LUNACY SCANDAL

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17610, 13 November 1922, Page 2

LUNACY SCANDAL

NEW SOUTH WALES CASES. STAETUNG . ALLEGATIONS.

For a long time the Lunacy League of New South Wales has been working under difficulties to secure an enquiry into the Lunacy Act and the various institutions under its tegis, says a Sydney paper. Although the society has secured the release of a number of allegedly insane victims of the lunacy laws, the only enquiries, it says, have been departmental white-washing affairs, in which their real objects have been side-tracked. It now asks for a Koyal Commission or an independent tribunal to consider allegations and evidence of injustice and malpractice. It is freely stated that ex-patients of the asylums are deterred from making complaints or pressing their charges, because there is in force a system of intimidation which haunts the victim with the spectre of secret detention in an out-of-the-way institution. People, whose names can be supplied, say they have been threatened that if they complain they will be put under lock and key again. Kather than pay that price for publicity, they remain silent. Dr. G. S. Thompson, who supplies affidavits and facts to back up the general insertions which he mado at a meeting, states that he is frequently consulted by perfectly sane men and women, who are going in terror from threats that they will be confined in an asylum. A domestic quarrel is often followed, it is stated, by an attempt to have one party or the other put away in the asylum. Dr. Thompson says "this can be done on two medical certificates. Thus are many people deprived of their liberty after but a casual examination by two individuals. There if often conflict of medical opinion about the condition of patients certified to be mad. In the case of Mr Courthope, who was confined at Callan. Park, 12 doctors gave him a certificate of sanity, though he had been diagnosed as suffering from general paralysis of the insane—an incurable disease. He is now practising law in Western Australia. "On affidavit this man says he was nearly choked, and had ribs broken in Callan Park.'' Patients state that the favourable form of dealing with recalcitrant patients is known as "kneeing." This consists of-getting a patient down, and kneeling on him, meanwhile, throwing the body about in a manner that often results in the fracture of the patient's ribs and internal injuries. No bruises show. Eeferring to the statement of Sudakoff that Chidley had committed suicide, Dr. Thompson Baid this was not true. "Mr Chidley died, it was said, from injuries to his head, received in a fall, but the Lunacy League does not believe that this was so. Chidley stated that rather than return to the "living death'' of Callan Park, he would commit suicide. While at the Darlinghurst Reception Hotise he secured some paraffin, and, pouring it over himself, put a match to his frock. He was burned dreadfully, but he was allowed to lie for five days at the Reception House without dressings for his wounds. He was not even put to bed. Dr. Thompson attended him, and urged his immediate removal to a hospital. He was sent to Callan Park. He never came out alive."