And your petitioners humbly pray ...
150 years of petitions in Victoria
Lunatic Asylum (1858)
To the Honorable The Members of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria in Parliament Assembled
The Petition of the Undersigned Landholders Householders Residents of Kew and its Immediate vicinity
Respectfully Sheweth
That Your Petitioners are owners of Property and Residents in Kew and the adjoining neighbourhood and that your Petitioners have learned with astonishment and alarm that a portion of the Land marked upon the Government Maps as set apart as a Village Reserve in immediate proximity to their Properties and abode has been selected as the site of a National Lunatic Asylum
That Your Petitioners would urge upon your Honorable House that by the Establishment of such an Institition on the ground described to have been set aside for Village purposes on the Original Government Plans their Properties will be much injured, and their comfort and happiness in their homes seriously affected
That Your Petitioners will view the erection of a National Lunatic Asylum on the Village Reserve at Kew as a breach of public faith, because in investing their Capital in the purchase of the Ground adjoining the Reserve they calculated that the Government would act in accordance with the information afforded your Petitioners by the Government Plans, and that your Petitioners regard the Institution of a National Mad House in their Neighborhood as offensive and injurious to the feelings and interests of the whole of the inhabitants of the District.
That your Petitioners do not believe it will be asserted that the site in the Reserve at Kew is the only one which (with increased Railway facilities) is at the disposal of the Government and therefore they press their Petition upon the consideration of your Honorable House in the full reliance that it will maintain, in its integrity, the compact on the part of the Government by appropriating the Land in question to the only purpose for which it was originally set forth to the Public-namely a Village Reserve
That Your Petitioners believe that by the appropriation of the present Reserve for the purposes of a Lunatic Asylum the public interest will be most injuriously sacrificed in the large pecuniary value of the Land so occupied.
That Your Petitioners from the results of certain Land sales in the neighbourhood of the Village Reserve in question have ascertained the value of the Land in the Reserve to be at least Two hundred pounds per Acre, and that by erecting such an Asylum on any part of the Reserve the remaining land will be rendered comparatively valueless.
That Your Petitioners also believe that if your Honorable House will institute a further enquiry it will find land in every respect equal for the objects of such an Institution at the value of one pound per Acre and that the adoption of such a course will be less hurtful to public feeling, and by far less injurious to the interests and comfort of any class of their fellow Colonists.
Your petitioners therefore pray that your Honorable House will not permit their properties to be depreciated, their comfort and happiness to be lessened, the public interest to be sacrificed, and the faith of Government to be compromised, by the erection of a National Lunatic Asylum on the land known as the Kew reserve.
And Your Petitioners will ever pray to
Ordered to lie on the table
9th Nov 1858
John Martin
Clerk of Assembly
Referred to the Public Lands Committee
17th Nov 1858
John Martin
Clerk of Assembly
Laid before the Committee in “Melbourne Public Lands”
18th Nov 1858
R. Sorell
Nov 10th 1858
No order made
C.K
PROV, VPRS 3253/P0, Unit 96
