If Asylum Walls Could Speak: A Memoir of 50 Years of Mental Health Nursing at Glenside.

By Sandy Bayley nee Williams

Sandy embarked on her mental health nursing career in Parkside Hospital in 1964 as a naive seventeen-year-old child and stepped into another worlda world of entrenched culture, such as the deep division of the sexes and women incarcerated for infidelity and labelled morally insane, doomed to spend the rest of their lives in the asylum.

Pencil baths, gang showers, and group bathing and how a young window cleaner saw more than he expected to and fled. The stately matron in her crisply starched whites and fearsome charge nurses who evoked terror among the junior staff. Sandy relates hilarious tales of bodies being transported in the dead of night to the hospital mortuary by some very unconventional means. The camaraderie and the close-knit community of the hospital made it a home to many but asylum to most. With 1,300 beds and the ridiculous ratio of fifty patients to one nurse on night duty, she still had time to knit between rounds. Sandy rolled up her sleeves and got on with the job, and fifty years later, she is still rolling with the punchesliterally.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503506732

Sandy Bayley nee Williams

Born in the UK and immigrated with her family in 1960, Sandy and her husband, Bill, have two daughters and five grandchildren. Sandy still works full-time at Glenside hospital, with a career in mental health now spanning over fifty years.

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Copyright © 2015 by Sandy Bayley nee Williams.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015910174

ISBN:   Hardcover              978-1-5035-0675-6

              Softcover                978-1-5035-0674-9

              eBook                     978-1-5035-0673-2

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Rev. date: 07/23/2015

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1 7 September 1964 – Nurse Williams

Chapter 2 My First Day

Chapter 3 Living In

Chapter 4 Wards by the Alphabet

Chapter 5 Junior Nurse’s Duties

Chapter 6 The Rebel in Me

Chapter 7 The Male Side

Chapter 8 First Year

Chapter 9 Second Year

Chapter 10 Aldinga Beach Camps

Chapter 11 Third Year

Chapter 12 Graduation and Beyond

PART TWO

1971 Handicraft Instructress (Occupational Therapy Aid)

PART THREE

Chapter 13 Back to the Fold

Chapter 14 Kurrajong Ward

Chapter 15 After Kurrajong

Chapter 16 Tasmania

Chapter 17 Brentwood

Chapter 18 Changes in the Wind

Chapter 19 Forensic Overflow

Chapter 20 History of the Roll Top Fence

Chapter 21 Almost a Widow

Chapter 22 Leadership

Chapter 23 More Changes Afoot

Chapter 24 Me … a Nurse Manager?

Chapter 25 Divide and Conquer

Chapter 26 Temporary Accommodation

Chapter 27 No-Smoking Policy

Chapter 28 They Said They Were Tamper-Proof

Chapter 29 Over Under ’Round and Through

Chapter 30 The New Build

Chapter 31 Returning to the Fold

Chapter 32 Back to the Future

Chapter 33 ‘The Journey Continues’

POEMS MENTIONED IN THE BOOK.

Cognitive Restructuring (from ‘the interlude’)

Remotely controlled (from chapter 14)

Shrinking Reputation (from chapter 18)

DEDICATION

I WAS ABOUT 7 when I decided to become a nurse, and whilst I was growing up, my ambition never faltered. I sometimes wonder what path my life would have taken if Dave Williams had not been a psychiatric nurse. Dave Williams was my cheerleader, confidant, encourager, and greatest fan. He was also my father. It’s little wonder that I aspired to become not just a psychiatric nurse, but a nurse of whom he would be justifiably proud.

I therefore dedicate this book to my dad, who sadly did not live long enough to read it. I miss you, Dad.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A PART FROM MY late father, I also owe a debt of gratitude to my late mother. Mum, a prolific writer, wrote and self-published her autobiography at the age of 75. She was a great encourager and mentor for my writing, and we shared a love of the same genre of books. We also shared a passion for writing rhyming poetry, which is a dying art. I miss her dearly.

Thanks goes to the late Matron ‘Nellie’ Birch who always believed in me. To Professor Norman James whom I greatly admire, Dr Leslie Stephan who encouraged me to write this book, and Sharon Olsson, my mentor and friend, I say thank you. Thanks also to Dot Cormack, herself an accomplished author, for her encouragement and assistance in editing. Thank you to my colleague and friend, Ian Pascoe, who used to work with my dad and filled in some gaps about the mysteries of the male wards.

Apart from the photograph of me in my uniform, aged 17, a glamour shot taken by my late father, and one of me getting into my Wolseley, all the photographs in this book are the property of the Glenside Hospital Historical Society Inc. and used with permission. Thank you, David Buob, the president of this society, for graciously providing me with the photographs.

