Mental Health Museum, Porirua.
FULL NAME OF PLACE: Mental Health Museum (former F Ward), Porirua Hospital, Kenepuru Drive, Porirua.
TERRITORIAL AUTHORITY: Porirua City Council.
DISTRICT PLAN LISTING:
APPLICANT'S REGISTRATION RECOMMENDATION: Category 1
REGISTRATION GROUP RECOMMENDATION: Category 1
BOARD DECISION:
CRITERIA: 23(1) Architectural Historical 23(2) (a) (b) (g) (m)
COMMENTS:
The following comments are made in relation to the significance or value identified under Section 23(1) of the Historic Places Act 1993.
Note:
The nomination for the Mental Health Museum includes three items1, the main museum building (the former F Ward Annexe of Porirua Hospital), the courtyard for the former F Ward (actually a grassed lawn behind the building), and the sun shelter located in the courtyard. Together these items can still be regarded as an historic place in terms of Section 2 of the Historic Places Act 1993 which states, " "Historic Place" means - (a) (iii) Any combination of land and a building or structure...."
Comparative assessments of the architectural quality of the courtyard and sun shelter have been omitted under s23(2) (m) criteria as there is no material available for making a comparative study with these items, however these items were functionally linked to the former F ward from the time the ward was built, and were part of the occupational therapy of the place as explained under criteria 23(2) (g).
23(1) Architectural.
Museum:
Although built in 1910-15, the former F Ward Annexe building (present day museum) was designed in the Victorian Carpenter tradition. Style indicators are:
* Timber frame with rusticated weatherboard cladding.
* Corrugated iron hip roof.
* Double-hung sash windows with four and six lights.
* Window architraves with decorated fretwork apron and battens beneath the sill.
Sun Shelter: The F Ward Sun Shelter was built at the same time as the ward and located in a grassed courtyard beside the building. A contemporary photograph of the shelter shows it as it still appears today, i.e., as an open-sided structure consisting of a hipped roof of corrugated iron supported on wooden posts. Seats are built into the posts under the central portion of the roof. The base or floor of the shelter is in the form of a concrete slab stepped down to the ground. There are no stylistic references in this structure which is a simple utilitarian building.
23(1) Historical. The former F Ward building at Porirua Hospital originally functioned as a ward for the treatment of refractory (or disturbed) women patients.2 In some respects the place contained features of the so-called 'villa system'3 for treating curable patients where a degree of outdoor therapy was permitted. However F Ward seems to have occupied a half-way position in relation to this system; it was always officially referred to as a 'ward' rather than as a villa, and the place appears to have been either semi-detached or directly connected to the main hospital building as one of the main wards for accommodating people who were less likely to be cured of mental illness.
F Ward was therefore not a completely detached villa intended for non-disturbed patients as some of the cottages located near the gardens at Porirua Hospital were. Nevertheless the ward allowed patients to spend most of their time outdoors in fine weather,4 and this reflected the villa concept by promoting outdoor therapy with a grassed lawn and sun shelter for patients adjacent to the building There was originally security wire netting around the perimeter of the building. In this respect the place emerges as having had what might be called a quasi-villa status and is therefore, in this sense, all the more significant today for revealing something of the philosophy behind mental health care policies at the time.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE. The Mental Health Museum was assessed for historical significance under s23(2) criteria and was considered to be of Category 1 significance.
The following comments are made in relation to the significance or value identified under Section 23(2) of the Historic Places Act 1993. Criteria which can be considered under historical significance are 23 (2) (a); 23 (2) (b); 23 (2) (1); 23 (2) g); 23 (2) (k).
23(2)(a)
The extent to which the place reflects important or representative aspects of New Zealand history.
Mental health care in the Wellington area began in 1844 with the erection of a temporary wooden building for the insane attached to the Wellington gaol. Mental illness was considered to be a law and order problem because the Victorians saw it as upsetting the peace.5 This created a somewhat difficult precedent that remained well into the twentieth century; the problem of whether to treat the mentally ill as prisoners requiring constant supervision, or as individuals requiring therapy.
