School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemCollection, collation & creation: girls and their material culture Victoria, 1870-1910( 2018)The thesis broadly explores the lives of girls who resided in the colony/state of Victoria, Australia between 1870 and 1910. A largely understudied and underappreciated area of historical study, the thesis takes a broad scope. Three case studies- urban girls’ collection of dolls, rural girls’ collation of scrapbooks, and Indigenous Victorian girls’ creation of fibrecraft- illustrate that tangible material culture can serve as evidence for intangible and marginalised histories. It overarchingly contended that girls, in any historical period, can express agency and resilience, individuality and creativity, through their material culture. In interacting with their day-to-day, seemingly mundane things, girls challenged, however subtly, repressive societal ideals that attempted to circumscribe their identities and their lives.
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ItemThe voice of Methodism: temperance policy in Victoria, Australia 1902-1977( 2018)This thesis seeks to examine the influence of the Methodist Church in Victoria, Australia, on public policy in the twentieth century using the issue of Temperance as a case study. Methodists had a tradition of social activism dating back to their eighteenth-century founder John Wesley. While the Church took up many causes, Temperance had become its signature concern. The secular Temperance movement in Victoria, Australia was unable to bring about significant reform so Methodist activists became the prime instigators of change and secured changes to licensing in 1906. Methodists adopted a policy of ‘unswerving hostility’ to alcohol but, unable to adapt to social change in the following years, their influence slowly diminished. It was finally eclipsed in 1965 following a Royal Commission on Hotel Trading Hours. The Church, split between those clinging to traditional values and those seeking a better way to engage the community to their point of view, lost its reforming voice.
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ItemBeyond the aetiology debate: the “great LSD scandal” at Newhaven Private Hospital & the social foundations of mental health legislation in Victoria, Australia( 2017)This research presents a case for the extension of existing analyses of Australian psychiatric scandals beyond the conclusion that such events are an inherent feature of the profession by virtue of its failure to resolve the aetiology debate. A mid-century impasse in the aetiology debate – the continuous shifting over time of professional commitment between organic and environmental aetiologies of mental illness – has been identified as the catalyst for the emergence of the therapeutic paradigm of eclecticism that fostered the deep sleep therapy and ‘Therapeutic Community’ programs that were central to Australia’s two infamous psychiatric scandals at Chelmsford and Townsville, respectively. While these two affairs were enduring the scrutiny of commissions of inquiry, the recommendations of which translated to the legislative reform of mental health services in the states of New South Wales and Queensland, a third such scandal was unfolding at Newhaven Private Hospital in Victoria involving the “injudicious use” of therapeutic LSD. By the late 1980s and early 90s, a number of former “patients” of Newhaven emerged claiming that they had never suffered any mental illness and that the LSD they had received had not been administered for therapeutic purposes but rather as a recruitment tool for a fringe religious sect known as The Family that had commandeered the hospital and the loyalty of a number of its staff. What constituted the scandal at Newhaven, however, was the fact that these activities continued unchallenged despite the implementation of statutory regulations – the Poisons (Hallucinogenic Drugs) Regulations 1967 – designed specifically to protect against the abuse of therapeutic hallucinogens. Having avoided any formal inquiry of its own, the Newhaven case represented not only a compelling narrative history opportunity, but also a test of the robustness of the prevailing argument that such scandals emerge as a consequence of the profession’s failure to achieve consensus on the aetiology of mental illness against the implication that inadequate legislation facilitated the abuse. Using the case of Newhaven as a working example, this research analyses the historical mental health legislation of Victoria and parliamentary debates to construct a legislative history of the aetiology debate and confirm its role in the emergence of psychiatric scandal, arguing that the Poisons (Hallucinogenic Drugs) Regulations 1967, and indeed mental health policy more broadly, were in fact products of the debate. Furthermore, it demonstrates how, far from being insulated within the profession of psychiatry, the debate itself was informed by wider prevailing social, cultural, political and economic trends. The abuse of therapeutic LSD unfolded under permissive regulations which reflected the permissive nature of broader mental health policy embodied in the Mental Hygiene Acts and their signature initiative of deinstitutionalisation. This permissiveness was a symptom of the underlying atmosphere of eclecticism that characterised mid-century psychiatry in Victoria as it sought to accommodate simultaneously the biological and social bases for the eugenic and community-based measures, respectively, that developed in response to the co-emergent social forces of the ‘mental hygiene’ and ‘anti-psychiatry’ movements.
