On 10 January 1906, the Senior Medical Officer at the Kew Idiot Asylum, Dr AA MacFarlane, was on his usual 'morning round' of the institution when he came upon Nurse Dowden assaulting patient Gwen Evans.¹ MacFarlane recorded the incident in Gwen's case history, where it stands as a rare example of a documented instance of abuse. The exact nature of the assault he witnessed remains unclear, however, because an inkblot obscures significant parts of the entry. The difficulty of knowing exactly what happened in this instance is emblematic of the methodological and interpretative problems of researching abuse from archival sources. Despite these difficulties, such research is crucial to understanding the history and legacy of institutions. Abuse was a significant, though often hidden, aspect of institutional life, as the frequently harrowing stories of people who lived in institutions reveal.² The purpose of this article is to show the kinds of archival records and methods researchers might use to investigate institutional abuse in the absence of such testimony and what these can (and cannot) reveal about a particular institutional world. It uses as a case study the first twenty-five years in the history of the Kew Idiot Asylum, now better known by its later name, Kew Cottages. Abuse - ill-treating or acting injuriously toward an individual - can take many forms. The focus of this article is on verbal and physical forms of 'ill-treatment', such as swearing at or striking patients.

A page of the case history of Gwen Evans featuring the inkblot.
PROV, VPRS 7419/P1, Unit 1, 10 January 1906, p. 42

Opened in May 1887, the Kew Idiot Asylum was Australia's 'first specialist institution' for people with intellectual disability.³ Dr Edward Paley, Victoria's Inspector of Asylums, first suggested the establishment of a separate institution for 'idiot children' in 1875, when fifty-four such children were living in the colony's 'lunatic' asylums. (At this time people with intellectual disability were commonly referred to as 'idiots' or 'imbeciles', in part to differentiate them from 'lunatics', as people with mental illness were known.) In Paley's view, establishing a distinct institution for children had several advantages: it would allow them to be separated from the 'adult insane' with whom they were living, a situation contemporaries considered harmful to the children's welfare; it would create space in the overcrowded asylums for the mentally ill; and it would make it possible 'to initiate a system of industrial training and occupation' for the children.⁴ This desire to establish 'an institution for the care and training of feeble-minded children' reflected the 'positive optimism' about the developmental potential of people with intellectual disability then prevalent.⁵ However, it took until 1887 before such an institution was successfully established.

Nicholas Caire, Idiot Asylum, Kew, c. 1900, photograph.
Courtesy of the Kew Cottages Historical Society

For many families, the Idiot Asylum provided a release from the physical work and emotional distress of caring for their intellectually, and often physically, disabled children. A child's violent behaviour, particularly toward other children, was the reason some families committed their son or daughter. Others sought institutionalisation to protect their children from potential dangers. Difficult economic circumstances seem to have precipitated some admissions, while other families hoped for improvement in their child's condition.⁶

Built in the grounds of the Kew Lunatic Asylum, the Idiot Asylum was administratively part of Victoria's Department of the Hospitals for the Insane (after 1905 renamed the Lunacy Department), in turn a Branch of the Chief Secretary's Department.⁷ The few institutional records that survive from the Asylum's early history primarily concern the legal and medical management of patients. Among the most significant of these for a study of institutional abuse are patient case histories and the institution's Medical Journals. The administrative relationship between the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums and their position in the public service hierarchy saw the creation of a handful of other relevant records. The most useful are the books in which the Inspector-General of the Insane (the administrative head of the Department under the minister) and Official Visitors noted their visits. Prior to the 1940s, the same Visitors were responsible for inspecting both the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums and wrote their observations in a single volume. Very few of the Lunacy Department records are helpful in researching abuse in the early part of the institution's history. While the Department kept a Register of Complaints against Staff in all the asylums, the only extant volume dates from 1908. Much of the correspondence between the Asylum and the Inspector-General's office is lost. However, correspondence from the Inspector-General to the Chief Secretary and the Department's Annual Reports to parliament contain occasional references to institutional ill-treatment.