Historical information

Taken on the 1st of April 1928 and copied from a private collection on the 27th of January 2010 the photograph depicts three well-dressed men and a small child standing around a fountain at the back of the administration building of Beechworth's 'lunatic' Asylum

The asylum was constructed between 1864 and 1867 to the designs by the Public Works Department (PWD) and was later renamed Mayday Hills Mental Asylum.
The decommissioned asylum was one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in Victoria and consisted of sixty-seven buildings, one thousand two hundred patients and five hundred staff members. The asylum was one of the first asylums to focus on treatment and rehabilitation instead of institutional confinement. At the asylum, active work was considered imperative and workshops were located near the male accommodations and laundries and drying yards near the female accommodation.

The asylum closed in 1995 and was sold to La Trobe University before being closed and sold again in 2011 to a private owner.

Significance

This photograph is historically significant as it demonstrates the freedom and safety of those who visited the asylum while also highlighting this instutions mission to treat and rehabiliate patients instead on institutionalising them.

Physical description

Black and white rectangular photograph printed on photographic paper

Inscriptions & markings

Reverse:
7606-1/
Copied 27 Jan 2010/
Copied from private collection/
Inscribed on the back of original/
J.Pinfold 1-4-1929/
May Mental Hospital for the Insane.