The Constitution of 1852 required the Provincial Governments to provide health services, and the first provincial lunatic asylum was built at Karori in 1854. Following a parliamentary inquiry into the mental asylums of the colony in 1871, accusations of cruelty and ill-treatment of patients at the Karori Lunatic Asylum led to the building of the Mt. View Lunatic Asylum which was opened in 1873 on the site of the present Government House in Dufferin Street, Wellington.6
Part of the intention behind building Mt. View was to take the management of asylums out of the hands of lay people and place it in the hands of professional medical doctors. Unfortunately problems of overcrowding at the new asylum led to new charges of cruelty towards patients with the doctor in charge (responsible for therapy) being unable to stop the superintendent of the hospital (responsible for the daily running of the place) from using violence towards difficult patients.7
With the abolition of Provincial Government in 1876, mental health care in New Zealand came under the control of a new government department called the Lunacy Department.8 Further parliamentary inquiries, spurred on by the problems associated with the running of Mt. View asylum, led to new policy initiatives resulting in the creation of Seacliff Hospital in Dunedin, completed in 1883, and Porirua Hospital near Wellington, completed and opened in 1910. With the building of Porirua Hospital, Mt. View asylum ceased operation.
The new hospitals were managed by Medical, as distinct from lay Superintendents, and introduced the concept of occupational therapy for patients through outdoor gardening. The new hospitals were therefore deliberately located in rural areas away from the distractions of built up urban areas. These changes were embodied in the Mental Defectives Act of 1911, which also facilitated a major policy initiative in the form of the villa system of management for mental hospitals. In this system the design of the main buildings of the new hospitals, while retaining wards for difficult or disturbed patients, introduced detached 'villas' for patients which were located away from the main building and which were intended to separate curable patients from the incurable.9
In its hey-day Porirua Hospital, as the latest embodiment of the new philosophy, represented all of the contradictions and aspirations of mental health care philosophy at the time. The main hospital building was demolished in 1943 leaving only F Ward as the last surviving ward of the old hospital.10 The uneasy relationship that, in hindsight, clearly existed between the need to keep patients under constant surveillance - the Victorian prison aspect of mental health care which was present in the former F Ward- and the need to facilitate patient care and therapy through outdoor activities and recreation, which can be seen in the courtyard and sun shelter aspect of the former F Ward, indicates the extent to which the present Mental Health Museum reflects important aspects of early mental health care practice in New Zealand. There are very few places left in New Zealand where the actual wards where mental patients were accommodated, can be seen as they were during their period of optimum use when the emphasis was on moral reform at one end of the spectrum, and physical restraint at the other.
23(2)(b)
The association of the place with events, persons, or ideas of importance in New Zealand history.
Events: Events of significance at Porirua Hospital can be seen in the context of mental health care in New Zealand, and would have involved patients from all wards. Notable among these events were two surgical operations for prefrontal leucotomy (a risky and infrequently performed operation by all accounts) by a United States Army neurosurgeon in 1942,11 and the introduction of electric shock treatment (ECT Treatment) to Porirua Hospital in March 1944.12 Porirua Hospital also had the first electronarcosis machine in the southern hemisphere installed in 1945.13 It can be reasonably assumed (although there is no data available) that after 1944 some disturbed female patients from F Ward would undoubtedly have had ECT therapy,14 and in this respect there would have been a direct association of the ward with important medical events in the treatment of the mentally ill.
Persons: Through the years there was a succession of notable Medical Superintendents at Porirua Hospital, among whom may be noted Dr. R. W. Medlicott who subsequently became Professor of Psychiatry at Otago Medical School.15 However the most outstanding medical doctor associated with Porirua Hospital, and with its villa system in particular, was Dr. Theodore Grant Gray, CMG.
