demanding answers, the health minister was forced to initiate a Royal Commission into Callan Park, which confirmed many of Bailey’s charges but found others to be grossly exaggerated [“A history of medical administration in N.S.W. 1788-1973] Public Health Administration: Chief Medical Officer – Director General of Public Health, (2003),http://www0.health.nsw.gov.au/resources/aboutus/history/pdf/pt2cmo.pdf; Stephen Garton, ‘Bailey, Harry Richard (1922–1985)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bailey-harry-richard-12162/text21793, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 12 December 2015].

The Commission’s predictable findings brought to the attention of the public what was commonly known by anyone who had regularly visited the facility. Callan Park (Kirkbride Block) was too large, too overcrowded, with low standards of accommodation. The orientation at Kirkbride was custodial rather than rehabilitative, there was evidence found of cruelty, neglect and corruption … Callan Park had, as it is standard to say today of such matters, failed in its “duty of care”, it had become “a byword for all that was bad in mental health care” [Tanner Architects, Callan Park Rozelle Volume I, Conservation Management Plan, www.callanparkyourplan.com.au].

One of the specific findings of the Royal Commission into the Callan Park complex identified a group of male nurses and attendants who were bashing, starving, verbally abusing patients, as well as neglecting their state of cleanliness. Sadistic nurses were a recurring feature of Callan Park, going back to the institution’s infancy, ex-patients had testified as to the cruelty meted out by these “mechanical, inhumane creatures” [“Sydney’s shameful asylums: The silent houses of pain where inmates were chained and sadists reigned”, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 3 March 2015].

The incidences of illegalities and misdemeanours unearthed by the Royal Commission hinted at the deep, structural problems that had plagued Callan Park since its early days. Bailey’s actions in exposing malpractice at Callan Park, though injudicious in method (Bailey secretly taped a conversation he had with NSW health minister Sheahan), ensured that the institution’s activities stayed in the public’s mind and in the media’s gaze in the years after 1961.