Necropolis DriveWintery rain slaps the window. I have the flu. I’m a linguist, a mechanic of language. I work with words and history. I’m lying in bed, reflecting on the word “sick.” Old English. Bringing me a cup of tea this morning before heading off to work, my wife Mia referred to me as “ill.” Norse. I shake free from the oblivion of fever momentarily to consider these two words, the cultures and wars behind them, the mystery of why I used one word and Mia used the other. I’m telling this story telepathically from a chamber of my mind unaffected by malaise and time.
The word “virus” comes from latin. I have passed the night waking drenched, body temperature sliding up and down, up and down, furnaced hair, pores gasping for breath. I can feel my heart beating. I press my fingers to the shallow point between my breasts. I’m still here. I am weak and tired and aching, but I want to get up. I stand, feeble, and pad around gingerly. This terrace house has become my world since I was benched after I lost it during a lecture. |
One minute I was talking about encultured subjectivity in translation work and the next I spaced out. I’m told that for several minutes I didn’t know where I was and that I grew agitated and couldn’t say my name. They sent me to hospital for a work-up, which all checked out fine, then the doctors declared me severely stressed and in need of rest. The head of School called me into his office: “elaine,” he said in his kindest voice, “you’ve had a series of blows. Why don’t you take three months and maybe consider talking to someone.” I didn’t have the energy to object, so now I spend my days in pyjamas for the first time since I had appendicitis as a child. I’m treating it like a sabbatical and plan to research a new project: a linguistic and cultural studies investigation of the letters of people declared mad; an idea inspired by the decision to look into the history of my great grandmother, who was committed to Callan Park hospital for the Insane in 1907. I want to work again, but I’m paralysed, weighed down by inertia and an inexplicable dread, and I can’t seem to get going. For now, this is how I fill the days: trying to read and stopping because my eyes hurt and I can’t concentrate. Watching wet midday movies starring forgotten actors in bad fashions (listening to the dialogue as if it’s in another language). Watching cooking shows and the Korean news, imagining I understand what the anchors are saying. Napping on and off, the blinds drawn and the noises of the day symphoning on outside the double-glazed windows. I water the plants. At some point, the heaviness sets in and I go back to bed. When I wake up again I feel the demon has gone and the last of the afternoon brightness tries to burst through the blinds. It’s sunny out. I should sit in the sun. I think of my mother. Where are you? Are you still you?
*
In the last five months, my mother died, then my father, then one of my oldest friends. Too many funerals. I remember this and roll away from the long needles of light, pressing my face into the pillow. My mother was one of those exhaustingly robust and active women till one day she called with the cancer news and three weeks later she was gone, just like that. My father endured diabetes for a decade, then he started having heart trouble. they found a blockage and scheduled the bypass. No private cover, he languished on the public hospital list for months. By the time his name came up his right toe had turned gangrenous and the operation was cancelled. he waited around for the toe to heal but it didn’t. the doctors spoke of fixing the toe then tending to the heart. They humour us. Finally, they amputated the septic toe and while he was laid up, staring at his mutilated foot, his heart began to fail. Diabolical. Six weeks later my childhood friend, Irene, was hit by a delivery van and killed instantly. thirty-eight. What is this life? A magician’s trick and us the doves.
*
I brew a cup of tea,steeping itstrong,staring out the window that fronts onto the street. the trees are bare and I can see, now that the curtain of stubborn autumn leaves has fallen, into the windows of the houses opposite. I’m looking directly into the stark, bold living room of a young professional couple who work opposite each other at a table, heads bent at their laptops, tapping away through the night. to the left of them there’s a house with windows permanently blacked out: the brothel. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I stand here. Now and then I catch sight of a petite young woman standing in the doorway smoking a cigarette, her heavy black hair shining in the glow of the streetlamp. Further up there’s a share house of Islamic students living in bare rooms set up no frills dorm-style. the young men come and go from the mosque around the corner, dressed in Djellaba with socks and slip-on sandals that they leave in the hallway of the share house upon entry. to the right of the young professional couple is my favourite house on the street: a humble abode, the home of an old Chinese couple. Next to that is the slate-grey home of a ruddy-faced man whose plastic blinds are always closed against the light.
The old couple, stooped and plump, are remnants from a time when Chinese settlers populated the area. they dress like turn of the 20th century mainland peasants. the interior of their tiny house is exotic, ancient, yellowed. every now and then when I walk by and the door is open, I get a good glimpse inside: it’s a dark rabbit warren of trashy treasures. A miniature portrait of Chairman Mao hangs above the doorless doorway between the living room, which opens to the street, and the kitchen at the back of the house. It’s a source of frustration that I can’t see into the bedroom upstairs from my window. the picture of Mao intrigues me—why did they come to Australia if they so revere him and consider themselves communists? I want to talk to them, to find out if they think the Ministry of State Security is watching and feel obliged to maintain the pretence of loyalty for fear of retribution. I want to hear their stories over cups of Jasmine tea.