Dr. Gray (1884-1964) was a Scot by birth and a graduate of the MedicoPsychological Association of Great Britain and Ireland.16 He was appointed to Porirua Hospital in 1911 as a Junior Assistant Medical Officer to the Medical Superintendent, Dr. Gray Hassell (Superintendent from 1890 to 1920).17 Dr. Gray indicated in his autobiography, The Very Error of the Moon (195 9), that there was a general apathy among medical men regarding the benefits of the villa system and a preference by them for maintaining the barracks-like system of the Victorian era. Against this lack of enthusiasm Dr. Gray set out to proclaim himself as a strong advocate of the villa system and of the principle of voluntary admission allowed for under the Mental Defectives Act of 1911. Dr. Gray maintained that the latter gave easier access to mental hospital treatment but it is equally clear that he believed that this treatment should be based on the clinically conservative philosophy of fresh air which the villa system promoted. Indeed, the Dictionary of Biography entry for Dr. Gray specifically mentions that he gave the villa system and voluntary admission precedence over the development of other forms of psychiatric services in his subsequent career as Medical Superintendent at Nelson and at Auckland and, from 1927, as permanent head of the Mental Hospitals Department.18
Dr. Gray worked at Porirua Hospital for only a short time (approximately 2-3 years), followed by work at Carrington and Seacliff hospitals before serving in the armed forces during World War One. Nevertheless during his time at Porirua Hospital he appears to have have also been instrumental in instituting the state registration of psychiatric nurses.19 The practical effect of this was to allow for female charge nurses to be appointed to male wards.20
Ideas: In general terms the former F ward at Porirua Hospital is associated with new initiatives in mental health care introduced by the mental Defectives Act of 1911. The new policy of voluntary admission, advocated by Dr. Gray a year after Porirua Hospital was opened in 1910, along with his conservative therapy for patients based on the benefits of fresh air, sunshine, regular habits, suitable diet, exercise, recreation, rest and sleep, ensured that at Porirua Hospital the villa system of mental health care was adopted there and by all major mental health institutions in New Zealand by 1912.21 There appears, nevertheless, to have been some initial doubt at the time about the merits of the villa system, and in this respect it is clear that what may be described as the quasi-villa status of F Ward, expressed in a significant way the manner in which both conservative and radical forms of treatment for patients actually worked in practice.
RECOMMENDATION: Category I, s23(2) (a) (b)
ASSESSED BY: Wayne Nelson, January 1999
PHYSICAL SIGNIFICANCE. The Mental Health Museum was assessed for physical significance under s23(2) criteria and was considered to be of Category 1 significance.
The following comments are made in relation to the significance or value identified under Section 23(2) of the Historic Places Act 1993. Criteria which can be considered under physical significance are 23(2)(c); 23(2)(g); 23(2)U); 23(2)(k); 23(2)(m).
23(2)(g)
The technical accomplishment or value, or design of the place.
DATE: 1910-1915
ARCHITECT: Public Works Department
STYLE CODE:19: Victorian Carpenter Tradition, simple colonial box building of the period 1840-1915.
DESIGN: The former F Ward of Porirua Hospital is a simple rectangle in plan, originally divided up inside into rooms for refractory (disturbed) women mental patients. The ward appears to have continued in this role from the time it was built until the early 1970s, becoming a museum of mental health soon thereafter.
Since becoming a museum, the surviving block of F Ward has undergone some minor modifications. The present building appears to be one of several wards which were physically located directly adjacent to the original brick main building of Porirua Hospital. A photograph of the hospital taken about 19 10 shows at least seven other buildings in the vicinity of F Ward.22 With the exception of the former F Ward, these other buildings have been replaced with modem structures which are part of the Wellington Nurse Training School. The original main building was demolished in 1943, and F Ward is the only surviving building of the original hospital containing an original ward. Inside the former F Ward some of the rooms have been modified to accommodate new office space and museum displays, but otherwise the original patient's bedrooms, nurses' office, and dental surgery have been left as they were during their period of optimum use.