Last but not least, my thanks go to Bill, my husband and best friend who has always believed in me and took over as my cheerleader when Dad died. Bill has constantly asked, ‘Haven’t you finished that book yet?’

Now I can say, ‘It is finished.’

PROLOGUE

S EVERAL BOOKS HAVE been written on the history of the actual buildings of Parkside Asylum, but little is known about the wretched people who were confined within its walls. I intend to give a very vivid picture of the asylum as a human warehouse where dignity and humanity were largely forgotten.

The late Henry Kay, who was the lay superintendent until his retirement in 1970, after a fifty-year career at Glenside, did a splendid job when he researched and wrote a book on the history of the hospital from 1870 to 1970. I re-read his book when I needed to jog my memory for a fact long since forgotten. Fifty years is a long time and I never kept a diary. Some who read this may dispute some of the facts, however, to quote Mark Twain, ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’

From 1870 to 1913, Glenside was called ‘Parkside Lunatic Asylum’. Interestingly, other names for asylum include refuge, shelter, haven, sanctuary, and retreat! When I began my career in September 1964, I gave little consideration to the inmates who had lived their whole lives within the confines of an asylum, forgotten by society and institutionalised into zombie-like states. However, it didn’t take long to appreciate how grim it must have been for many.

Society did its best to care for them; however, so little was known about either mental illness or its treatment.

Before the building of Adelaide’s first asylum, these people were incarcerated in prisons. In that respect, we have come full circle because 30 per cent of current inmates in our gaols are people suffering from mental illness. By virtue of their lack of judgment, many fall foul of the law.

From 1913 to 1967, the institution was called Parkside Mental Hospital. It had another change of name in 1967, becoming Glenside Hospital. Still later, it was referred to as a campus; thus abolishing the term ‘patient’. Nevertheless, most doctors still refer to them as patients.

I have changed my terminology as the story continues from imperial to decimal in 1966. Initially, the patients were called inmates then patients, clients, and now consumers.

I refer to the colour ‘hospital green’ to describe the paintwork. It seemed to be the same green used in most hospitals of this era and I can find no better description.

‘Licence conditions’ refers to those consumers who were detained by order of the courts under the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, section 269. These people were not permitted in gaol and had to be held in James Nash House with Eastern Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit at Glenside and Southern Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit in Flinders Medical Centre as the designated and gazetted overflow units.

When I began in X ward, the mentally challenged were labelled ‘retarded’. I have only used this term sparingly because I now find it offensive. Another thing I find offensive is swearing. It is something I don’t do. All things considered, it really is an indicator of a poor command of the English language. I agonized about including a number of swear words in my book; however, on most occasions, they are used as quotations, so I have chosen to include them and I hope you will forgive me.

If you drive through the Glenside grounds today and head out to Amber Woods drive, the red brick building to the right as you exit is the old ‘X ward’. The derelict appendage that juts onto its side served as the ward’s pantry. This building became one of the sheltered workshops and renamed INVICTA. Later still, it became a storeroom. R1 still stands alongside X ward, but R ward has been demolished, making way for private housing.

My early years of nursing were very formal with much bowing and scraping to my elders. Although respect still remains an expectation, the formalities have all but faded into the woodwork. And now, the jargon and hierarchy always changing, always evolving has accelerated at an alarming rate. Nobody seems to know who’s who anymore. We’ve left behind the stately matron in her crisply starched whites and swapped her for directors of nursing, nursing directors, executive directors, nurse managers, sector managers, and general managers. Their roles remain a mystery.

Finally, most names have been changed to protect the innocent, although not many of them were!

CHAPTER 1

7 September 1964 – Nurse Williams

I T HAD BEEN three weeks since my seventeenth birthday as I stood on the threshold of my nursing career. Clad in pale pink crimplene button through uniform-style dress, wearing brown lace-up shoes and brown stockings, I could not be described as eye-catching. The shoes were originally my black school shoes Dad insisted on having dyed as they still had plenty of wear in them.

Mum sat at the wheel of the family’s 1958 FE Holden, impatiently drumming her long fingernails on the steering wheel whilst I waited expectantly for someone—anyone—to answer the doorbell of the nurses’ home.

A three-storeyed, dirty cream stone building, just inside the main Fullarton Road gate on the left, the nurses’ home had opened in December 1954, built to house eighty-four nurses. The architectural design has been described by someone as a ‘tiered cake’ due to the unusual layering of its construction: basic and contemporary, yet functional.

