Gladesville Mental Hospital

Gladesville Mental Hospital officially opened in 1838 under the name Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum. It was located in the Sydney suburb of Gladesville, and was run by the office of the Colonial Secretary before the Office of the Inspector General of the Insane was established in 1876 and took over it’s management. It had several different names thorugh it’s operation, changing to Hospital for the Insane, Tarban Creek in 1868, the Hospital for the Insane, Gladesville in 1869, then Gladesville Mental Hospital in 1915, and from the mid 1960s to Gladesville Hospital. It closed in 1993, and its services were merged with Macquarie Hospital to become the Gladesville Macquarie Hospital.

Gladesville Mental Hospital is known to have provided ‘care’ to young people under the age of 18 from at least 1872. The Correspondence Files of the Colonial Secretary includes letters relating to the admission of children as young as six years old to Gladesville Hospital, some of whom had been transferred from other mental health hospitals, and a few who had originally been admitted to children’s homes or destitute asylums. These records, as well as other patient files from Gladesville Hospital, are held by Museums of History NSW (State Archives NSW).

This practice of admitting young people to Gladesville Hospital continued at least into the 1970s. It was mentioned in Submission number 318 to the 2003 Senate Inquiry into Institutional Care. The author of this submission describes being sent to Gladesville Hospital by the Child Welfare Department at age 15, as a result of depression resulting from traumatic experiences in childhood. At Gladesville he was placed on an adult ward with other adult patients.

Another former patient, Michael, was placed on an adult ward at Gladesville in 1969 when he was just 12 years old. He has described both good and bad memories from his time at Gladesville:

There were some good things about Gladesville Hospital and some bad things. The bad things included electric shock therapy and they would get away with it. They would always say to us “there is no point reporting it, no one will believe you.” I remember getting kicked in the stomach, and if I tried to report it I would be more likely to be put in the lock-up ward.

Gladesville was different from some of the other hospitals. They believed in therapeutic things, they started art projects and I would help with serving afternoon tea and cooking for patients, which I loved. We were a bit more interactive – when we had ward meetings we would bring up suggestions and sometimes our suggestions were listened to. One of the patients suggested we had a social and they listened to us and the patients organised it. We also had a talent quest that was recorded. They also ran community integration education workshops like sex education to prepare us to transition back into society. (as quoted in Gladesville Hospital Cemetery Memorial, Mental Health Commission of New South Wales, published 2019)