Mary Jane Dean nee Whitmore
When writers and poets depict the character of Australian pioneer women, they are resilient, stoic and strong. They face severe hardship with courage, give birth to children in the meanest of circumstances and support their families through bushfire, drought and all the disasters which are features of our country. However, was this always the case?
The following report appeared in: The Brisbane Courier, Monday 2 June 1881.
Our Gympie Correspondent sends the following sad chapter of casualties… accident of a very serious nature happened on Wednesday morning to a little girl, 6 years of age, daughter of Mr Thomas Whitmore, residing on Deep Creek Road. She went out with her father on to a piece of land partially cleared, where a bush fire had been burning, and sat on a hollow log not knowing that it was on fire. Her clothes became ignited and she would have burnt to death but that her father threw his coat around her and extinguished the flames. She has been very severely burnt about the lower part of her body but there are hopes of her recovery.
The little girl was Mary Jane Whitmore and it is a privilege to finally give this lady a voice.
Mary Jane was born in Gympie on the 22 of April 1875 to parents Thomas Whitmore and Jane Whitmore (nee Daykin). Thomas was a farmer at Pie Creek and held a timber licence for many years. Mary Jane was the sixth of seven children born to the family. Her father, Thomas is remembered for the overland journey he undertook with two of his sons in 1880. The details of this journey are recorded in a newspaper account “Overland to Coolgardie. Across Australia from East to West.” Thomas could not long have returned from this journey when the accident took place.
It is impossible to imagine the suffering of this child enduring the treatment for these severe burns. The 1800s show a wide range of both understanding and misinterpretation of the pathophysiology and treatment of burns. The skin was treated by the application of whatever ointments and salves were available. Dressings were changed daily and even in modern medicine this is an extremely painful process. Infection was the greatest danger and although doctors were aware of this they were helpless to prevent it. As the burns healed the scar tissue would have been tight and movement painful. Laudanum and morphine were available for pain relief. Mary Jane survived all this but, in an age, where post-traumatic stress was unheard of it is to be suspected that she was sent home and expected to live a normal life grateful that her life had been spared.
Mary Jane was 20 when she married John Thomas Dean in 1895 and they set up a home together. Their first home was on River Road, Gympie and John worked as a labourer. It was after the birth of their first child, Florence, that Mary Jane’s struggles began. She would bear two more children closely following Florence but her mental condition deteriorated. Now for the second time in her young life she encounters a medical condition unknown at that time. Did she suffer post-natal depression or was there a compounding of post traumatic stress brought about by childbirth?
Dean Children
Florence, John and Mary Ann
John (known as Tom) did seek help for his troubled wife. Dr Ryan was a local doctor and he treated her for several years. Like Tom, Dr Ryan would have had little in his medical repertoire to treat Mary Jane’s declining mental health. Tom attempted to be supportive of his wife but the cost of medical treatment was a drain on the finances of the family. He was to state that he had sacrificed what he had to keep his wife and children in comfort and health.
On 11 April 1901, the Gympie newspaper reports a hearing in the Police Court. The language of the report in the best indication of the attitude toward mental health that existed at the time.
“There was rather an imposing array at the Police Court yesterday— imposing at least physically, if not numerically. Three ‘offenders’ — two males and one female —were all separately arraigned on the one charge — on suspicion of being ol unsound mind. Of the males, one was discharged on the certificate of Dr. Ryan, and the other was remanded for medical treatment. The female, Mary Jane Dean, was ordered to be sent to Goodna Asylum, on the certificate of Drs. Ryan and Pulleine.”
The use of social isolation through psychiatric hospitals and “insane asylums,” as they were known in the early 1900s, were used for the treatment of all forms of mental illness. Diagnoses ranged from hysteria, melancholy and acute mania. Causes were just as bizarre and mental conditions in women were attributed to menstrual problems, laziness and even novel reading. Most are readily treatable today through combinations of drug therapy and counselling.
The conditions in the Goodna Asylum were less than desirable. The institution remained overcrowded, short of qualified staff and lacking adequate government funding or interest. Several wards, condemned unfit for human habitation in 1893, still accommodated 350 patients in 1915. In 1913, the Council rat gang exterminated 2080 rats in eleven days and in 1915, another 2065 rats. The institutionalisation of those with mental illness in Queensland had become an efficient system of control and regulation with an emphasis on confinement rather than treatment or care. This was the environment Mary Jane endured during her time in Goodna.
The location of a major asylum in the south-east of Queensland meant for very many of its inmates a trying journey over many days. Special provision over many years was made for transport of ‘lunatics’ in a purposely designed rail-car for travel from Townsville to Roma Street. From there the patients would be transported by another train or a black Maria (police vehicle) to Goodna. Conscious of the impact of isolation of many patients from their family or friends, for many years the Queensland Government supplied a free rail pass for family to travel to Brisbane for asylum visits. It is not known whether Tom ever took advantage of this offer.
In 1903, the “Toowoomba Lunatic Asylum” underwent expansion and it was to here that Mary Jane was transferred. She would spend the rest of her days confined in Toowoomba and died there on 21 October 1930. She was 55 years old. Her children were to assume that their mother had died and it seems that no one told then otherwise.
Tom never remarried and by the 1940’s he was a dairyman living at Widgee Crossing, He died in the Gympie Hospital in 1956. The children Florence, John and Mary Ann (known as Dolly) all grew, married and had families. Whether they ever found out the true story of their mother’s fate is unknown.
All that can be hoped for Mary Jane is that by the end of her days she had found peace.
Recent Comments