The clock in the old tower chimed eight times, and Mum, now anxious about being late for work, suggested I ditch the battered old suitcase containing all my worldly belongings by the front door of the nurses’ home. I climbed back into the FE and we drove along the road and around a large roundabout, surrounding a beautifully manicured garden of flowering shrubs and rosebushes. Mum pulled the Holden to a full stop as she craned her neck to look at the old fifty-foot-tall stone building.

‘Will you be all right, love?’ Mum asked anxiously, as she glanced at her watch, probably worrying about being too late to get a car park in the city to offer to wait with me.

‘I’ll be fine, Mum,’ I assured her, anxious to shake her off and be liberated.

I got out of the car without looking back, the sound of Mum’s call of ‘Good luck, Sandy’ echoing in my ears.

I ran up the old slate steps of the handsome building between huge pillars each side, similar to a pair of carved and matching bookends. The staircase led up to the portico of the now heritage-listed building which, to an impressionable and naive teenager, stood imposing. Once inside, I took in the dark rich timber of the panelled walls and the high ornate ceiling, generously carved with plaster leaves and flowers. The seats, resembling church pews, lining the foyer walls and clad in orange vinyl, were an unfortunate match for the garish red carpet. Although always in favour of bright colours in preference to drab, the clashing of red and orange rang out to me like a clanging gong.

Dad appeared from nowhere, holding a cup of tea in welcome. Dad had been employed at Parkside Mental Hospital since we emigrated from the UK in April 1960. He had ducked out of the ward where he was on duty as a psychiatric nurse. Leaving me with a wink and a cup of hospital tea, Dad departed. I stood alone sipping strong tarry-stewed tea and deliberated on what to do next.

‘Nurse Williams.’

It sounded more like a statement than a question, so I looked behind me, expecting to see another person with the same last name as my own before realising she was indeed speaking to me. What to do with the cup?

‘Nurse Williams?’ she repeated, with head slightly cocked to one side.

Apparently in 1964, nurses did not have Christian names.

Short and stout with no nonsense about her, the mystery woman looked about my mother’s age but frumpier than my mum and I wondered who she was. She offered no introduction but evidently knew my identity. However, I was Sandy Williams and no more used to being called ‘nurse’ than being called ‘Sandra’, the name I quickly discarded along with my English accent soon after our arrival from England. ‘Sandra’ sounded acceptable to me until our arrival in Australia where everything is pronounced with a drawl, making my name sound more like ‘Seendra’ whilst the family pronounced my name as ‘Sarndra’. I chose to be called Sandy and refused to answer to anything else. Nevertheless it became apparent I now had a new moniker, which would be mine for many years to come.

My stammered response fell on deaf ears as she turned on her heel and strode out of sight like the white rabbit. The only evidence of her existence was the sight of the heavy glass doors still swinging where she had thrust her way through.

Abandoning my heavy china cup on top of the orange vinyl, I obediently trailed behind her through the old glass doors that led into a quadrangle, complete with a pond and fountain. From within the quadrangle, I gazed upwards to discover I was now surrounded by four stone walls on all sides. The ornamental masonry and quoins on the windows and doors created a Gothic look to the freestone building. The corrugated iron roof had become home to a flock of pigeons that cooed a welcome. With heads cocked and beady eyes staring down at me, the birds scrabbled about on the hot tin and I imagined how much poop would be clogging the guttering.

I looked back down in time to see into which doorway this nameless woman had entered. I followed her into a room just off to the left side of the quadrangle past an old wooden shingle reading ‘Sewing Room and Uniforms … Female’. I watched with curiosity as three motherly looking women were industriously sewing shapeless dresses in about four different floral patterns of gaudy material. I would soon be scrutinizing this material more closely. There never seemed to be much diversity and all inmates, young or old, were always clad in this garish fabric. The maternal hands worked deftly, furiously as their old Singer machines hummed noisily.

The white rabbit kitted me out in a uniform of starched apron and a strange square cap that I would quickly learn to fold and clip to my hair on the front of my head. ‘Only qualified nurses are permitted to wear their cap at the back,’ warned the nameless one. Thankfully, these caps and aprons were laundered in the huge hospital laundry. Subsequently, removing make-up from the cap, which brushed my forehead constantly, was not my own responsibility. Even so, I couldn’t wait to be ‘qualified’.

Another nameless woman issued me with a large key with the tag number of ‘124’ and firmly instructed to ‘always have it on my person’ when on duty and to surrender this to ‘Switch’ at the end of each shift. Over four inches long and quaintly referred to as the ‘female key’, it permitted the possessor to enter all doors of the female wards. Meanwhile, the male nurses owned the male counterpart. In the early seventies, the two cohabited—in more ways than one could possibly imagine!