The old couple, stooped and plump, are remnants from a time when Chinese settlers populated the area. they dress like turn of the 20th century mainland peasants. the interior of their tiny house is exotic, ancient, yellowed. every now and then when I walk by and the door is open, I get a good glimpse inside: it’s a dark rabbit warren of trashy treasures. A miniature portrait of Chairman Mao hangs above the doorless doorway between the living room, which opens to the street, and the kitchen at the back of the house. It’s a source of frustration that I can’t see into the bedroom upstairs from my window. the picture of Mao intrigues me—why did they come to Australia if they so revere him and consider themselves communists? I want to talk to them, to find out if they think the Ministry of State Security is watching and feel obliged to maintain the pretence of loyalty for fear of retribution. I want to hear their stories over cups of Jasmine tea.
*
In this state of entombed mourning, I’ve become intimate with the daytime rituals of my neighbours. the old woman tends her garden every morning and evening at sunset, and often at random times in between. the garden is nothing special—common plants haphazardly arranged in a small square of dirt sectioned off from the pavement around an enormous tree in front of the house—but the way it speaks to her immigrant need to create a home and her obvious attachment to it, moves me. the way she contemplates the leaves and shoots with great attention and affection.
I tried to talk to her the other day when I passed by as she was bent over picking out a weed. I stopped to compliment her on the garden. We spoke at increasingly tense cross-purposes in different languages until a conveniently passing bilingual Chinese-Australian stopped to help. the stranger, translating from Cantonese, explained that the old woman was fretting, under the impression I was objecting to the garden, worried the council might take it away. I explained that, no, I only meant to express my admiration. the old woman nodded a thank you and offered a small smile, but the fear didn’t leave her eyes. I find myself thinking more and more about the old couple, curious about how they manage without command of the english language. How do they shop? How do they catch a bus? Most likely they don’t leave this block: the Buddhist temple up the hill, the Chinese grocery store around the corner, with its peculiar, pungent smells, and the Mahjong rooms in run down houses with their constant clattering of talk and tiles.
I tried to talk to her the other day when I passed by as she was bent over picking out a weed. I stopped to compliment her on the garden. We spoke at increasingly tense cross-purposes in different languages until a conveniently passing bilingual Chinese-Australian stopped to help. the stranger, translating from Cantonese, explained that the old woman was fretting, under the impression I was objecting to the garden, worried the council might take it away. I explained that, no, I only meant to express my admiration. the old woman nodded a thank you and offered a small smile, but the fear didn’t leave her eyes. I find myself thinking more and more about the old couple, curious about how they manage without command of the english language. How do they shop? How do they catch a bus? Most likely they don’t leave this block: the Buddhist temple up the hill, the Chinese grocery store around the corner, with its peculiar, pungent smells, and the Mahjong rooms in run down houses with their constant clattering of talk and tiles.
*
When Mia comes home we co-exist with an awkward, alienated deliberation. I don’t discuss my neighbourhood musings. I know I’m shut down. She grows more distant every day and I struggle to care. She wants a child. She’s returned to the subject in tentative tones over the past two years—though she hasn’t raised it lately, given recent events. I suppose that each day when she comes home to find me still in my grief and perpetual pyjamas she must lose a bit more hope. I can’t put words to why I don’t want this. It’s an odd feeling, being so familiarwith words and no longer knowing how to speak. Not about anything that matters. I used to think myself articulate and I’m said to be an expert on language, but I’m lost in the body. I can’t see people. I feel sure that I have about me an air of death.
*
The earth has turned and the afternoon sun falls on the back deck, which overlooks the stamp-like yards of the terraces all around. I sit on the deck wrapped in a blanket, letting the sun rest on my face. I think about the dead people, but that’s beginning to feel less like the point: it now strikes me as miraculous that anyone remains alive.
*
Last night Mia implied I’d become robotic and dull, so today I visited the graves of my mother and father at rookwood Cemetery in the hope that it might help me feel something. It was disorientating, driving with cars buzzing past me like angry wasps. Irene was a Buddhist, so she was cremated and her ashes scattered to the wind off a cliff. It was a picturesque service led by a monk whose saffron robe stood out like a flame against a moody sky. Irene’s daughter, Jessie, gave a thin and shaky-voiced eulogy while her blond hair lashed her sad little face and it was unbearable. My parents’ funerals were, in contrast, Catholic and claustrophobic. During my mother’s service I sat in the front pew numbly wishing they’d bring back the latin and frankincense. At my father’s funeral I fidgeted in a daze. they’d purchased plots for themselves alongside the grave of my brother, who died aged two when I was eight. At the time I took their not purchasing a plot for me as a rejection, as proof they didn’t want me in the after-life and when I complained they explained that they’d bought plots for themselves because they didn’t want my brother to be alone, but that they were sure I would live a long and happy life and have a family of my own and that when I “passed over” I would want to be with them. Strange assumptions. All of them.
*
It’s an interesting cemetery. I was surprised to find myself coasting down a road signposted “Necropolis Drive.” Necropolis: city of the dead. I felt like a ghoul surrounded by ghouls. each structure a sepulchre, each body in motion, flowers in hand, a patient corpse. I thought of the term “bone-yard” and remembered that the old english for “bod” translated as “bone-house.” Bone-house—a wonderfully gothic image. I thought of how, in old english, there are many words for death. Death itself can be cwalu; deap ealdorgedæl; fordfor; fordweg; guddead; lifgedæl. But there are also lost poetic interpretations. Death as “separation of body and soul” is gástgedál and as “compulsory journey” it’s niedfaru. there’s another word for “forced dissolution” and another for “painful journey,” as in a bad death, but I can’t remember them.
