The American's wife

It was a house everyone admired – an elegant, two story residence at the west end of Hamilton – belonging to the Americans. A medical doctor, Silas Rand, and his brother Thomas Rand, a dentist, had their practices there, and their homes. They’d grown up in Minnesota. Their house had once been a Turkish bath house. Visitors reported pipe works still visible on interior walls.

Hamilton Turkish Baths c.1961, prior to demolition

Photograph from personal collection of Vita Fraser

The Baths had been built in 1879 by Francis W Reay, catering to ‘the well to do, and ladies.’ Reay, a medical herbalist who’d made money on the goldfields, quickly became a man of influence, and Mayor of Hamilton in 1887. The services available in the Baths have been described here.

The baths passed into the hands of the Rand brothers probably around the early 1900s, but were not operated as baths from then on.

After graduating from dentistry in 1904, Thomas Rand followed his brother Silas to Australia. Silas was already settled in Newcastle.

Thomas Rand graduated in dentistry from Northwestern University, Chicago, 1904, 

joining his brother Silas in Newcastle soon after

Photograph from personal collection of Susan Kemp

At some point, a young woman by the name of Ena Newsome Cheers became housekeeper for the brothers in their large residence. Ena had grown up on a grazing property near Frederickton on the Macleay River near Kempsey, New South Wales. The youngest of nine children, she was probably around twenty when she took up the housekeeping post.

Thomas and Ena married in 1912. It was not unusual for young women without further education to be sent away from home to work as housekeepers or governesses, and even to marry within their employer’s family.

In an early variation of ‘a farmer wants a wife,’ that happened to my own mother. She married one of the sons on the isolated country property where she’d been sent to work as a ‘companion’ to a girl just a few years younger than herself.

Thomas and Ena’s first child, Howard Ainsworth, was born within a year of their marriage. Seven years would pass before the arrival of their second, Beulah.

Ena Newsome Rand (n.d.)

Photograph from personal collection of Susan Kemp

Newcastle resident Susan Kemp, granddaughter of Thomas and Ena, has researched correspondence between her grandparents, medical records  and other family history to piece together Ena’s story.[1] She writes poignantly:

‘I only met my grandmother, a total stranger, once, possibly in 1960-61, shortly before her death. My mother had care of her on a day’s leave from Stockton Hospital. She was a simple, little old lady who was in need of basic care such as clothing, hairdresser and dentist. She played the piano beautifully by memory for us for hours. She cried when we took her back to the hospital as she wanted to stay.’

How did Ena’s life come to this?

In early 1919 the first cases of the deadly pneumonic flu were diagnosed in Melbourne. An epidemic followed, and in Newcastle alone, 1500 people were hospitalised, and 500 lost their lives. Hamilton council chambers became the site of an inoculation centre. [2].

Ena was called to Sydney to help care for a favourite nephew, who was ill and asking for her. Returning on the train, Ena wore a mask and was already feeling unwell.

As a complication of the pneumonic flu, Ena appears to have contracted encephalitis. This can result in a complete personality change, with the person exhibiting bizarre behaviour with neurological and psychiatric symptoms. Paranoia, aggression and violence are not uncommon.

It was at this point, probably in 1920, that Thomas moved his family to the farm he and Silas had bought at Mutdapilly, south of Ipswich in Queensland. Thomas had been advised that the fresh country air might help his wife.

An episode of Ena’s unpredictable and dangerous behaviour occurred in relation to 16 year old Madge Bernasconi, who had been employed to help with the children. Ena became jealous of the young girl, tried to set the house on fire, and had to be locked in her room for safety.

Things did not improve, and on 24 February, 1922 at the age of 34, Ena was admitted to a private mental asylum in Ipswich. Howard would have been 9, and Beulah just 2.

Howard and Beulah Rand feeding chickens at the Mutdapilly farm

Photograph from personal collection of Susan Kemp

Ena spent three years in the Ipswich asylum, with another 450 patients. Ena’s medical notes suggest that she was ‘bright at home, fond of music, sociable but suspicious...(diagnosis) Insanity attributed pregnancy and influenza in 1919.’

It was a time when medications for mental illness were not available, and emphasis was placed on a pleasant environment for patients, including areas for employment, recreation and exercise. Susan writes:

‘At this time she was striving to be reunited with her family:”I am trying to get out for the sake of the children’’ and to maintain her identity:”Will you bring the photo of me in evening dress and let them see what I was.”’

In the early 20^th century, a shift occurred in the treatment of the mentally ill, with more women and those with neurotic behaviours being institutionalised, often for long periods. Ena became one of them, with a diagnosis of ‘Hypochondriacal Melancholia’. Melancholia was a common diagnosis for women at the time – what we know of today as clinical depression.

Her sister Una Cheers sought Thomas’s permission to remove Ena from hospital and care for her in Una’s Sydney home.

Letter from Ena’s sister, Una Cheers, to Thomas Rand seeking permission

 to take responsibility for Ena’s care, 26 May 1925

‘I would rather see her dead than where she is’, writes Una

Photograph from personal collection of Susan Kemp

Ena was released into Una’s care, but the task proved too great. Ena was then admitted to Parramatta Mental Hospital. She was 37 years of age.

Hospitals for the mentally ill were at this time chronically overcrowded with inadequate accommodation; patients were under constant surveillance and lived very regimented lives. Female patients suffered violation of their privacy during bathing and dressing, as well as emotional and physical abuse. They wore standardised, shapeless clothes with no opportunity to take pride in their appearance. Sedative medications provided chemical restraint; forced seclusion was particularly feared by patients. Such practices were aimed at controlling behaviour in an often volatile environment.

