School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemPunishment and crime: guilt and grandiosity in the life of Ronald Ryan( 1999)This thesis examines the life and crimes of Ronald Joseph Ryan, the condemned man at the centre of the most politically divisive capital punishment case in Australia's history and the last man judicially executed in Australia. Ryan was born Ronald Edmond Thompson in Melbourne in February 1925, the son of impoverished working class parents. His father was a violent, alcoholic miner crippled by miners' phthisis and his mother (who, at the time of the birth, was married to another man) was an alcoholic and sometime prostitute. Ryan's childhood was characterised by early traumatic deprivation, parental abuse and neglect. Following a petty theft at age 11, Ryan was removed from his parents and, by court order, made a ward of state and placed in custodial care at an institution for "wayward and neglected' boys. He absconded from his wardship at age 14 and joined his half-brother, later travelling to Balranald, N.S.W., where he worked as a timber-cutter. The period from age 15 to his mid-20s were relatively productive and law-abiding - he was married in 1950 - but aspects of his personality also became more obvious: his gambling compulsion and certain obsessive compulsive behavioural traits. In 1953, now back in Victoria, Ryan was involved in arson of his rented family home in order to claim insurance monies, although he was subsequently acquitted of the offence. Beginning in 1956, a string of forging and "break-and-enter' offences ensued. When arrested Ryan typically confessed, and later court appearances led to his first brief imprisonment for theft in 1956. Further breaking offences followed in 1959 and 1960, in a period in which he was virtually a professional criminal, and he was eventually prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to 8 ½ years imprisonment. While in prison Ryan appeared strongly motivated toward rehabilitation, successfully undertaking further education. He was regarded by prison authorities as an outstanding, high-achieving model prisoner. Released after serving 3 years, Ryan quickly returned to crime, however, and his offences at times involved violence. A series of shop- and factory-breakings and safe-blowings between 1963 and 1964 saw him convicted and returned to prison for 8 years. In 1965 he escaped from Pentridge prison in Melbourne, during which he shot and killed a pursuing prison officer. Following his recapture, Ryan and his co-escapee, Peter Walker, were tried in the Victorian Supreme Court. Ryan was convicted of murder and Walker convicted of manslaughter. Despite exhaustive legal appeals and unprecedented media and community opposition, Ryan's death sentence was not commuted by the Victorian Cabinet and he was hanged on 3 February 1967. Utilising archival records, primary sources and extensive interviews with his family and contemporaries, the thesis presents a biographical account of Ryan's life. It documents the social conditions of Ryan's childhood and institutionalisation and his later criminal and prison history, but more particularly it seeks - through the evidence of his behaviour and his writings - to elucidate his inner life as a way of understanding the contradictions between Ryan as model prisoner and ambitious professional criminal. The thesis advances a hypothesis about Ryan's criminal personality: grandiose in his phantasied criminal role, a prisoner to obsessive rituals and compulsive gambling for much of his life, driven by a compulsion to confess to his crimes, and prone to hero phantasies and acts of rescue and reparation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the thesis explores the extent to which Ryan's criminality can be understood as an expression of his unconscious wish for punishment, as derived 'from a sense of guilt' , and shaped by his narcissistic grandiosity.
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ItemThe Premiership of Sir Albert Dunstan( 1960)Writers on Australian politics have constantly stressed the need for detailed research into the Country Party's role in its structure, and some have "tended to deplore the Labour Party's almost complete monopoly of such pursuits. Out of a profound sympathy for such sentiments, as well as a desire to unearth something original, I decided to direct my attention to this need. Apart from considerations of domicile, 'which leave little elbow room for an impecunious student, there were other pressing reasons for concentrating my efforts on Victoria. In New South Wales and Queensland, the Country Party has never enjoyed sufficient power in the legislature to form its own government, but has had to be content with participating jointly with other parties of an urban non-Labour stamp, and only during short breaks in long-established Labour ascendancies. In Victoria, however, the coin has fallen on the reverse side. There Labour has achieved power only for short unstable intervals as a minority Government, until 1952 when it commanded a majority over all other parties for the first time in its existence. In its place the responsibility of governing the State has been thrown from one non-Labour party to another, frequently too hot to hold in such an unstable climate. Since 1917 the Country Party has made its own peculiar contribution to this instability, by exerting an influence out of all proportion to its electoral strength. In 1935 this culminated in its seizure of office from the party with which it had shared it for two and a half years, and its enjoyment of an almost uninterrupted decade of office under the record-breaking premiership of Sir Albert Dunstan. Until 1943 he led a minority Government composed entirely of his own party members, deriving his support from a hapless Labour Party which gained little in the way of concessions. Even when the latter withdrew its support, the Country Party under Dunstan was able to continue in office with little loss of influence despite a small grant of portfolios to the Liberals. Such a sweep of political history, with such singular features, seemed at first sight to be too great a gift for a Melbourne research worker to overlook. (From Preface)