Acres of multicultural dead segregated into vast lots according to religion and culture, like a deceased league of Nations. I passed the sombre, black granite tombstones of the Russians and Jews. I took a wrong turn and ended up in the sprawling fields of the Anglican dead, with many graves overgrown with spindly weeds. I turned back and passed a Vietnamese lot that was mostly vacant. the most beautiful of all the graves are those of the Muslims. they have about them a balance of care and release. the tombstones are proud and colourful, tended but not controlled, with lush trees and foreign plants growing up between and around them.
When I found the Catholics I pulled up. It was a bleak, windy day, fitting for a walk down the aisles of a cemetery. Crows flew overhead, perhaps an omen of rain. I drew my coat around me and set off through the lots looking for my family. Some graves featured statues of the Virgin Mary or photos of the dead. Many had crosses. there were tombstones of imposing marble with ornate inscriptions; other graves were barely marked. there was a weather-beaten wooden cross with the words “theresa toms—9 years” printed on it, and an antique timber crucifix, worn to an ashen grey, with “mum and dad” written in a child’s handwriting. there was a sunken grave, as if the body had departed even its final resting place.
I found my parents’ glistening new tombstones beside my brother’s. I stood for some time, keeping vigil before the loss, still-hearted. I wondered what would happen to the old Chinese couple when they died and who would tend to their end-business. I trudged back to the car against the wind, and sailed down Necropolis Drive and out into the peak hour traffic. Wedged in a jam at a set of lights, I began to feel faint. I rested my head down on the steering wheel and closed my eyes. When the light turned green and the car behind blew its horn I straightened up and kept driving.
Acres of multicultural dead segregated into vast lots according to religion and culture, like a deceased league of Nations. I passed the sombre, black granite tombstones of the Russians and Jews. I took a wrong turn and ended up in the sprawling fields of the Anglican dead, with many graves overgrown with spindly weeds. I turned back and passed a Vietnamese lot that was mostly vacant. the most beautiful of all the graves are those of the Muslims. they have about them a balance of care and release. the tombstones are proud and colourful, tended but not controlled, with lush trees and foreign plants growing up between and around them.
When I found the Catholics I pulled up. It was a bleak, windy day, fitting for a walk down the aisles of a cemetery. Crows flew overhead, perhaps an omen of rain. I drew my coat around me and set off through the lots looking for my family. Some graves featured statues of the Virgin Mary or photos of the dead. Many had crosses. there were tombstones of imposing marble with ornate inscriptions; other graves were barely marked. there was a weather-beaten wooden cross with the words “theresa toms—9 years” printed on it, and an antique timber crucifix, worn to an ashen grey, with “mum and dad” written in a child’s handwriting. there was a sunken grave, as if the body had departed even its final resting place.
I found my parents’ glistening new tombstones beside my brother’s. I stood for some time, keeping vigil before the loss, still-hearted. I wondered what would happen to the old Chinese couple when they died and who would tend to their end-business. I trudged back to the car against the wind, and sailed down Necropolis Drive and out into the peak hour traffic. Wedged in a jam at a set of lights, I began to feel faint. I rested my head down on the steering wheel and closed my eyes. When the light turned green and the car behind blew its horn I straightened up and kept driving.
*
I’m out on the deck with the blanket draped over my shoulders, and I can hear the faint cries of a dog. It sounds young. It’s a pitiful noise, a song of loneliness and pain.
*
The crying has continued—bar short spells of quiet—for two days now. I went for a walk this morning and tracked the wailing to the lane behind the slate-grey house. Peering under the timber fence I saw a German Shepherd pup sitting alone in the barren yard with no toys or shelter, just a bowl of water. I assume the pup had been acquired with the intention of its being a guard dog. I wriggled my fingers under the fence and the Shepherd ran to lick them, desperate for company. I settled in, cross-legged, and stayed for an hour. Sitting with the Shepherd I felt a pulsating connection, the first in a long time. I thought of breaking in and taking the pup, butI imagined Mia’s reaction. She would call it theft and remind me, in that lawyery way of hers, that I could be prosecuted. I thought about the word crime, then about the word neglect and the definition of crime, and about the way animals are considered property. You can’t go around taking other people’s dogs.
*
I woke up in the small hours and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and poured myself a whiskey. “Whiskey”: from the Gaelic. I strictly MeerA AtKINSoN measured two fingers as I make a maudlin drunk and I can do without the self-pity. Was it Benjamin Franklin who once said there were two hundred and twenty-nine terms for “drunk” in American English? I stood at the window and thought of the dog. It was cold and the Shepherd was silent, probably asleep, hopefully inside. I decided it was time to head back out to the State Archives to read the letters of mad people, or rather I should say people declared mad. Many of them weren’t any madder than you or me. I did some light research yesterday and managed to stay with it for two hours. It’s common knowledge that asylums were hellholes and that you didn’t have to do much in my great grandmother’s day to be locked up, especially if you were a woman. I found a Daily Telegraph article from a couple of years ago that said people were often deemed lunatics because of “domestic trouble,” “religious excitement,” “love affairs and seduction,” “nostalgia,” “sun stroke,” “overwork,” and “sexual intemperance.” once in, often there was no way out.