From a purely stylistic point of view the former F Ward building has nothing to recommend it as an example of Victorian Carpenter tradition architecture. However it would be a mistake to assess the design significance of the place in these terms. Its real significance lies in the function for which the place was designed, and how this was exemplified in the plan. In an era when drugs were not administered to patients suffering from mania, physical restraint and (from 1944) electric shock treatment was the main method of control used. In this respect the design of F Ward is, in some of its parts, similar to the plan and design of Police lockups of the same period. Lockup planning was standard in format and originated in the 1880s from the Colonial Architect's department.23 Its characteristic features are clearly evident in F Ward and may be seen in the barracks-like plan of the place and in the double-skin diagonal board doors to some of the bedrooms called "seclusion"24 rooms. These rooms were in effect prison cells for disturbed patients with a high stud of about ten feet, and having horizontal timber match-lined walls. Windows were covered over but had ventilation provided either by wire grilles over the windows or by holes drilled through the walls high up in the ceiling cornice A contemporary nurse described part of the layout of F Ward as follows:
"Seclusion was not a room. Seclusion was a state. You didn't put someone in a room without filling in the required forms, even in those days, and it was only from sun up till dark. They were not allowed to be in that same room for more than 12 hours. So if they were in that room all day they would have to go into another room for the night and that room would be aired and scrubbed by the nurses. A patient was put into a room and the door was locked. There were big wooden shutters over the windows and at the top there was a wire grille. The lights were away up high. The door didn't have a handle on the inside."25
In general terms the overall plan of F Ward, as noted above, was that of a long barrack-like building with a straight passage or corridor running down the middle with the bedrooms, including the seclusion rooms and a room for dental care, arranged on either side. This appears to have followed a convention for the wards of psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand, and a similar arrangement of rooms can be seen in the plans for the Karori Lunatic Asylum (18 54-1873) and the Mount View Lunatic Asylum (1873-19 10).26
Although a timber, rather than a brick building, the former F Ward at Porirua also followed a standard Victorian/Edwardian design where the wards of a hospital were incorporated into wings extending back from a main central block .27 At Porirua the main central block, built in 19 10, was a large brick Gothic Revival building similar in size, planning, and style to Seacliff Psychiatric Hospital in Dunedin (completed 1883) and Sunnyside Psychiatric Hospital in Christchurch (main block completed 1891). Wings often folded back at right angles to enclose space for courtyards, or "airing" space, which often presented views of the countryside for patients, or led to villas which were part of the treatment .28 The former F Ward at Porirua appears not to have been completely detached, but seems, rather, to have occupied a half-way position as a ward of the main hospital with some villa-like facilities in the form of a grassed lawn for patients (curiously termed a 'courtyard') and an outdoor sun shelter.
If one is to identify the representative significance of the place in these terms, it is necessary to understand that by the time Porirua. Hospital was built the medical profession appears to have been in two minds as to whether or not it was preferable to maintain a prison-like environment in mental hospitals, or create more humane conditions where mental patients could have a measure of freedom through outdoor therapy. Eventually the latter view came to be accepted and formed the basis of the Mental Defectives Act of 1911 which attempted to change the image of mental illness, and in principle advocated the villa system of treatment for protecting some patients from being accommodated with the chronically insane. Gardening was emphasised as part of the therapeutic treatment of patients. As a consequence all of the major mental hospitals in New Zealand from 1903 on, introduced extensive gardens where the patients worked as part of their cure.29 The former F Ward at Porirua appears to have been linked in to this concept in some degree, but (perhaps due to the type of patients accommodated in the ward) fell short of gardening therapy with the patients being simply left to sit around outside most of the day.
In summary, despite the relatively humble architecture of the former F Ward at Porirua, it does represent in microcosm the evident tensions which existed in Edwardian mental health care planning, from the institutional prison aspect of the place in terms of the straight corridor and seclusion rooms designed for the observation and control of difficult patients, to the relative freedom of the villa concept evident in the courtyard and sun shelter outside. Understood in these terms, the place would have to be seen as having special and outstanding features which can only be partially seen at two other registered places in New Zealand (see below).
23(2)(m)
Such additional criteria not inconsistent with those in paragraphs (a) to (k).
There are 20 hospitals listed on the national register. Two of these were built as mental asylums, Carrington Hospital, Auckland, 1865-1877, Category I, and Sunnyside Hospital, (Mountfort Buildings), 1871-91, Christchurch, Category II. The Mountfort block at Sunnyside, is now empty but still standing in 1999. Carrington Hospital has functioned as an architectural school of design administered by UNITEC Institute of Technology since 1994, but has successfully retained the original planning of the place in the adaptive reuse to which the building has been put. One can still, therefore, obtain a good idea of early New Zealand psychiatric health care planning in these two places. Nevertheless the fact that there is only two registered places of this type left, and three if the proposed Mental Health Museum at Porirua is registered, argues for a degree of rarity so far as places associated with mental health care in this country are concerned. The contrast in building materials between Carrington, Sunnyside, and the former F Ward at Porirua enhances rather than detracts from our understanding of the practical building issues facing health planners ninety years ago.