‘Good morning, Nurse Williams.’

‘Good morning, Matron,’ I replied to the kindly looking woman in white starched uniform with resplendent veil, to which she apparently had sole wearing rights. I had met Matron Birch at an interview some weeks before. After a few more instructions from Matron, she revealed I had been rostered to X ward, the ward that housed the intellectually challenged children. I felt relieved because I liked children and felt more ready to care for them than adults, considering I was only a child of 17.

We walked through the grounds together as Matron pointed out the various buildings. As we left the quadrangle behind us, she showed me the hospital kiosk on the right and to the left, she indicated a red brick building, which was one of the female wards. An airing court lay adjacent to this ward and I observed in fascination, patients of all shapes and sizes scurrying about their business. Matron called out to some by name and I was impressed she knew so many. On reflection, she probably took me on a direct route to X ward, nevertheless I was already in a dismal panic, having no sense of direction. How would I find my way back? I remembered with added dread my abandoned suitcase and mentioned this fact to Matron.

‘Don’t worry, Nurse’, she reassured, ‘I will ask the housekeeper to have it left in your room.’ She proffered the key to my room almost as an afterthought. ‘It’s room 13 on the first floor.’

CHAPTER 2

My First Day

A T NINE O’CLOCK, we walked into X ward, one hour and forty-six minutes past the normal starting time. On their first day, nurses were rostered to commence their first shift, after they’d been kitted out in uniform. Matron introduced me to Nurse Popov who scowled at me. She wrongly concluded I had slept in and her glare inferred she was now going to hold me entirely responsible for the fact she was running late with the routine of the ward. Nurse Popov was apparently the deputy charge nurse, noted by her grey uniform. Popov had a set smile on her face as Matron bid me a cheerful goodbye before scurrying out the door.

The smile on Popov’s face transformed to a sneer as she quickly summed up my youthful appearance; she looked me up and down with contempt before snarling, ‘Pick up a child, wash it, and dress it!’

I surveyed the room. The floor seemed to be littered with children suffering various incapacities. Most returned my gaze with a disinterested and vacant stare. I picked up the nearest child and sat her on the table next to the infant who Nurse Popov struggled with in her endeavour to get unwilling spastic limbs into sleeves of ill-fitting and shapeless garments. I deftly washed the chosen child and selected the best of the appalling-looking dresses that were starched as stiff as my apron. These garments were obviously fashioned by the devoted seamstresses whom I had met earlier. I discovered the child’s name was Elizabeth, so I cooed softly to her as I did my best to dress her. After carefully placing Elizabeth on a padded mat on the floor, I selected another, enquiring of Nurse Popov the name of each one, hoping to memorise their names.

At half past eleven, Nurse Popov, who had up to this point only spoken when asked a question, asked one of her own. In her heavy European accent, she intoned, ‘Nurse Villiams, how long have you verked at this hospital?’

I held up my left arm to study my watch and brightly replied, ‘Oh … about two and a half hours.’

Popov reeled in horror as a look of shocked realisation appeared on the woman’s face. ‘But this verk iss too hart for you, Nurse.’

‘Nar, piece of cake,’ I replied with a flick of my head, causing the absurd starched cap to teeter precariously. I hated my cap already.

Being the new recruit, deputy sent me on my lunch break with a couple of nurses more seasoned than I who took me under their wing. I felt like the odd one out because a new uniform had recently been introduced, which did not include starched aprons. However, being a lowly probationer, I would have to wait for three months to be issued with my own. In the meantime, I stuck out like a nun in a pub.

We arrived at the dining room, situated at the opposite end of the quadrangle from Switch which I had passed on the way to be kitted out in my current apparel. The dining room had a peculiar and entrenched custom.

‘Females go in this door and blokes come in the other end,’ explained my escort.

I surveyed the seating inside the large dining hall. Male nurses occupied the tables at one end of the room with women at the other. Gathered around the table by a window bay were Matron, Assistant Matron, and the chief male nurse, the male equivalent to Matron. Theirs was the only table adorned with linen whereas we mere mortals made do with plain-old Formica tables. Matron’s group enjoyed table service whilst the hoi polloi lined up at the servery to claim their meal before looking for a free table. Someone introduced me to some of my new colleagues.

‘This is Fitch,’ said my chaperone, dropping the mandatory ‘Nurse’.

‘Hi,’ responded Fitch. ‘They call me Fitch the Bitch,’ she announced with a proud grin. Why she could be so proud of that handle I never discovered.

‘Williams, first day,’ said my chaperone. Heads nodded knowingly. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ they assured me. I informed them I was ‘living in’, a term used for the residents of the nurses’ home.