*
Her name was Florence. I know she was born in Kurri Kurri 1881, that my grandfather was born in 1904 when she was twenty-three. I know she was committed in 1907 at the age of twenty-six not long after giving birth to another child, a daughter named Anne. Florence had a post-partum reaction, and back then women with post-partum depression, psychosis, or mania, were institutionalised. I read one study that said women were also commonly admitted following childbirth for “having an illegitimate child/shame.” According to her records, Florence was diagnosed with “mania puerperal,” but was also noted as depressed and distressed. She never came home from Callan Park, dying of “lobar pneumonia and exhaustion” two weeks after admission. By family accounts, her husband, my great-grandfather, struggled to cope raising three children as a working class single father with the help of his older sister Agnes who herself had six kids. he went to war in 1915, like thousands of others, and after he was killed in action the children became wards of the state since without his wages there were too many mouths for Agnes to feed.
I can feel Florence, the traces of her, trapped in refrigerated history. I look up to the sky, draining my glass. A full moon shimmers, an orb covered by misty birthmarks.
I can feel Florence, the traces of her, trapped in refrigerated history. I look up to the sky, draining my glass. A full moon shimmers, an orb covered by misty birthmarks.
*
This morning I got up early and drove out to the Archives. I knew from my preliminary research that there were no letters on file from Florence; she died so soon after arrival there was scarcely time for writing letters. But there were letters from other women, women whose letters never got where they intended them to go, missives seized and filed in the casebook as evidence of mental state. When I arrived, the archivist had the lettersI had requested piled up in a column of manila files. I showed my ID, signed my name, and put on the surgical gloves.
Knowing that the process of going through the admissions books to determine the cohort for the new project would take several days, I decided to postpone that onerous task and ease my way in. I wanted to get closer to Florence by reading letters from women. I wanted to get lost in the letters without reading the corresponding admission information, to get a sense of the women without influence of how the formal records framed them, to hear from the women themselves before reading how others described them or what was prescribed for them.
I spent all day reading letters written in the twenty-year period up to Florence’s admission in 1907. I meant to study the language, yes, but mostly I wanted to get a feel for the women, for their histories and circumstances, and for the way they were making sense, or not making sense, of them. Some of the letters were suggestive of psychotic states, such as the woman who claimed to be Russian royalty, making reference to the “emperor of Australia,” but many were perfectly lucid with no discernible indication of mental illness. the letters were to husbands, mothers, friends, solicitors, and various authorities. Woman after woman claimed not to be mad. Many stated that they were imprisoned against their will for reasons they didn’t understand, and many detailed the horrors of the hospital, each in their own voice and hand.
Knowing that the process of going through the admissions books to determine the cohort for the new project would take several days, I decided to postpone that onerous task and ease my way in. I wanted to get closer to Florence by reading letters from women. I wanted to get lost in the letters without reading the corresponding admission information, to get a sense of the women without influence of how the formal records framed them, to hear from the women themselves before reading how others described them or what was prescribed for them.
I spent all day reading letters written in the twenty-year period up to Florence’s admission in 1907. I meant to study the language, yes, but mostly I wanted to get a feel for the women, for their histories and circumstances, and for the way they were making sense, or not making sense, of them. Some of the letters were suggestive of psychotic states, such as the woman who claimed to be Russian royalty, making reference to the “emperor of Australia,” but many were perfectly lucid with no discernible indication of mental illness. the letters were to husbands, mothers, friends, solicitors, and various authorities. Woman after woman claimed not to be mad. Many stated that they were imprisoned against their will for reasons they didn’t understand, and many detailed the horrors of the hospital, each in their own voice and hand.
*
Envelope addressed to Mr P. hooper,
41 Alexandra Parade Glasgow Scotland
41 Alexandra Parade Glasgow Scotland
Sunday 19. August 1906
My Dear John,
I pen these few lines to let you know that I am still alive. I am in an insane asylum but you know as well as I do we have been proved all right. I have been doing well for myself the past 19 years until the law took it on themselves to imprison me here for no provocation whatsoever. There is a scoundrel here who threatens my life and says he will keep me here all my natural term of life. John you know I have had very bad trials in this life and I hope the next will be better as my friends are all dead and I soon will follow for I am tired of this living hell being buried alive and tortured to death by enemies strangers to me and in a strange place. Dear John I have undergone some of the worst stages of cruelty in this place. I had never heard tell of such inhumane brutes since I came to this country I have (undecipherable) a prostitute and I am here under an assumed name they don’t know who they are dealing with but they very soon will know when I take the law into my own hands which I mean to do rather than suffer any more of this mortal bloody butchery. Dear John if I was to explain all I’ve come through and seen in here it will astonish you and many more the she devils that ought to be hung for the murder they have committed it’s a shocking state of affairs and yet this rotten government allows it to be done. Dear John I mean to give them a piece of my mind before very long...