A third place in the category of places associated with mental health care is the Lyttelton Gaol site (Category 1) which began with a gaol for the mentally ill and debtors in 185 1. The associations at Lyttelton, however, are with the site only and with G.E. Seager who later became the Superintendent of Sunnyside Hospital. The present-day ruins of the gaol are those of a later structure erected in 1873 and are not particularly helpful in understanding Victorian psychiatric health care policies. A fourth place which would have helped in understanding these issues was Seacliff Hospital in Dunedin designed by architect R.A. Lawson. When it was completed in 1883 it was the largest mental hospital built in New Zealand. Seacliff was demolished in 1959.
In purely architectural terms this leaves only Carrington and Sunnyside as comparative examples with which to compare the Porirua Hospital Mental Health Museum. Both Carrington and Sunnyside were oustanding architectural tour deforces in their day, and still stand as examples of grim Victorian institutional planning on the giant scale in solid brick and plaster. The main brick building of Porirua Hospital, built in 1910, was identical in size, style, and planning, but this building was pulled down in 1943 after sustaining damage in the Wairarapa Earthquake of 1942 .30 Apart from the original service buildings of the hospital which were retained after 1942 31, this left the former F Ward building as the only surviving remnant of the original hospital wards.
In these terms one would have to say that although the Porirua Mental Health Museum building is, comparatively speaking, of a different architectural character to that of the original Porirua Hospital main building and former Carrington and Sunnyside hospitals as described above, it is nevertheless more or less complete and as it was during its period of optimum use, whereas the wards at Carrington and Sunnyside are not.
As a part of the original health care facilities of Porirua Hospital the former F Ward conformed to a plan for such institutions where wings were added to allow patients a greater measure of freedom from surveillance. In its developed form the concept eventually led to the building of free-standing villas for patients. Both aspects were represented at Porirua Hospital right from the beginning and can be seen in the former F Ward, the sole survivor of the original plan. In this respect the place is not simply representative of mental health care planning as it was ninety years ago, but is special and outstanding insofar as examples of such specialised facilities are rare in New Zealand today.
RECOMMENDATION: Category I, s23(2) (g) (m)
ASSESSED BY: Wayne Nelson January 1999
1. Wendy Hunter Williams, Out of Mind Out of Sight. Porirua Hospital, 1987, p.40
2. Williams, ibid., pp.54: 177
3. Ibid., see p.63 for a description of the villa system.
4. Ibid., see pp. 177-184 for a first-hand description of the ward by a nurse who worked there in the 1940s.
5. Ibid., pp.3-5
6. Ibid., pp.5-36
7. Ibid., pp.30-34
8. Ibid., p.28
9. Ibid., p.63
10. Ibid., p. 193
11. Ibid., p. 164
12. Ibid., pp. 164-65
13. Ibid., pp. 165-67
14. Ibid., pp. 164: 215
15. Ibid., p. 155:166
16. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Volume Four 1921-1940, pp.205-206
17. Williams, ibid., p.72
18. Dictionary of Biography, ibid, pp.205-206
19. Ibid., p.206
20. Williams, ibid., p.63
21. Dictionary of Biography, ibid., pp.205-206
22. Williams, ibid., see the photograph with F Ward in the foreground, p.40
23. Wayne Nelson, Register of Historic Police Stations and Lock-Ups in New Zealand. N.Z. Police Centennial Museum, 1994, Section 5 & Appendix
24. Williams, ibid., p.181
25. Ibid., p 181
26. Ibid., p.7; 24 27. Treadwell, Jeremy Therapeutic Landscapes, Papers from the 15 th annual conference of SAHANZ, Melbourne 1998. p.393
28. Treadwell, ibid., p.393
29. Ibid., pp.389-394
30. Williams, ibid., p. 193
31. Ibid., p. 193
© NMPT, Wellington, NZ