First Superintendent at Sunnyside

Press, 26 December 1987, Page 19

First Superintendent at Sunnyside

Edward William Seager: Pioneer of Mental Health. By Madeleine Seager. The Heritage Press, 1987. 300 pp. Illustrations by Graeme King. $26.50. (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) Edward Seager was a colourful person who, in the history of the treatment of mental illness, was well ahead of his time. He was a man who considered that mental patients profited from drama productions in which they participated; he had what he called his “family” of patients singing in choirs to the background of an organ specially constructed by his brother; he constantly worried about patients’ comfort and dignity, and had an “Asylum Journal” with articles, poetry and riddles by staff and patients. He deserves a place in

history. The late Madeleine Seager, a granddaughter married to a grandson of the subject of her biography, has produced a labour of love full of research and admiration for a Canterbury pioneer, whose name has so far only lived on in the Edward Seager School in the grounds of Sunnyside Hospital in Christchurch. All her painstaking research, however, conveys only a blurred facsimile of what a man her grandfather must have been. Another illustrious granddaughter was Dame Ngaio Marsh who seemed to inherit some of her grandfather’s dramatic flair and passionate dedication. Arriving in Canterbury in 1851, Seager became a jailer at Lyttelton and Sergeant of Police involved in such episodes as the capture of McKenzie the sheep stealer. The early part of the book has snippets of the foundation of Christchurch and Lyttelton and its prominent few citizens. The problems of drunkenness and disturbed immigrants are recounted, including the episode of the jailed sailors who lifted up their fragile prison from inside and walked it away. One can gather from this period that Seager was a highly moral man condemnatory of transgression, idealistic, and a good civil servant, but, above all, humanitarian. Already

at this point, and continuing throughout the book, are constant financial accounts and lists of items of furnishings interrupting the flow of his career.

Seager became convinced of the need for an asylum from his experience at Lyttelton with the insane and became the first

Superintendent of what became Sunnyside Hospital in 1863 and remained there until 1887. He was a Victorian with "compassion, interest in all things of the universe including astronomy and the occult, all leavened with music and his own style of humour.” To the “lunatics” he showed “dissolving views” of astronomical illustrations and comic slides and acted with them in their entertainment items. He had married Esther Coster and moved to the Lincoln Road Asylum with her and four children, a family which quickly grew to 10 in number, and Esther acted as Matron for the whole of his stay there. His rapidly increasing insane population were fully occupied in the gardens and on the farm, and with the women making

clothing and doing the washing. Cultivating the soil, he believed, was veiy efficacious in treatment, as were religious services and amusements. A medical officer was called in for emergencies. In reports over the next decades conditions at Sunnyside were always described as being highly satisfactory, both by official inspectors and hospital visitors. Sea-bathing at Sumner was popular as was the annual patients’ ball. While many chapters are occupied in the book with criticisms of the smaller asylums in other parts of New Zealand, there was little fault to be found with Sunnyside until 1878 when it was considered that patients had too much liberty and the Inspector of Asylums commented that the treatment of "habitual drunkards, whether male or female, was hardly ever followed by the slightest benefit and their presence in an asylum was irksome and disagreeable to themselves and others.” The need for new buildings had, by 1877, become pressing with the original leaking and dangerous wooden structures falling apart. The Superintendent and his wife and family lived in the centre of the asylum itself at this stage. The building which had been designed to accommodate 60 now contained 119 patients.

In 1880, after a great deal of pressure on the authorities for a variety of reasons, it was decided to appoint a medically qualified Superintendent to Sunnyside. It is a

little unclear from the book why this was seen as being of prime importance; the treatment of mental illness at that time was rather by

control and moral stimulation than by medical means, although there were medical fashions that swept the world from time to time. A Dr Walter E. Hacon was duly appointed and suddenly Seager was reduced to the position of looking after the hospital store for a few years and then later being promoted to be put in charge of male employment on the farm. Dr Hacon complained shortly after his appointment of the difficulties ol Sunnyside with the huge proportion of chronic, incurable patients. He did, however, introduce a new procedure of military drill which occurred daily and the parade was inspected by the Medical Superintendent much to the admiration of the Inspector who found everything neat and tidy and in places assigned to them.

What seems to have occurred is that Seager looked on the hospital patients as his “children,” calming and soothing them and forging them into a small community. Sometimes he even used a form of mesmerism as a hypnotic to quieten the anxious and aggressive, always encouraging small signs of progress and a close relationship with all the patients at the institution. With the increase in numbers Dr Hacon conducted his administration largely on the English style of asylum with a great deal more regimented, circumscribed life, that would later appeal to another Medical Superintendent of a psychiatric hospital, Dr Truby King, who designed a Plunket system to develop healthy soldiers for the Queen. Not long after the Medical Superintendent’s arrival, Seager negotiated the possibility of a pension for the end of his civil service career, but in 1887 he and his wife were asked to “retire” when he was 59, without the compromise of another position, and a once-only payment of 268 pounds. He went on to take a position as usher of the Supreme Court in Christchurch until finally giving up work. In that position he ensured the Judge had clean towels and kept order in the Court. After his wife Esther died Seager, heartbroken, lived for a while with one of his daughters and eventually moved to a nursing home in Papanui Road where he died at the age of 95 in 1922. His was an important life in

Canterbury and Madeleine Seager has opened it up for the markers of a much fuller picture yet to be written.