I pen these few lines to let you know that I am still alive. I am in an insane asylum but you know as well as I do we have been proved all right. I have been doing well for myself the past 19 years until the law took it on themselves to imprison me here for no provocation whatsoever. There is a scoundrel here who threatens my life and says he will keep me here all my natural term of life. John you know I have had very bad trials in this life and I hope the next will be better as my friends are all dead and I soon will follow for I am tired of this living hell being buried alive and tortured to death by enemies strangers to me and in a strange place. Dear John I have undergone some of the worst stages of cruelty in this place. I had never heard tell of such inhumane brutes since I came to this country I have (undecipherable) a prostitute and I am here under an assumed name they don’t know who they are dealing with but they very soon will know when I take the law into my own hands which I mean to do rather than suffer any more of this mortal bloody butchery. Dear John if I was to explain all I’ve come through and seen in here it will astonish you and many more the she devils that ought to be hung for the murder they have committed it’s a shocking state of affairs and yet this rotten government allows it to be done. Dear John I mean to give them a piece of my mind before very long...
*
Envelope addressed to Master Bertie McDonald
C/o Mr. harold Perry, Myer tobacconist
George Street City Callan Park 28. 6. 1903
C/o Mr. harold Perry, Myer tobacconist
George Street City Callan Park 28. 6. 1903
Callan Park 28. 6. 1903
Dear Bertie
I wrote a letter to (undecipherable) about a month ago and I am very angry with him not coming and not writing to me and as for your father I have cursed his soul to hell. Now Bertie, you know very well that I am not out of my mind. They have destroyed all my things at Callan Park. You know Bertie dear that I was a good mother to you boys and a good wife to your father before I was put in Callan Park (Hell) and he and Dr Hall asked no questions about myself. Tell Mr Perry that in my opinion it is a good way for a man to get rid of his wife by putting her in Callan Park Hell. PS: keep this letter until I get home xxxx Kisses for Mary and Edward
I wrote a letter to (undecipherable) about a month ago and I am very angry with him not coming and not writing to me and as for your father I have cursed his soul to hell. Now Bertie, you know very well that I am not out of my mind. They have destroyed all my things at Callan Park. You know Bertie dear that I was a good mother to you boys and a good wife to your father before I was put in Callan Park (Hell) and he and Dr Hall asked no questions about myself. Tell Mr Perry that in my opinion it is a good way for a man to get rid of his wife by putting her in Callan Park Hell. PS: keep this letter until I get home xxxx Kisses for Mary and Edward
*
Εnvelope addressed to Sir Alfred Swan Police Court Sydney
June 1887
Callan Park Asylum
Callan Park Asylum
Dear Sir Alfred,
I am aware you are my husband and wish to ask you if you would see after our children and have them taken away from those people who are in no way suited to have them. You know exactly how they have treated me during my so called married life. I do not quite understand why I have been brought to Callan Park Asylum.I am here as a lunatic but do not think I am insane. Harold Jones, with his brother and sister came here bringing with them our children do you think it was correct on your part to allow this visit. How dare he visit me. You are aware what has transpired whileI was under his governorship and will not go into the sickening details. How is it I am detained? Have I to remain here against my wish. Will you accede to my request to have my our children taken away from them as quickly as possible. I hope you have acted rightly as regards my father and mother and all enquiring friends. I will speak to the matron and request Harold and his family not to visit me the horror and repugnance I feel for that man and his friends is unbearable.
Think of our children.
I remain
Yours Sincerely
Wife Elizabeth
I am aware you are my husband and wish to ask you if you would see after our children and have them taken away from those people who are in no way suited to have them. You know exactly how they have treated me during my so called married life. I do not quite understand why I have been brought to Callan Park Asylum.I am here as a lunatic but do not think I am insane. Harold Jones, with his brother and sister came here bringing with them our children do you think it was correct on your part to allow this visit. How dare he visit me. You are aware what has transpired whileI was under his governorship and will not go into the sickening details. How is it I am detained? Have I to remain here against my wish. Will you accede to my request to have my our children taken away from them as quickly as possible. I hope you have acted rightly as regards my father and mother and all enquiring friends. I will speak to the matron and request Harold and his family not to visit me the horror and repugnance I feel for that man and his friends is unbearable.
Think of our children.
I remain
Yours Sincerely
Wife Elizabeth
*
No envelope
Callan Park
Gaol Section No 1
April 27th 1893
Gaol Section No 1
April 27th 1893
To Dr Hall
Dear Sir/
Would you kindly ask the Darlinghurst Police, when I can leave this gaol and please ask them why I have been detained here so long. I came here last March in a cab with Eugene Whitelegge. I was told on my way in the cab, thatI was to come here to Callan Park for one month, for rest and change and board and residence. I have been treated in a very peculiar way, this is not board and residence. I am not guilty of any crime or offence, and have not been accused of any, or allowed to appeal in any court or answer any accusation thereforeIcant consider myself legally a prisoner although I have been kept here as one and made to do manual labour. All my thoughts are recorded in this place. I have been working like a black ever since I came and I think its about time, they allowed me to leave. I was legally married to Eugene Whitelegge and have three boys and I am legally born myself...
