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According to the "Lunatic Act", these men were "of unsound
mind unfit to be at large and incapable of maintaining themselves".
To care for sixty to seventy of them, only four attendants were allowed,
that is, one to every fifteen, whereas in an ordinary hospital, the
number of attendants was one to ten patients .
Of these four, one
attendant did the cooking required with such help as he could get from
the lunatics , another all the washing.
attended to , the patients watched wherever
In addition, the gate had to be
they might be, the wards
cleaned, the beds made , the unatics assisted, and all other daily duties
performed with only the assistance they could coax from wa)'l·Jard lunatics ,
t'lhich was often worse than useless. Nor was that all : even at night
they \-Jere unable to rest quietly and refresh themselves after their hard
day's work, but were placed to sleep two in each dormitory, one to be
constantly up to assist and guard the inmates.
Pleaded Hall:
• . . . I ask any man of common sense, could it be possible for
four men properly to go through such an amount of daily and
nightly labour ? • . . .
Moreover , these attendants were selected from prisoners who had finished
their sentence on the Peninsula, or from invalids whose health had
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improved sufficiently to allow them to undertake the duty . In addition,
there were two underkeepers : the senior underkeeper , who was responsible
for the superintendence of the lunatic asylum, was a newly appointed
married man with a family, who arrived on the same day as Hall, having
had no previous experience in such a position; the other acted as
overseer to the gang sent out each day with handcarts to draw shells or
loam or do whatever work was required . Both Hall and the two underkeepers
lived outside the asylum, so that after locking up hours the
whole establishment was under the care of the four attendants. After
Hall took charge, another underkeeper, a free man , was appointed. As
he was a single man, Hall insisted that he sleep within the asylum.
In time Hall's refusal to blame the preceding Medical Officers
was confirmed when he discovered that , previous to Everitt's appointment ,
the insane for years were under the medical charge of a doctor stationed
at Impression Bay five miles away. He, in fact , was able to pay only
an occasional , hasty visit as his duties at Impression Bay were heavy
enough. He learnt , also, that there had been continuous conflict
between the previous underkeeper, who had resigned in disgust , and other
officers of the asylum and the Assistant-Superintendent of the station