Royal Commission appointed to inquire into alleged cases of brutality at the Claremont Mental Hospital, State of Western Australia

The ‘Royal Commission appointed to inquire into alleged cases of brutality at the Claremont Mental Hospital’ was appointed on 20 March 1950. It found children needed to be better segregated and recommended improvements to record-keeping, medical supervision and staffing.

The Royal Commission was chaired by Mr Justice Adrian H. Curlewis of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. It had been stimulated by articles in the Sunday Times newspaper and was specifically required to ‘inquire into and report upon…alleged cases of brutality at the Claremont Mental Hospital, as published by the Sunday Times newspaper in its issues of the 12th and 19th February, 1950…’

The Royal Commissioner found that:

• ‘Unkindness, roughness and violence had occurred’ in the Claremont Mental Hospital
• Punitive measures against the attendants mentioned in the incidents ‘would not be warranted’
• Remedial measures could be ‘amply satisfied by proper instructions being given to attendants, by closer co-operation between the attendants and medical staff, and by a far greater supervision of the attendants …had the Medical Superintendent and the Inspector General properly carried out the duties cast upon them by the Lunacy Act, many aspects of the present inquiry would not have arisen’
• If the evidence of the ‘Chairman of the Board of Visitors , represented the views of his Board, then it is inescapable that the Board has also failed to carry out its duties under the Act.

These findings were hotly contested by the Inspector General and in large part were not accepted by the government of the day, who proceeded to prosecute (unsuccessfully) the attendants named in the incidents. The Royal Commission did, however, prompt the government to implement the changes to the Lunacy Act 1903 that the Inspector General had recommended in 1949.