Dear Sir/
Would you kindly ask the Darlinghurst Police, when I can leave this gaol and please ask them why I have been detained here so long. I came here last March in a cab with Eugene Whitelegge. I was told on my way in the cab, thatI was to come here to Callan Park for one month, for rest and change and board and residence. I have been treated in a very peculiar way, this is not board and residence. I am not guilty of any crime or offence, and have not been accused of any, or allowed to appeal in any court or answer any accusation thereforeIcant consider myself legally a prisoner although I have been kept here as one and made to do manual labour. All my thoughts are recorded in this place. I have been working like a black ever since I came and I think its about time, they allowed me to leave. I was legally married to Eugene Whitelegge and have three boys and I am legally born myself...
*
No envelope
Callan Park
August 12th 1897
August 12th 1897
My dear mother
I am going to tell you my sad story I was shot in the head by W. Hecht and A. Hecht at Annandale and I nearly died with the pain in my head. Mother something has gone very wrong with my legs and Ican scarcely walk. Mother I have been in Callan Park ever since the 30th of November 1895 Mother do take me out I will work for you and then we will get a home I have had a wee baby and I suppose the matron has got it. My dear Mother did you ask Jane about your ruby and diamond ring do not forget to ask – I hope (indecipherable) will soon get a situation. Mother my poor wee birds were nearly killed the other morning by a beast of a dog.
With kindest love and best wishes dear Mother
I remain your loving daughter
Hannah Richards
I am going to tell you my sad story I was shot in the head by W. Hecht and A. Hecht at Annandale and I nearly died with the pain in my head. Mother something has gone very wrong with my legs and Ican scarcely walk. Mother I have been in Callan Park ever since the 30th of November 1895 Mother do take me out I will work for you and then we will get a home I have had a wee baby and I suppose the matron has got it. My dear Mother did you ask Jane about your ruby and diamond ring do not forget to ask – I hope (indecipherable) will soon get a situation. Mother my poor wee birds were nearly killed the other morning by a beast of a dog.
With kindest love and best wishes dear Mother
I remain your loving daughter
Hannah Richards
*
Woman after woman claiming not to be mad, stating their unjust imprisonment, testifying to torture, heartbroken, angry, missing their children, each in their own voice and hand. As I read, I felt compelled to seek justice, to somehow, beyond studying their words, honour their need and right to be heard, to help give voice to those so silenced by the system and the terrible power it had over them.
There were also letters about the women in the casebooks—correspondence between doctors, officials, and family members enquiring and sharing information that might be of assistance. In one letter, a husband wrote of the doctor who told him his German wife—3 years and 2 and a half months in Callan Park—was “melancholic and unduly depressed in her mind.” he noted that she refused to see him when he visited, that the malady “seems to be hereditary as one of her aunts from her mother’s side died in a German asylum” and his wife’s sister “died 5 years ago in Kew Asylum in Melbourne.” he also informed the doctors of his wife’s history of drinking and being intoxicated and of her fall from the staircase hitting the back of her head, and finally that she was “suffering besides from the change of life.” In another letter dated 1900, a father writes about his daughter, Mary, explaining that, four and a half years prior, she was left £100. She married a man who took her to Sydney and when she was taken ill he put her in the hospital and “deserted her, taking her money, and leaving her penniless, with her little boy.” the father explained that Mary’s sister was also in an asylum in Melbourne, that their grandmother (on their mother’s side) died in an asylum, and that Mary had two other married sisters who “act rather queerly sometimes.” the father finished by reassuring the doctors that despite this, all his daughters “are very fond of their children.”
I drove home, my mind swimming in stories. I was distracted over dinner and Mia and I barely spoke. of all I had read, what haunted me most was the fact that these heartfelt letters never reached their destination, that they were, like many of the women, put away and forgotten. In one letter, a woman named Gertrude George, fond of quoting the old testament (and most especially the Book of Isaiah), wrote that the hospital staff interfered with and intercepted her correspondence. there was no escaping the horrible irony of sitting there in a government facility, a hundred and twelve years later, reading those words in a letter that had indeed been intercepted and interfered with. I don’t know how much longer Gertrude was held captive in Callan Park, but I do know her outrage at the “insults and indignities” of the asylum and her forthright demand for “liberation at once” went unheeded for there they were in the annals, preserved as further evidence of her madness.
I slept fitfully and dreamt of Florence. I tried to imagine what kind of letter she would have written, and to whom. I would never hear her voice through cursive words on aged paper, could never know her thoughts during the two weeks between the time she was admitted and the day she died. And I could not be certain the shock and stress of her incarceration and the draughty halls and stony walls of the hospital weren’t responsible for the pneumonia, if that were even the true cause of death. Callen Park was opened in 1878, inspired by an American doctor of the enlightenment, one Thomas Kirkbride, and established on prime waterfront parklands. Its neo-classical buildings were reportedly made from sandstone quarried on site and designed to make the most of the winter sun and the summer breezes. But despite its beginnings as a progressive project, numerous well-meaning doctors and nurses, and some verifiable happy “patient” endings, the hospital became a notorious and overcrowded dumping ground for the criminally insane, mentally ill, returning soldiers with “shell shock,” the mildly depressed, poor, neurodiverse, the unconventional, and individuals otherwise deemed a problem proper society was best spared.