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ItemA networked community: Jewish immigration, colonial networks and the shaping of Melbourne 1835-1895( 2015)Current scholarship on empire considers those Britons engaged in processes of colonisation as culturally homogeneous, but this view negates their cultural complexity. From the first forays of the Port Phillip Association, Jewish settlers and investors have been attached to Melbourne. Although those settling in Melbourne were themselves predominantly British, they brought with them not only the networks of empire, but also the intersecting diasporas of European Jewry and the new and expanding English-speaking Jewish world. This thesis considers how the cosmopolitan outlook and wide networks of the Jewish community helped shape Melbourne.
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ItemA history of Churchill Island: settlement, land use and the making of a heritage site( 2015)This thesis utilises a public history approach to respond to the desires of the project’s public stakeholders to obtain a rigorous and detailed history of Churchill Island, and to examine its nature as a heritage site. It examines how Churchill Island has been variously imagined and used to make a permanent settler colonial space. In doing so it argues that the history of the island offers a rich example of the complexity of settlement in Victoria. An exploration of the intersections between the practices of community engagement, academia and history, the thesis responds to the challenges thrown up by the History Wars and the Churchill Island Project by making a history of settlement that is both academically critical and publicly accepted.
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ItemGreat Britain's exiles sent to Port Phillip, Australia, 1844-1849: Lord Stanley's experiment( 2014)This thesis examines the origin, operation and outcome of the exile scheme implemented in Port Phillip between 1844 and 1849. It argues that the scheme announced by Lord Stanley, British Colonial Secretary, was an experiment in prisoner reform and labour deployment originating in imperial desperation and expediency. It notes how the scheme divided European settlers and inflamed the issue of separation from New South Wales. I conclude that this significant, often-overlooked episode in Australia's immigration history had positive outcomes for many, whilst others re-offended, partly due to government mismanagement. The early 1840s was a time of economic distress and increasing crime in Britain, but also a time of changing attitudes to prison reform. This period also witnessed economic depression in the Australian colonies. The exile scheme was created largely in response to the deteriorating employment circumstances in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, to which the exiles were destined. One aim of the experiment was to provide opportunities for the exiles to begin new lives in the colony. Between 1844 and 1849, Britain transported to Port Phillip nine shiploads of conditionally-pardoned exiles from Pentonville, Millbank and Parkhurst Prisons. These 1,727 men and boys had experienced lengthy periods under the ‘separate system’ of incarceration, during which they learned a trade and improved their literacy levels. Upon arrival they landed as free men in Melbourne, Geelong and Portland, provided they did not return to Britain during the remainder of their sentences. The despatches containing Lord Stanley’s announcement and instructions accompanied the exiles in the first ship, the Royal George. These despatches were addressed to the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, to the Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, and to the Superintendent of Port Phillip, Charles La Trobe. The exiles were enthusiastically received by pastoralists anxious for rural labourers, but stigmatized and feared by the townspeople who dubbed them ‘Pentonvillains’. The dread of a convict taint, inflamed by the press, resulted in the exiles’ presence becoming a catalyst which unleashed a spirit of defiance amongst the townspeople against the imperial government’s policy. Their response accelerated political action, which re-emerged in the campaigns of the Anti-Transportation League. This thesis seeks to give greater voice to the exiles and their descendants. In so doing, it draws on a wealth of archival sources in Britain and Australia, supplements limited secondary sources on this topic and utilises for the first time information provided by family historians. In particular, this thesis has benefitted from a meticulous examination of the prison registers. My thesis argues that while the exile scheme had positive outcomes for many participants who established productive lives in Australia, others were less successful in the colony. Finally, this thesis asserts that, despite the failures, the exile scheme was a qualified success, and that many exiles and their descendants have contributed significantly to Australian society.