Living in cost £7 a fortnight in 1964, and this included full board with meals even provided on my off-duty days. When payday seemed a long way away, going to the dining room whilst off duty became my choice between eating and starving. A fully cooked breakfast included in the deal as well as two, three course meals a day. However the advice given amounted to an unwritten rule; although permissible, attending breakfast on one’s day off was ‘just not done’.

Matron’s home consisted of a flat on the ground floor that I had imagined to have been quite grand. However, my friend Ian (a current colleague) shattered that illusion many years later when he related the following tale. Matron had locked herself out of her flat, so she asked Ian if he would climb in the window to let her in. Ian described to me a frugal scene of a basic mismatch of furniture with worn linoleum on the floor. Matron’s little Morris car had its own reserved parking spot at the front of the nurses’ home and I do believe this little car became her pride and joy. Matron could rarely be seen out and about, driving her Morris, and she always appeared to be on duty. ‘Married to the job,’ I surmised, making a mental note to myself I did not wish to aspire to the same fate.

Although this nurses’ home was built to accommodate eighty-four nurses, when I moved in on September ’64, only about sixteen of us had chosen this option. If a nurse was ‘living in’, their room had to stand entirely vacated when they went on holidays or they would be charged full board for the duration. We understood we could be re-allocated to a different room on our return. I always packed up as instructed because seven quid was a lot of money in those days! Nonetheless the threat was an empty one because I always returned to room 13. With sixty-four vacant rooms, it would hardly be worth the trouble of cleaning dusty bedrooms just to shift us about the almost empty home.

Shift starting times all began at fourteen minutes past seven, with finishing times varying between ‘Long’, which finished at seven p.m. ‘Medium’ shift finished at twenty-seven minutes past five, whereas the coveted ‘Short’ ended at five p.m. The roster configuration was Long, Medium, Off, Long, Short, Off, and then ‘Long’, ‘Off’ before replicating. The only solace being that one scored a weekend off every eight weeks!

Every day at 5:27, nurses could be seen scurrying between wards to relieve those fortunate ones who were on shorter shifts than their own. This must have been a logistical nightmare for Matron, whose task it was to configure the roster.

I recall being approached on my first day by a male nurse.

‘You’re new, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, it’s my first day.’

‘Are you in the union?’

‘No, not yet … is it compulsory?’

‘No, now sign here.’

‘Hang on, I’m only on three months’ probation, what if I join and they don’t keep me on?’

‘Nar, you’ll be all right, love, they always tell you that … now sign here.’ He jabbed his stubby finger on the dotted line of the form he’d shoved under my nose.

The Australian Government Workers Association (AGWA) had the reputation of being a militant union and not to be messed with, so I signed. Mr Anderson, the paymaster, would dutifully deduct my fortnightly membership fees.

Mr Anderson knew every nurse by name, both male and female. The payslips, all handwritten, were about two inches by two feet in length. Mr Anderson was always contactable and always polite and considerate. He also had a reputation of being personable, and I never knew him to make an error.

In the 1960s, we had a lot of respect for the pay office.

CHAPTER 3

Living In

A T THE COMPLETION of my first day, I lined up with my colleagues at Switch and relinquished my key, politely announcing its number. I noticed if one threw the key roughly across the counter, the man at Switch would hurl the key back at the retreating nurse. Only the male nurses tried this trick.

Switch, the abbreviated name for switchboard, was usually manned by an Evergreen. Whilst the women had various coloured uniforms and the positioning of their caps, the only distinction of rank for the male staff was the colour of their tie. First years wore green. Some nurses repeatedly failed their first-year exam and never qualified. Forever destined to wear green ties, they became known as Evergreens. Worthy of note is the fact that unqualified female nurses could also be called Evergreens, their roles relegated to the more mundane tasks, and although some worked on the wards, these unqualified nurses could not be trusted with anything of consequence.

I arrived back at the nurses’ home, where interestingly, only females were afforded the privilege of ‘living in’ with no males permitted inside the building without good reason. I had to get permission from the housekeeper for a delivery man to assist me to cart my new radiogram up to my room. Nevertheless, I learned years later that some rebellious nurse had harboured her homeless boyfriend in her room for three months without detection.

Matron had also issued me with a front-door key to the nurses’ home as well as the one for my room. Whilst other hospitals’ nurses’ homes continued to have a ‘home sister’ who locked the front door by ten at night, ours was unique inasmuch as we were actually trusted with our own front-door key, thus avoiding the need to shimmy up the drain pipe as my predecessors had done. Nevertheless, given the long shifts and the hard slog, I quickly learned to adhere to my own curfew.

I bounded up the stairs, taking