Five decades after Florence’s admission, the 1961 royal Commission into Callan Park Mental hospital revealed serious abuses, reporting sadistic acts by a cluster of staff members. When it closed in 2008 it was known as rozelle hospital, and the site is now occupied by health and education services. there seem to have been many different Callan Parks.
Mia had already left for work when I woke unsettled, as if I was shaking off a series of hallucinations. I lay still for a long time, staring at the ceiling with the covers pulled up. of the many lives the hospital housed in its various guises, Florence edna Middleton’s alone brought me into being, and if I could not quite bring myself to be thankful for that I could not deny the personal significance of the fact. there is only one photograph of her in the family albums; she sits unsmiling and dark-haired with a child upon her knee, and when I look in the mirror I can see something of her in my mouth and eyes. What can I offer in return? only this patchy tracking back to her from an unimaginable future that would surely shock her, only this distant homage to her life and death, and to the lives and struggles of other women of her day. Is it enough? It will have to be, for I’m up against time and other porous walls.
A truck roared down the street shaking me into the day, and soon after the Shepherd began crying. A charge of energy animated me and I knew exactly what to do. I could not break those women out of Callan Park, could not get their letters to where they meant them to go, but I could take this stand: I would not let that dog pass a lifetime as a neglected prisoner in the barren yard of that odious man.
I dressed and, without eating breakfast, took the hammer from the toolbox. I walked to the lane, found the fence, and scanned for signs of a loose nail. I found one with a protruding head and pulled on it with the claw of the hammer till it gave. I yanked on the plank to loosen the next nail then drew it out with the hammer claw, calculating that lifting up two planks should make enough of a gap for the Shepherd to squeeze through. Just as the second nail lifted I heard the squeaking of a gate and turned around to see the old woman emerging into the lane with a bag of garbage, which she dumped into a wheelie bin almost as tall as she was. She looked at me, a concerned, quizzical expression on her face. I started talking, trying to explain, and then I remembered she couldn’t understand me so I gestured in charades, making panty dog face with ears and wagging a hand-tail at my backside, followed by a down-turned mouth and fingers running down my face in pretend dog-tears. When I saw the old woman understood I went back to work on the fence, freeing up another plank. the Shepherd ran forward and wriggled through the opening into my arms. I spied the old man doing tai chi in a corner of their small concrete yard as I dashed past with the Shepherd nestled under my coat. there was no break in his concentration.
Once inside, the Shepherd sniffed, chewed on corners of furniture, and followed me everywhere, tail wagging, snapping at the bottom of my pyjamas with pin-like teeth. When Mia came home she looked at the panting puppy, said nothing, and smiled a little smile, and I remembered I love her.
There were also letters about the women in the casebooks—correspondence between doctors, officials, and family members enquiring and sharing information that might be of assistance. In one letter, a husband wrote of the doctor who told him his German wife—3 years and 2 and a half months in Callan Park—was “melancholic and unduly depressed in her mind.” he noted that she refused to see him when he visited, that the malady “seems to be hereditary as one of her aunts from her mother’s side died in a German asylum” and his wife’s sister “died 5 years ago in Kew Asylum in Melbourne.” he also informed the doctors of his wife’s history of drinking and being intoxicated and of her fall from the staircase hitting the back of her head, and finally that she was “suffering besides from the change of life.” In another letter dated 1900, a father writes about his daughter, Mary, explaining that, four and a half years prior, she was left £100. She married a man who took her to Sydney and when she was taken ill he put her in the hospital and “deserted her, taking her money, and leaving her penniless, with her little boy.” the father explained that Mary’s sister was also in an asylum in Melbourne, that their grandmother (on their mother’s side) died in an asylum, and that Mary had two other married sisters who “act rather queerly sometimes.” the father finished by reassuring the doctors that despite this, all his daughters “are very fond of their children.”
I drove home, my mind swimming in stories. I was distracted over dinner and Mia and I barely spoke. of all I had read, what haunted me most was the fact that these heartfelt letters never reached their destination, that they were, like many of the women, put away and forgotten. In one letter, a woman named Gertrude George, fond of quoting the old testament (and most especially the Book of Isaiah), wrote that the hospital staff interfered with and intercepted her correspondence. there was no escaping the horrible irony of sitting there in a government facility, a hundred and twelve years later, reading those words in a letter that had indeed been intercepted and interfered with. I don’t know how much longer Gertrude was held captive in Callan Park, but I do know her outrage at the “insults and indignities” of the asylum and her forthright demand for “liberation at once” went unheeded for there they were in the annals, preserved as further evidence of her madness.