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ItemA history of zoological acclimatisation in Victoria, 1858-1900( 2014)Zoological acclimatisation in Victoria between 1858 and 1900 was an attempt to restore, understand and improve the distribution of animals in the colony. Studying it provides a deepened scholarly understanding of colonial science, Australian and transnational environmental history, and the world-wide nineteenth-century acclimatisation network. The actions of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria (ASV) and its successor organisations, the regional fish acclimatisation societies and the Fisheries and Game branch of the Department of Agriculture, can be best explained by an evolving combination of scientific, aesthetic, utilitarian and political conceptualisations of the Victorian landscape and its flora and fauna. In part, the importation of exotic organisms and translocation of native organisms was an attempt to address and repair post-colonisation ecological damage. Furthermore, zoological acclimatisation was conditioned by disputed and changing notions of evolution, biogeographic distribution and climate both within the ASV and in broader colonial Victorian society. These arguments are substantiated by combining the techniques and scholarship of environmental history and the history of science. This combination allows for sophisticated analysis of zoological acclimatisation as a process of introducing exotic species and managing both introduced and native species. Zoological acclimatisation in Victoria, seen in these expansive terms, was more complex, contradictory, long-lasting and influential than previously realised.
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ItemThe prison and society in colonial Victoria: labour, deterrence and reform at Pentridge, 1857-1870( 2014)Victoria's penal establishments underwent radical changes between 1857 and 1870, resulting in the replacement of disorderly hulks and stockades with a modern prison system. This thesis details how the resulting programme of penal discipline that was instituted at Pentridge, Victoria's chief prison, combined deterrence with labour. The aim of this new disciplinary regime was make the prisoners into productive and useful workers by instilling in them a strong work ethic and convincing them that honest labour was preferable to the hardships of imprisonment. It is argued that this system was shaped by the social and economic context of Victoria and by Inspector-General William Champ's background and experience in the management of transported convicts. In addition, it is established that such large reforms came about because of the favourable social and political climate of Victoria during the 1850s. The findings of this thesis situate Pentridge within the broader narrative of Victorian history, and challenge previous historical work by revealing Victoria's penal history to be clearly distinct from that of England.
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ItemThe Age and the young Menzies: a chapter in Victorian liberalism( 2010)The Melbourne Age was Robert Menzies' favourite newspaper. This thesis investigates the early years of Menzies' political career, when his relationship with The Age and its senior personnel was established. It is a comparative study of two liberalisms: that of the principal creator of the Liberal Party of Australia, and of a newspaper famous for its liberal affiliations. The Age had been closely identified with the Liberal politician Alfred Deakin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After Geoffrey Syme became its proprietor in 1908, The Age pursued a programmatic agenda based in the dominant liberal ideology of the day, social liberalism, which stood for responsible citizenship and State intervention. The paper was influenced by both Deakinism and its New Liberal equivalent in Britain, whose political representatives were Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George. When Menzies emerged on the Victorian political stage in the mid-twenties, The Age still stood for ideals and institutions which had been influential in the first decade of nationhood: New Protection, the conciliation and arbitration system, responsible trade unionism, accountable government, and social meliorism. The early chapters of the thesis explore the paper's political outlook, focusing on its vigorous campaign against the conservative ascendancy in non-Labor politics. That the newspaper remained a coherent exemplar of New Liberal orthodoxy from 1908 until the outbreak of the Second World War is one of the study's main findings. To Syme, the young Menzies represented a talented new generation of Liberal reformer. The Age vigorously supported his election to the Victorian Legislative Council in 1928, and his subsequent move to the Assembly. Despite the paper's hopes for him, Menzies' liberal-conservative tendencies were soon strongly to the fore. During the Depression, he aggressively opposed the introduction of unemployment insurance. When Menzies joined economists and primary producers in attacking the regime of tariff protection that was central to The Age's Deakinite identity, the relationship between the newspaper and the politician reached a low watermark. These episodes are explored in detail. The second half of the thesis focuses on Menzies's ideological make-up. It identifies him as a post-Deakinite whose personal politics were a contradictory mixture of older and newer streams of liberalism, and whose personal style was a mixture of pragmatism tinged with a consciousness of the legacy of Deakinite idealism. The phrase 'blended liberalism' usefully describes Menzies' political makeup by the late thirties. Three major influences on his political ideology are identified: the Victorian Liberal tradition; the Law, which was his first and, he said, best loved calling; and his family's Presbyterian faith. The thesis also explores Menzies' friendship with the British Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin, a devout Anglican whose constructive social vision influenced Menzies. The final chapter of the thesis is a case study of the National Health and Pensions Insurance Act (1938), a regime of compulsory contributory social insurance which was based on the British model and included elements of Lloyd George's original bill and of Baldwin's extended scheme. Both Menzies and The Age supported the Australian measure. The thesis discusses how their shared campaign for national insurance brought them back into close relationship, yet how their ideological rationales for national insurance were significantly different.