Research Susan Kemp has undertaken suggests that Ena would have had electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or ‘shock treatment’ regularly – up to three times a week – her permission was not required. Often half a dozen people would be needed to hold the patient down. Patients were lined up to watch, knowing their turn would be soon.

Ena’s medical records documented delusions, restlessness, and conflict between her and staff members, sometimes to the point of violence.

In 1953 Ena was transferred from Parramatta to ‘new’ wards at Stockton Hospital.

Stockton Hospital in Newcastle had opened in 1910 in buildings that had served as a quarantine station. Originally a cheerless, inhospitable and overcrowded place, it was substantially redeveloped in the 1930s.

Portrait of three nurses from Stockton Hospital, NSW 1928

Photograph by F. Lucknam, Newcastle and Hunter District Society Archives, 

courtesy of Cultural Collections, University of Newcastle, Australia

Susan learned something of what her grandmother might have experienced at Stockton from research, and interviews with people such as Marie Lilly. Marie was a nurse who began her training at Stockton Hospital in 1950 and worked there for nearly 40 years.

Marie Lilly outside the nurses’ home, Stockton Hospital, 1950

Photograph from personal collection of Susan Kemp

Staff knew patients as individuals, understanding their likes and dislikes. Patients were taken on regular walks and on outings such as to the Newcastle Show. They worked in the sewing room and laundry, had film nights in the recreation hall, and were involved in growing their own vegetables. In this village community type situation, they were protected from the outside world. [3]

Stockton Hospital (NSW), three years before Ena Rand’s admission

Photograph Newcastle Morning Herald, 26/9/1950, courtesy Newcastle Region Library

Ena remained at Stockton until 1961, and it would have been around this time that Susan Kemp first met her grandmother on day leave from Stockton. At the age of 73, Ena was transferred yet again, this time to the North Ryde Psychiatric Centre. It must have been a huge dislocation for her and she missed Stockton terribly, asking to be returned. Her stay would not be long. Ena had a fall, developed double pneumonia and heart failure, and died on 24 February, 1962.

While the laws had begun to change, providing for improved treatment for the mentally ill and reflecting changes in community attitudes and concerns, it was too late for Ena Rand. She’d been caught in the mental health system for almost 40 years, certified insane and thought to be incurable, unable to return to normal life.

And what of the family left behind?

Mental health institutions have been described as ‘the sanitizers of society’ [4] - able to relieve a troubled family of an intractable and embarrassing member. Coping with mental illness – for the affected individual, and for those who love them – is both intensely challenging, and heart breaking. Inevitably, there is a great cost to the family unit. Susan Kemp describes this:

‘In Ena’s situation, Howard and Beulah were separated and grew apart. My grandfather Thomas felt he could not raise a daughter on his own, and she was taken by one of Ena’s sisters to be raised in Sydney. Thomas lost a wife and a partner in life, and a daughter. Throughout his later life he remained a dignified, lonely gentleman dependent on his son Howard, my father, to whom he was very much attached. ....all his family (were) in the USA, except his bother Silas, who died in 1931.’

After more than a decade on the farm, Thomas returned to Newcastle  - possibly 1933/34 - to resume his dental practice in the former Turkish baths building. Probably by then, Susan speculates, he would have become resigned to the fact that Ena was never coming home. Meantime, his son Howard, who was about 18, would work with his father as a dental technician.

Father and son, deeply attached through the tragedy that befell their wife and mother, died within six months of each other, in 1957 and 1958 respectively.

For her part, Ena never forgot her children. In postcards and letters held by Susan, Ena constantly begged to hear from them.

 

Postcard from Ena Rand to her family

‘Love from Mother and tell Dad to come and get Mother’

Photograph from personal collection of Susan Kemp

Susan Kemp writes:

‘I don’t know if my grandfather (Thomas Rand) ever saw her again. Maybe he thought of Ena as being “dead” and that helped him live with the situation. I don’t know what contact my father had with her. It seemed after a time she ceased to exist.’

In her meticulous research, undertaken out of compassion for that ‘simple, little old lady who was in need of basic care,’ Susan Kemp has gifted her grandmother Ena Newsome Rand not just with her identity – so erased by the overburdened and often harsh system into which she’d stumbled – but also with her place in the family history.

Father and son: Thomas and Howard Rand at the Mutdapilly farm

Photograph from personal collection of Susan Kemp

Acknowledgement

My thanks to Susan Kemp for sharing her research and documentation of the story of her grandmother, Ena Newsome Rand, setting it in the context of the treatment of people with mental illness in Queensland and New South Wales from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Related post 

Hamilton Turkish baths

 http://hiddenhamilton.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/hamilton-turkish-baths.html

  

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[1] Susan Kemp 2008: An insight into the life of Ena Newsome Rand, 15 June 1888 – 24 February, 1962. Susan Kemp, Newcastle. Information and quotations have been drawn from Susan Kemp’s research, with her permission.

[2] ‘The Hunter Plague’, Newcastle Herald, Saturday 9/11/1991.

[3] Susan Kemp 2008, An insight into the life of Ena Newsome Rand, 15 June 1888 – 24 February, 1962. Susan Kemp, Newcastle, 9.

[4]  Dr Jim Gardner 1976, inside the cuckoo’s nest, Madness in Australia, Planet Publishing, Queensland. Quoting Braginsky & Braginsky, 1971.