I slept fitfully and dreamt of Florence. I tried to imagine what kind of letter she would have written, and to whom. I would never hear her voice through cursive words on aged paper, could never know her thoughts during the two weeks between the time she was admitted and the day she died. And I could not be certain the shock and stress of her incarceration and the draughty halls and stony walls of the hospital weren’t responsible for the pneumonia, if that were even the true cause of death. Callen Park was opened in 1878, inspired by an American doctor of the enlightenment, one Thomas Kirkbride, and established on prime waterfront parklands. Its neo-classical buildings were reportedly made from sandstone quarried on site and designed to make the most of the winter sun and the summer breezes. But despite its beginnings as a progressive project, numerous well-meaning doctors and nurses, and some verifiable happy “patient” endings, the hospital became a notorious and overcrowded dumping ground for the criminally insane, mentally ill, returning soldiers with “shell shock,” the mildly depressed, poor, neurodiverse, the unconventional, and individuals otherwise deemed a problem proper society was best spared.
Five decades after Florence’s admission, the 1961 royal Commission into Callan Park Mental hospital revealed serious abuses, reporting sadistic acts by a cluster of staff members. When it closed in 2008 it was known as rozelle hospital, and the site is now occupied by health and education services. there seem to have been many different Callan Parks.
Mia had already left for work when I woke unsettled, as if I was shaking off a series of hallucinations. I lay still for a long time, staring at the ceiling with the covers pulled up. of the many lives the hospital housed in its various guises, Florence edna Middleton’s alone brought me into being, and if I could not quite bring myself to be thankful for that I could not deny the personal significance of the fact. there is only one photograph of her in the family albums; she sits unsmiling and dark-haired with a child upon her knee, and when I look in the mirror I can see something of her in my mouth and eyes. What can I offer in return? only this patchy tracking back to her from an unimaginable future that would surely shock her, only this distant homage to her life and death, and to the lives and struggles of other women of her day. Is it enough? It will have to be, for I’m up against time and other porous walls.
A truck roared down the street shaking me into the day, and soon after the Shepherd began crying. A charge of energy animated me and I knew exactly what to do. I could not break those women out of Callan Park, could not get their letters to where they meant them to go, but I could take this stand: I would not let that dog pass a lifetime as a neglected prisoner in the barren yard of that odious man.
I dressed and, without eating breakfast, took the hammer from the toolbox. I walked to the lane, found the fence, and scanned for signs of a loose nail. I found one with a protruding head and pulled on it with the claw of the hammer till it gave. I yanked on the plank to loosen the next nail then drew it out with the hammer claw, calculating that lifting up two planks should make enough of a gap for the Shepherd to squeeze through. Just as the second nail lifted I heard the squeaking of a gate and turned around to see the old woman emerging into the lane with a bag of garbage, which she dumped into a wheelie bin almost as tall as she was. She looked at me, a concerned, quizzical expression on her face. I started talking, trying to explain, and then I remembered she couldn’t understand me so I gestured in charades, making panty dog face with ears and wagging a hand-tail at my backside, followed by a down-turned mouth and fingers running down my face in pretend dog-tears. When I saw the old woman understood I went back to work on the fence, freeing up another plank. the Shepherd ran forward and wriggled through the opening into my arms. I spied the old man doing tai chi in a corner of their small concrete yard as I dashed past with the Shepherd nestled under my coat. there was no break in his concentration.
Once inside, the Shepherd sniffed, chewed on corners of furniture, and followed me everywhere, tail wagging, snapping at the bottom of my pyjamas with pin-like teeth. When Mia came home she looked at the panting puppy, said nothing, and smiled a little smile, and I remembered I love her.
*
It was raining when the inevitable showdown took place. the Shepherd weaved messily around my legs as I crossed the road, umbrella in one hand and lead in the other, just as the man in the grey-slate house opened his front door, uncharacteristically late, and stepped out onto the footpath. I stopped dead. he looked down at the Shepherd and then at me, his face reddening to diffuse rouge. “Is that my dog,” he said in a flat way, as if it weren’t a question. Before I could answer, and with no credible answer at hand, the old woman, who’d been tending her garden protected by a cheap yellow rain-coat, stood up to face him, soiled spade in hand. he looked at her, then back to me, and then he turned and strode off toward his car. the old woman put the spade down as he drove off and knelt down to pat the Shepherd. “Dog,” she said in a thick accent, smiling, and it cracked the shell of sorrow around my heart.
By the time we reached the park it had stopped raining and the sun came out. the slow aroma of soaked earth rose up. the Shepherd looked up at me as if I’d made the world. I could feel breath entering and leaving my body, and in that moment I began to accept that I couldn’t erase my parents’ suffering or bring my friend back. But I could stay alive and I could bear witness. Maybe that matters. It mattered when the old woman stood witness for the Shepherd and me.
And I’ve made up my mind: the dog stays.
Author’s note: the excerpts are from letters contained in the NSW Government State Archives and records, but the names and some other potentially identifying details have been changed.
By the time we reached the park it had stopped raining and the sun came out. the slow aroma of soaked earth rose up. the Shepherd looked up at me as if I’d made the world. I could feel breath entering and leaving my body, and in that moment I began to accept that I couldn’t erase my parents’ suffering or bring my friend back. But I could stay alive and I could bear witness. Maybe that matters. It mattered when the old woman stood witness for the Shepherd and me.
And I’ve made up my mind: the dog stays.
Author’s note: the excerpts are from letters contained in the NSW Government State Archives and records, but the names and some other potentially identifying details have been changed.